Main news of January 10

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* A powerful 7.3-magnitude earthquake struck off the coast of Indonesia, the United States Geological Survey said on its website

* Tajikistan detained some 200 members of extremist and terrorist organizations in 2011 and secured convictions against about 170 of them, the country’s first deputy prosecutor general, Abdukodir Muhamadiyev, said

* Embattled Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said he would not resign from his post and reiterated that a foreign conspiracy was behind the bloody unrest in the country

* Daughter of Yulia Tymoshenko, Yevgeniya, said the court decision requiring the jailed Ukrainian ex-premier to pay losses to Ukraine's Naftogaz company was impossible to execute, Tymoshenko's website said

* Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev has vetoed the decision by the country’s Constitutional Council not to hold parliamentary elections in the southwestern town of Zhanaozen, which saw violent riots last month that left 16 people dead, the presidential press office said

* The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) guerilla group said in a statement it was ready for a dialog with the country’s government

* The International Atomic Energy Agency officially confirmed that Iran has started enriching uranium to the 20-percent level, which can easily be turned into fissile warhead material

RUSSIA

* Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has pardoned 27 convicts serving prison terms, in keeping with what has become a yearly tradition for the Russian president at Christmas, according to a statement on the government's official legal online portal

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is preparing his presidential election program based on sociological research gathered by his party, his spokesman told the Izvestia daily

* Phobos-Grunt, a failed Russian sample mission to a Martian moon, was launched despite risks of which Russian scientists were well aware

BUSINESS

* Russia's Finance Minister Anton Siluanov has replaced his predecessor Alexei Kudrin as the Russia governor in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank following a presidential decree signed

* Consumer price inflation in Russia hit a historic post-Soviet period low of 6.1 percent in 2011, the Federal State Statistics Service (Rosstat) reported on Tuesday, citing final data

* Commercial banks’ overnight deposits with the European Central Bank have hit a new record high against a background of Europe’s lingering sovereign debt woes and a confidence crisis on the interbank market, ECB data showed

* The U.S. national debt has reached an ominous milestone, surpassing the size of the entire U.S. GDP for the first time since World War Two, USA Today reported

SPORTS

* Anzhi winger Balazs Dzsudzsak is joining Russian Premier League rivals Dynamo Moscow, the Hungarian said

Svetlana Kuznetsova retired from her match against Czech player Lucie Safarova at the Sydney International because of the heat, the tournament website reported

* Argentinean-born forward of the Barcelona team Lionel Messi became the first to win FIFA player of the year award three times in a row