Main News of June 6

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Tehran said failure to draft an agenda for the upcoming nuclear talks in Moscow was not conducive to their success, Iran’s IRNA news agency reported

* U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called on China and Russia to apply its influence on Damascus to stop the bloodshed in Syria but said that it must include a political transition from the al-Assad regime

* Washington-based Freedom House think tank warned of rising antidemocratic tendencies in Hungary and Ukraine that have the potential to take root elsewhere in the region

* Iran’s application to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) will be considered after international sanctions on it have been lifted, the Russian presidential envoy to the organization said

RUSSIA

* The U.S. administration does not fully appreciate the consequences of its support for Georgia's efforts to propagandize the "Russian occupation of Georgia," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said

* President Vladimir Putin has signed amendments to the 2012 budget considerably increasing the projected oil price for this year to narrow the budget deficit, the Kremlin website reported

BUSINESS

* Russia’s Central Bank has spent $200 million a day on the domestic foreign exchange market in the last three business days to defend the national currency amid eurozone debt woes and falling oil prices, Central Bank Chairman Sergei Ignatyev said

* Russia's Federal Antimonopoly Service (FAS) is examining the shareholders agreement of the Russian-British joint venture TNK-BP for antitrust violations at the request of the country's largest oil company Rosneft, FAS deputy head Anatoly Golomolzin said