| Israeli forces step up attacks on Gaza strip with attacks on tunnels
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 US Secretary of State John Kerry arrived in the Middle East as the death toll continued to rise in the latest clashes between Israel and Palestine. Israeli armed forces have stepped up their assault on Palestinian areas of Gaza and the West Bank while attempting to close a series of tunnels used by Palestinian militia to attack Israeli checkpoints. VoR's Simon Parker reports.
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| Key questions about Rick Perry's border plan
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 (CNN) – Texas Gov. Rick Perry's decision to send up to 1,000 National Guard troops to the southern border is the latest move in a controversy over the influx of migrant youths from Central America, many unaccompanied, streaming into the United States. It represents concrete action over concerns raised by Perry and other Republicans that border security be given more resources generally and specifically in this case to deal with what most agree is a humanitarian crisis. FULL STORY
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| That parts of the Labour Party still love Blair so much ought to worry the 'new' leadership
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 The relationship between a current leader and a former one is always complex. Tony Blair may be a well-behaved éminence grise but, like Margaret Thatcher and Ted Heath, he views the present mainly through the prism of his political past. Given that Ed Miliband has defined his leadership as a break from the New Labour era there are bound to be moments when the current leader is at odds with the former one.
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| The West is too locked in to Russia to cause it pain. But it inflicts a lot of pain on itself
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 The trick with economic sanctions is to put pressure on a country by damaging its economy, but without doing more damage to your own. That is not easy in our interconnected global economy. But fortunately, in the case of Russia, the target country is busy imposing sanctions on itself. In the short run we should not expect too much from sanctions, but in the long run any uncertainty in Russia's economic relations with the developed world undermines an already difficult position.
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(sources)
