Mexico City, Jun 19 (Prensa Latina) Mexico’s President Claudia Sheinbaum has 82.5 percent citizen approval, according to the results of a FactoMétrica poll released today.

According to the survey, carried out from the 14th to the 18th of this month by telephone, only 17.5 percent of those consulted considered the performance of the president, the first woman to hold the office in this country, as bad or very bad.

The opinion poll revealed that 44.9 percent of those surveyed rated the chief executive as very close to the concerns of the people; 28.2 percent as somewhat close; 15.1 percent as not very close and 11.8 percent as not at all close.

Likewise, 79.5 percent defined her as an honest person compared to 20.5 percent who do not perceive her as such.

Meanwhile, 74.8 percent of the citizens considered the dignitary to have the capacity to make the right decisions in times of crisis, nine percent said that it depended on the situation, and 16.2 responded negatively.

When asked about trust in Sheinbaum to adequately represent Mexico in the international arena, 65.3 percent said they trusted her a lot, 13.8 somewhat, 7.7 a little and 13.2 not at all.

Regarding the opinion analysis on the government’s work in different areas, 77.6 percent expressed a positive opinion about the fight against poverty and 63.8 expressed the same opinion regarding the work in the area of security.

The study included 1,200 people over 18 years of age and the type of sampling was probabilistic, randomly stratified by geography, gender and age groups, in order to guarantee adequate national representativeness.

Brasilia, Jun 19 (Prensa Latina) Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, showed confidence today in winning the 2026 elections, seeking reelection, challenging right-wing governors and minimizing his strength, despite the decline in polls.

Although he has not yet confirmed his candidacy, Lula publicly questioned the strength of right-wing politicians who sound as potential presidential candidates for next year and expressed his willingness to face them at the polls if he decides to seek a new mandate.

At 79 years old, the founder of the ruling Workers’ Party assured that he is in good health, willing and ready to face a new campaign.

“If I am in the condition I am today, with this health and this will, I will be a candidate to win”, he declared during an interview on the Mano a Mano podcast, hosted by rapper Mano Brown and journalist Semayat Oliveira.

Although he avoided officially confirming his candidacy, he sent a clear message to his opponents: “Let the extreme right look for their candidate. If I am a candidate, it is to win,” he said.

Lula directly mentioned some of the names that the right wing is considering as options for 2026: governors Romeu Zema (Minas Gerais), Ronaldo Caiado (Goiás), Ratinho Júnior (Paraná) and Tarcísio de Freitas (Sao Paulo).

The latter, although he has not run, is seen as a strong card of Centrão (center tendency) and bolsonarismo (followers of former governor Jair Bolsonaro), given that the ultra-right politician is still judicially disqualified from running.

“Whoever wants to win me will have to walk more than me in the streets, talk more with the people and do more than me. And I doubt that among those who are now, there is anyone capable,” Lula expressed firmly.

Notwithstanding the recent polls showing a drop in the evaluation of his government, he relativized the numbers: “The poll is only a snapshot of the moment. This is the year of the harvest. I am convinced that we will deliver more benefits than people imagine”, he said.

He also admitted failures in the communication of his administration, acknowledging that many actions were not adequately disclosed: “People do not know what we did, that is why they do not approve of the government”, he lamented.

The electoral scenario for 2026 remains uncertain. Bolsonaro’s disqualification, ratified by the Electoral Justice, leaves a vacuum on the right, which has not yet consolidated a figure capable of uniting the conservative electorate.

In this context, São Paulo Governor De Freitas is being watched with growing interest, but has not yet given definitive signals.

On the other hand, Lula seems to be betting on his connection with the people and his experience as a differential against younger pretenders to power, although with less national experience.

The Israeli military said Iran launched a missile with a cluster munition warhead at a populated area in central Israel on Thursday, according to Lt. Col. Nadav Shoshani, a military spokesman — the first report of that type of weapon being used in the current war.

Iran’s mission to the United Nations declined to respond to the Israeli claim, which was linked to a ballistic missile that struck Or Yehuda, Israel, and nearby towns. No one was killed by the missile or its bomblets, and it was unclear if anyone was injured.

