WORLD
* Four activists of Ukrainian feminist group Femen staged a topless protest for gay rights at the Vatican as Pope Benedict XVI was reciting his prayer, local media said
* A court in Egypt has granted ex-President Hosni Mubarak’s appeal against his life sentence and ordered a retrial of the ousted Egyptian leader on charges that he failed to prevent the deaths of protesters during the uprising against his regime
* Israeli police evicted Palestinian activists from a tent village they had set up on a West Bank site designated as the area for a new Jewish settlement, Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said
* About ten people were injured in the Egyptian capital Cairo when a group of unidentified men attacked an opposition tent camp, the country’s interior ministry said
* UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon urged international action on Syria, comparing the ongoing civil conflict in the country to Holocaust, the UN News Centre reported
*Venezuelan law-enforcers have seized a light plane transporting 530 kg of cocaine on Saturday, local media reported
* Some 190 inmates considered political prisoners have been freed in Georgia under amnesty which came into effect
RUSSIA
*Thousands of people braved freezing temperatures in Moscow to protest a government ban on adoptions of Russian children by US nationals, as well as to call for the dissolution of parliament, which initiated the legislation
* The Kremlin shares concerns about Russian orphans voiced by protesters at a march in downtown Moscow on Sunday, but warns against calls to “disband” the Russian parliament
* Russian opposition figurehead Sergei Udaltsov has invited French actor Gerard Depardieu, who recently received a Russian passport, to join the next protest march
*Russian opposition activist Leonid Razvozzhayev suffered a heart attack in November fearing trial in Siberia, his lawyer has said
* Russia’s Black Sea resort of Sochi, the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics, was hit by a mild earthquake that caused no damage or casualties, Sochi seismic station head Yelena Karpovich said
* Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev congratulated Russian journalists with their professional day, praising their contribution to the exercise of citizens’ fundamental democratic rights and freedoms, the government press office reported
*A teenage girl who was born blind became an overnight Internet sensation in Russia after publicly appealing to President Vladimir Putin to repel the ban on foreign adoptions that he endorsed
*Rail traffic resumed on world’s longest railroad connecting Moscow and Far East, after Saturday’s derailment in Siberia, the Russian Emergencies Ministry said
* Moscow believes that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's exit cannot be a precondition for a deal to resolve the country’s crisis, Russia’s foreign minister said
SPORT
* France’s Martin Fourcade has continued his domination of the biathlon World Cup with victory in the men’s sprint in Ruhpolding, Germany
* Team East won the fifth KHL All-Star Game by a score of 18-11 against the Western Conference select
