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Rishi Sunak's approval rating drops by 5 percentage points in just one week, and this after the Conservative Conference in Manchester where he announced plans on relaxing net zero plans and other policy. Sunak's approval rating drops to 20%. A poll taken after Starmer's speech at the Labor conference in Liverpool shows the Conservatives dropping to 24% and Liberal Democrats dropping to 9%. Labor has the support of just under half of voters in Britain today at 47%. 32% now feel Starmer would be the best prime minister compared to 20% for Sunak. After the Liverpool Labor Conference the percentage of people who thought Labor had a clear plan for the country increased by 6 percentage points.

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Melanie Garson, professor at University College, London, says attention was diverted to expansionist settler programs in the West Bank leading to lax efforts for security on the border with Gaza. Parties on the right controlled the key ministry of Defense and their priorities were the West bank diverting resources,  say experts in this France24 report. Warnings were ignored from the Army, and from Egypt, according to this report. Garson says it will be very hard for Netanyahu to avoid responsibility for not having the mechanisms in place to protect people on the border with Gaza. On this page a former prime minister of Israel who had reached an agreement with Abbas of the Palestinian Authority for peaceful coexistence of the Jewish and Palestinian reflects on that progress and its disruption by rocket attacks from Gaza by Hamas leading to the Gaza war in 2006, 17 years earlier. The patterns are similar with the Israelis and  Palestinians close to an agreement but not going the last mile and external forces disrupting the process at the last moment. ...

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Labour's Starmer gives pledge to build an extra 300,000 homes in Britain each year if elected in 2024.

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The last time there was a war with Hamas was in 2006 under prime minister Olmert of the Kadima party. It happened when Olmert was negotiating a peace settlement with Mr. Abbas of the Palestinian Authority and the two sides had come very close differing on refugee resettlement and how much of West Bank in percentage each side would give up.  Olmert was being investigated for financial dealings by prosecutors which led to derailing further negotiations ,and the Hamas rocket attacks from Gaza shutting down peace efforts. A former mayor of Jerusalem from Likud for ten years and prime minister of Israel from Kadima party reflects on his efforts to bring a settlement with the Palestinians which would create the conditions for the two communities peaceful coexistence. NPR's Dana Estrin talked to Ehud Olmert in 2022 in this interview which you can listen to on NPR audio by clicking on article.

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The Israeli response to the Hamas attack and US plans to rescue hostages on Day 5 of the war in Gaza and border towns in Israel.

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The Texas housing market and overpriced homes resembles the situation in California.

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The US policy of assistance to Israel balanced by the need for deterrance not to lead to regional conflict in the Middle East. The US was close to an agreement with Saudi Arabia and Israel, following earlier accords with UAE and Morocco. These agreements provided a way forward for bringing the Middle East out of a conflict ridden period. Internal divisions in Israeli politics have also played a part in not reaching a lasting settlement of disputes in the region.

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Issues of social media spreading misinformation are seen in this report in NYT about Twitter acquired by Elon Musk and now called X.  This only points to the broader negative role played by social media in the last decade, which includes negative effect on young people and its damaging effect on society. As a medium it has added little and shows the corrosive effects of some technologies.

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Labour leader Keir Starmer tells the 1923 Labor Conference in Liverpool imagine what we could build  "if working people feel they belong and can contribute to Britain, if a whole country says we back your potential." He said of the Tories damage during 13 years of government, "their project will crash against the spirit of working people in this country." And he called the Labour party the builders, the healers- "But know this-what is broken can be repaired. What is ruined can be rebuilt. Woulds do heal." And he said "people are looking to us because they want our wounds to heal and we are the healers, people are looking to us because these challenges require a modern state and we are the modernizers, people are looking to us because they want to build a new Britain, and we are the builders."

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In this analysis of Keir Starmer's speech at the Labour conference inLiverpool in October 2023 The Guardian looks at the scale of the task ahead. Starmer faces the task of the 1997 style decline of public services, the need to channel the Harold Wilson mission to modernize the economy in a time of change, and the Clement Atlee 1945 imperative to build a new Britain "out of the trauma of collective sacrifice." Starmer told delegates- "In 2024 it will have to be all three." Such is the task facing Britain and Starmer in 2024. Something similar is taking place in the US with Biden and Modi in India in 2024, in three of the largest democracies in the world, and two of the oldest.

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The Labour party takes the Rutherglen parliament seat from SNP with Labour's Michael Shanks winning twice the votes of the SNP candidate. Scotland can now lead the way to a Labour government. In his speech Keir Starmer, Labour's leader said he would put Scotland at the "heart of a Britain to last." Labour stands for working people across all these islands, "there is nothing more important." That Labour stands for an argument for Britain, an old partnership perhaps, but a flame now reignited to  face a modern flame of insecurity." On the Scottish nationalists and their party the SNP Starmer said- "Once again they will wave away the lessons of history, try to present nationalism as a bridge to the world. We have to remind them that it can barely provide a ferry to the Hebrides."

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Overdevelopment of the office market in Dallas, Houston, and Austin, cities in Texas, presents a problem in combination with the increase in remote work. The office vacancy rate in Texas is 25% in the third quarter of 2023, according to Moody's Analytics, compared to 12% for New York and 17% for San Francisco. The oversupply of buildings for office space was decades in the making, says WSJ.

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RFK Jr Independent candidacy could take votes away from both Democrats and Republicans. His anti-vaccine stand is closer to a section of Republicans and his family name relates to Robert F Kennedy and the Kennedy family of Democrats. 

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Xi tells Senate majority leader Schumer on a visit to Beijing that China has every reason to want stable relations with the US. Xi meets Biden at a November Summit meeting in the US.