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The specter of an uprising of reanimated corpses also poses a significant challenge to interpreters of international relations and the theories they use to understand the world. If the dead begin to rise from the grave and attack the living, what thinking would -- or should -- guide the human response?

For our purposes, a zombie is defined as a reanimated being occupying a human corpse, with a strong desire to eat human flesh

Because they can spread across borders and threaten states and civilizations, these zombies should command the attention of scholars and policymakers.

But the latest round of fighting appears to have given Israel the upper hand in a conflict that has already outlasted all expectations and is increasingly becoming a war of attrition.

Israel’s advantage has never looked more lopsided. In contrast to the earlier phase of the war, Israel this week deployed its extensive intelligence capabilities and overwhelming firepower in targeted bombings with limited civilian casualties less likely to raise the world’s ire.

“There’s a longstanding conventional wisdom that Israel doesn’t do well in wars of attrition,” said Michael B. Oren, an Israeli historian and a former ambassador to the United States. “That overlooks a broader historical view that Israel’s entire existence has been a war of attrition, and we’ve won that war.”

He sketched out three dominant approaches: realism, liberalism, and an updated form of idealism called "constructivism."

Realism focuses on the shifting distribution of power among states.

Liberalism highlights the rising number of democracies and the turbulence of democratic transitions.

System level analysis examines state behavior by looking at the international system. 

State level analysis examines the foreign policy behavior of states in terms of state characteristics.

Organizational level analysis examines the way in which organizations within a state function to influence foreign policy behavior. 

The three months of increasingly intense fighting between pro-Kiev forces and eastern separatists have unleashed both sides' worst instincts and demonstrated their high tolerance for loss of civilian life.

These developments exclude any recovery of Ukrainian statehood, even in its dysfunctional post-Soviet form. The Ukrainian state, as it emerged after the Soviet dissolution, is finished.

It says a great deal that Hamas’s former Arab backers, which historically have included Egypt, Syria and Saudi Arabia, long ago abandoned the terrorist group. Only a few nations still stand by Hamas. Among the most prominent is the tiny Persian Gulf emirate Qatar.

In recent years, the sheikhs of Doha, Qatar’s capital, have funneled hundreds of millions of dollars to Gaza. Every one of Hamas’s tunnels and rockets might as well have had a sign that read “Made possible through a kind donation from the emir of Qatar.”

Qatar’s proxies of choice have been radical regimes and extremist groups.

Aminah is one of an increasing number of Syrian refugees who opt to marry Turkish men. Women's rights groups are worried: "A lot of women agree to these marriages out of sheer desperation. All they think about is how to feed their family, how to make ends meet. These arrangements might seem like the only way out, and men exploit this," says one activist from Gaziantep, who wished to remain anonymous. "At the same time, local women feel helpless and anxious about their own families breaking apart. Women on both sides of the border become victims this way."

Turkish authorities put the number of Syrian refugees in the country at nearly 1 million, a figure projected to rise by the end of the year to 1.4 million.

women and children constitute 75% of refugees in Turkey, with under-18s accounting for 50%. I

These Pillars are: a well functioning government, a sound business environment, an equitable distribution of resources, an acceptance of the rights of others, good relations with neighbours, free flow of information, a high level of human capital, and low levels of corruption.

Negative peace is the absence of violence or the fear of violence; i

He focuses on three sorts of factors shaping security strategies: the motives of a state, its material capabilities, and the information it has about the capacities and intentions of others. Out of these variables, he fashions a rationalist theory that deduces the circumstances under which states will seek to cooperate or compete.

One of the worst parts of the crisis is that the countries affected are being abandoned. Several airlines have cancelled flights, non-governmental agencies are calling their personnel home, and neighboring countries have closed their borders. Consequently, even those doctors and nurses recruited by foreign charities have difficulty accessing the countries.

The Ebola epidemic has overwhelmed its health professionals. With four million people, Liberia has only 200 doctors and 1,500 nurses, most of whom are in and around the capital of Monrovia.

As with most emergencies in developing countries, it is their health professionals that provide most of the care to their citizens. They are in a better position than the brave volunteers from foreign charities to manage a crisis, since they know the country’s customs, language, and are there for the long haul. However, one of the major problems faced by poor countries is the inadequate number of trained health workers.

The effort has been messy, inefficient and expensive, often lagging the epidemic’s twists in tragic ways.

Despite difficulty filling positions, the W.H.O. now reports that it has more than 700 people working at 77 field sites, the largest emergency response in its history.

Charities with no background treating Ebola patients began running hospitals specialized for Ebola care, some of which were built by militaries and others staffed by hundreds of personnel from China and Cuba who were also facing Ebola for the first time and trying to overcome language challenges.

searching for new measures that will have more impact than the economic sanctions imposed so far, without risking major damage to their own industries or a military escalation that could spiral out of control.

new package of sanctions targeting Russia’s banking, energy and defense sectors, but expressed skepticism that the measures would force Moscow to reverse course.

provide arms and more intelligence to Ukraine’s beleaguered military.

As it struggles to secure the consent, if not yet the trust, of Slovyansk’s largely ethnic Russian population, Ukraine has found that its best weapon has been provided by the rebels themselves — a legacy of violent thuggery and chaos that alienated just about everyone.

housands of residents thronged a large square in front of City Hall to welcome the pro-Russian putsch, chanting “Russia, Russia” and posing for photographs with gunmen they hailed as their saviors from the fascists who had seized power in Kiev with the February ouster of President Victor F. Yanukovych, a Russian-speaker from Donetsk.

