UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 18, 2015. Two workers from Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation’s head plant – repair mechanic Oleg Belousov and engineer Andrei Ryabov – are going to serve a two-year term as Sverdlovsk Region Youth Parliament deputies. The company press service reports forty-eight delegates representing ten different parties and associations ran for the office in Nizhniy Tagil/Gornouralsk. Ural Vagon Zavod’s Nizhniy Tagil youth group got most of the votes, which entitled it to two seats in the parliament out of twenty-five. The voters were Sverdlovsk Region residents in the 14-30 age

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 18, 2015. A project presented by ESK ChTPZ (a daughter enterprise of Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant/ChTPZ) won the International Small-Scale Power Generation – Large-Scale Achievements Prize, the company press service reports. The awarding ceremony took place in Chelyabinsk during the 5th Energy Forum coordinated by the Ural Small-Scale Power Generation Association. This year, the company set up an electric power fiscal metering unit at the plant’s primary substation. To do this, the company workers installed i-TOR, the innovative 110-kilowatt facility made by

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 18, 2015.Koltsovo Airport had to close temporarily because of two reported bomb threats, the airport’s press service informed UrBC. ‘We received two emails, one reporting that the Angelo Hotel, the airfield, and the planes were all supposedly mine-laid. The other email claimed the airport terminal had bombs inside as well,’ the press service says. All the passengers on the planes as well as all the hotel guests and people in the airport terminals have been evacuated by now. Special rescue forces are now working at the scene.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 18, 2015. The average per-square-meter price on Yekaterinburg existing home market dropped by 7.7%, down to 70,821 RUR, since the start of the year, Ural Real Estate Chamber reports. Prices have been declining the fastest (-1.7%) in the city’s remotest and cheapest districts and now come to 51,902 RUR per m2 on average. Centrally located apartments and those in the city’s second priciest districts are now 0.8% cheaper, 98,079 RUR per m2 and 75,370 RUR per m2 on average, respectively. Homes in the third most expensive districts grew 0.6% cheaper, down to 65,213

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, December 18, 2015. Sverdlovsk Region-based borrowers’ mortgages amount to 1.862m RUR on average, 3.7% of loan repayments are by now past-due, the National Credit History Bureau reports. According to the bureau, this percentage of debts is the lowest among all the popular retail loans at the moment. All in all, the number of mortgages issued in Russia since the start of the year has gone up by 11%, whereas the number of unsecured loans dropped by 10% and that of car loans by 9%. It is reported, however, that the quality of new mortgages has been deteriorating over the last