Main news of February 3

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* The United States considers Iran's launching of a Kavoshgar-3 rocket a "provocative act," White House spokesman Bill Burton told journalists

* The Moscow City Court has upheld an arrest warrant for a U.S. national who founded an Andrei Sakharov prize, a court spokesperson said

* Ukraine's parliament, the Supreme Rada, adopted on Wednesday amendments to the law on presidential elections, canceling the two-thirds quorum required for electoral commissions' decisions to be legal

* Passions reached boiling point on Wednesday in Ukraine ahead of the February 7 presidential polls runoff as MPs came to blows in parliament

* Russian-British joint oil venture TNK-BP said on Wednesday it had placed Eurobonds worth $1 billion with maturities in 2015 and 2020 to fund its current operations and refinance its short-term liabilities

* Iran said on Wednesday it had successfully launched a satellite carrying an "experimental capsule" as part of events to mark the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution

* Iran unveiled three new satellites plus a satellite booster rocket in National Space Day ceremonies attended by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad

* Iran has developed a new weapon to shoot down U.S. Apache attack helicopters, the Iranian Fars news agency has reported

RUSSIA

* Officials plan to evict a branch of the Jehovah's Witnesses from an 18th century estate in northern Moscow, the prefect of Moscow's northern district, Oleg Mitvol, said

* The speaker of the upper house of the Russian parliament Sergei Mironov launched a counter-attack against pro-Kremlin United Russia party after it demanded his resignation over criticism of Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's course

* A militant shot dead by police in the south Russian republic of Dagestan was one of the co-founders of al-Qaeda in the North Caucasus, a security service spokesman said

* Russia launched on Wednesday a Progress cargo spaceship on a resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS), a spokesman for the Russian Mission Control said