In the first half of 2012 against the first half of 2011, the rating of Russia’s top twenty insurance companies changed in the following way: the first seven positions have remained the same, while VTB Insurance, with the 17th position last year, is now in the 8th place (formerly occupied by Alliance, which is in the 9th place this year). MSK Insurance Group is no longer in the top ten, but it only slid down one position and is now in the 11th place. The portal Strakhovaniye carried the ranking of insurers for the first half of 2012. The ranking is based on the data provided by the Federal

Google and Auto.ru launched a project called Russian Roads, where web users can evaluate the condition of roads in 22 Russian cities using their Android-based mobile devices. Yekaterinburg happened to be in the middle of the list and came 11th in the rating, Google’s official blog states. In the six months of 2012, users evaluated 103,100 km of Russian roads, which comes to a tenth of all the roads in the country. The average score for the quality of roads in cities is 2.8 on a scale of one to five. Not a single city got a score lower than 2 points and not a single city got a score higher

The Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos) announced a tender for the position of the Director-General of N.Semikhatov Automated Devices Scientific Production Association (NPO Avtomatika). Applications can be submitted on October 15-19 in Moscow. Now Leonid Shalimov has been the enterprise’s DG since 1997. The tender will be coordinated on October 26. A successful candidate will have higher vocational education, at least five years’ managerial experience, and knowledge of management, economics, and finance. The tender will comprise two stages. First, all the candidates qualified for the tender will

The 70th track-and-field contest was held in Nizhniy Tagil recently, with prizes awarded by Machinostroitel, Uralvagonzavod Scientific & Production Corporation’s corporate newspaper. The contest was dedicated to the newspaper’s 80th anniversary and gathered 93 teams, the corporation’s press service reports. Every year, teams from each of Uralvagonzavod’s divisions take part in the contest. This year, not only the representatives of the corporation’s head enterprise, but also workers from Nizhniy Tagil-based Transport Machine-Building Design Bureau and Uralcryomash, Yekaterinburg-based

Sverdlovsk Region trade unions used the court mechanisms to make the local employers stick to a 36-hour working week for the trade industry, the press service of Sverdlovsk Region Federation of Trade Unions reports. ‘Under Sverdlovsk Region Court’s ruling, METRO Cash & Carry will have to switch to a 36-hour working week for its employees, and offer them a 4% rise and seven extra days of paid holiday a year. This ruling actually sets a precedent, because it makes the employers at other shopping centers offer their workers the same compensation. This has to do with the fact that