March 27, 2015. Uralvagonzavod Corporation’s head plant in Nizhniy Tagil launched DECT, a microcell network, at its metallurgical, railway carriage assembly, and mechanical assembly departments. ‘The new system makes control more efficient and helps make all the jobs safer. It is also meant to prevent accidents or reduce their impact on the production processes through clear administration and immediate notification of emergency services,’ the company says. It took several years to introduce DECT at the plant. The first fifty-subscriber station was launched at Uralvagonzavod’s power station

March 27, 2015. 75 management companies in Sverdlovsk Region housing services and utility sector owe more than 2.536bn RUR to heat and power suppliers (including 2.36bn RUR owed for heat energy and 167m RUR owed for electric power supplies). Yekaterinburg companies’ share is currently the largest, as they owe suppliers 1.2bn RUR, Sverdlovsk Region division of EnergoSbyT Plus’s press service reports. ‘The amount of money owed to resource suppliers exceeds our retooling and repair budgets by many times. Practices adopted by some unscrupulous management companies pose a formidable threat both to

March 27, 2015. Russia’s Sberbank went three positions down in the Forbes banks’ reliability rating for the year 2015. The bank is now placed 8th on the first-group-reliability list. Remarkably, Nordea Bank, Citibank, HSBC Bank, BNP Paribas, Crdit Agricole CIB, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and MSP Bank were all ahead of the country’s largest bank in this rating. Citibank, however, was also demoted from the first to the second place. Forbes analysts explain that the most reliable banks operating in Russia at the moment are daughter enterprises run by foreign banks. ‘This year, the

March 27, 2015. It has preliminarily been calculated that there were 1,362 enterprises responsible for atmospheric discharge with 57 stationary emission sources in Sverdlovsk Region last year. According to Sverdlovskstat, overall emissions amounted to 9,322,000,000 kg (compared with 10,073,000,000 kg in 2013). 8,300,000,000 kg (89%) of emissions were filtered and neutralized and 1,021,000,000 kg were discharged in the air; this was, in fact, 76,000,000 kg less than in 2013. At the same time, Nizhniy Tagil’s air emissions went up by 14% last year; the emission rates in the rest of Sverdlovsk

March 27, 2015. Increasingly more Russians are opting for a used car rather than a new one: their number went up from 29% to 40%, Interfax refers to Russian Public Opinion Research Centre’s survey findings as stating. About 14% of respondents would like to purchase a new Russian automobile, while 13% of those surveyed are considering buying a used Russian car. 78% of respondents are not planning on getting a car, while 20% are thinking about this. 1% of those who intend to buy a car hope to do so within the next six months, 4% will probably make the purchase within a year, and 12% will do so