Main news of January 31

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Belarus will take measures in response to the EU sanctions against top Belarusian officials, Foreign Ministry spokesman Andrei Savinykh said

* The European Union and the United States announced the introduction of new travel and financial sanctions on Belarus in response to December's flawed elections and a brutal clampdown on opposition leaders and protesters

* Thousands of Egyptian protestors plan to spend the night on Cairo's main Tahrir Square regardless of the state curfew in the run-up of a mass rally on Tuesday that some say could reach over one million people, a freelance journalist in the capital told RIA Novosti

* Egypt's embattled President Hosni Mubarak unveiled a new cabinet with key ministers retaining their positions

* The creation of a joint Russia-NATO missile defense network will be a key issue on the agenda of the upcoming global security conference in Munich, a German diplomat said

* Kazakhstan will hold presidential elections earlier than scheduled, the country's long-serving president, Nursultan Nazarbayev, said

* The Constitutional Council of Kazakhstan has declared unlawful a proposed referendum on extending Nursultan Nazarbayev's presidential term to 2020, the council's chairman said

RUSSIA

* Russian opposition leader Eduard Limonov and twenty of his backers have been detained during an unsanctioned rally at Moscow's downtown Triumfalnaya Square, a RIA Novosti correspondent reported from the scene

* The Russian Navy will receive a new Graney class nuclear-powered multipurpose attack submarine by the end of 2011, a spokesman for the Malakhit design bureau said

* Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said the government was planning to adopt a new program on the modernization of the country's defense industry in the near future

* Moscow's Basmanny Court has sanctioned the arrest of suspects over a bomb blast at a target shooting club in Moscow in late December, the court's press secretary, Yekaterina Korotova, said

* Moscow Basmanny District Court issued an arrest warrant for former Russian lawmaker Ashot Yegiazaryan accused of large-scale fraud, his lawyer Dmitry Barannikov said

BUSINESS

* Head of Russia's space agency Roscosmos Anatoly Perminov confirmed that the youngest daughter of the world's first cosmonaut has filed an application to register a trademark for "Yury Alexeyevich Gagarin"

* Russian energy firms LUKoil and NOVATEK have confirmed they are evacuating their staff from Egypt, as the political crisis and unrest in the country continues

* Iran and Armenia have agreed to build a pipeline to carry Iranian oil derivatives to Armenia