Main News of August 21

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* U.S. President Barack Obama’s threat to intervene in Syria is an element of his election campaign, Syrian Deputy Prime Minister Kadri Jamil said

* Syria has no Russian-made chemical weapons stockpile, Deputy Director of the Federal Agency for Safe Storage and Destruction of Chemical Weapons Col. Vladimir Mandych said

* Hackers have launched a spate of cyber attacks on British government websites to protest WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange’s extradition to Sweden, Sky News reported

RUSSIA

* A chance still remains for national reconciliation in the conflict in Syria, despite the large number of opponents of that process including those outside the country, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* The defense team will appeal the two-year prison sentence for members of punk group Pussy Riot next week, lawyer Nikolai Polozov told the RAPSI news agency

* The European Court of Human Rights gave a priority status to the case of Adam Osmayev, who is accused of masterminding a plot to kill Russian President Vladimir Putin, a court source told the RAPSI news agency said

BUSINESS

* U.S. aerospace giant Boeing has won a $1.4 billion deal to supply India with 22 helicopter gunships, beating off competition from Russia's Mil Mi-28, the Times of India reported

* Russian flagship carrier Aeroflot has no plans to buy any new An-148 airliners for its subsidiary GTK Rossia, company CEO Vitaly Savelyev said