The U.S. government is sending flimsy plastic aprons and gauze masks to the Africans with assurances that the donning and removal processes are where the majority of the risk to caregivers is realized. This is simply not true. As is evident by the precautions currently being taken in the U.S. and other developed countries, multiple layers of protection are employed by health workers, and cadavers are treated as highly infectious.

President Obama has sent nearly 5,000 members of the U.S. military to West Africa to assist in trying to stop the spread of the disease for a very good reason — the problem is quickly spinning out of control, and has the potential to become a serious national security concern.

Since 2010, the Department of Defense has partnered with Tekmira Pharmaceuticals to develop a vaccine for Ebola. Tekmira was given ‘fast track’ authority to develop a vaccine earlier this year.

On the surface at least, it's very simple: the conflict is over who gets what land and how it is controlled. In execution, though, that gets into a lot of really thorny issues, like: Where are the borders? Can Palestinian refugees return to their former homes in present-day Israel?

Israeli forces have occupied and controlled the West Bank ever since. It withdrew its occupying troops and settlers from Gaza in 2005, but maintains a full blockade of the territory, which has turned Gaza into what human rights organizations sometimes call an "open-air prison" and has pushed the unemployment rate up to 40 percent.

Settlers are Israelis who move into the West Bank.

Kennedy was the first of five American airports to introduce Ebola screening protocols, and the new measures were the latest indication of the risk that the disease presented.

Beginning next week, Washington Dulles, Newark Liberty, Chicago O’Hare and Atlanta international airports will employ the same screenings as those put in place at J.F.K.

Since at least the 14th century, when the bubonic plague devastated Europe, posting medical officers at a port of entry has been one of the main tools used to try to halt the spread of disease.An outbreak of yellow fever in 1878 led the United States Congress to grant the federal government the authority to order a quarantine to prevent its spread.

“These crises hammer home the full cost of the international community’s failure to prevent conflict,” Pillay said. “None of these crises erupted without warning.”

Pillay said Syria’s conflict “is metastasing outwards in an uncontrollable process whose eventual limits we cannot predict”. She also cited conflicts in Afghanistan, the Central African Republic, Congo, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, Ukraine and Gaza.

The resolution acknowledged that the United Nations has not always used the tools in its charter for preventing conflict. It prescribed several steps for improvement, focusing on addressing human rights violations earlier and recognizing that such abuses are often warning signs of looming conflicts.

s such our platform is comprised of the following: 1. To remain in the region and be apart of the nation’s long-term economic and social recovery and development. 2. To ensure employees, families and communities are aware of the disease and are taking the best precautions to avoid infection and stigma. 3. To share experiences and resources, including trained personnel and practices, to assist governments and partners to mobilize quickly to control the spread of the disease. 4. To offer loan or gift-appropriate assets and resources essential to the deployment of an integrated response by donors, militaries, host governments, NGOs and community-based organizations. 5. To make available information about needs of various organizations and first responders, so that they may be connected with corporate giving. 6. To commit to learning from this outbreak and working together to support a strong healthcare system in the affected counties. 7. To raise international awareness and advocate for a larger global coordinated effort to combat Ebola. 8. To advocate for open trade and humanitarian corridors by air, land and sea.

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A senior European diplomat in Geneva involved in health issues, who was not authorized to speak publicly, lamented the limited international response. “The scale of the epidemic is what the international community is still not getting,” the diplomat said. “It’s becoming obvious that what you need is to scale up by a factor of 20. There’s not enough international coordination and imagination going into this.”

uba sent 165 doctors and nurses last week, China has expanded a medical team deployed there, and British personnel are scouting sites for at least five new centers and 700 additional beds that will bring the total closer to the World Health Organization’s target of about 1,300 beds.

United States delivers on a pledge to provide up to 17 100-bed units, said Dr. Ian Norton, who is coordinating foreign medical teams for the W.H.O. In Guinea, the W.H.O. says there are four treatment centers working with 160 beds available, with 100 more beds needed.

The Economic Community of West Africa (ECOWAS) created a ‘solidarity fund’ to contain and manage the outbreak, [17] and the World Health Organisation convened an emergency meeting of regional health ministers in Accra to strengthen surveillance operations and facilitate cross-border consultations. [18] The World Health Organisation also opened a Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordinating Center in Conakry. [19] Doctors Without Borders has deployed 300 personnel to assist in health care facilities, and both the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the European Union have provided scientific personnel and resources to assist with laboratory testing and government coordination. [20]

The World Health Organisation fulfilled its coordinating mission by organising a meeting of regional health officials in Accra in early July—but that was three-and-a-half months after the first report of the disease. WHO’s Sub-Regional Outbreak Coordination Center has the potential to be a useful resource, but it took nearly four months from the outbreak’s beginning until WHO began such operations. Given how quickly Ebola spreads and its virulence, such a delay helped the disease gain a foothold in the region. Arresting the spread of infectious diseases requires quicker action.

First, the current response needs to be ratcheted up. Opening sub-regional command centers, deploying personnel from governmental and nongovernmental sources, and providing financial resources are all important—but they need to be done in greater number and with greater urgency. The initial efforts are not necessarily failures; they are just too small and slow in response to the overwhelming nature of this unprecedented outbreak.