The US government sees the China-dominated AIIB as competition to the US-dominated World Bank and Asian Development Bank. But now that it is clear even to the White House that the US can’t stop the tide, Treasury Secretary Jack Lew backpedaled vigorously on Tuesday. The government would welcome the AIIB, he suddenly said, as long as certain conditions are met, such as adequate transparency. So after this bruising setback, the US now has another opportunity to oppose China’s financial and monetary ambitions.

China is trying to get the IMF to bestow reserve currency status on the yuan, which would add the yuan to a glorious basket that includes the dollar and the euro – currently the dominant reserve currencies with a 63% and 22% share respectively. So it has been lobbying core members of the IMF behind the scenes for support, and they’re coming around despite US conniptions, the Wall Street Journal reported. Despite these US conniptions, the writing is on the wall, at least for the long term. IMF Managing Director Christine Lagarde summarized it last week while in China: The yuan as a reserve currency, she said, is more a matter of when, not if.

For China, it’s part of a long-term strategy, and not dependent on the next election cycle: reign in the power of the dollar – and the benefits it conveys to the US – by elevating the yuan and transferring some of those benefits to China. It won’t happen on a straight line. A “hard landing” or the outright implosion of the China bubble would be one of the zigzags along the way. But it will happen, and the US government is only able to slow down the process.

With a swift and sudden rise to power two months ago, the machinations of Mohammed, King Salman bin Abdul-Aziz’s favored son, remain elusive and his skill untested, even as he leads an aggressive — and escalating — Arab coalition intervention against the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. In just a week of fighting, he’s become a poster boy for the Saudi-led military campaign, known as “Operation Decisive Storm,” as well as an embodiment of his country’s recent shift toward a more hawkish foreign policy in the region.

Yet he is a man whose youth and inexperience have left him almost invisible until now. Even the prince’s age is a matter of speculation and debate. Some peg him as young as 27. Others say he could be as old as 35. “He is a mystery,” says Emile Hokayem, a Middle East analyst at the International Institute for Strategic Studies. More than a half-dozen other analysts and Middle East experts interviewed by Vocativ paint the prince in equally ambiguous terms.

As questions about Prince Mohammed grow, at least one thing is clear, observers say. He’s emerged as one of the most influential players in the House of Saud, and likely the youngest to yield any real influence. After ascending to the Saudi throne in January, his father, King Salman, moved swiftly to consolidate power, appointing the prince to three key cabinet posts. He made Mohammed defense minister and head of a newly-formed economic council. He also placed the prince in the role of chief of the royal court, the equivalent of White House chief of staff.

While the finer details have yet to be elaborated, the significance of this deal should not be underestimated. It will do much to defuse tensions around the Iranian nuclear programme and represents the culmination of more than a decade of political wrangling. While it is far from a perfect deal - many will argue that it rewards Iranian bad behaviour - the alternative would have been no deal at all and a significant deterioration of the diplomatic and security context. For western powers, the agreement will roll back elements of the Iranian programme and maintain an acceptable distance between Tehran and the bomb.

Among the measures announced, Iran’s 19,000 centrifuges will be reduced by two-thirds and the underground enrichment facility at Fordow will be converted into a research facility with enrichment activity confined purely to Natanz alone. For Iran, the deal allows it to keep a good amount of its nuclear programme while providing phased relief from economic sanctions as Tehran takes steps to implement the final deal if it is agreed by the end of June. If Iran fails to implement a deal then the sanctions will ‘snap back’ into place.

Crucially, a delicate dance of diplomacy has allowed both sides to present the outcome as a victory to domestic audiences, even if the naysayers – particularly in Tehran and Washington - will remain potential thorns in the side of successful implementation of the deal. But if the deal constitutes a pragmatic solution to a complex problem, it is also something of a Faustian bargain. While limiting Tehran’s nuclear activities and providing for an intrusive inspection regime, the deal also leaves Iran with a considerable enrichment capacity and the technical know-how to advance its nuclear programme at speed.

While major world powers and Iran made genuine progress in reaching a broad agreement in Switzerland on Thursday, the real test looms at the end of June when the deal must be finalized. "This is an encouraging development, but of course the devil lies in working out the details,” said Edwin Lyman of the Washington-based Union of Concerned Scientists, a nonprofit group that is typically highly critical of nuclear power.

The marathon talks in Lausanne had been finely balanced between success and collapse, and Obama himself cautioned on Thursday that "success is not guaranteed" despite the agreement. Obama’s Republican rivals showed no signs on Thursday of retreating from plans to propose legislation that Obama says would undermine the talks, including a bill requiring that any final deal be approved by the Republican-controlled Congress.

