Main News of August 2

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

POLITICS

* Russian President Vladimir Putin said Friday that a recent real jail term for his vehement opponent Alexei Navalny was “strange,” given that another defendant in the case got away with a suspended sentence

WORLD

* The US Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has concluded that it could not have prevented the deadly Boston Marathon attack despite being warned by Russia that suspected bomber Tamerlan Tsarnaev was becoming increasingly radicalized, The New York Times reported this week

RUSSIA

* Fifty-three percent of Russians are positive about the United States, though that figure showed a 3 percent decline from last year, independent pollster Levada Center said Friday, citing a recent poll

* Moscow police detained over 1,675 migrants at a construction site on suspicion of involvement in criminal activity, law enforcement officials said Friday, as the authorities continued a sweeping series of raids targeting migrant workers across the city

* Russia's Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev officially reprimanded the head of the Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) for incompetence Friday, the government press service said

* Edward Snowden, who is wanted by the United States for leaking classified information on US surveillance programs and who was granted temporary asylum Thursday by Russia, has decided where he is going to live and is in a safe place with friends, a Russian lawyer who helped him with his asylum bid said

* A bohemian Muscovite who tried to revamp a backwater provincial school was jailed for bribery upon retrial in a controversial case that his supporters blame on a clash of cultures within Russia

* The Russian government appeared to renew its support for the Skolkovo innovation hub Thursday as Economic Development Minister Alexei Ulyukayev told the Cabinet that the embattled project would be included in a state program and receive 502 billion rubles ($15.2 billion) of funding through 2020

* A Boeing 767 with over 240 people on board made an emergency landing in Russia’s far eastern city of Khabarovsk, a local prosecutors office responsible for transport issues reported

* Prosecutors in central Russia’s Nizhny Novgorod Region launched a probe in regard to a regional deputy governor on allegations that the state official owns an undeclared property abroad, Kommersant daily reported

CRIME

* A court in Russia’s North Caucasus republic of Dagestan has sentenced militant Ruslan Ismailov, implicated in a deadly terrorist attack last year in the republic’s capital, Makhachkala, to 16 years in a maximum security penal colony, the Investigative Committee said

* A court-martial on Russia’s far east Sakhalin Island sentenced a reserve army captain to 1 ½ years in jail for setting up a cell of the banned Islamic group Hizb ut-Tahrir, investigators said

BUSINESS

* President Vladimir Putin on Friday expressed hope for a rise in private investment in the development of Russian infrastructure, especially highways and railroads