Mr Brown also announced a Children in Care Bill to do more to protect vulnerable children, and a Child Maintenance Bill to prevent children from falling into poverty when parents split up.

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In 2003, France split dramatically from Britain and the United States, leading attempts to prevent their invasion of Iraq.

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In order to prevent the transactions from being flagged under insider-trading laws, the trades are split among hundreds, at times thousands, of small accounts.

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But a decision to split the policy and technical food safety functions of the FSA in 2010 did not prevent the FSA "acting properly", the prime minister said.

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