Aeroflot , which has already lost several million dollars this year due to the SARS epidemic and the war in Iraq, is ready to continue to bear "millions in losses" if its main shareholder, the state, asks it to, said the company's CEO Valery Okulov. According to him, Aeroflot is ready to forget about such despicable matters as profitability and profit when it comes to air traffic between the Kaliningrad region and the rest of Russia.

The Internet is full of all sorts of dating sites and other similar resources. And not necessarily online dating. The Internet can help you find real people and communicate with them offline for the first time. For example, the site http://speeddater.co.uk specializes in parties "For those who are over ...". It publishes a list of such events in large cities of Great Britain, indicating the meeting place (usually a club, bar or pub), entrance prices and the specialization of the party.

The technical specification, which will allow the use of symbols of various national alphabets in domain names, was approved by ICANN (the international organization that sets the rules for assigning addresses on the Internet) in March 2003. The ICANN board recommended that domain administrators develop rules for using symbols of national alphabets in their domain zones.

The project to create a nationwide CDMA-450 cellular network, announced last year by the holdings Accord-Tel and RTDC, has new participants. As Vedomosti learned, AFK Sistema, Svyazinvest and the offshore Telco Overseas recently signed an agreement to create the company Skylink, which will unite all future operators of the promising cellular standard.

Moscow scientists, employees of the Bauman Moscow State Technical University, have figured out how to quickly, effectively and inexpensively turn old tires into a very finely ground powder, from which you can then make a lot of useful things. The technology they have developed has a truly explosive temperament. The thing is that the authors suggest not cutting the tires - pre-treated, of course - into small pieces and not burning them, as is usually done, but blowing them up in special chambers.

A federal court in Brooklyn has found four employees of the Evergreen International Spot Trading brokerage firm, controlled by Russian businessman Andrey Kudashev, guilty of fraud. With their participation, 1,400 investors lost about $100 million. The trial of Kudashev himself, who at one time headed the state unitary enterprise Mosoblgaz, is still ongoing.

The number of American suppliers of poultry meat to our country will decrease by 40% - this is the result of the recently completed inspections of poultry farms and cold storage facilities in the USA by Russian veterinarians. Not all suppliers were rejected by sanitary workers: some themselves refused to continue deliveries to Russia after the introduction of new veterinary rules.

AFK Sistema has acquired 33.46% of the shares of Belkamneft from the Udmurt government. This is already the third oil producing enterprise co-owned by the Moscow holding. Belkamneft was created on the initiative of the authorities of Bashkortostan and Udmurtia in 1997. Bashneft provided the enterprise with equipment, and the government of Udmurtia ensured the issuance of licenses for fields with total reserves of 80 million tons of oil.

Sibneft President Evgeny Shvidler does not like giving interviews. He made an exception for Vedomosti, telling for the first time how the owners of his company negotiated a deal with YUKOS and sold Aeroflot . Shvidler believes that the capitalization of the holding formed as a result of the merger of Sibneft and YUKOS will eventually reach $100 billion, and its final buyer could be one of the Western oil giants, ChevronTexaco.

The union is unbreakable. Despite the celebration of the anniversary of independence, official Minsk will this week emphasize its loyalty to the union with Russia in every possible way. And it is not at all because on July 1, the non-cash Russian ruble is being introduced into circulation in Belarus. Minsk simply missed the deadline agreed with Moscow for the creation of a Russian-Belarusian gas transportation joint venture based on Beltransgaz.

The Ministry of Property Owns 38.37% of Gazprom shares, another 0.9% is owned by the state-owned company Rosgazifikatsiya, and 15.11% at the beginning of the year was controlled by Gazprom itself through its subsidiaries. Of these, the main holders were Gazprom Finance BV (4.58%), Gazprom's pension fund (4.70%), and Gazprombank (1%), while Gazprom controls another 4.83% of its shares through Gazprominvestholding.

The Ministry of Taxes and Duties (MTS) has come up with an idea to accommodate entrepreneurs who do not want to spend money on double-entry bookkeeping.

Kazan's Krasny Vostok, one of Russia's largest beer producers, may join the Russian juice market. Juices will be produced at a new dairy plant in Kazan, which the company's owners intend to put into operation next year. OJSC Krasny Vostok is the fourth largest domestic beer producer. Its main brands are Krasny Vostok, Solodov, and Czech Standard. According to the marketing agency Business Analytics, at the beginning of the year the Kazan company controlled about 6% of the domestic beer market.

At the end of last week, the Moscow mobile operators VimpelCom and Mobile TeleSystems (MTS) made absolutely identical marketing moves. Both operators promised their lowest-income subscribers - those who use prepaid tariff plans - not to disconnect their phones if they do not top up their accounts on time. Experts point out that as a result, the subscriber bases of both operators will be filled with "dead souls", and the average income per subscriber will decrease.

In the "In Brief" section of the report "MDM Bank Borrows $50 Million" (No. 109 dated 06/26/03, p. B1) it should read: "According to information from the MDM Bank press service, the margin over the cost of funding (LIBOR) of 2.95% is the lowest of those established for Russian private banks since 1998." The error was made in the MDM Bank press release.