US Senator Marco Rubio, a prospective presidential candidate, called the initial terms of the Iran deal "very troubling" and vowed to work to impose additional sanctions. Obama faces the challenge of calming Israel, which sees Iran's nuclear program as an existential threat and has previously hinted it might attack Iran's nuclear sites if it believes Tehran is making a dash to build an atomic bomb in defiance of any eventual final deal.

“Iran’s behavior in Syria and Iraq and Yemen, all of those places, is going to continue to muddy the waters for Obama in the Middle East,” said Aaron David Miller, a former Middle East negotiator for Republican and Democratic administrations. “But there may be enough traction here to get to the next phase of negotiations.”

Netanyahu added that the deal would legitimize Iran’s nuclear program and not block their path to a bomb, but instead pave its way. The Israeli leader suggested the alternative would be standing firm and increasing pressure on the country.

The White House released a readout of Obama’s call to Netanyahu Thursday night. Obama told the Israeli leader that the deal represents significant progress toward a solution that prevents the Islamic Republic from obtaining a nuclear weapon and emphasized US commitment to Israel.

Kirk remarked that the deal, which was announced Thursday, is more generous than Neville Chamberlain's offer to Nazi leader Adolf Hitler in Munich (in 1938), and that Congress would be hovering over the White House and US President Barack Obama during the final agreement negotiations.

Kirk, a longtime proponent of additional sanctions against Iran, introduced legislation several months ago that would mandate new sanctions only if a nuclear deal is not reached by March, a timetable that has already been extended past the original November deadline. The bill co-authored by Kirk and Democrat Senator Robert Menendez is a toned down version of a previous bill they authored and which had gained momentum in Congress, but Obama lobbied hard against it and threatened to veto it.

Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker added that the US will have to provide more details about the framework agreement, and that a State Department fact sheet released overnight did not give enough information for an informed decision. Moreover, hours after the fact sheet was released, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif contested several key points - and insisted that the US was lying.

One core issue is whether, when, and how Washington would impose sanctions on Iran for breaking the deal. “We don’t know what they would have to do for that to occur,” Corker said. “Congress can do something by weighing in on this deal. Congress’s role in this and concerns about this area could over time affect what actually happens.”

The meeting finally wrapped up at 6am, said a senior administration official, “and that is not because we were up early.” But how that key issue was resolved remains fuzzy. An Obama administration fact sheet on the deal says only that Iran will be able to conduct “limited research and development” into the centrifuges — which are far more efficient than the relatively crude devices Iran now operates — “according to a schedule and parameters which have been agreed to” by Iran, the United States, and five other world powers.

Although Iran will be barred for a decade from enriching uranium with the advanced devices, that schedule and those parameters remain otherwise unknown. Critics of the agreement were quick to zero in on the question. “This is a bad framework that will lead to a bad and dangerous deal,” said an Israeli government source in Jerusalem, who cited as a key complaint the fact that Iran “will continue its centrifuge research and development.”

The research-and-development question is just one of a handful of key issues left unresolved, at least in public, and which could endanger the agreement’s survival.

The siege ended nearly 15 hours after the Somali group's gunmen shot their way into the Garissa University College campus in a pre-dawn attack, sparing Muslim students and taking many Christians hostage. Interior Minister Joseph Nkaissery said four gunmen strapped with explosives were behind the attack, the same number that killed 67 people during the 2013 bloodbath at a shopping mall in Nairobi.

"The operation has ended successfully. Four terrorists have been killed," Nkaissery told Kenyan media. Kenyan police chief Joseph Boinet said the attackers had "shot indiscriminately" when they entered the university compound.

Al Shabaab, who carried out the deadly attack on the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi in 2013, claimed responsibility for the raid on the campus in Garissa, a town 200 km (120 miles) from the Somali border. The group has links to al Qaeda and a record of raids on Kenyan soil in retaliation for Nairobi sending troops to fight it in its home state of Somalia.

People who have acquired rights of residence will still have those rights even if the EU treaties cease. They are known as "acquired rights", "executed rights" or "vested rights". They are so firmly established that they have acquired the status of "customary law", which means that they stand as a fundamental principle of international law, not needing a specific treaty to confirm them. There is even a parliamentary briefing note about it, so Mr Grieve has no excuse.

Mr Grieve stands in a long line of people who have got things wrong concerning the EU, starting with the late Sir Edward Heath who assured everybody in 1971 that joining it involved "no essential loss of sovereignty". Years later, on television he admitted that he knew all about the project for the euro currency and for a United States of Europe at the time he said this.

Even that enthusiastic europhile Lord Hattersley half admitted the truth deficit on a Radio 4 programme in 2000: "Not only was it wrong for us to deal superficially with what Europe involved, but we've paid the price for it ever since, because every time there is a crisis in Europe, people say, with some justification, 'Well we would not have been part of this if we'd really known the implication.'" So never take at face value any statement about the EU by a main party politician – especially by a lawyer on a matter of law!

