Main News of April 13

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Russia is calling on the UN Security Council to adopt a swift resolution on the urgent sending of UN observers to Syria to ensure a ceasefire in the country torn by civil unrest, Deputy Foreign Minister Gennady Gatilov said

* Russia and the United States cannot yet agree on missile defense, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* North Korea admitted that its much-hyped rocket launch has failed

* Russia opposes new sanctions against North Korea following Friday's failed rocket launch, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said

* Russia will back Dr. Jim Yong Kim as head of the World Bank, Russian Finance Minister Anton Silyanov said

* Norwegian gunman Anders Breivik, charged with killing 77 people in twin attacks last year, wants to be acquitted on the grounds of self-defense, Norway's Dagbladet newspaper said citing his lawyer

* Jailed former Ukrainian Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is not in a condition to attend court hearings, a German doctor said

* Thousands of Egyptians from Islamist movements took to the streets in Cairo to protest against former allies of ousted President Hosni Mubarak running for president.

RUSSIA

* Russian warships will be continuously deployed for patrol duty off the Syrian coast in the Mediterranean, a high-ranking source in the Russian Defense Ministry said

* Chechen warlord Doku Umarov, Russia's most wanted militant, will be charged in absentia with masterminding an assassination plot against president-elect and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Kommersant business daily reported

* Russia’s chief specialist on tackling drug abuse reiterated the country’s reluctance to introduce a Western-style system of needle exchanges for heroin addicts, saying it would do nothing to combat high HIV infection rates.

BUSINESS

* Draft laws on a new preferential taxation system for companies operating on Russia's continental shelf will be ready by October 2012, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said

* Russia's state budget could receive 50 billion rubles ($1.7 billion) in 2013 from an additional increase in the mineral extraction tax (MET), the country's key tax for energy firms on gas, Deputy Finance Minister Sergei Shatalov said

* VTB, Russia's second largest bank, completes a buyback of its shares sold in a "people's IPO" in 2007