A Japanese stone garden can now be seen at Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant’s Vysota 239 department. The new ornamental addition is located on the unoccupied premises of the corrosion-resistant tube coating section, the plant’s press officer reports. The stone garden is a flat surface filled with sand, with picturesquely located stones and pink Japanese cherry trees. The position of the stones corresponds with the certain rules Zen Buddhist rules: for one, there is an odd number of them, most of the stones are horizontal and half-sunk in the sand, and they create triangular shapes together.

Sverdlovsk Region Government refuses to provide a list of residents for the special economic zone Titanium Valley. The construction will begin in 2012, so then we will have specific data regarding the Titanium Valley residents. Most of the companies will be foreign ones,’ the Economics Minister Evgeny Sofrygin announced at a press conference in Yekaterinburg today. Now the Director-General of Titanium Valley Management Company Artemy Kyzlasov said earlier that the valley would house VSMPO New Technologies and two more Russian companies whose names were not disclosed. The companies in question

VUZ-Bank and UNIStream international money order system now offer their customers the opportunity to send money orders where the money can be received in any point of service in the addressee’s country of residence. The money orders can be processed in rubles, U.S. dollars, and euros. The money orders not tied to a particular addressee location are now available in 180 outlets in Ural Federal District, which comes to 55% of all such outlets in the region. Besides, over 60% of money orders handled in this district are processed through a customer’s unified card.

The Investigative Department of Ural Federal District division of Russia’s Internal Affairs Ministry completed the investigation of an infamous criminal case involving Alexei Kalinichenko, who, the investigative authorities believe, deceived about 4,000 citizens of Russia, Kazakhstan, Germany, Byelorussia, Ukraine, and Latvia with the help of a pyramid scheme; the damage was estimated at over 1bn RUR altogether. The victims’ representatives now started looking into the files of the case. Alexei Kalinichenko was first heard of in 2003 when, according to the inquiry team, he and his accomplices