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A munition lands on a sidewalk in Or Yehuda, Israel on Thursday morning.CreditCredit…Or Yehuda Municipality Cluster munitions have warheads that burst and scatter numerous bomblets, and are known for causing indiscriminate harm to civilians. More than 100 countries have signed on to a 2008 agreement to prohibit them — but Israel and Iran have not adopted the ban, nor have major powers like the United States, Russia, China and India.

Videos and photographs verified by The New York Times show an unexploded bomblet on the patio of an apartment building in Or Yehuda after an Iranian missile barrage on Thursday.

The object, which resembles a narrow artillery shell or rocket warhead, is most likely a submunition similar to those that have armed some Iranian ballistic missiles since 2014, according to Fabian Hinz, a research fellow at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a London-based think tank.

“The chances of hitting something increase when you have a missile that might not be as pinpoint-accurate as you would like it to be,” Mr. Hinz said in an interview. “Sometimes you might not need that much destructive force — imagine you want to hit an air-defense or a missile-defense system. These things are not armored, they are pretty soft targets, so just having a geographical spread of the attack could be worth it even if the explosive force and penetrative power is less.”

Trevor Ball, a former U.S. Army explosive ordnance disposal technician, seconded Mr. Hinz’s identification of the item as a submunition from a cluster weapon. Surveillance footage showing an object striking a sidewalk in Or Yehuda appears consistent with a submunition explosion, he said.

The Times also verified photographs and videos showing three small craters in the same area consistent with explosions of submunitions from cluster warheads. The craters are in a sidewalk, a backyard, and the parking lot of a hospital.

The Home Front Command, the Israeli military unit responsible for emergency response and civilian guidance, said in a statement that “a missile containing submunitions struck and dispersed over a relatively wide area,” and warned the public that some of the unexploded submunitions may still detonate and are therefore dangerous. It urged anyone who finds such an object to report it immediately to the authorities.

The command said it had found at least 10 sites in central Israel that may have been struck by submunitions from a cluster weapon.

The Times was not able to independently verify all of those sites, or verify that the submunitions came from a warhead that would be illegal under the 2008 international agreement, the Convention on Cluster Munitions. It prohibits warheads containing ten or more submunitions that each weigh less than four kilograms.

Israel has used cluster munitions in past wars, most recently in 2006 in Lebanon. Russia and Ukraine have used them in the war underway between them since 2022.

Experts say there is very limited publicly available information about the different warheads used on Iran’s expansive arsenal of ballistic missiles. If Iran used missiles carrying cluster warheads, it suggests that it is digging deep into its arsenal and not holding back from using a controversial weapon.

Israel and Iran have been exchanging fire since Israeli forces began an aerial attack on Iran last Friday, targeting its nuclear infrastructure and top military commanders.

Since then, Iran has launched more than 400 missiles at Israel. Most have been shot down by Israeli air defense systems but some have hit military facilities, residential buildings and, on Thursday, a hospital. Those attacks have killed at least 24 people, according to the Israeli authorities.

Israeli warplanes have conducted strikes in both rural and urban areas. As of Thursday, 224 people in Iran have been killed, according to the Iranian health ministry. Israeli strikes have killed at least 10 senior Iranian military leaders.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu answered “yes” when he was asked in a televised interview with Kan, the Israeli public broadcaster, if Iranian missile with a “fragmenting warhead” had hit Israel.

“There are smaller bombs that if you touch them they explode,” he said. He did not explicitly refer to the missile on Thursday as a cluster munition.

Mr. Hinz, who has studied Iranian ballistic missiles extensively, said that the submunition seen in the images from Israel can be carried by at least two Iranian missiles — the Qiam, which is an Iranian-made version of a Soviet SCUD missile, and the much larger Khorramshahr, which can carry up to 80 submunitions.

Cluster munitions, first used by the German Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War, have long been controversial.

“Cluster munitions cannot distinguish between soldiers and civilians because they spread their submunitions over a wide area and leave behind unexploded submunitions that endanger civilians, like land mines, for months or years to come,” said Bonnie Docherty, a senior arms adviser at Human Rights Watch.

Since the adoption of the 2008 convention, 99 percent of global stockpiles have been destroyed, according to the Cluster Munition Coalition.

The Israeli military circulated a digital flyer with a photo of what looks to be an unexploded projectile and a warning that “it may explode upon touch or movement.”