On the day of Vladimir Putin's meeting with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, the Finance Committee of the House of Representatives of the Congress presented a draft of a new bill on sanctions against Russia, which will be discussed at a hearing on Wednesday, March 15. The main innovation of the project is unprecedentedly tough sanctions in case of new Russian interference in the US elections.

Gazprom decided to unexpectedly pay record dividends and immediately rose in price by 16%. This is a victory for the Ministry of Finance, but private shareholders will also benefit Gazprom shareholders have a real holiday: the company unexpectedly decided to pay a record dividend in history, almost 400 billion rubles. The capitalization of the state-owned company jumped by 16.6% - to the maximum since the summer of 2011.

In Yekaterinburg, the detention of activists began, who oppose the construction of the church of St. Catherine in the square of the local Drama Theater. The police detaining protesters for damage to property and violation of the established procedure for holding a rally - by 21:00 Moscow time, from 12 to 30 people were detained , according to various sources. The publication Znak.com reports that several thousand activists gathered at the square.

Gazprom unexpectedly revised plans for paying dividends for 2018 - only on April 11 the board approved the decision to pay shareholders a total of 246.9 billion rubles (10.43 rubles per share), and today it became known that the concern’s management changed their mind and decided to immediately increase payments by 1.6 times. The new dividend recommendation is 393 billion rubles (16.6 rubles per share). This is a record for Russian companies and twice as much as the concern paid out in 2017.

A court in California has ruled that agrochemical giant Bayer must pay more than $2 billion to an elderly couple in a lawsuit over the carcinogenicity of one of its flagship products, the herbicide glyphosate (brand name Roundup). This is the largest amount awarded in glyphosate cases, Reuters writes , but it is likely to be lowered by the Supreme Court. However, there are more than 10,000 such claims pending.

Russian President Vladimir Putin approved a new doctrine for Russia's energy security. It replaced the document approved back in 2012. One of the objectives of the strategy is to eliminate competition between different types of Russian energy resources on world energy markets. So far, such competition exists between Russian liquefied and pipeline gas in the European direction.

Today, bitcoin crossed the threshold of $8,000 per token, having doubled in price since February and returned to the level of June 2018, writes Bloomberg. There is no single reason for such dynamics, but it is possible that a combination of factors could lead to a cryptoralli. Reasons for growth Along with bitcoin, which jumped by as much as 25% the day before, other cryptocurrencies grew.

WhatsApp, owned by Facebook, has urged all of its 1.5 billion users to update the app. It revealed a vulnerability that allowed hackers to install Israeli spyware on the device without the knowledge of the user, writes the Financial Times. Call tracking The vulnerability was discovered for several weeks, and hackers actually used it to remotely access users' devices, the messenger confirmed. How many devices were compromised is not specified: the investigation is not completed.

The rally against the construction of the temple in Yekaterinburg ended in clashes. This is not the first project of billionaire Igor Altushkin, which causes mass protests Protesters surrounded the steel fence at the construction site of the church of St. Ekaterina in Yekaterinburg Last night, the center of Yekaterinburg unexpectedly became a place of clashes. The protest against the construction of the Drama of the Church of St.

A massive spontaneous action in Yekaterinburg against the construction of a park on the site of the city Drama Theater of the Church of St. Catherine ended in clashes between protesters and the police and athletic young people who called themselves defenders of the temple. The construction of the church for the 300th anniversary of Yekaterinburg is financed by two local billionaires - the owner of the Russian Copper Company Igor Altushkin ( No.

Wanted businessman Roman Trushev, whose companies are accused of dumping oil contaminated with organochlorines into the Druzhba export oil pipeline, told Kommersant that if there was an excess, it was insignificant. But the oil supplied by Tatneft was hundreds of times higher, Trushev claims. Tatneft has already denied the accusation. Read more.

US Senators Ted Cruz and Gene Shaheen have drafted a bill to impose sanctions against Russia's Gazprom's main export project, the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline, writes Foreign Policy. They will strike at the most vulnerable point of the pipeline running along the bottom of the Baltic Sea, bypassing Ukraine, and can lead to a delay in commissioning. More. The purpose of the bill is the companies whose ships are laying the offshore part of Nord Stream 2 for Gazprom.