Main News of November 29

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* The Palestinian Authority is convinced that the majority of UN member states will support the Palestinian bid to upgrade its UN status, the Palestinian ambassador to Moscow said

* South Korea canceled the launch of its KSLV-1 carrier rocket due to problems in its second stage, the Russian Federal Space Agency Roscosmos said

* Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi offered the former Soviet republic of Kazakhstan “billions” in the early 1990s to retain its nuclear arsenal as the Muslim world’s “first atomic weapons,” a former Kazakh foreign minister and high-ranking UN official said

RUSSIA

* Russia's leadership is pushing Damascus to stop military operations against the country’s insurgency in order to enable a political solution to the standoff in Syria, a representative of a moderate Syrian opposition group said

* Russian President Vladimir Putin said he was ready to rejuvenate government plans to create a mega state corporation to develop Russia’s depressed eastern Siberia and Far East

* Linking the repeal of the Jackson-Vanik amendment with the so-called “Magnitsky Act” is a huge mistake by US lawmakers and will result in a reaction from Moscow, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev said

* Police are investigating the alleged theft of 4.5 billion rubles ($145 million) at national development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB), the Russian Interior Ministry's Moscow administration said