Brazil’s president has blasted the monstrous role of the US dollar in the global economy during a formal visit to China after the two nations forged a recent pact to replace the dollar with their own currencies in trade deals.
"Why should every country have to be tied to the dollar for trade? Who decided the dollar would be the world's currency?" asked President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva at a Thursday ceremony in China’s largest city and global financial hub, Shanghai, to inaugurate his political ally Dilma Rousseff as president of the New Development Bank set up by the BRICS member nations -- Brazil, China, Russia, India and South Africa.
"Why can't a bank like the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other BRICS countries? Today, countries have to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies," added visiting Lula, who is currently touring China aiming to further expand ties with his country’s top trading partner.
The 77-year-old president, who is due to meet with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Beijing on Friday, intends to reposition Brazil as a global go-between and deal broker, spreading a message that "Brazil is back" as a key player on the global stage.
Lula’s administration declared last month that China and Brazil had reached a deal to trade in their own currencies, ditching the US dollar as an intermediary.
Under the currency deal, Brazil and China named two banks – one in each country – to conduct their massive trade and financial transactions by directly exchanging yuan for reais and vice versa, rather than going through the dollar.
China is Brazil's biggest trading partner, with a record $150.5 billion in bilateral trade last year.....more below
Islamic Republic inflicted “heavy” and “extensive” damage on Israel during its US-backed aggression of June against Iran.
Speaking on Monday, Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister for Legal and International Affairs, Kazem Gharibabadi, said in the course of the aggression, Iran dealt a “severe blow” to Israel, which had remained arrogant since the wars in the 1960s, particularly the Six-Day War and subsequent conflicts with Arabs.
“During the war, we inflicted very heavy losses upon the Zionist regime, only a portion of which was made public. Israel itself prevented the full disclosure of the extent of damage caused by Iran’s missile attacks.”
“The reports and images we received from various satellites, together with information obtained from multiple sources in the Israeli-occupied territories, all indicated that the damage sustained [by the regime] was absolutely extensive.”
He said Iranian missiles penetrated through the host of defense systems deployed by several ...
Israeli forces stormed the sealed headquarters of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) in occupied East al-Quds, raiding the long-standing compound in Sheikh Jarrah just days after the UN General Assembly overwhelmingly renewed the agency’s mandate.
In a statement on Monday, the al-Quds Governorate, affiliated with the Palestinian Authority (PA), said Israeli police entered the compound, detained its security guards, and confiscated their phones.
“Israeli police cut off communication, making it impossible to know what is happening inside the compound,” the statement said.
Officials added that the raid was carried out “alongside a complete closure of the surrounding area and extensive searches across all facilities of the building.”
The compound, used as an UNRWA office since 1951, had been vacated earlier this year following a decision by Israel......more below
https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2025/12/08/760269/Palestine-UN-UNRWA--al-Quds--
The document’s dismissal of Europe “as a power of no significance signals that there are three truly great powers left: the United States, Russia and China,” military expert Alexei Borzenko told Sputnik.
The US is also “well aware that we’ve outpaced them on certain types of weapons,” the observer said, citing Russian advances in hypersonics, and the depletion of US and European weapon stocks in Ukraine.
The US is eager to end the crisis in Ukraine, which has proven “a dead-end situation" for NATO "from which the only way out is peace,” Borzenko said, citing the document’s conciliatory language on the conflict and on Russia.
Furthermore, “during negotiations, the Americans figured out what the Kiev junta represents, and how difficult it is to negotiate with it. They understand what kind of crooks they are dealing with” and are tired of it, Borzenko argues.
That’s why various leaders’ recent claims that the Ukrainian crisis could end abruptly seems like a real ...
