Main News of November 26

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Syrian President Bashar Assad will not attend a peace conference in Geneva in January dedicated to ending the nearly three-year-long Syrian civil war, which has killed more than 100,000, a senior Russian diplomat said

* Ukraine will sign an association agreement with the European Union when its economy is ready, President Viktor Yanukovych said

* India’s Vikramaditya aircraft carrier left a shipyard in northern Russia, embarking on a long voyage to its permanent base half way across the world, the Sevmash shipbuilder said

* Russian President Vladimir Putin met with longtime friend and former Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi for informal talks in Rome on Monday, Putin’s spokesman said the following day

RUSSIA

* Russian President Vladimir Putin and Pope Francis met in the Vatican for one-on-one talks that focused on finding a peaceful solution to the ongoing civil war in Syria

* Russia’s top investigator has sent an official request to the US Attorney General for an investigation into recently reported violations of the rights of Russian-born children adopted by American families

* Russian and North American military officials have held a first planning meeting for next year’s joint anti-terrorism drills involving the Russian, US and Canadian air forces, a Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said

* A co-founder of The Pirate Bay, one of the Internet’s most notorious file-sharing websites, is being prosecuted under Russia’s controversial new anti-piracy law, a newspaper reported