The signing of the Master Agreement on Extending Credit Facility in Local Currency and the Multilateral Letter of Credit Confirmation Facility Agreement by the heads of development banks of the member states are the main achievements. Meanwhile the parties declared their intention to initiate a reciprocal payments scheme in national currencies that would allow the exclusion of Dollar and Euro from internal trade transactions among BRICS members. India even proposed an idea to create a new development bank for BRICS countries drafted as “South-South Bank”.

The Finance Ministers of the states agreed to tackle the issue without delay. Moreover the BRICS members were confident in the clamant need for IMF structural reform, first of all aimed to get the Fund off de facto US control. According to the BRICS, the IMF management structure should match the existing geopolitical reality; take into account the apparent redistribution of resources and growing influence of developing countries, as well as prospects for strengthening this trend.

China, on the other hand, is more of a soft leader in Central Asia, having established lucrative business contacts in recent years and struck extremely strategic energy deals with most of the region’s members, first and foremost Turkmenistan.

The state of play in Central Asia is the following: Russia is consolidating its influence over the former Soviet sphere with states which it already has cultivated deep relations with, while China is moving in to fill the void in certain economic vectors. It is of the highest importance for China to be able to diversify its natural resource import routes in order to avoid the US-occupied and chokehold-prone Straits of Malacca, ergo its energy interest in Central Asia.

It is through Russia’s implicit acceptance of China’s involvement here via the RCSP that it is able to proceed without a hitch, as it is also in Russia’s interest to have a strong and as energy independent as possible partner in China.

“There was a direct connection between the progression of the fighting and cyber attacks,” according to Colonel N, the commander of the IDF’s cyber defense division. “It wasn’t like this in previous operations,” he added. “For the first time, there was an organized cyber defense effort alongside combat operations in the field. This was a new reality.”

The attack’s massive scale came as a surprise to Israeli forces. At the beginning of the operation, security services and Internet providers identified only a few attempts to commit cyber attacks. They defined pro-Palestinian hackers as independent actors whose attacks were neither sophisticated nor coordinated.

But as the operation continued, Israel’s understanding of the threat evolved. Colonel N said it became clear that pro-Palestinian groups played a role in the attack. “Today, they’re organizing much more quickly, and it takes them much less time to carry out powerful strikes,” he explained. “During Operation Protective Edge, we saw attacks on a greater scale and on a more sophisticated level. A significant amount of thought and investment stood behind the attacks we saw. I won’t be surprised if, next time, we meet [terrorists] in the cyber dimension.”

Somehow, she expects this to end war, rape, and violence in general. Though this seems like trying to end violence by committing violence – because it is – she asserts that it is “the only logical solution.” Terrifyingly, she has spawned a gaggle of followers that believe in selective breeding, male-only abortions, and an International Castration Day. She asserts that men of all ages would need to attend a castration ceremony, and murdered if they refuse.

Don’t worry, though, the men’s spouses and mothers have the option to “milk the male” before castration if they want a sperm sample. Nothing says “peace” quite like genital mutilation, eugenics, and murder. Oh, and slavery. There’s slavery, too… it’s like a combination of 1984, Brave New World, and the Communist Manifesto… but with “feminism”!

The shaking set off car alarms and had residents of neighboring Sonoma County running out of their houses in the middle of night. After the quake, residents flooded social media with pictures and video of the earthquake's aftermath, showing shook-up kitchens, grocery store aisles littered with broken wine bottles and the sides of buildings crumbling to the street. A bridge in American Canyon was damaged in the earthquake and will be closed, and Napa City Hall has also sustained serious damage.

Queen of the Valley Medical Center has treated 89 patients following the earthquake, according to spokesman Vanessa Degier. Only two of the patients suffered 'major injuries' while most of the injured were able to receive treatment and return home. They have set up a triage outside the hospital to treat the influx of patients.

The earthquake also started several fires, with firefighters battling a blaze that started in a mobile home park in the area. Four homes were completely destroyed in that fire. Diana Martini described the terrifying early-morning quake to ABC News: 'I was alone in the house so I didn't know what to do, and the first thing when it stopped - I ran under the table and tried to get cover because it's the first thing they say to do for an earthquake is get under the table.' 'This is the first major quake that I've been in and I can tell you it's scary,' Derek Moore added on Good Morning America.

Residents are now bracing for a larger aftershock, that could hit the area with another 5.0 magnitude earthquake within the next week.

The US was already the world’s commercial powerhouse, having eclipsed the British Empire several decades earlier. America was also on course to be among the victors of “Europe’s conflict”, even though its economy was largely unscathed by war. As such, Bretton Woods was US-dominated and produced a settlement largely on US terms.

Seventy years ago this week, that fateful summit ended. Its close marked the moment the dollar’s unquestionable supremacy was secured. Since then, global commerce has been conducted largely in dollars and leading economies have held the greenback as their primary reserve currency. The same system remains intact today, with the lion’s share of commercial settlements worldwide still clearing the US banking system – even if the parties involved have nothing to do with the States.

America’s GDP, incidentally, was $16.8 trillion on World Bank numbers, and China’s was $16.2 trillion – within a whisker of knocking the US off its perch. The balance of global economic power is on a knife-edge. Tomorrow is almost today.

The Zayandeh Roud, or “life-giving river”, has flowed through the ancient city for more than 1,000 years en route from its source in the Zagros Mountains in the west of the country to the vast wetlands of Gavkhooni in the south of the Isfahan region. But the riverbed now resembles a vast, gravelly beach, a dead stretch of sun-baked land that winds through the heart of Isfahan, a five-hour drive south of Tehran.

“No water in this river means I had to leave my farmlands in the town of Varzaneh and work for the Isfahan municipality for 15,000 tomans [$5.60] per day,” says Afshin as he cuts weeds on the riverbed. The drying out of the river means about 2 million people – 40 per cent of the population – in the Zayandeh Roud basin who depend on agriculture have lost their income, says Mostafa Hajjeh-Foroush, head of the agriculture committee of the Isfahan Chamber of Commerce. “If this situation continues they should think of changing jobs,” he adds.

They called him “the Italian” because he spoke Spanish with an Italian accent. It was only after he was spirited out of the country, the boys say, his picture splashed all over the local news media, that they learned his real identity: Archbishop Jozef Wesolowski, the Vatican’s ambassador to the Dominican Republic.

The case is the first time that a top Vatican ambassador, or nuncio — who serves as a personal envoy of the pope — has been accused of sexual abuse of minors. It has sent shock waves through the Vatican and two predominantly Catholic countries that have only begun to grapple with clergy sexual abuse: the Dominican Republic and Poland, where Mr Wesolowski was ordained by the Polish prelate who later became Pope John Paul II.

It has also created a test for Pope Francis, who has called child sexual abuse “such an ugly crime” and pledged to move the Roman Catholic Church into an era of “zero tolerance.” For priests and bishops who have violated children, he told reporters in May, “There are no privileges.” Mr Wesolowski has already faced the harshest penalty possible under the church’s canon law, short of excommunication: on June 27, he was defrocked by the Vatican, reducing him to the status of a layman.