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.

"Many of us have received death threats toward ourselves and our families," the speaker said, wearing sunglasses, paint beneath her eyes and a baseball cap. "We will not hide. We will no longer live in fear … If you support Darren Wilson, make your voices heard." She refused to give the media her name, saying "You want my name? I am Darren Wilson. We are Darren Wilson."

The speaker said the media has shown a strong bias against Wilson supporters, drawing loud applause from the crowd. "We share the united belief that officer Wilson's actions on August 9 were warranted and justified and he has our unwavering support," the woman said. Another rally was planned for Sunday. A crowd-funding page created for Wilson raised $235,010 from 5,902 people before organizers stopped accepting donations Friday after surpassing their goal of $100,000 in four days.

“This is an opportunity for me to say we are against the killing of any civilians, any journalists,” he told Isikoff. Claiming that it was Israel who was killing civilians and journalists in an IS-esque fashion, not Hamas, Mashaal said that Hamas would, in the future, take measures to warn Israeli civilians of impending attacks, just as Israel does in the Gaza Strip. He admitted, however, that Hamas has a “problem” directing its strikes at military targets only.

“We do not have sophisticated weapons. We do not have the weapons available to our enemy … so aiming is difficult … We promise that if we get more precise weapons, we will only target military targets,” he said. Mashaal was keen to distinguish Hamas from IS, which was the target of an outpouring of criticism this week after releasing a video showing the beheading of American journalist James Foley.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was quick to point out the similarities between the tactics and objectives of the two organizations, stating that “Hamas is like ISIS, ISIS is like Hamas.” Mashaal, however, took issue with the comparison, calling it a “lie” concocted to “trick” the US public.

According to the report, during the course of its recent terror war on Israel, Hamas has fired over 1,600 rockets from civilian sites, cynically using UN facilities, schools, graveyards, mosques and power plants, among others. The IDF has already documented Hamas's rampant usage of human shields, a phenomenon that has also been caught on film by foreign journalists.

An Indian TV report during the operation exposed terrorists setting up and launching a rocket just meters away from a Gaza hotel where members of the international media were staying, in the middle of a crowded residential area. A France 24 TV journalist - who famously ducked for cover during a live interview when a Hamas rocket was fired right next to him - has also gone on the record to report how the rocket which caught him off guard was launched in a crowded civilian area and right in front of a UN building.

Hagel's assessment of Islamic State, which gained strength during Syria's civil war and swept into northern Iraq earlier this summer, sounded a note of alarm several days after the group posted a video on social media showing one of its fighters beheading an American hostage kidnapped in Syria.

Asked if the hardline Sunni Muslim organization posed a threat to the United States comparable to that of the attacks of September 11, 2001, Hagel said it was "as sophisticated and well-funded as any group we have seen." "They are beyond just a terrorist group. They marry ideology, a sophistication of ... military prowess. They are tremendously well-funded. This is beyond anything we've seen."

General Martin Dempsey, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said officials were worried about the possibility that European or US nationals, radicalized after fighting in Iraq or Syria, would return to their home countries. Dempsey suggested Islamic State would remain a danger until it could no longer count on safe havens in areas of Syria under militant control. "This is an organization that has an apocalyptic, end-of- days strategic vision and which will eventually have to be defeated," Dempsey said. "To your question, can they be defeated without addressing that part of their organization which resides in Syria? The answer is no. That will have to be addressed on both sides of what is essentially at this point a non-existent border."

For those who resist, who dare to act independently, think for themselves, march to the beat of a different drummer, the consequences are invariably a one-way trip to the local jail or death. What Americans must understand, what we have chosen to ignore, what we have fearfully turned a blind eye to lest the reality prove too jarring is the fact that we no longer live in the “city on the hill,” a beacon of freedom for all the world.

We live in a state of undeclared martial law. We have become the enemy. In a war zone, there are no police — only soldiers. Thus, there is no more Posse Comitatus prohibiting the government from using the military in a law enforcement capacity. Not when the local police have, for all intents and purposes, already become the military. In a war zone, the soldiers shoot to kill, as American police have now been trained to do. Whether the perceived “threat” is armed or unarmed no longer matters when police are authorized to shoot first and ask questions later.

In a war zone, you have no rights. When you are staring down the end of a police rifle, there can be no free speech. When you’re being held at bay by a militarized, weaponized mine-resistant tank, there can be no freedom of assembly. When you’re being surveilled with thermal imaging devices, facial recognition software and full-body scanners and the like, there can be no privacy. When you’re charged with disorderly conduct simply for daring to question or photograph or document the injustices you see, with the blessing of the courts no less, there can be no freedom to petition the government for a redress of grievances. And when you’re a prisoner in your own town, unable to move freely, kept off the streets, issued a curfew at night, there can be no mistaking the prison walls closing in.

So if you don’t want to get shot, tased, pepper-sprayed, struck with a baton or thrown to the ground, by all means, stand down. Cower in the face of the police, turn your eyes away from injustice, find any excuse to suggest that the so-called victims of the police state deserved what they got. But remember, when that rifle finally gets pointed in your direction — and it will — when there’s no one left to stand up for you or speak up for you, remember that you were warned.