Ural State University is getting ready to elect their new Rector. Two people have applied for the position so far; they are Dmitriy Bugrov, the Dean of the Department of History, and Evgeniy Pamyatnikh, pro-Rector. The former Rector Vladimir Tretyakov had to resign on December 12, 2006 due to turning 70. The federal Higher and Postgraduate Education Act states that no person over 70 can be a rector of any higher educational establishment. Valeriy Larionov has been appointed acting Rector until the time of the elections (scheduled for April 26, 2007). The list of candidates is going to be

36.6, the federal chain of drugstores, acquired Yekaterinburg-based chain Atoll Pharm. Some experts believe this could be an approximately $15m transaction that gives 36.6 a chance to achieve the leading position on the Ural market – a desirable target for all the federal players at the moment. Rigla, the company’s major rival, as well as O3, a chain of pharmacies recently bought by Protec, Rigla’s proprietor, also have some outlets located in Yekaterinburg. Atoll Pharm had 45 stores in August 2006 and mainly competed with the local Zdravnik and Zhivika and Pharmacia, the state-owned chain.

MegaFon Ural, the mobile operator, has recently introduced a new Student tariff scheme for young and communicative people. The scheme provides for 30 text messages, no extra charge for the first minute of the conversation and cheap outgoing calls. This is an excellent offer for young people who wouldn’t be parted from their phone: outgoing calls at only .35 RUR per minute will give them a chance for virtually unlimited communication. Switching or subscribing to the new tariff is free and available in every office or point of sale as well as in the dealers’ offices as long as you provide your

‘Noviy Grad, the local developer, only provided one building in 2006. This is a block of flats located in Onufriev St,’ Konstantin Bruner, Chairman of Affordable Housing (a non-profit organization), said to UrBC representative. ‘Yet the developer missed all the deadlines for commissioning, which made the city council order the company to finish the construction in the shortest possible time. Noviy Grad met these requirements at the cost of technical quality; besides, all the building-related documents were actually drawn up post factum,’ Mr Bruner said. ‘This developer still has a great

According to Pavel Kukushkin, the Public Prosecutor of Sverdlovsk Region, 19 regional enterprises had 20m RUR worth of wage arrears in 2006. At the beginning of 2006, the figure amounted to 51m RUR and covered 46 companies.

According to the Central Bank of Russia, the volume of deposits and investments placed by natural persons in UralTransBank for a term of 181 days to 1 year went down 24.7% (from 1,824,007 RUR to 1,373,105 RUR) in January-December 2006.

‘We are currently getting ready to hold a competition among the realtors who will deal in direct homes sales in the would-be Academic district of Yekaterinburg,’ says Academic construction project manager Stanislav Pridvishkin. ‘As for the show room, we definitely are going to have one so that the buyer has a chance to look at the detailed model of the district and choose the building they would like to live in,’ Mr Pridvishkin said. This new district is to appear in the south-west of Yekaterinburg and is expected to occupy 2,500 hectares of land, with 1,200 hectares covered by forests and

Yekaterinburg’s leading air carrier is expected to start performing daily Chelyabinsk-Moscow flights on January 23, 2007. The planes belonging to Ural Airlines will leave Balandino airport of Chelyabinsk at 8.40 AM, arrive at Domodedovo airport (Moscow) at 8.55 AM, leave Moscow at 9.05 PM and arrive in Chelyabinsk at 1.20 AM. There is no fuel fee for this flight, so one will only pay 2,499 RUR for the cheapest single ticket and 4,999 RUR for the cheapest return one. There are several carriers servicing the Chelyabinsk-Moscow-Chelyabinsk route at the moment, the most important ones being

The report on the state of the environment and the way environmental factors affect the health of Sverdlovsk Region population indicates that Sverdlovskaya poultry factory is Yekaterinburg’s top ammonia and hydrogen sulphide polluter; its share comes to 64.7% and 30.1% of the total amount of ammonia and hydrogen sulphide, respectively, that is dumped into the air.

Sverdlovsk Region division of Glavgosexpertisa, the state expert authority, believes that the pre-construction expert examination of Mega Trade Center in Yekaterinburg was conducted inaccurately. The official reports on this were sent to Deputy Mayor for Capital Development Vladimir Kritskiy and to Alexander Karlov, the Minister for Construction and Communal Facilities, the spokesperson for Glavgosexpertisa said to UrBC representative. Mr Kritskiy said that Mega Trade and Entertainment Center hosting IKEA and Auchan had received no permission to operate; the same is true of a number of blocks