The legislation specifies requirements for the payment card system as well as regulatory functions and features to be carried out by the Bank of Russia. The main goal of the NPS is to ensure complete independence from international payment systems, foreign regulators, and political risks that could result in the partial or complete blocking of foreign payment systems. If the NPS project is successful, widely used international payment systems could lose up to $4 billion which the companies earn from commissions on approximately 85% of all transactions in Russia. And this despite Russians using bank cards much less than in the West. Out of all bank card operations within Russia, 81% are cash withdrawals and only 19% are for cashless purchases.

Sadika Hameed, CSIS fellow, Program on Crisis, Conflict and Cooperation spoke with WEJ on the future of the Pakistan-China relations and its impact on the regional geopolitical and economic stability.
Ms. Hameed, how would assess the current state of Pakistan-China relations?
Relations between China and Pakistan are certainly close and continue to grow especially with regard to military and economic ties. These ties could possibly expand even further if China grows closer to Central Asia and wants overland access to the Arabian Sea. However, this must be viewed in a wider context with a pragmatic China and its ambitions regionally and globally to understand potential implications for the United States. China will continue to view Pakistan as a strategic ally but will carefully balance it with a growing India which is a major trading partner for them. For example, China-India trade is larger than India’s trade with the United States. Similarly, India will balance its relationship with the United States, now a close partner and ally, for economic and security reasons as well. While China and India may both also compete with each other, regional stability is vital for their regional and global ambitions.

It is believed that women in the 20th century won equal rights and opportunities. But does this mean that the market values them on an equal basis with men? Not at all. As proof of this, Bloomberg experts estimate that women make up only 8% of the CEOs of U.S. companies with the largest capitalization on the S&P 500. And the most striking thing is that the salaries of these women are 18% less than those of men in a similar position.
Back in 1963, President John Kennedy signed into law the Equal Pay Act, requiring organizations to pay the same to men and women who perform the same jobs. Fifty years later, there is still no appreciable progress, and the issue of the gender pay gap in the U.S. is still acute. Last year, the average American woman earned 76.5 cents for every dollar earned by the average man – even less than in 2011, when the ratio was 77 cents to the “male dollar.” If the average annual income of men last year, according to the Census Bureau, was $49,398, then for women, the figure was only $37,791. Thus, over a 40-year career, the average woman working full-time would lose $443,369. And in order to earn as much as a man over her career, a woman would have to work almost 12 years longer.
Of course, this situation is reflected in pensions, which are directly dependent on wages. The formula is simple: The higher the pay, the larger the pension. It turns out that at the end of their careers, women still face inequalities. Because of their lower income in the United States, the average Social Security benefit for women above age 65 in 2011 was about $12,700 per year, compared with $16,700 for men of the same age. And the worst thing is that most women who are actively working today are likely to retire without having received all the benefits of equal pay. According to the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR), gender pay inequality will not disappear until at least 2058.

Despite the slowdown in the world economy, the total amount of giving to charity has continued to increase, according to the British organization Charities Aid Formation. The World Giving Index 2013 reveals another curious result: It is the developing countries that are driving growth in charity and the material wealth of individuals isn’t always a sign of their willingness to donate to a good cause.
The World Giving Index 2013 looks at data collected in 2012 from 135 countries and that account for 94% of the world’s population. The study is based on Gallup polls, conducted as part of their World Poll initiative. The statistical data obtained is then interpreted by analysts at the British Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) into three categories: helping a stranger, donating money to charity organizations, and volunteering. The total of these three components determines a country’s ranking in the Index.
The Index leader this year was the United States, which previously held this title in 2011, passing the top spot to Australia in 2012. America came out on top in charitable donations because Americans gave more to needy strangers in 2012. And even while there was relatively stable distribution among the top places across Western countries, this year’s Index was a direct confirmation of a global trend – that people from developing countries are more and more frequently getting involved in such social processes. If you look at the number of people active in charitable giving in absolute numbers and not as a percentage, then India and China are clear leaders. On average, 654 million Indians per month gave some form of help in one of the three categories, while in China it was 531 million and in the U.S. it was 470 million.

By the end of 2014, all of Syria’s chemical weapons and production facilities must be destroyed. Over the next several weeks through the end of March, the most dangerous and toxic elements of Syria’s arsenal will be disposed of. No chemical components should remain by mid-summer and by the end of the year all production and delivery systems will be gone. Ten governments are directly involved in the operations to eliminate Syria’s chemical weapons and dozens more are financing the OPCW and the commercial destruction of components. It’s impossible to determine total costs to date, but the scale is quite impressive.
“One of the lessons of the Cold War is that when things fall apart in a country with weapons of mass destruction, some outside assistance is necessary to secure materials, technology, and people,” said Sharon Squassoni, Director and Senior Fellow for the Proliferation Prevention Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, in a conversation with WEJ. She described the active participation of a wide coalition of countries involved in the destruction of Syria’s chemical weapons.
Back in August 2013, the world’s most eminent analysts weighed the option of U.S. and NATO military intervention in Syrian affairs under the pretext of Assad using chemical weapons against rebels and civilians. But as a result of a diplomatic compromise and the direct participation of the Russian Foreign Ministry, the parties managed to agree on a plan at the end of last August to destroy all chemical weapons and production facilities inside Syria.

The West accuses Russia of violating the main unspoken principle of the postwar world order – the ban on the redistribution of territory between “civilized” countries. However, this rule has been repeatedly violated in recent decades (for example, witness the emergence of the state of Kosovo on the world political map), when Western countries, acting in the name of the world community, decided that such redistribution is in their interests. The Kosovo precedent, of course, would not justify the actions of Russia in the Crimea, if it were not for one fundamental difference: The peninsula was transferred from one legal jurisdiction to another with practically no bloodshed and no conflict. After all, Crimeans have really always considered themselves to be Russians. The West refuses to officially recognize that the residents of Crimea have a right to self-determination, even though such a right has been declared by all international institutions. It refuses not only because of its reluctance to approve of Russia’s policy, but also  it is obvious that Europe, which is experiencing serious economic problems, is itself experiencing this principle in action: After all, it will have to accept the results of the already announced referenda in Scotland and Catalonia. Even the Venetians, judging by the latest news, are not against restoring their republic.