'Big Three' global credit ratings agency Standard & Poor's (S&P) has assigned its AA+ long-term and A-1+ short-term issuer ratings with a stable outlook to the BRICS New Development Bank (NDB).

The AA+ is the rating agency's second-highest ranking, behind only a AAA rating. "The ratings reflect our opinion that NDB will establish itself as a catalyst in reducing the infrastructure deficits faced by its BRICS members," S&P said in a press release.

NDB was founded by the BRICS member countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) in 2014 and formally opened in Shanghai in July 2015. The goal of the bank, with an initial authorized capital of $100 billion, is to fund sustainable development infrastructure projects in emerging economies.

Overall, NDB has 23 projects costing $6 billion, including $1.7 billion in China and $1.8 billion in India. Each member country has a 20-percent shareholding and voting rights.

A court in St. Petersburg, Russia has sentenced a man to six years in prison for terrorist propaganda and recruiting new members for the banned Islamic State group using popular internet messenger WhatsApp.

The united press service of St. Petersburg courts told Interfax on Thursday that in 2015 the convict, Azizbek Rustamov, created a special WhatsApp group to commit crimes connected with terrorist activities. After including several members in this group, he subjected them to terrorist propaganda. In particular, Rustamov attempted to persuade his targets to commit terrorist attacks and join illegal terrorist groups, such as the infamous Islamic State (IS, formerly known as ISIS).

Investigators told the court that the group members received texts and videos that contained, among other things, "information about the events in Syria presented from the positions of terrorist ideology."

The US-led coalition is planning to establish air defense stystems at its garrison in the area of al-Tanf occupied by the US in southeastern Syria, former Commander of Syria's Deir ez-Zor Military Assembly Fayez Esmer told Turkey's Yeni Safak newspaper on August 28.

"The US's next step is to build a missile defense shield in the region which must be considered as a part of Washington's long-term plan for chaos in the region," Esmer said.

The Washington administration has realized that the PKK [the Kurdistan Worker's Party] is insufficient regarding its plans related to east of the Euphrates. Therefore, it will further fortify its military presence in the region. On the other hand, US activities carried out in Syria and Iraq is due to its determination to exploit underground resources."

Based on accurate intelligence info, the Syrian Army has unearthed a huge weapon cache in Tulul al-Humur village in southern Hama countryside.

Some of the weapons, which were hidden underground, include the US-made TOW missiles with launchers, as well as an advanced military night vision device.

The arsenal belong to rebel fighter who had controlled the village for years before the Syrian Army restore the area early this year.

Twitter is seemingly fueling concerns over its perceived political bias with a new proposed feature, which suggests accounts that a user should unfollow "to make Twitter great for you."

This week, some users of the microblogging service reported finding a new feature, which appears to be the opposite of Twitter's longstanding suggestion-generator, "Who to Follow."

"You don't need to follow everyone to know what's happening. Make sure you're only following the people that make Twitter great for you," says the message, followed by suggestions of people who a user might like to unfollow, providing an option to strike them out.

On Monday, National Public Radio revealed that two-thirds of school shootings reported in 2015-2016 never actually happened.

Morning Edition reports:

This spring the U.S. Education Department reported that in the 2015-2016 school year, "nearly 240 schools ... reported at least 1 incident involving a school-related shooting." The number is far higher than most other estimates.

But NPR reached out to every one of those schools repeatedly over the course of three months and found that more than two-thirds of these reported incidents never happened. Child Trends, a nonpartisan nonprofit research organization, assisted NPR in analyzing data from the government's Civil Rights Data Collection.

We were able to confirm just 11 reported incidents, either directly with schools or through media reports.

In 161 cases, schools or districts attested that no incident took place or couldn't confirm one. In at least four cases, we found, something did happen, but it didn't meet the government's parameters for a shooting. About a quarter of schools didn't respond to our inquiries.

