Main news of August 31

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours.

WORLD

*Work to bring to the surface 70 bottles of what may be the world's oldest drinkable champagne began on Tuesday afternoon in the Baltic Sea off Finland's Aland archipelago, media reports said

*A burglar's passion for video games saw him end up behind bars in Moscow, media reports said

*The completion of the summer political season was marked by another flare-up in Russian-Ukrainian gas relations

*Israel is unlikely to prolong its 10-month moratorium on settlement construction in the West Bank, the Israeli ambassador to Russia said

*Iran will have manufactured enough fuel to run its research reactor in a year, the country's nuclear chief said

*The Thai Prosecutor General's Office on Tuesday received a formal request from the United States to drop a second set of charges against Russian suspected arms trader Viktor Bout, a Thai daily reported

*Russia has condemned a fire bomb attack on its embassy in the Belarusian capital of Minsk and ordered a detailed investigation, the Russian Foreign Ministry said

*U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs Robert Blake begins his visit to the Tajik and Russian capitals, Dushanbe and Moscow, the U.S. Department of State said

*There is no change in an anticipated extradition of Russian businessman Viktor Bout, suspected by Washington of illegal arms trade, from Thailand to the United States, the U.S. Department of State said

RUSSIA

*Police detained almost 200 protestors at unsanctioned opposition rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg

*The Russian government, along with RusAl and Interros, the two main shareholders at Norilsk Nickel, are against the appearance of a new shareholder

*Police officers are trying to disperse a protest rally in downtown Moscow, and several prominent opposition leaders have already been detained

*Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the northern city of Norilsk will not face the recent fate of another single-industry town, where residents blocked a major highway to draw attention to difficulties caused by the closure of three plants

*Russia's Progress M-06 cargo spacecraft undocked from the International Space Station (ISS) to begin a seven-day independent scientific mission, a Mission Control spokesman said

*An opposition plan to hold a rally in the centre of Moscow later on Tuesday is a provocation, a joint statement by the mayor's office and city government said

*A delegation from the European Parliament's Subcommittee on Human Rights has arrived in Moscow to monitor an opposition demonstration on Tuesday, the head of the subcommittee said

*Three Russian pilots, kidnapped on Sunday in Sudan's troubled Darfur region, have been released, an official with the Russian embassy in Khartoum said

*The European Court of Human Rights has begun looking into a claim made by three Russian activists on violations made by the Moscow authorities on the right to freedom of assembly, lawyer Dmitry Agranovsky said

*Russian president Dmitry Medvedev said the country's military-industrial complex must be modernized to retain its competitive status on the market

*The Russian Mir-2 mini-sub has found several shiny metal objects on the bottom of Lake Baikal that could be the legendary Tsarist gold lost during the Russian civil war, the Fund for the Protection of Lake Baikal said

*The Russian government can legally implement price caps on flour, wheat, buckwheat and salt in 45 regions since the prices of the foodstuffs have increased by 30 percent in the past four weeks, Russian business daily Vedemosti said

*Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska's private jet was not allowed to land on Monday at an airport in the northern Russian city of Norilsk, where Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is to hold a meeting