Main news of September 26

RUSSIA

* Alexei Kudrin resigned as Russia’s finance minister and deputy prime minister after a dispute with President Dmitry Medvedev

* Ukrainian Prime Minister Mykola Azarov told a delegation from the Council of Europe’s Parliamentary Assembly that Russia had agreed to review its current gas deal with Ukraine, but a spokesman for Gazprom denied the information

* Russian prosecutors are probing the hospitalization of two prison officials charged over the high-profile death of lawyer Sergei Magnitsky

WORLD

* The Greek government rejected media reports that it may default on up to half of its 350 billion euro sovereign debt

* Abkhazian president-elect Alexander Ankvab was sworn in at a low-key ceremony broadcast by state television

* A Georgian TV company showed footage of Badri Bitsadze, the fugitive husband of opposition leader Nino Burdzhanadze, in Vienna

BUSINESS

* Russia’s central bank has raised the upper limit of the floating currency band as the ruble continued its slide amid increased investor fears of a recession in the United States and Europe, traders said

* The Coca-Cola Company has launched a $120 million plant in south Russia to supply non-alcoholic beverages for the 2014 Winter Olympic Games in Russia’s Black Sea resort city of Sochi, the company said

SPORTS

* The London 2012 organizing committee is coming to Russia to put Sochi volunteers through their own Olympics and select 100 candidates to take to Britain for next year’s Summer Games