Main News of February 26

A roundup of what has happened in the past 24 hours

WORLD

* The United States and Russia will do “everything possible” to facilitate a dialogue between the Syrian government and the armed opposition, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Berlin following his first bilateral meeting with US Secretary of State John Kerry

* Participants of the first day of closed talks between Iran and a group of six nations held in the Kazakh city of Almaty were cautious in evaluating the results of the meeting

* Two expert commissions that examined the site of a partial roof collapse at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant (NPP) said that there is no danger to humans or the environment

* Kyrgyzstan is on course to join the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus by the end of the current year, Russian Ambassador to the republic Andrei Krutko said

RUSSIA

* Russian President Vladimir Putin said that all obstacles that prevent Russians from adopting children should be removed as soon as possible

* The crash of a Russian Zenit-3SL rocket earlier this month was caused by defective components manufactured in Ukraine, Ivan Kharchenko, first deputy head of the Russian government's military-industrial commission, said

* A court jailed two people, including a much-decorated Soviet Afghan war veteran, for 4 ½ years each after they were found guilty of a bizarre plot to seize power in Russia’s Urals city of Yekaterinburg

* Every tenth Russian company making settlements through the Central Bank’s payment system dodged tax payments in 2012, according to data posted on the regulator’s website

* Investigators searched the Moscow offices of RUSAL, the world's biggest aluminum company, over claims a subsidiary had not paid almost $7 million in tax