Main News of February 12

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych is ready to appoint a coalition government that includes members of the opposition, the speaker of parliament said

* China officially announced the loss of its maiden lunar rover due to technical problems

* A senior Kazakhstan defense official has been arrested on suspicion of large-scale bribery, a military court in the country said

* A parliamentary commission in the Baltic nation of Latvia has supported proposed legislation criminalizing the denial of Soviet and Nazi occupation

* A Ukrainian judge who recently sentenced several political protesters to house arrest has been shot dead by unknown attackers, police said

RUSSIA

* Recent statements by the US leader on Russia and Syria are an attempt to manipulate public opinion and force Russia to support a “counterproductive” UN resolution, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said

* The Russian Air Force received 12 advanced Su-35S multirole fighters to be deployed with an air regiment based in Russia’s Far East

SPORTS

* Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov of Russia won gold in the Sochi Olympic figure skating pairs competition as their compatriots Ksenia Stolbova and Fyodor Klimov claimed the silver

* Russia’s Sochi Olympic biathlon silver medalist Olga Vilukhina has fallen ill and is likely to miss Friday’s 15-kilometer individual race, her coach Valery Ivanov told R-Sport

* Russia’s Anton Shipulin, who was one shot away from Sochi Olympic biathlon sprint gold, won’t take part in the individual race, the country’s biathlon union announced

BUSINESS

* A US government energy agency says it believes a major oil project in Kazakhstan that has been marred by chronic delays and closures will restart production in the second half of 2014