War

The Israel Air Force have turned Gaza into a warzone again on Wednesday evening, officially declaring the area a “military zone” after the army fired tank shells at the Palestinian occupied territory.  The shelling comes in response to an alleged mortar fire near the border which Israel says Hamas had fired towards Israeli forces in an attempt to deter them from searching for tunnels. haaretz.com reports: According to reports in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, five airstrikes targeted Hamas training camps in the vicinity of the airport and in the center of the enclave.

Donald Trump says Israel should continue construction of illegal settlements across the occupied West Bank.

Russia has wasted no time in responding to NATO's decision to deploy 4,000 troops to Russia's border. Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu announced that Russia will be deploying two new divisions to the West, and one to the South (reportedly with 10,000 troops each) in order to counterbalance NATO's increased military presence.

As we detailed recently, in addition to its sub-prime debt crisis, China is dealing with an issue that is just as troubling, if not more so: Porkflation. Due to a drop in global production of pig meat, pork prices in China have been skyrocketing at both the wholesale and retail levels.

Retail prices

And wholesale prices

As we also noted previously, Pork's role in CPI is also being felt (factors heavily into the CPI basket), as China's broad-based CPI is creeping up.

The Turkish Prime Minister said that Ankara was in a position to send ground troops to Syria if necessary. Ahmet Davutoglu seems to believe that it would be alright to invade Syria as NATO’s consistent violation of international law had made it ‘legal’ to do so. Sputnik news reports: He pointed out that such a move by Turkey would be legal as the UN had made a number of decisions on the fight against ISIS in terms of self-defense and countering terrorism. “If necessary, we will send troops to Syria.