Main News of January 29

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Ukraine's former Interior Ministry General Oleksiy Pukach has been sentenced to life in prison after a Ukrainian court found him guilty of murdering opposition journalist Georgiy Gongadze in 2000

* Twenty-one people were killed when an airliner crashed near the Kazakh city of Almaty, according to Kazakhstan's Prosecutor General's office

* Brazilian police have so far arrested four people in connection with a deadly fire that killed over 230 people at a nightclub in the town of Santa Maria in southern Brazil on Sunday, Mexican media reported

* The International Monetary Fund approved the disbursement of about $18.4 million under the Rapid Credit Facility (RCF) to Mali in support of the efforts to maintain macroeconomic stability and growth in the war-torn country during the next twelve months

* A search in underway for a US F-16 Fighting Falcon fighter jet that has gone missing on a training flight off the coast of Italy, the ANSA news agency reported

RUSSIA

* Russia confirmed it is extending its "Dima Yakovlev" blacklist to include more US citizens deemed to be human rights violators, who will be banned from entering the country in the latest tit-for-tat retaliation for the US Magnitsky Act

* Russia will carry out annual Antarctic geological and geophysical research expeditions including study of global climate change, under a plan approved by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the government’s press service reported