World Report

LONDON (JTA) -- Microsoft has purchased a software company run by an Israeli for an undisclosed sum believed to be several million dollars.

STNC, which was started by 32-year-old Israeli software engineer Ran Mokady and his wife, Amy, who have lived in Britain for the past decade, specializes in developing technology to hook up the Internet to mobile phone networks.

New top negotiator named on slave labor

BERLIN (JTA) -- The leader of Germany's Jewish community welcomed the appointment of Otto Graf Lambsdorff as the country's new chief negotiator in talks on a fund to compensate Nazi-era slave laborers.

Ignatz Bubis, chairman of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, described Lambsdorff, a former economics minister, as a competent and trusted figure.

The former lead negotiator, Bodo Hombach, recently resigned to run the European Union's reconstruction efforts in the Balkans.

Payments to begin to survivors in Russia

MOSCOW (JTA) -- Payments totaling $1.05 million were scheduled to be made this week to Russian Holocaust survivors.

A total of 1,745 Jewish survivors and 890 non-Jewish survivors will each receive $400 from a $180 million fund that was established in 1997 by Switzerland's three largest banks to aid needy survivors worldwide.