* Severstal, Russia's leading steelmaker, and Arcelor, the world's second largest steel producer, agreed on a merger that will create the world's largest steel company
* The head of state-owned pipeline monopoly Transneft said the East Siberia - Pacific Ocean pipeline would pass 400 kilometers (250 miles) away from Lake Baikal, the world's largest fresh water body
* A London court awarded Russian tycoon Boris Berezovsky 50,000 pounds in damages Friday in a slander case brought against one of Russia's richest men, Mikhail Fridman.
* Gazprom deputy chairman Alexander Medvedev said:
- Gazprom and Japan's Chiyoda Corporation executives had discussed collaboration on development of the giant Shtokman gas field in Russia's Arctic at a meeting
- Gazprom could increase its annual natural gas production by 13%, but did not currently need to increase its output, and that the company would produce as much as the market demanded
- The company was considering building a second branch of its Blue Stream natural gas pipeline, the largest Russian-Turkish joint energy project to date
- The company could honor its export contracts without supplies of Central Asian natural gas
- The company would decide on involving a third partner in the North European Gas Pipeline project in summer
* Vladimir Putin and Emomali Rakhmonov, the presidents of Russia and Tajikistan, met to discuss cooperation and bilateral relations in light of planned summits of organizations in the former Soviet Union
* TVEL, Russia's leading producer and supplier of nuclear fuel for power plants, said Sergei Sobyanin, the head of the Kremlin administration, had been appointed its chairman
* Moscow's Mayor Yury Luzhkov said he believed the capital and the surrounding Moscow Region could unite into a single super-region
* Russia's Supreme Court asked a lower court to hand over materials from the case against Mikhail Khodorkovsky to consider an appeal against his eight-year sentence
* A Moscow district court said it had upheld a ban imposed by the city government on a Gay Pride parade slated to have been held Saturday in the Russian capital
* A senior Interior Ministry official said police in the North Caucasus republic of Daghestan had eliminated a network of underground laboratories manufacturing counterfeit banknotes to finance terrorist operations
* A deputy natural resources minister said Russia's uranium production was in near catastrophic state and action was needed as a matter of priority
* The Agriculture Ministry said new cases of bird flu had been registered in eight villages in three Siberian regions
* The economics ministry said it would sign an agreement with Volkswagen AG Monday to open a car-making plant in Russia
