UrBC, Moscow, October 7, 2015. Russian banks issued their customers 1.514m loans amounting to 181bn RUR altogether in August; this was 9% less than in the previous month, United Credit Bureau’s press service reports. ‘1.514m loans worth 181bn RUR were issued in August and 1.558m loans worth over 199bn RUR were issued in July,’ the bureau reports. For one, 131bn RUR worth of cash loans were issued to private customers in July and only 117bn RUR worth of those were issued to customers in August. The number of car loans also went down from 19,000 to 17,000, even thought the overall amounts

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 7, 2015. New-generation trams are now cruising the streets of Yekaterinburg, the city council reports. There will be two trams on Route 18 (VIZ to Shartash Station through Kirov St, Dolores Ibárruri St, Verkh-Isetsky Boulevard, Kommunarov Square, Lenin Ave, Gagarin St, and Blücher St). The 407 tram is a new make with lowered floor in the middle. The low-floor section makes up 39% of the tram’s premises. So far, the first passengers have complained about the relatively high steps at the front- and back-section entrances and rather steep slopes between the low-floor

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 7, 2015. Not a single forest fire broke out in Yekaterinburg in the summer of 2015, the city council reports. A special fire alert mode was introduced for the summer, which meant locals were not allowed into the potentially dangerous parts of forests and peat bogs. The city council representatives joined rescue rangers to patrol the nearby forests and detect offenders. ‘Ad hoc committees and teams were set up in every city district to prevent and fight forest fires. The potentially dangerous spots are controlled by these; the spots get inspected on a regular

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 7, 2015. The economically priced trips costing under 50,000 RUR will remain the most popular offers on Sverdlovsk Region’s travel market in the winter of 2015/2016, Executive Director of Ural Tourism Association Mikhail Maltsev said at a press conference. ‘We are actually talking about the winter school break rather than New Year trips here. Such package tours in the under-50,000 RUR price range are sure to be popular and get sold out by late or even mid-October. Most of these tours are to Russian resorts, primarily Sochi, to which city a direct flight is

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, October 7, 2015. Tanks. Spirit of the Urals, a film by Russian Vice Premier Dmitri Rogozin, won the 26th Rossiya Film Festival Award in Yekaterinburg. The film was given a special Patriotism Promotion Prize and Nizhniy Tagil Council Culture Department’s prize as the Best Patriotic Motion Picture, Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s press service reports. The awards were received by the film director and producer Sergei Savushkin and the corporation’s State Secretary and Deputy DG Alexei Zharich. 361 applications from 49 settlements and 14 cities in Russia, Belarus, Armenia,