EU: Microsoft may have to pay $4 mn per day in fines
Brussels: The European commission is planning to fine Microsoft up to 3 million euros ($3.8 million) per day if the U.S. software company continues to defy its antitrust decision, reliable sources said on Monday.

European competition regulators recently met to endorse a separate fine that the European Union's executive arm will impose on Microsoft for having failed to comply with a 2004 ruling that it abused its dominant market position.

The amount of the penalty will be announced on Wednesday, and could be more than 400 million euros, which adds to a record 497 million euro fine the Commission levied in March 2004, when it found Microsoft guilty of anti-competitive business practices.

The EU can fine a company up to 5 percent of the previous year's average daily turnover. Microsoft's turnover in 2005 was $40 billion, according to its Web site, averaging just less than $110 million a day.

The Commission in 2004 said Microsoft had shut out rivals by withholding information that would help them make server software as compatible as Microsoft's own with its ubiquitous Windows operating system. It also said Microsoft would have to make available that information to competitors. The Commission now says it has not done so.
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US, Russia likely to sign WTO deal before G8
Moscow: The United States and Russia are likely to sign a deal on the eve of the Group of Eight summit setting the way for a Russian entry into the World Trade Organisation.

Presidents George W. Bush is scheduled to meet Russian president Vladimir Putin on the eve of the summit in St Petersburg.

Sources said the WTO talks had reached a compromise, with the Americans withdrawing demands that foreign banks should be able to open branches in Russia and that Russia should counter intellectual property abuses immediately rather than gradually.

Russia would agree to open up its insurance market over seven years and agree to cut agricultural subsidies, which the paper said amounted to $9.2 billion annually.

A U.S. deal is the last major hurdle to Russian entry into the WTO. Russia, chairing the G8 for the first time, is the largest economy outside the 149-member free trade club.
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