Main News of January 17

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

*Rescuers found five more bodies on the capsized Costa Concordia cruise ship, bringing the overall death toll to 11.

*Russia has circulated a draft of the United Nations Security Council’s resolution on Syria, its third since December, but Western diplomats remained unimpressed, dismissing it as “small tweaks” and “playing for time."

*The Greek default is inevitable and will be carried out in an “orderly” manner, Italy’s AGI news agency quoted a senior Fitch official as saying.

*Iran's foreign minister has warned oil exporting countries against making "unfriendly" statements about boosting output if Iran’s exports of 2.2 million barrels a day are hindered by international sanctions.

*A Canadian military intelligence officer has been arrested on charges of alleged espionage on behalf of Russia, CTV News reported.

 

RUSSIA

*A powerful electromagnetic emission from a U.S. radar in the Pacific could have caused the malfunctioning of the Russian Phobos-Grunt probe, the Kommersant daily said.

*Billionaire presidential candidate Mikhail Prokhorov said that if he wins the election he might name former Russian Finance Minister Aleksei Kudrin or jailed tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky as his prime minister.

*Russia’s Communist Party entered into a pact on Tuesday with the radical Left Front movement in a striking show of unity between two generations of opposition forces in the run-up to March’s presidential polls.

 

BUSINESS

*A U.S. investment fund has agreed to buy a shopping mall in downtown St. Petersburg for $1.1 billion, in Russia’s largest ever real estate deal.

*Russia will harvest at least 90 million tons of grain in 2012, with government spending on crop raising expected to increase four percent to 46.5 billion rubles ($1.5 billion), Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said.

*The heads of Russian state-owned companies and state corporations will have to present information about their income, assets and property and that of their spouses and children by April 1, the Kremlin press service said.

*Renova Group, controlled by Russian tycoon Viktor Vekselberg, is considering buying Russia's largest airport, Domodedovo International in Moscow.