Main news of February 14

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Iranian police dispersed an opposition demonstration in Tehran with teargas, Iranian opposition websites said

* The authorities in Iran and Bahrain stepped up security ahead of planned protests inspired by uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia

* At least 3,000 protestors gathered on the streets of Yemen's capital Sanaa in the hope of repeating the success of recent revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia and to oust their long-standing President Ali Abdullah Saleh

* A symbolic monument to the victims of anti-government riots in Egypt has been installed on Cairo's central Tahrir Square, the hub of the protest demonstrations that overthrew President Hosni Mubarak

*Japan ceded the title of the world's second largest economy to China, the NHK TV channel said on Monday citing a government report

RUSSIA

*A Moscow court rejected a lawsuit initiated by opposition figures against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin and a state-owned TV channel

* An aide to a Moscow judge who imposed a jail sentence on former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky in December has claimed the verdict was determined by "higher" powers

BUSINESS

* Italian, Czech and Slovakian consumers sent requests to Russian energy giant Gazprom in 2010 asking it to lower its gas prices, the company said

* Russia's Gazprom Neft, the oil arm of state-controlled energy giant Gazprom, will cut its 2011 investment by 6.12% to $4.6 billion, Gazprom said

*Russia launched its massive privatization program by raising about 96 billion rubles ($3.3 billion) from the sale of 10% in the country's second largest bank VTB at market price

*World's largest aluminum producer UC RusAl said it increased its aluminum output 3% in 2010, to more than 4 million metric tons, and plans further growth this year