The Education Department, asked for comment on our reporting, noted that it relies on school districts to provide accurate information in the survey responses and says it will update some of these data later this fall. But, officials added, the department has no plans to republish the existing publication .

...A separate investigation by the ACLU of Southern California also was able to confirm fewer than a dozen of the incidents in the government's report, while 59 percent were confirmed errors. ...

...Most of the school leaders NPR reached had little idea of how shootings got recorded for their schools. For example, the CRDC reports 26 shootings within the Ventura Unified School District in Southern California.

"I think someone pushed the wrong button," said Jeff Davis, an assistant superintendent there. The outgoing superintendent, Joe Richards, "has been here for almost 30 years and he doesn't remember any shooting," Davis added. "We are in this weird vortex of what's on this screen and what reality is."

Researchers are sounding the alarm over US teenagers' mental health and abilities, as a new study finds they've almost completely dropped books for social media. In the 1970s, 60 percent read books and in 2016 - just 16 percent.

One in three US teens fell short of picking up a book or magazine of their own choice in 2016, while spending an average of six hours online, texting and on social media. Smartphones trump not only books, but TV or going to the movies, according to the research, published in the American Journal of Psychology.

The study collected data from the University of Michigan-run survey project 'Monitoring the Future', which has been surveying high school students' trends since 1975. The study also found a staggering increase in social media use among 12-year-olds. In 2008, 52 percent of them said they visited social media sites such as Facebook or Instagram "almost every day." In 2016, it increased to 82 percent.

A Hawaii-based US Army soldier has pleaded guilty to aiding the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) terrorist group. He was arrested last year after pledging allegiance to the group in a ceremony staged by the FBI.

Ikaika Erik Kang, 35, sergeant first class of the US Army, entered a guilty plea, admitting his guilt on four counts of attempting to provide material support to ISIS. Kang became the first person ever to be convicted of such a crime in Hawaii, the US Department of Justice said in a statement.

Kang was arrested on July 19, 2017 shortly after he took an oath of loyalty to the IS mastermind, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, in a ceremony staged by an undercover FBI agent impersonating a senior IS member.

During the mock ceremony, Kang kissed the IS flag and voiced his desire to go downtown and celebrate by shooting people with his rifle.

Trump's hyperbole has currency because the media often live up to conservatives' worst expectations.

On July 27, CNN reported that Donald Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, would be willing to tell Special Counsel Robert Mueller that the president knew in advance of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his campaign and a Kremlin-linked lawyer who was allegedly selling dirt on Hillary Clinton. This revelation not only contradicted Trump's denials, but also Cohen's testimony to Congress. It was quite the exclusive-the closest we've come to ferreting out "collusion" since the last time CNN botched a big scoop.

The story, bylined by Carl Bernstein, Marshall Cohen, and former Obama administration political appointee Jim Sciutto, cited numerous "sources" with knowledge of the supposed bombshell. The Washington Post, chasing the same story, soon outed Cohen's lawyer, the preternaturally mendacious Lanny Davis, as the source of the contention.

But Davis was forced to walk back the claim, first conceding that he "should have been more clear" and that he "could not independently confirm what happened," and then he sort of apologized. (It's worth noting that anyone who trusts Davis as a primary source for any story is likely to be either consciously allowing themselves to be duped or irreparably incompetent.)

Pink Floyd ex-frontman Roger Waters took aim at the controversial White Helmets group, and spoke about censorship on Facebook and other social media platforms during an interview with RT's Sophie Shevardnadze.

Waters told the host of SophieCo that he would offer his full support to the White Helmets if he saw that the organization was actually involved in helping victims of the Syrian conflict. But "all the evidence points to the fact that that is not the reality," he said. Commenting on the Oscar-winning documentary about the supposed humanitarian group, Waters quipped: "Have you ever seen anything so obviously scripted and carefully shot?"

The rock legend also touched upon tech giants cracking down on undesirable speech.