Main News of January 31

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours.

WORLD

* Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov discusses bilateral cooperation in high-tech industries, including space and nuclear power, during one-day working visit to Australia

* U.S. President Barack Obama says the United States is considering the possibility of a free trade agreement with Georgia

* The EU has urged the UN Security Council to take immediate steps to end the violence in Syria despite Russia’s opposition to an Arab League-supported UN draft resolution

* Greece not discussing tightening of budgetary oversight, despite the fact that it may need more financial aid than was been planned, Greek Prime Minister Lucas Papademos said

* The euro will decrease over the next 16 months, Russia's former finance minister Alexei Kudrin said

* South Ossetia warned Georgia against interfering in political landscape of the former Georgian republic the South Ossetian Foreign Ministry said

 

RUSSIA

* Russia indicated it will veto a draft resolution on Syria that calls on President Bashar Assad to step down and provides for “further measures” if he refuses

* Moscow police detained 49 people at an unauthorized opposition protest on Triumfalnaya Square, a police spokesman said

* Mikhail Prokhorov said he would not launch attacks against Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, the frontrunner in the March 4 presidential election, unless the two men end up facing off in a second round runoff

* Accusations that Joseph Stalin ordered thousands of captured Polish officers executed without trial at Katyn in 1940 are a violation of the Russian Constitution and an illegal slander against the Soviet leader, a lawyer for Stalin’s grandson Yevgeny Dzhugashvili said