US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has pledged support for the new UN and Arab League special envoy for Syria, Lakhdar Brahimi, who replaced Kofi Annan in this post. "The United States stands with you and ensures a lasting peace that addresses the Syrian people's legitimate aspirations for a representative government," Clinton said in a statement. The Secretary of State also expressed gratitude to Kofi Annan for his service as Special Envoy.

The current head of the Belgorod region, Yevgeny Savchenko, has been nominated as a candidate for the post of governor of the region in the upcoming elections by the regional branch of United Russia, the party's press service reported on Saturday. The corresponding decision was made at the conference of the regional branch of the party on Saturday.

Japanese ships set sail on Saturday for the Senkaku Islands (Chinese name - Diaoyu), over which Tokyo is engaged in a territorial dispute with Beijing, Agence France-Presse reports. A flotilla of about 20 ships set sail from Ishigaki Island in southern Japan, the agency said. One of the ships is carrying a delegation of 100 Japanese activists who plan to commemorate Japanese who died in the region during World War II when they arrive at Senkaku, Reuters reported.

The laws of Germany and Austria provide for imprisonment for insulting the moral feelings of religious citizens, said the official representative of the Russian Foreign Ministry, Alexander Lukashevich, on Saturday. According to information published on the website of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the department received a request for comment from the RIA Novosti agency on the measures of punishment for insulting the moral feelings of religious citizens in Germany and Austria.

The agroholding Yug Rusi plans to begin production of biofuel at its Novoshakhtinsky plant; $200 million will be invested in the launch of production at the first stage of the project, Sergey Kislov, chairman of the directors and main owner of Yug Rusi, told journalists. According to Kislov, these funds will be enough to launch the production of 1,000 tons of "green diesel" per day. The production is planned to start in three years.

Activist Tatyana Romanova, detained near the Khamovnichesky Court building on Friday, was released from the police station on the surety of a lawyer pending trial; she faces 15 days of arrest for disobeying the police. "Romanova is being released pending trial on my surety," lawyer Vasily Kushnir reported on his Twitter microblog on Saturday. "I'm home.

Unknown persons have smashed the office of the Ivorian Popular Front party, which included former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo, who is accused of war crimes, the AFP news agency reports. According to the agency, on Saturday in Abidjan, the largest city in Côte d'Ivoire, people armed with machetes and hunting rifles broke into the party's office building, stole a number of things and documents and started a pogrom. They also burned a car parked nearby.

Czech police officers have detained an alleged follower of Norwegian terrorist Anders Breivik, suspected of preparing a terrorist attack on Czech territory, Radio Praha reported on Saturday, citing Ostrava police chief Radovan Vojta. According to the head of the city police, the detainee is a 29-year-old resident of Ostrava, a citizen of the Czech Republic, previously convicted of illegally manufacturing explosives and attempting to detonate one of them.

9 photos The court changed the preventive measure for Alexei Navalny from a recognizance not to leave the place to house arrest, a Vedomosti correspondent reports from the Basmanny courtroom. He is prohibited from leaving or changing his place of registration, communicating with any persons other than close relatives, lawyers and investigators, using any means of communication and the Internet, or making statements to the press regarding the criminal case.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has ordered the military to be ready to strike South Korea if North Korean territory is shelled, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported on Saturday.

The members of the Pussy Riot group, sentenced to two years in prison for hooliganism, will be able to win an appeal of the verdict in the Moscow City Court if they condemn the action in their support, carried out by activists of the Ukrainian FEMEN movement, said senior researcher at the Department of Philosophy of Religion and Religious Studies of the Philosophy Faculty of Moscow State University, Archdeacon Andrei Kuraev in his blog on LiveJournal on Saturday.

The insurance company AlfaStrakhovanie plans to increase collections by 21% in 2012, to 40 billion rubles, reported the president of the AlfaStrakhovanie group, Mikhail Bershadsky. He also reported that in the first half of 2012, AlfaStrakhovanie achieved higher results than in the same period last year. "If last year we collected about $1 billion, this year we are better than last year's results in terms of profit and collections.

Syrian Vice President Farouk al-Sharaa has left the country and moved to Jordan, Al Arabiya TV channel reports, citing the Syrian opposition. Damascus has not yet officially commented on the vice president's escape. In early August, Syrian Prime Minister Riyad Hijab also left the country, declaring his defection to the opposition. He is currently in Jordan.

AP Moscow has fulfilled Soviet arms contracts with Syria and is not yet concluding new ones, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in an interview with Sky News Arabia. The TV channel's correspondent asked Lavrov whether the Russian side intends to continue supplying weapons to Syria in light of the fact that "Damascus is launching airstrikes against civilians using weapons and equipment purchased from Russia." "Let's be honest, we are talking about weapons purchased from the Soviet Union.

A temporary cross has been erected in the center of Kyiv in place of a worship cross that was cut down by members of the FEMEN movement; a permanent replacement will be installed in a week, Channel 5 reports. The temporary wooden cross was erected by activists representing various opposition political forces and public organizations. The structure was attached to the lower part of the previous cross.