Main News of August 31

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD:

* US President Barack Obama on Saturday said that while he is prepared to launch a military strike against the government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, he will first seek authorization to use military force from the US Congress

* US diplomats have allegedly canceled a telephone conversation between Secretary of State John Kerry and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov, a diplomatic source told RIA Novosti on Saturday.

* A presidential election in impoverished Tajikistan that has been ruled by an iron-fisted strongman for almost two decades will take place on Nov. 6, an election official said.

* Russian President Vladimir Putin slammed the US on Saturday saying that Washington’s allegations about the Syrian regime’s use of chemical weapons against civilians were "unimaginable nonsense.”

* Four Kyrgyz villagers suspected of having contracted bubonic plague are healthy and have been released from hospital, a health official in the impoverished Central Asian republic reportedly said.

* A bilateral meeting between presidents of Russia and the United States is not on the agenda of the G20 summit in St. Petersburg due in early September, a senior US administration official said on Friday.

 

RUSSIA:

 

* The head of an outlawed opposition party and two dozen activists were detained Saturday at unsanctioned rallies in Moscow and St. Petersburg that were dispersed by police, the rally’s organizers said.

* Fifteen animal burial sites, including two storing remains of animals killed by anthrax, have been flooded in the disaster-hit Russian Far East, a Russian minister said Saturday.

* A military strike on Syria not sanctioned by the UN Security Council would be inadmissible no matter how “limited” it is, the Russian Foreign Ministry said on Friday.

* Russia won’t negotiate any defense contracts with Iran as long as the Islamic Republic continues its litigation with Moscow over a failed S-300 air defense systems deal, a Russian deputy premier said on Friday.