Main News of September 1

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD:

* The head of Russia’s parliamentary committee on international affairs said Sunday that US President Barack Obama would use the upcoming gathering of the Group of 20 major economies in St. Petersburg to declare justification for a US attack on Syria.

 

* The Syrian opposition has expressed disappointment by US President Barack Obama’s decision to delay possible military intervention in Syria until the congressional approval.

 

* The first-ever female spokesperson for the Islamic Republic of Iran’s foreign ministry proclaimed in her inauguration speech that her country was opposed to any military intervention by a Western nation in the Syrian civil war.

 

* South Africa’s former President Nelson Mandela has been discharged from a hospital in the capital, Pretoria, and will continue his recovery at home in Johannesburg.

 

RUSSIA:

* Over the six days that this year’s MAKS airshow was open to the public, about 350,000 people attended.

 

* Russian President Vladimir Putin has signed a decree to deal with the consequences of a devastating flood in the country’s Far East.

 

* Oil exports from Russia’s Black Sea port of Novorossiisk will be delayed throughout early September because a transit pipe burst in the nearby Volgograd Region, but the month’s planned volume will be fulfilled.

 

* Russia will build 195 more kindergartens, enough for 50,000 children, by the end of this year and will resolve the overall lack of kindergartens in the country within three years.

 

* A fireball that lit up the sky over Vladivostok was actually created by a Russian rocket stage, not a meteor, a scientist said.