monitoring Trump and relevant contemporary events

Israel's capability to bomb Iran far exceeds Iran's capability to bomb Israel.

Yes but Iran's capacity to invade Israel by land far exceeds Israel's capacity to invade Iran by land.

Invading Israel isn't that difficult. It's a tiny country.

Thousands of Palestinians have attended the funeral in Gaza of a volunteer medic who was killed by Israeli fire during protests on the border.

Razan al-Najar, 21, was shot dead as she ran towards the border fence on Friday to help a casualty, Palestinian health officials said.

The death of Razan al-Najar followed weeks of deadly violence on the Gaza-Israel border.

More than 100 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces amid protests in support of the declared right of Palestinian refugees to return to their ancestral homes in what is now Israel.

The Palestinian Medical Relief Society said Ms Najar had been trying to reach an injured protester when she was shot near the city of Khan Younis.

"Shooting at medical personnel is a war crime under the Geneva conventions," it said in a statement.

UN envoy for the Middle East Nickolay Mladenov tweeted that Israel needed to calibrate its use of force and Hamas needed to prevent incidents at the border.

The UN's Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) also said it was "deeply concerned" and called for the protection of medical workers.

WASHINGTON — President Donald Trump is falsely claiming that "bad legislation passed by the Democrats" has forced his administration to separate children from the border, even though no such law exists.

TRUMP'S TWEET

Trump tweeted Tuesday: "Separating families at the Border is the fault of bad legislation passed by the Democrats. Border Security laws should be changed but the Dems can't get their act together! Started the Wall."

THE FACTS
No law mandates that parents must be separated from their children at the border, and it's not a policy Democrats have pushed or can change alone as the minority in Congress.

Children are being separated from the parents at the border at an accelerated rate because of a new "zero tolerance policy" being implemented by Trump's own administration. Announced April 6 by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, the new policy directs authorities to prosecute all instances of illegal border crossings, even against people with few or no previous offenses.


Administration officials are quick to note that Sessions' policy makes no mention of separating families. That is correct. But under U.S. protocol, if parents are jailed, their children are separated from them because the children aren't charged with a crime.

So while separating families might not have been the administration's intention, it is an obvious consequence of the policy.

separate children from the border, even though no such law exists.

I prefer to remember Razan al-Najar

According to U.S. Customs and Border Protection, more than 650 children were separated from the parents at the border during a two-week period in May.

Jordan's King Abdullah has ordered the country's new prime minister to conduct a review of a controversial new tax bill, following days of protests.

Education minister and former World Bank economist Omar al-Razzaz has replaced former Prime Minister Hani Mulki, who resigned on Monday.

The protests in Jordan, a key Western ally, are the biggest in years.

Demonstrators say a new tax bill backed by the International Monetary Fund will hurt the poor and middle class.

The former PM had refused to scrap the proposals, which include higher taxes and more austerity measures.

In the letter appointing Mr Razzaz to form a new government on Tuesday, King Abdullah said that the cabinet "must carry out a comprehensive review of the tax system" to avoid "unjust taxes that do not achieve justice and balance between the incomes of the poor and the rich".

The previous evening, the monarch warned that Jordan risked entering "the unknown" if it failed to find a way out of the current crisis, Jordan's Petra news agency reported.

Protesters gathered outside the prime minister's office for a fifth night after Mr Mulki announced he was stepping down. Police have previously said that dozens of people have been detained and over 40 members of the security forces injured.