Main News of February 10

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Syrian diplomats ruled out the possibility of discussing whether President Bashar Assad should resign, during the second round of international peace talks, which began in Geneva

* A third batch of chemical weapons was taken out of Syria, the global chemical weapons watchdog said

* The European Union is discussing possible economic assistance to Ukraine, the bloc’s foreign policy chief said

RUSSIA

* Russian President Vladimir Putin refused to speculate on whether the cost to develop infrastructure in Sochi ahead of the Olympic Games was inflated, saying that the issue would be investigated later by authorities

* Russian investigators have reopened a probe into an alleged multimillion-ruble fraud at the Defense Ministry on the basis of one of the suspect's testimonies, Kommersant newspaper reported

* Russia’s major satellite provider stopped broadcasting Dozhd independent television channel after the network became embroiled into a controversy over an opinion poll about World War II

* A gunman who killed two people and wounded six in an Orthodox church in Russia’s Far East on the weekend has confessed to the crime, investigators said

SPORTS

* Russian President Vladimir Putin gazed down approvingly from the stands as his country schooled the rest of the world in figure skating, winning its first gold medal of the Sochi Olympics in the process

* Evgeny Plushenko has been confirmed as Russia's entrant in the individual figure skating event at the Sochi Winter Games, his coach told R-Sport, scotching talk the 31-year-old would pull out on medical grounds