President of the Diamond Way Buddhist Center of the Karma Kagyu Lineage in Kachkanar Alexander Berezin appealed to journalists on behalf of the community of believers who have been working on a Buddhist monastery Shadtchupling in Mount Kachkanar, Sverdlovsk Region, for the last seventeen years. In his letter, Berezin explains that all these years the local Buddhists cannot up the monastery at the mountain even though the conditions are very propitious there for Buddhist practices. For over a decade, the believers kept trying to get the necessary land allotment registered but have failed so

Ural Airlines now offers a direct international flight from Irkutsk Airport to Guangzhou. Flights will be operated every Sunday starting April 1, 2012. The cheapest round trip tickets are available for ?299 (plus fees and charges), the airline’s press service reports.

Metallosnabzheniye I Sbyt’s January issue featured a rating of Russia’s best ferrous and non-ferrous metals manufacturers and traders in the second half of 2011. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) was mentioned as one of Russia’s Top 3 deep-level processing goods manufacturers and the country’s 4th best section steel producer. What is more, MMK’s daughter enterprise MMK METIZ was announced one of Russia’s Top 3 hardware plants. ‘MMK once again proved second to none in the production of flat-rolled goods. According to the rating of Russia’s best ferrous and non-ferrous metals

The rating agency Expert RA affirmed the solvency rating of United Machine-Building Plants (Uralmash-Izhora Group) at A (high solvency level), with Stable rating outlook. The agency’s analysts report that the rating was favorably affected by the increase in the company’s capital between December 31, 2008 and June 30, 2011 as well as by net assets growth and the positive net working capital. ‘It must be noted that United Machine-Building Plants keeps reducing its debt burden and expects to finish the financial year 2011 with some positive net profit,’ Expert RA says. As for the factors that

‘Stolnik Publishers decided to close down Yekaterinburg after the magazine’s prospects on today’s advertising market had been thoroughly evaluated. The publishers feel that working on a men’s glossy magazine would suit the current situation better than keeping on investing in the printed business press,’ Yekaterinburg Editor-in-Chief Marina Zhivulina explained in answer to a query from UrBC. ‘As a result, the city of Yekaterinburg now witnesses a new project: Mister, the magazine produced by the same publishing house. For the time being, Mister functions as a supplement to Stolnik. The idea

A train full of nuclear waste will soon set off from Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant to Krasnoyarsk Territory, where a depository for Russian and foreign nuclear waste is expected to be built. The date of departure (which will get going a large-scale series of nuclear waste transportation missions from all over Russia to Siberia) is not disclosed, EcoZaschita Group reports. Under RosAtom’s plans, 22,000 tons of used nuclear fuel will be relocated to Siberia before 2025. This means that three echelons with nuclear waste will arrive in the closed city of Krasnoyarsk 26 every two months, the

The international rating agency Fitch affirmed Russia’s long-term Issuer Default Rating at BBB, while the rating outlook was reduced from Positive down to Stable, the agency reports. ‘The political instability is on the increase in this country, while the global economy development forecast has worsened since the agency last confirmed Russia’s rating in September 2011,’ the agency’s release states. Fitch also affirmed Russia’s short-term rating at F3 and the country ‘ceiling’ at BBB+. The likelihood of a rating promotion that was strong with a Positive outlook is now lower, so the current

Ural Airlines is now offering its customers tickets for scheduled flights to Cologne, the company’s press service reports. Starting April 2, 2012, flights will be operated from eleven Russian cities, with a stop in Domodedovo Airport in Moscow. These will be available three times a week, on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays; starting June, five flights a week will be offered. All of Ural Airlines’ flights will be operated using the comfortable Airbus A320 planes that have full-scale business and economy class seats. The timetable has been arranged so as to be as convenient for the passengers

Sverdlovsk Region division of Rospotrebnadzor (the consumer rights agency) carried out both a scheduled and an unscheduled on-site inspection of Eldorado electronic goods chain between September 19, 2011 and October 14, 2011 and between December 5, 2011 and December 20, 2011, respectively. Six outlets selling hi-tech household appliances, DVDs, and other goods were checked for compliance with the consumer rights protection and sanitary legislation. 7,984 items offered for sale were inspected, including 346 hi-tech items and 6,806 audio disks and DVDs; 6,276 items out of those inspected turned

OOO Barclays-Bank that was bought out from the British Barclays might get its older name of Expobank back, sources close to the company informed Kommersant. According to this report, the bank’s new owners have already submitted their application to register the name of Expobank to the Central Bank of the Russian Federation. OOO Barclays-Bank is the former Moscow-based Expobank that was bought by the British group for $745m early in 2008 and sold to partners, headed by Igor Kim, in October 2011. It was earlier reported that the new proprietors were going to launch a 25% layoff and to cut the

Uralkhimmash Board of Directors decided recently that the BOD Chairman Daniyar Kamilov should resign. Kamilov has been succeeded by former Uralkhimmash Deputy BOD Chairman Sergey Yelizarov. Uralkhimmash manufactures machinery for the oil and gas sector as well as for the power and nuclear industries, chemicals production business, ferrous and non-ferrous metallurgical enterprises, and construction companies.

