A recent worldwide opinion poll conducted by Pew Research Center shows that Vladimir Putin enjoys more trust than Donald Trump, and analysts blame this fact on America's selfish and reckless foreign policy.

Trade wars with key economic partners, continuing military operations abroad, and the ongoing split among US political elites have been thought to do little for the president's image. This conclusion appears to have been confirmed by the poll.

According to recent research conducted by Washington-based think tank Pew Research Center, people now trust Vladimir Putin more than Donald Trump. Over 26,000 people were surveyed for the study in 25 countries throughout the world.

Friday marked one of the deadliest days at the fence that divides the Gaza Strip from Israel since protests began in Gaza last March, as Israeli forces killed seven including two children.

Four of the seven were shot dead east of Gaza City in circumstances where it appears the demonstrators posed no threat to Israeli soldiers. "Amateur videos showed them kneeling down and kissing the ground on the Israeli side as gunfire could be heard," the AP reported.

The youngest casualties on Friday were Mohammed al-Houm, 14, and Nasser Mosabeh, 12.

Around 1,200 mourners took part in the funeral of Musabeh on Saturday. Mourners chanted slogans against the U.S. and Israel. The procession stretched across the streets of Khan Younis in southern Gaza. He was wrapped in a beige canvas and carried through the city on a stretcher hoisted overs shoulders.

Have you ever noticed how rare sincere apologies are in politics? I've been thinking about this a lot lately. Normal people apologize to each other every day, for accidentally interrupting someone or standing in their way, for being inconsiderate or forgetful, for being unable to satisfy a customer's needs; it's just a part of life we take for granted at work and at home.

But in the highest levels of the most powerful governments on earth, where thousands of human lives can be snuffed out by a single unwise decision and ecosystems and economies destroyed on a whim, apologies are almost unheard of. You only ever see them when a leader is cornered in a complete political checkmate with no other options available to them.

This is because the highest levels of the most powerful governments in the world are dominated by highly manipulative people. If you serve truth, humanity and the world, you are almost certainly delightful to be around and you will almost certainly never have a career in federal politics.

The system is set up to serve a ruling class of plutocrats and their lackeys, so the way to get to the top of the political ladder is in the exact opposite direction of serving the weak and defenseless and being truthful and compassionate. To win elections you first need to win the blessing of the ruling class, and the way to do that is by kissing the right asses while regurgitating the right sound bytes whenever the cameras are rolling.

In my September 24 column, "Truth Is Evaporating Before Our Eyes," I used the destruction of the CBS news team that broke the Abu Ghraib story and the story of President George W. Bush's non-performance of his Texas Air Force National Guard duties to demonstrate how accusations alone could destroy a Peabody Award winning, 26 year veteran producer of CBS News, Mary Mapes, and the established news anchor Dan Rather.

I have many times written that it was President Bill Clinton who destroyed the independent US media when he permitted 90 percent of the US media to be concentrated in six mega-corporations that were in the entertainment and other businesses and not in the news business. This unprecedented concentration of media was against all American tradition and destroyed the reliance that our Founding Fathers placed on a free press to keep government accountable to the people.

Until I read Mary Mapes book, Truth and Duty (St. Martin's Press, 2005), I was unaware of how this monopolization of the media in violation of the Sherman Anti-trust Act and American tradition had proceeded to destroy honest reporting.

Here is what happened. The Texas Air National Guard was a place the elite placed their sons to avoid the Vietnam War draft. Copies of documents written by Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian describing George W. Bush's ability to jump the large waiting list hoping to avoid the war, Bush's non-compliance with National Guard requirements and Bush's unauthorized departure to another state were given to CBS. The CBS team worked for many months to confirm or discredit the documents. The information in the documents proved to be consistent with the interviews of people acquainted with George W. Bush's time in the Texas National Guard.

