A new bill on guaranteeing citizens' bank deposits will be submitted to the government by April 15. This decision was the main outcome of a meeting of representatives of interested departments that took place yesterday at the Ministry of Economic Development. At the same time, the parties note that it was not possible to resolve all contentious issues and officials will have to meet more than once to discuss them.

The Investigative Department of the Internal Affairs Directorate for the Northern Administrative District of Moscow has become interested in the schemes by which the investment company UFG buys domestic Gazprom shares for foreign clients. Gazprom believes that if the investigation finds a crime in these schemes, UFG's main shareholder Boris Fedorov will lose legitimacy as a member of the board of directors of the gas monopoly.

Bill Gross, owner of the fledgling New.net, is making one of the largest attempts to organize the distribution of Internet domain names without the involvement of bureaucratic organizations. Gross plans to sell addresses in 20 new top-level domains that are designed to function like familiar domains like com, net and org. New.net will, in particular, offer clients addresses with the extensions family, tech, sport and xxx at a price of $25 for each second-level domain. The idea is not new.

BEIJING - Those who believe that China is actively cooperating with potentially aggressive regimes specifically to spite the United States are wrong. Chinese companies have recently been much more free to choose their business strategies. And they are choosing Libya, Iran and Iraq as partners because they see it as the only way to expand their markets.

FRANKFURT - All 200 employees of the German bank Volksbank Ostholstein Nord have received a free membership to a fitness club from their bosses. They need to tone up their muscles, because soon they will have to carry 40 tons of money: the bank will start receiving euro cash, and the usual marks will have to be taken out. In Germany, the transition to the euro has its own specifics due to the huge number of coins in circulation.

In a letter to shareholders, Soros Fund Management CEO Frank Saika proposes preserving the Mustcom consortium, which currently holds a blocking stake in Svyazinvest. In order to increase the attractiveness of the project, Soros Fund Management proposed issuing global depositary receipts (GDRs). In my opinion, if Mustcom remains as a single entity, it has more opportunities to influence the restructuring of Svyazinvest.

A topic that had already fallen out of the business community's sights - the dispute over the conditions under which Ukrainian pipe producers should supply their products to Russia - is once again relevant. Last week, the Ukrainian Ministry of Economy sent a letter to the Russian Ministry of Economic Development stating that Ukrainian producers are ready to voluntarily self-restrain and supply 15% fewer pipes to Russia from April 1 to October 1 than in 2000.

Today, the Ministry of Health is holding an annual tender for the supply of insulin under government orders. The result is known in advance. The tasty morsel of the market worth $120 million will again be divided between traditional suppliers - Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly. The Russian manufacturer, which has been trying to get to the trough for years, is again overboard. The company "Bryntsalov A" has less and less hope of recouping the huge investments in the creation of insulin production.

07.06.2000 Will the shareholders and management of RAO UES be able to resolve the conflict surrounding the company's restructuring plan? Advertisement Advertisement

Minority shareholders of Surgutneftegaz, who are against the dividend policy of this company, have moved from words to deeds. The Swedish fund Prosperity Capital Management intends to use the court to force Surgutneftegaz to increase dividend payments on preferred shares several times.

A quick glance at the behavior of European stock indices might give the impression that the annual earnings season has been terrible, with most European companies announcing one after another disastrous results for the past year. This impression is false - most European companies performed very well in 2000. The problem is different.

Almost a fifth of the world's population lives - or rather tries to live - on less than a dollar a day. Of course, these are just dry figures, but behind them lies the suffering of millions of people - hunger, poverty and disease that no one deserves. At the UN conference in September 2000, world leaders, among other things, promised to halve the number of people living in extreme poverty by 2015.

By 2003, it is planned to complete the construction of the "Cherry Orchard" theater center on Sukharevskaya Square. As stated by the center's artistic director, Alexander Vilkin, the main areas of creative activity will be "staging plays in the best traditions of Russian and Soviet directing," opening an acting and directing school jointly with the Shchukin College, and touring activities. It is planned to organize a charitable foundation, "Doctor Chekhov," on the basis of the center.

HULL - Many of the Middle East's protagonists have already passed into the shadows. Along with Egypt's Nasser and Israel's Rabin, one of the most prominent figures on that list of the departed is a certain Sir Mark Sykes, the man who is perhaps more to blame than anyone else for what is happening in Palestine. Sykes' archive is housed at the University of Hull, a three-hour drive from London.

Yesterday, the daily newspaper "Vremya MN" announced its imminent closure. This publication was launched in the spring of 1998. Two years later, the newspaper "split in two" - a team of journalists led by editor-in-chief Vladimir Gurevich left it. As a result, until now there have been two "Vremya" - "Vremya MN" and "Vremya Novostey", which was created by Gurevich. And now the split is over - "Vremya MN" will soon cease to exist.