USA - China remains the world's most populous nation at 1.4 billion people, followed by India with 1.3 billion, according to UN figures. The United States, Indonesia, Brazil, and Pakistan combined all have just under 1 billion people. Here is an updated list of the world's most populated cities, according to the UN:

1. Tokyo, Japan (38 million)

2. Delhi, India (25 million)

3. Mexico City, Mumbai and Sao Paulo (21 million)

4. Osaka, Japan (20 million)

5. Beijing, China (just under 20 million)

6. New York-Newark area and Cairo, Egypt (18.5 million)

FRANCE - French Economy Minister Arnaud Montebourg on Saturday criticised German austerity measures and warned France would no longer "be pushed around" by the EU's economic powerhouse. "You have to raise your voice. Germany is trapped in an austerity policy that it imposed across Europe," the socialist minister said in an interview with Le Monde newspaper. Montebourg's comments follow Germany's snubbing of a request from French President Francois Hollande earlier this month for an EU-wide shift of economic policy in order to encourage growth. They put Montebourg at loggerheads with Hollande, who said this week he did not want to see France go "head to head" with Berlin. France is mired in a stubbornly slow economic recovery and the central bank warned this month that Hollande had no hope of reaching his target of 1.0-percent growth for 2014.

USA - The “pause” in global warming may last another decade before surface temperatures start rising again, according to scientists who say heat is being stored in the depths of the Atlantic and Southern Oceans. Global average surface temperatures rose rapidly from the 1970s but have been relatively stable since the late 1990s, in a trend that has been seized upon by climate sceptics who question the science of man-made warming. Climate change scientists have proposed more than a dozen theories to explain the "hiatus", which they say is a "distraction" from the widespread consensus on global warming.

USA - An earthquake with a preliminary magnitude of 6.0 struck California's northern San Francisco Bay area early Sunday, damaging buildings, starting fires and leaving thousands without power. The 30-second earthquake struck just before 3:30 am about 10 miles northwest of American Canyon, which is about 6 miles southwest of Napa, in California wine country, Leslie Gordon of the US Geological Survey said. It's the largest earthquake to shake the Bay Area since the 6.9 magnitude Loma Prieta quake in 1989, the USGS said.

USA - The Navy is sending a second aircraft carrier strike group to the Asia Pacific region amid new tensions with China over a dangerous aerial encounter between a Chinese interceptor and Navy P-8 surveillance craft.

The strike group led by the USS Carl Vinson departed San Diego for the Pacific on Friday, the Navy said in an announcement of what it terms a “planned” deployment. China’s military on Saturday, meanwhile, demanded an end to all US monitoring flights and called US criticism of dangerous Chinese jet maneuvers false. Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Yang Yujun said in a statement that a Chinese fighter jet made a “regular identification and verification” of the Navy P-8 anti-submarine warfare jet during an encounter in an area 135 miles east of Hainan Island.

USA - In early July 1944, delegates from 44 countries gathered at the Mount Washington Hotel in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. A three-week summit took place, at which a new system was agreed to regulate the international monetary and financial order after the Second World War.

MIDDLE EAST - Hamas shot dead 18 suspected collaborators on Friday in a public killing spree triggered by successful Israeli assassination strikes against its most senior military commanders. Seven people were shot dead outside the Omari mosque in central Gaza City's landmark Palestine Square in a display apparently designed as a deterrent message to other would-be informants. Masked militants clad in black gunned down the victims, whose faces were covered and hands tied behind their backs, as worshippers emerged from Friday prayers, witnesses said. "This is the final moment of the Zionist enemy collaborators," one of the masked militants announced, before firing.

USA - Janet Yellen, chairman of the US Federal Reserve, appeared to open the door to an early rise in interest rates on Friday, as she warned that it was almost impossible to determine whether the labour market would ever bounce back to its state before the economic crisis. In a speech at the annual economic conference at Jackson Hole, Wyoming, she said that the Fed has used monetary policy in order to get as many people back to work as possible, but it is becoming hard to tell how long it might take to reach the central bank’s targets. “A key challenge is to assess just how far the economy now stands from the attainment of its maximum employment goal,” she said.

IRAN - Farmers who worked the fertile lands around Isfahan have had to find a new way to make a living since the river at the heart of this Iranian city ran dry. Instead of raising and selling crops irrigated by the Zayandeh Roud, they are now paid to keep its parched riverbed clean and litter-free.

VATICAN – He was a familiar figure to the skinny shoeshine boys who work along the oceanfront promenade here. Wearing black track pants and a baseball cap pulled low over his balding head, they say, he would stroll along in the late afternoon and bring one of them down to the rocky shoreline or to a deserted monument for a local Catholic hero. The boys say he gave them money to perform sexual acts.

USA - After a video surfaced on YouTube Tuesday of Islamic terrorist group ISIS beheading American journalist James Foley, some people asked how this could happen. A spokesperson for YouTube provided the following statement to Mediaite:

“YouTube has clear policies that prohibit content like gratuitous violence, hate speech and incitement to commit violent acts, and we remove videos violating these policies when flagged by our users. We also terminate any account registered by a member of a designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and used in an official capacity to further its interests.”

USA - Online fundraisers for Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson surpassed the amount of money raised for Michael Brown's family as Wilson supporters gathered in an afternoon rally. Supporters of Wilson, the police officer who shot and killed Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, gathered Saturday at Barney's Sports Pub in south St Louis.

MIDDLE EAST - Hamas political chief Khaled Mashaal admitted that Hamas members killed three Israeli teens in the West Bank in June, but claimed the leadership of the organization was not made aware of the details of the abduction plan in advance, in an interview published by Yahoo News on Friday. Interviewed by Michael Isikoff in Doha, the Qatari capital, Mashaal said that the leadership of Hamas learned of the details of the killings of the three teenagers, Naftali Fraenkel, Gil-ad Shaar and Eyal Yifrach, from the Israeli investigation into them. The search for the killers prompted an Israeli crackdown on Hamas in the West Bank, Hamas then escalated rocket fire at Israel from Gaza, triggering the current 47-day conflict.

USA - A long list of Hollywood heavyweights have put their names to a letter slamming Hamas over the “devastating loss of life endured by Israelis and Palestinians in Gaza.” The reported 187 signatories, who include Mayim Bialik, Minnie Driver, Kelsey Grammer, Seth Rogen, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sarah Silverman, and Sylvester Stallone, condemn the “ideologies of hatred and genocide which are reflected in Hamas’ charter, Article 7 of which reads, ‘There is a Jew hiding behind me, come on and kill him!’” In their letter, set to be published on Sunday in Billboard, Variety and Hollywood Reporter, and also in leading US newspapers, they write that “Hamas cannot be allowed to rain rockets on Israeli cities, nor can it be allowed to hold its own people hostage. Hospitals are for healing, not for hiding weapons. Schools are for learning, not for launching missiles. Children are our hope, not our human shields.”

ISRAEL - The IDF has declassified a new special report detailing Hamas's "illegal use of civilian infrastructure" throughout the course of Operation Protective Edge, which began July 8. The report was released on Tuesday, the same day that Hamas breached a ceasefire, and presents an irrefutable case against the terror organization utilizing intelligence maps, photographic and video evidence.