Main News of August 3

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

*The UN General Assembly on Friday passed a Saudi-drafted resolution on Syria that Russia called ‘unbalanced’ and voted against.

*Syria is planning to join the Customs Union of Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan soon, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Kadri Jamil said.

*Belarus refused to renew the Swedish ambassador’s accreditation, but did not expel him from the country, a Belarusian Foreign Ministry spokesman said.

 

RUSSIA

*Four barrels with hundreds of human embryos, dumped in a Urals forest, belong to the Urals State Medical Academy, a local police spokesman said.

*Fires are spreading across vast Siberian forests in a flashback to the summer of 2010, when the worst drought on record sparked fires that killed dozens of Russians.

*Court bailiffs have barred Russian opposition figurehead Alexei Navalny from entering the Khamovniki Court in Moscow in order to testify as a witness in the Pussy Riot punk band trial.

*Russian investigator Pavel Karpov has filed a defamation lawsuit with the High Court in London against Jamison Firestone, managing partner of the Moscow-based law firm Firestone Duncan, who has accused the investigator of involvement in the prosecution and death of Russian anti-corruption lawyer Sergei Magnitsky, Russian daily Vedomosti reported.

 

BUSINESS

*Russia's largest private oil company LUKoil has filed a bid for the Skifskaya oil and gas shelf area located in the Ukrainian part of the Black Sea, Ukrainian Environment and Natural Resources Minister Eduard Stavitsky said.

*Synergy, one of Russia's leading spirits producers, will start sales of Scotch whiskey under its own brand name in Russia this year, Synergy Board Chairman Alexander Mechetin said.