UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. 37,195 people registered with Sverdlovsk Region’s employment agencies as officially out of jobs between January 1 and March 9, 2016; this exceeded the figures for late December by 9.6%, Head of Sverdlovsk Region Labor & Employment Department Dmitri Antonov said at a press conference in Yekaterinburg. ‘The increase has to do with seasonal factors as well as the economic downfall. One year earlier, for example, unemployment was up by 16%,’ Antonov said. According to Antonov, 1,396 people are expected to be made redundant in the near future, and over

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. The number of applications from customers wishing to receive their pay onto the Ural Bank for Reconstruction and Development’s account doubled last year, the bank’s press service reports. Some 6,000 applications were submitted to the bank in 2015 altogether. According to head of the UBRD Plastic Card Department Alexei Piskunov, quite a few customers started applying for a bank card account after the so-called ‘pay slavery’ regulation (when you could only get paid into the account in a bank chosen by your employer) was lifted on November 5, 2014. ‘We

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. Ural Airlines are now offering a daily scheduled flight from Moscow to Tomsk and back, the air carrier’s press service reports. Starting from April 15, the company’s Moscow-Tomsk flight will be operated daily at 10:30 PM, with the return flight departing at 6:30 AM; this means a business trip to the capital can be planned without any time losses. ‘Once in the capital, travelers from Tomsk can use the company’s connecting flights to the cities of Russia and the CIS member states as well as to destinations abroad. All of Ural Airlines’ flights are operated

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. Ural Locomotives (a joint venture run by Sinara Group and Siemens) completed successfully its operational tests of 2ES7 001, an AC locomotive, at South Ural Railways in February. Sinara Group’s press service reports the loco has traveled over 13,000 km from Kartaly to Magnitogorsk to Inzer so far, with seventy trains connected to it all in all. The largest train was 8,000,000 kg big. The loco also proved very efficient at traveling up and down at steep slopes: A loco set of 7,400,000 kg went up the challenging Khalilovo-Sara slope at 50 km per hour during

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, March 11, 2016. The foundry departments of Omsktransmash (a member enterprise of Ural Vagon Zavod Corporation) are now running on natural gas rather than furnace oil, the corporation’s press service reports. Based on the company’s calculations, this is expected to result in 40m RUR in savings this year, and even more in the years to come. ‘Our Senior Engineer’s and Senior Metallurgist’s Departments did a lot of work finding contractors and getting all the necessary pipelines and ducts installed for the converted equipment and purchasing all the new appliances. For one,