Three German youths reportedly stabbed a local journalist in the eastern town of Naumburg, performing a Nazi salute after the incident. The reporter narrowly escaped death despite sustaining a 6cm-deep stab wound

Klaus-Peter Kruemmling, a reporter working with Naumburger Tageblatt, found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time, his newspaper reported on Tuesday. The 59-year old has just finished shopping at his local Rewe supermarket on Friday evening when the brawl started.

While heading for his car, the reporter came across three youngsters - and one of them allegedly spat at him and gestured with his middle finger. Insulted by the obscene gesture, Kruemmling confronted the trio about their behavior near the pedestrian crossing - and this is where the brazen attack happened.

In a significant victory for coastal access rights in California, the U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected a Silicon Valley billionaire's appeal to keep a beach to himself.

The decision caps an all-out legal battle over a small stretch of sand in San Mateo County known as Martins Beach. What began as a local dispute over a locked gate has exploded into a cause celebre for beachgoers across California. The decadelong squabble spurred a spate of lawsuits that zeroed in on whether property owner Vinod Khosla needs state permission to gate off the road.

A string of California courts has said he does. If Khosla's last-shot appeal had been granted, his arguments before the nation's highest court could have threatened a landmark state law that declares beach access is a fundamental right guaranteed to everyone.

Leneeth Suazo, four months pregnant, had tried to ignore her ex-boyfriend's menacing voice mails, phone calls, and text messages since he kicked her out of his apartment.

Now it was New Year's Eve and the doorbell wouldn't stop ringing at the apartment complex where Suazo had taken refuge. She knew it was Jim Phane outside, pressing every buzzer in the building.

Suddenly, there was a knock at the front door. Phane, let in by a neighbor, was standing there, begging Suazo to talk to him.

Fearful that he'd attack her as he had once before, Suazo discreetly pressed record on her cellphone. Phane threatened her, and when he noticed the phone was recording their conversation, he lunged.

"Jim, don't touch me. Don't touch my face. I don't want you to touch me . . . Stop!"

Suazo later told police that he grabbed her jaw, shoved her, and elbowed her belly before fleeing as she screamed. A judge granted a restraining order, based on her application outlining the alleged history of violence, and police sought a felony assault and battery charge against the ex-boyfriend.

But justice would elude her. The case would go into the darkest corner of the Massachusetts criminal justice system, where closed-door hearings are often held in private offices without public notice, where the outcome is up to the discretion of a single court official who may not have a law degree, and where thousands of substantiated criminal cases go to die every year.

Call it our secret court. No other state in the country has anything like it.

A senior scientist has given what has been described as a "highly offensive" presentation about the role of women in physics, the BBC has learned.

At a workshop organised by Cern, Prof Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University said that "physics was invented and built by men, it's not by invitation".

He said male scientists were being discriminated against because of ideology rather than merit.

He was speaking at a workshop in Geneva on gender and high energy physics.

Despite booze being strictly forbidden in Iran, some tainted alcohol has left at least 42 people dead and more than 300 poisoned. Hundreds are still recovering in hospitals.

The number of victims has climbed to 371 on Monday and has been drastically rising since the end of last week, with 42 fatalities, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency said, citing Head of the Emergency Department Mojtaba Khalidi. A total of 13 deaths were initially reported on Saturday, but 29 others died across the country as a result of the tainted alcohol in the intervening two days.

Of those hospitalized with poisoning, some 167 people have been already discharged, but 173 victims are still receiving treatment.

The conversation surrounding gender discrepancies in workplaces and universities often focuses on STEM - science, technology, engineering and mathematics - because these are high-paying fields in which women typically lag men in both representation and advancement. There is far less attention paid to similar or greater disparities in other disciplines. Rarely, for instance, does one hear much complaint about lower-status professions such as construction, logging or roofing, all fields where, in the United States, men make up over 96% of workers. The pattern is similar in my own country, Canada, and in the wider Western world more generally. In regard to skilled occupations that women dominate - such as accounting, nutrition, pharmacy, physical therapy, psychology, veterinary medicine, social work and nursing - advocacy groups fighting for equal representation tend to fall mute.