Germany’s Federal Minister of Transport, Building and Urban Development Peter Ramsauer spoke very approvingly of Sverdlovsk Region and Germany’s collaboration, especially of the partnership that exists between Siemens and Sinara Transport Machines: the two companies are working on Lastochka electric trains; the Minister also praised the level of Yekaterinburg’s development, Sinara Group’s PR Department reports. Peter Ramsauer and Sverdlovsk Region Minister for International and Foreign Economic Relations Alexander Kharlov met at Koltsovo Airport the day before when Germany’s official group of

The Consulates-General of Cyprus and Ukraine and a trade representation of the Turkish Embassy in Russia will be opened in Yekaterinburg before the end of this year. What is more, the honorary consul of the Republic of Nicaragua in Yekaterinburg Sergey Konstantinopolsky will assume office at the end of January. As a matter of fact, twenty-one official representations of foreign states operate in the Urals’ capital at the moment, including eleven consulates-general, nine honorary consuls’ offices, and one trade representation of the Republic of Byelorussia’s Embassy in the Russian Federation.

A number of local experts are currently working on gathering the necessary data on the Urals’ capital after the commission to this extent was issued by Head of Yekaterinburg Municipal Council Alexander Yakob. The information is to be submitted to the NGO EXPO 2020 Application Committee. The experts aim to enhance the efficiency of presenting Yekaterinburg on the international arena. The action plan for the events that need to be coordinated in Yekaterinburg was recently sent to the EXPO 2020 application committee’s leaders for consideration and approval. Now the application committee was set

The management of Nizhniy Tagil Customs met with the law-enforcement agencies’ representatives in the last quarter of 2011 in order to come up with a joint action plan aimed at protecting the consumer market from counterfeit goods. It was reported that the intellectual property rights infringements disclosed by Nizhniy Tagil Customs officers were most common in the field of consumer industry (clothes and footwear) and data storage devices (DVDs), while goods bearing famous logos such as Adidas, Lacoste, Umbro, and Nike were among the most frequently pirated products.

The domestic flights terminal of Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport had to be closed temporarily because of smoke pollution. A short-circuit failure occurred at the lighting switchboard room at 8:48 PM, causing the cables to melt and producing a blanket of smoke. The airport’s firefighting brigade arrived at the scene of the incident and put the fire out. Koltsovo Airport’s ground crew decided to have the passengers in the domestic flights terminal relocated to the international terminal, from where flights to Moscow, Khabarovsk, and Vladivostok departed. No passengers or airport staff were

The cosmetics manufacturer Concern Kalina’s Board of Directors suggested that the company’s shareholders should accept Unilever Rus’s proposal regarding the purchase of the company’s 966,740 shares. The offer was made to the enterprise on January 10, 2012. The proposed price came to 4,267.92 RUR.

By the end of November 2011, Home Credit & Finance Bank’s share of POS express loans market dropped below 25% for the first time since quite a while; the decrease amounted to 3.3% since the beginning of the year 2011, Kommersant reports. According to Frank Research Group’s findings, the POS lending market’s volume reached 175bn RUR on December 1, 2011. Home Credit & Finance Bank is still the market leader, as it was at the start of last year, but its share has decreased below 25% for the first time since 2009 and amounted to 24.5%. The bank’s share of the market kept going down

Ural Airlines’ passenger turnover rose by 40% in 2011, the company’s press service reports. In December 2011, the air carrier operated 1,691 flights (which exceeded the figures for December 2010 by 30%), including 534 international flights, 754 domestic flights, and 403 flights around the CIS. 187,633 customers flew with Ural Airlines in the last month of the year, which was 66% more than a year earlier. 70,165 customers were international travelers, 75,355 people used the company’s domestic flights, and 42,113 passengers traveled to or from the CIS member states. The actual passenger

A worker employed at UC RUSAL’s Ural smelter tried to commit suicide because his labor contract wouldn’t be renewed. It is reported that the hydrometallurgical equipment operator Vladimir Kalugin tried to kill himself by slitting his throat open right in his workplace. Shortly before this suicide attempt, Kalugin was informed that his fixed-term contract was not going to be renewed. He still had three years to go before reaching the official retirement age. ‘First aid was provided immediately at the scene of the incident, then Vladimir was placed in the hands of surgeons from the trauma unit