The Slovak gas monopolist SPP filed a lawsuit against Gazprom with the Arbitration Court of the International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, demanding compensation for losses from the transit crisis at the beginning of last year, a source familiar with the situation told Interfax . The Slovak side calculated its losses back in March, sending a demand to its Russian partners to compensate them. The SPP press service did not confirm that the claim had been filed.

The main flight tests of the fifth-generation fighter T-50 in Zhukovsky near Moscow will begin in April this year, a source in the company that developed the Sukhoi aircraft said. Since the beginning of the year, three T-50s have already completed training flights in Komsomolsk-on-Amur, where the vehicles are currently based.

Denis Pinchuk SAINT PETERSBURG (Reuters) - Roulette lovers in Russia no longer need to retreat to special gaming zones or go abroad: a cruise ship awaits them in St. Petersburg. From April 20, the Princess Maria ferry will operate five times a week on the St. Petersburg-Helsinki-Petersburg line, and once a week will depart from the St. Petersburg port to the open sea for the night and return there in the morning. “One flight departing from St.

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran could cut off oil supplies to European countries and fire missiles at any hostile power, Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, said on Sunday. Western countries fear that Iran is developing nuclear weapons and insist that it abandon the production of fuel for nuclear power plants. Tehran has begun enriching uranium, claiming that its nuclear program is peaceful.

This morning, a new earthquake of magnitude 5.1 occurred in the Bio-Bio region of Chile, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). According to the USGS, the tremors were recorded at 03.07 UTC (06.07 Moscow time) 80 km from the city of Concepcion. Let us remind you that a powerful earthquake of magnitude 8.8 occurred in Chile last Saturday. The epicenter of the disaster was 115 km north of Concepcion, at a depth of 55 km.

In Samara, a sentence was passed on pilots Oleg Zubkov and Andrei Lapanov, because of whose mistake the Tu-134 crashed in March 2007 at Kurumoch airport. Both pilots received suspended sentences. The plane, operating the flight Surgut - Samara - Belgorod, landed on March 17 400 m before the start of the runway, touched the ground with its wing and fell apart. The crash claimed six lives and 28 more people were hospitalized. In total there were 50 passengers and seven crew members on board.

The head of the Federal Tax Service (FTS) of Russia, Mikhail Mokretsov, may leave his post and join the Ministry of Defense, a source familiar with the situation said. “The decision has not yet been made, it is being approved by the country’s leadership and can be made in the near future, the issue of its transfer to the Ministry of Defense is being considered,” Interfax quotes the source as saying .

AvtoVAZ expects to complete approval of the debt restructuring program with banks in the coming days, said the head of the company, Igor Komarov. “The debt restructuring program with all the issues is being discussed.

MOSCOW (Reuters) - French automaker Renault could reconsider the size of its stake in Russia's AvtoVAZ if the Russian government requests it, the company's chief executive Carlos Ghosn said on Monday. “If this 25 percent package changes, it will not be on our initiative, but if the Russian government asks us about it, then we will reconsider,” he said in an interview with Reuters television.

Today, experts will conduct an autopsy on the body of artist Vladislav Galkin, who died a few days ago at the age of 39, said Anatoly Bagmet, head of the capital department of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office (SKP) of Russia. “There are no grounds to initiate a criminal case. Today, Monday, an autopsy of the artist’s body will be carried out, which should finally establish the causes of his death,” RIA Novosti quotes Bagmet as saying .

TNK-BP International, the parent company of the Russian-British oil holding TNK-BP, received a US GAAP net profit of $5 billion at the end of last year, said the holding's chief operating officer Bill Schrader. In 2008, this figure was $5.3 billion. Thus, the company decreased net profit by 5.7% for the year. The holding's revenue last year decreased to $34.753 billion from $51.886 billion in 2008, RIA Novosti notes . Operating expenses also decreased - to $4.142 billion from $5.24 billion.

LONDON (Reuters) - The euro trailed the pound sterling in European trading on Monday amid political uncertainty in Britain. The pound today showed the sharpest weakening among major currencies, falling by more than a percent against the dollar and euro, after the release of poll results according to which no party will yet be able to win a majority of votes in the parliamentary elections in Britain on June 3.

BERLIN (Reuters) - Europe's single currency is currently facing its most difficult period in its history and Greece must overcome problems that have shaken confidence in the euro, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with broadcaster ARD on Sunday. According to Merkel, European countries have not yet made any decisions regarding the provision of financial assistance to Greece, which will have to reduce its gigantic budget deficit and public debt.

Which athletes did the state spend the most on and which of them showed the greatest profitability at the Winter Olympics? Russia failed the Vancouver Olympics. In the unofficial team competition, our team takes sixth place in the total number of medals and eleventh in gold medals (there were only three of them for the entire team). The main hope - the hockey team - was left without medals for the first time in half a century.

Gazprom signed a memorandum with the French company GDF Suez on participation in the Nord Stream gas pipeline construction project, in which it will receive 9%, the companies said in a joint press release. The deal could be closed within a month. The volume of supplies to GDF Suez via Nord Stream from 2015 could reach up to 1.5 billion cubic meters.