• Syrian Civil War:
  • The head of the international Red Cross, Peter Maurer, arrives in Damascus for a three-day review with the Syrian government of the humanitarian situation. (Xinhua)
• War in Afghanistan:
  • New Zealand announces that it plans to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan's Bamiyan province by the end of April 2013. (TVNZ)
• A car bomb explodes near the U.S. consulate in the Pakistani city of Peshawar, killing at least three people and wounding up to 19 others. (BBC)
• Lonmin shares are slightly up on hopes of talks. Solidarity, a major trade union, does not share the optimism yet. A new shooting today at a gold mine in Johannesburg wounds at least four. South Africa conditionally releases 162 of the 270 miners who were detained for killing their fellow miners at Marikana last month. (AP via Yahoo! News)(Reuters) (AFP via Google News)

• American actor Michael Clarke Duncan dies in Los Angeles at the age of 54. (BNO News)
• Jefferson Starship guitarist Mark Abrahamian, aged 46, dies of a heart attack after a concert. (Reuters via Yahoo! News) (AP via Billboard)

• The Moody's agency changes its outlook on the European Union's Aaa credit rating from stable to negative. (Bloomberg via New York Times)

• The North Korean state news agency says Typhoon-15 (Bolaven) left 48 people dead and caused major damage. (KCNA)

• Lebanon bans smoking in closed public places like restaurants and cafés. (The Daily Star)

• South Korea and Japan temporarily halt some military cooperation programs in a long-running dispute over control of the Liancourt Rocks. South Korea's first fleet plans a "biannual" drill around the area from September 7 to 11. (The Mainichi) (Yonhap) (CNTV via Xinhua)
• The Democratic Republic of the Congo wants United Nations sanctions on Rwandese top military officials named in a June U.N. report as supporting the M23 rebels in the current east Congo conflict. (Business Week) (Daily Monitor) (Defence Web)
• Three hundred Hizb ut-Tahrir supporters protest in Jakarta ahead of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visit to Indonesia. (Reuters)

• Vorayuth Yoovidhya, the grandson of a creator of Red Bull, is arrested in Bangkok after an early morning hit-and-run that killed a police officer. (AP via Yahoo! News)
• Former Colombian crime boss Griselda Blanco is killed by hitmen in Medellín. (Miami Herald)

• Swaziland virgins perform an annual reed dance, paying homage to the king, pleasing tourists and compatriots. (Reuters)

• Cracks in 3 of the 21 wooden beams of a European Parliament hemicycle roof lead to the temporary closure, among others, of the plenary debate room; parliamentary operations are reportedly unaffected. (European Voice) (Public Service Europe)