BEIT IBA, West Bank (AP) Tony Blair toured a Palestinian aluminum factory Thursday and was told it runs at one-third capacity because of Israeli import restrictions. He promised he’ll take it up with Israeli authorities.

RAMALLAH/GAZA CITY: A senior Palestinian official yesterday rejected a proposal by Israeli Defense Minster Ehud Barak to give the Palestinians some neighborhoods in East Jerusalem to be the capital of the Palestinian state.

The Russia-Georgia clash has generated heated anti-Moscow rhetoric from John McCain and U.S. neoconservatives about a new Cold War, a prospect that most people might see in a negative light but which many military contractors surely view as a financial plus.

Brazen invasion of Georgia by the Russian troops has become the last straw to break the back of tolerance of the international community, which in its policies towards the Kremlin over the recent years has been copying the outdated policies of the free world towards “pacification” of Hitler’s regime in …

Dmitry Medvedev, the Russian president, has signed a decree under which Russia formally recognises the breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states.   “I have signed decrees on the recognition of the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia,” Medvedev said in a pre-recorded address broadcast on …

Ukraine said on Wednesday it wanted to discuss charging Russia more for the lease of a Black Sea naval base, a move that could aggravate regional tensions already enflamed by Moscow’s conflict with Georgia.   humanitarian supplies to Georgia, Russia said its navy was watching “the build-up of NATO forces …

Russia has sent a missile cruiser and two other ships to a Georgian port, while a US military ship has docked at another southern port in a show of force amid an escalating standoff with the West over a nation devastated by war with Russia.

Georgia’s former president Eduard Shevardnadze said Russia will live to regret its recognition of rebel regions and called for a boycott of the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, in remarks published Thursday.

As the attention of the America public is focused on the American election, with the Democratic Convention having just ended, and the announcement today of McCain’s female running mate, and the Republican Convention next week, the public has missed something. Something not missed by Europeans, even mainstream European news media …

Russia praised the European Union on Tuesday for taking a  “responsible approach” to its conflict with Georgia by declining to impose sanctions on Moscow but said the EU had failed to understand its reasons for intervening.