In a crisis, a negative image of the banking sector may form in society, so financiers themselves need to adopt the banker’s code. This was announced by the President and Chairman of the Board of VTB State Bank Andrei Kostin , Interfax reports . According to him, if the banking community does not evaluate the behavior of its colleagues, then it will not be possible to “wash” the banker’s image.

Greek basketball clubs Olympiacos and Panathinaikos reached the Final Four of the 2008/09 Euroleague. In the quarter-final series up to three victories, Panathinaikos defeated the Italian Siena, and Olympiacos defeated Real Madrid. In the semifinals, the Greek clubs will play each other, the official website of the Euroleague reports. Olympiacos and Panathinaikos won their series with a score of 3:1.

French police arrested 300 people in Strasbourg ahead of the NATO summit. The arrests were made after clashes between demonstrators and law enforcement officers, which began on April 2. The police also had to use tear gas against two thousand demonstrators. The NATO summit will be held in Strasbourg, France, and in the German cities of Kehl and Baden-Baden.

The large St. Petersburg developer Makromir, owned by the founder of the Pyaterochka and Karusel food chains Andrei Rogachev, filed an application for bankruptcy with the Arbitration Court of St. Petersburg and the Leningrad Region. newspaper writes about this The Kommersant . The basis for filing the application was the inability of Makromir LLC to pay both its own loans and the loans of those companies where the developer acts as a guarantor.

On April 3, President of Ukraine Viktor Yushchenko said that he would agree to hold early elections of the head of state if they are combined with elections to the Verkhovna Rada, UNIAN reports . At the same time, the president noted that these early parliamentary elections should be held on the basis of an updated electoral system. In particular, in his opinion, parliamentary immunity should be eliminated, and party lists should be disclosed so that people know who exactly they are voting for.

In the first quarter of 2009, the majority of transactions in Russian securities were carried out on domestic exchanges, and not on foreign ones. This was stated by the head of the Federal Service for Financial Markets (FSFM) Vladimir Milovidov , RIA Novosti reports . It was previously reported that in the autumn months of 2008, investors preferred to trade on the London Stock Exchange.

The Russian government can provide financial assistance to Gazprom , but the company has so far refused this. This was stated by Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin , Interfax reports . “If necessary, we will look for opportunities to lend a shoulder and support the company,” the prime minister noted. Putin also proposed revising Gazprom's investment program downward.

Anastasia Volochkova was denied registration as a candidate in the mayoral elections of Sochi, Interfax reports with reference to the ballerina. According to her, the reason for the refusal was that she did not indicate her birthday on the bank check for the payment of the election deposit. Volochkova called this reason ridiculous and promised to appeal the election commission’s decision in court.

The Ministry of Defense proposed creating a unified coordination center for search work carried out in the battlefields of the Great Patriotic War. This was reported by Rossiyskaya Gazeta with reference to the head of the department for perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland, General Alexander Kirillin. The coordination center is supposed to be located next to the military memorial complex in the town of Mytishchi near Moscow.

The memorial in honor of Dwight Eisenhower (1890-1969), the 34th President of the United States, will be built in Washington by Frank Gehry, a Pritzker Prize winner, one of the leading architects of the second half of the 20th century. The project, according to The New York Times, will cost between $90 million and $120 million. Construction of the memorial, which will be located near the Ministry of Education and the National Aerospace Museum, will take four years.

Agatha Christie's later books indicate that the "queen of detective stories" suffered from Alzheimer's disease, a type of senile dementia, in her last years. This conclusion was reached by researchers from the University of Toronto who analyzed the writer’s texts using statistical methods. The Guardian newspaper provides some of the scientists' arguments. Researchers Ian Lancashire and Graham Hirst examined Agatha Christie's vocabulary in novels written between the ages of 28 and 82.

American senators Olympia Snowe and Bill Nelson have developed a bill designed to reduce the number of unwanted messages received on mobile phones, AFP reports . The authors of the document, called the m-SPAM Act of 2009, note that mobile spam ends up not only on cell phones, but also on the communications bills of millions of people. In the US, some plans include charges for incoming text messages. Sometimes their cost reaches 20 cents.

During the filming of one of the episodes of the film “Taras Bulba” in Ukraine, unknown persons threatened to kill the film’s director, Vladimir Bortko, reports the UNIAN agency . According to Bortko, the incident occurred during preparation for filming on location in Bakhchisarai. There it was planned to capture the scene of Taras’ memories of his time in Turkish captivity.

The productivity of office workers increases if they visit sites not related to their main activities while at work. This was reported in a study from the University of Melbourne. It turned out that it is useful for office employees to spend, for example, up to 20 percent of their working time on entertainment sites. In this case, their labor productivity increases by nine percent. The University of Melbourne study involved 300 people.

Swedish football coach Sven-Goran Eriksson has been fired as coach of the Mexico national team. Eriksson was fired on April 2, the day after the Mexican team lost to Honduras (1:3) in a 2010 World Cup qualifying match, BBC News reports. The Swede worked in the Mexican national team for less than a year. After the defeat to Honduras, the Mexicans dropped to fourth place in the 2010 World Cup qualifying group, which includes teams from North America, Central America and the Caribbean.