Main News of June 2

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* An international peace conference on ending the ongoing civil conflict in Syria could take place in July, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said

* Egypt’s highest court on Sunday ruled as invalid the country’s upper house of parliament and a panel that drafted the country's constitution

* Another series of tornadoes struck the US state of Oklahoma, killing at least nine people and injuring more than a hundred, just 11 days after the area was hit by a devastating EF5 twister, US media reported

* A mock military parade to mark the Children’s Day in North Korea on Saturday: kids were dressed in miniature replicas of military uniforms and drove toy cars made to look like tanks and rocket launchers, Sky News reported

* Iran's intelligence ministry said on Sunday its agents have dismantled a “terror network” backed by Israel's Mossad that planned to disrupt the upcoming presidential polls, the Fars news agency said

* Almost a thousand of people were detained and 79 injured in Turkey when police attempted to disperse nationwide anti-government protests, Interior Minister Muammer Guler told a news conference on Saturday evening

* Iraqi authorities have uncovered two workshops producing chemical agents, such as sarin and mustard gas, BBC reported

* North Korea lashed at the South Korean president for insisting on government-level talks on the Kaesong industrial zone instead of accepting the communist country's earlier call for resolving tensions at the civilian level

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and US Secretary of State John Kerry held a telephone talk to discuss ways for resolving the Syria crisis, Russia’s Foreign Ministry said on its website

* The Syrian army has seized two cylinders of the nerve agent sarin in an operation in the city of Hama, Press TV reported

* Egypt’s police have released a group of tourists who had been earlier detained for allegedly shooting a pornographic movie in the popular Red Sea resort of Hurghada

* Some 60,000 people gathered for a ‘Goodbye to Nuclear Power Plants’ rally in downtown Tokyo on Sunday in a display of public anger at the government’s decision to restart nuclear power plants

* As many as 97 girls at two schools in northern Afghanistan have fallen sick after a suspected gas poisoning, the Pajhwok news agency has reported

* Rescuers have found the body of a second victim of heavy floods in the Czech Republic, while another three people are missing, state media reported

* The EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton has condemned the disproportionate use of force by police against protesters in Turkey and expressed “deep concern” over the violence

RUSSIA

* Russia has blocked British-drafted resolution that criticizes the Syrian regime’s offensive in the strategic town of Qusair in Syria, UN diplomatic sources said

* Russia's chief military prosecutor Sergei Fridinsky said all those involved in the scams connected to the corrupt Oboronservis defense property services company will be punished under the law

* Foreign same-sex couples will be officially banned from adopting Russian children, said Alexei Levchenko, an aide to a Russian deputy premier overseeing social issues, Olga Golodets

*A driver in the city of Podolsk near Moscow is suspected of running over a family couple after a brawl over parking, the Moscow Region Investigative Department said

* A group of activists in the Central Russian city of Yaroslavl planted potatoes in road potholes “to see if these potatoes will grow sooner than the city authorities repair the roads”

* Darya Ulyanova, a twenty-one-year-old student at Moscow State University, has been crowned as Miss Moscow 2013, the beauty pageant organizers said

* A Moscow Court has sanctioned a two-month arrest of the mayor of Dagestan's capital Makhachkala, Said Amirov, who was detained on suspicion of having organized a murder of a Russian investigator, a court spokeswoman said

* A small plane crashed in the Moscow Region on Sunday, killing a pilot, a spokesman for local emergencies has said

SPORT

* Real Sociedad's fourth-placed finish in the Spanish Primera Division means Zenit St. Petersburg will be seeded in the playoff round of next season's Champions League

* World No. 5 David Ferrer became the first quarterfinalist of the French Open on Sunday, defeating South Africa’s Kevin Anderson in straight sets

* Russia’s Svetlana Kuznetsova beat eighth seed Angelique Kerber in a rollercoaster match on Sunday to reach the quarterfinals of the French Open

* World No. 1 Serena Williams delivered a straight-set defeat to Italy’s Roberta Vinci in the fourth-round match of the French Open

* Roger Federer pulled off a gutsy third-round victory over Gilles Simon at the French Open on Sunday, overcoming a 2-1 deficit to beat the relentless Frenchman in five dramatic sets to advance the quarterfinals