As reasons for the need to establish stronger cooperation, the MP named the “security situation” in the Middle East as the primary reason for the need to “support the democratic development of the country [Egypt]”. Kauder also stressed the importance of parliamentary elections taking place in “foreseeable time”, and to enable the press in Egypt to work “as freely as possible”.

In the statement by the Christian Union parliamentary bloc, economic ties were mentioned “foremost” as a field for growing cooperation between the two countries. According to the statement, Al-Sisi expected German investments in his country to number roughly €20-€30 billion. Another important aspect was the security cooperation, with assurances by the German side that there was a “strong interest that the relationships to Cairo develop successfully”. Kauder called the formation of a joint military force, as decided on at the Arab League summit on Sunday, as “a very important step”, since this force could “stabilise the region more than in the past”.

He also called Al-Sisi’s confession to religious freedom, an important topic to the German MP in the past, “impressive” with Al-Sisi stating: “There are only Egyptians and no division between Christians and Muslims.” The German MP is known as an advocate for Christians abroad, stressing the importance to protect them as a minority. He voiced concerns as Morsi took power, warning not to transform the Egyptian civil state into a religious one, and to maintain dialogue with social groups, especially including Christians.

Marathon negotiations between Iran and foreign ministers from six world powers are nearing a self-imposed deadline. Ministers want to restrict Iran's nuclear programme in exchange for relief from crippling sanctions. There is no sign that the most intractable problems, such as the pace and timing of sanctions relief, have been resolved, the BBC's Barbara Plett reports from Lausanne.

However, reports say there are plans to issue a joint statement on general points of agreement, accompanied by documents outlining more technical details. These would be enough for all parties to continue negotiations aimed at achieving a comprehensive accord in June, our correspondent adds.

Kerry and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced they would stay at least until Thursday. In a potentially hopeful sign, French Foreign Secretary Laurent Fabius returned for more talks after flying back to Paris the previous day because progress had been too slow.

Six world powers - the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia and China - aim to stop Iran from gaining the capacity to develop a nuclear bomb. Tehran wants to lift international sanctions that have crippled its economy, while preserving what it says is its right to peaceful nuclear technology.

The sides were meant to reach a preliminary accord in the Swiss city of Lausanne which would provide an outline for a final deal to be reached by June 30. The preliminary deal was meant to be achieved by midnight on March 31, but the sides are under pressure not to go home empty handed. The powers and Iran said they had moved closer, but both sides accused the other of refusing to offer proposals that would break the deadlock. Washington said it was willing to walk away from the talks unless the sides could agree on a preliminary framework.

But so rapid has been the deterioration of relations between the Obama administration and Netanyahu government that America's protective shield is now up for discussion at the White House, as part of a broader review of US relations with Israel. Rarely have the grievances between two such close allies been given such a public airing, or chronicled in such vivid and profane detail.

Obama and his aides have made no secret of their anger at Benjamin Netanyahu for accepting an invitation from the Republican leadership to address a joint session of Congress in the midst of his re-election campaign, and then using that pulpit to denounce the potential nuclear deal between Washington and Tehran. Netanyahu's voiced opposition to Palestinian statehood in the final days of the Israel election campaign injected more poison into relations.

Brown was on hand Wednesday as state officials took stock of historically abysmal levels of snowpack in the Sierra Nevada amid the state's grinding drought. It was the first time that a governor attended the measuring event, which has taken place at Lake Tahoe since 1942. Brown ordered the California Water Resources Control Board to implement mandatory restrictions to reduce water usage by 25%. The water savings are expected to amount to 1.5 million acre-feet of water over the next nine months.

Brown said drastic changes were necessary because it's unclear how long the drought will last, and the nearly nonexistent snowpack foreshadows another dry year. Cease-and-desist orders and fines could be issued to those who fail to comply with new restrictions, he said.

Electronic readings on Wednesday at about 100 stations across the Sierra showed that the water content of the snow was only about 5% of the state average for April 1, the date on which snowpack is normally considered at its peak. Official manual readings will be announced Wednesday afternoon.

And it has huge implications for tens of millions of people who depend on water flowing downstream from melting snow — including the nation's most productive farming region, the California Central Valley. Groundwater reserves are getting lower and lower as farmers and towns drill deeper and deeper, sucking out more water than there is coming in. It's gotten so bad in the San Joaquin Valley that the ground is actually sinking. Last summer it sank a half-inch each month.

The snow supplies roughly a third of all of California's water, on average. The Sierra Nevada snowpack is supposed to be a storage bank. It holds the snow late into the spring that then melts gradually. The runoff feeds reservoirs that supply water for millions of people — and the Central Valley. This year, California's chief snow surveyor says, there may not even be runoff.