LONDON (Xinhua) -- Fifty-three percent of U.S. voters feel they are worse off financially since U.S. President Donald Trump took office in January 2025, compared with only 21 percent who said they are better off, according to a recent poll by the Financial Times. The poll also showed clear partisan cleavages, with almost 80 percent of Democrats saying they are worse off under Trump, as opposed to 23 percent of Republicans who said the same. Meanwhile, 64 percent of voters found that the U.S. economy is going in the wrong direction, while only 25 percent said it is going in the right direction. Eighty-six percent of Democrats believe the economy is heading in the wrong direction, while the share among Republicans stands at 37 percent.

 

*** 

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Rebuffing President Donald Trump for a second time, the U.S. Supreme Court declined on Monday to hear his appeal of a $5 million verdict in favor of E. Jean Carroll after a jury found him liable for sexually abusing and defaming the former magazine columnist. The justices rejected Trump’s request to reconsider their previous decision in June denying his appeal of the 2023 jury verdict stemming from allegations that he raped her in the 1990s in a Manhattan department store’s dressing room. Trump’s lawyers contend that the trial was unfair.

 

*** 

MOGADISHU (Reuters) - Somali federal troops drove opposition forces out of one of the country’s biggest cities, Baidoa, on Monday, following heavy clashes that left many people dead, residents told Reuters. Baidoa, which is home to hundreds of thousands of people displaced by conflict and hunger in other areas, was shaken by hours of fighting between the federal soldiers and opposition forces loyal to the former president of South West state, Abdiaziz Hassan Mohamed Laftagareen.

 

*** 

PARIS (AFP) - Nine people have been killed and 23 injured, including a child, in Ukrainian strikes on Russia, local officials have said. Eight people were killed in the western Belgorod region bordering Ukraine in the past 24 hours. A woman died overnight in the southern Astrakhan region. Ukraine said two people were killed in Russian drone attacks on the north-eastern Sumy region, and another two in the eastern Donetsk region. The strikes come a night after what Russia described as the “largest-scale” attack by Ukraine this year, in which at least seven people were killed. Russian attacks on Ukraine also killed at least seven people and injured more than 39 on Saturday night.

 

*** 

SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva holds a tight lead over Senator Flavio Bolsonaro, his main right-wing challenger, in a potential runoff ahead of October’s election, a BTG Pactual/Nexus poll showed on Monday. In a simulated second-round runoff, the leftist Lula would receive 47% of voter support compared with 44% for Bolsonaro, unchanged from last week’s poll. The poll has a margin of error of two percentage points. In a first-round scenario, Lula would lead with 41% of the votes, followed by Bolsonaro at 36%, each up one percentage point from a week earlier. Senator Bolsonaro is the eldest son of former President Jair Bolsonaro. If no candidate wins more than 50% of valid votes in the first round, the two frontrunners advance to a runoff.