UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 2, 2018. The number of MegaFon’s cash-back option #Специи rose by nearly 70% by the middle of summer vacation season, the telecommunications provider’s press service says. The Urals are now the third biggest market for the service, only outstripped by Moscow Region and the Volga Region. People mostly make their purchases on AliExpress, MegaFon.ru, and booking.com. ‘As for the breakdown within Ural Region, customers based in Sverdlovsk Region, Yugra, and Tyumen Region accumulate more cash-back bonuses than any others: 25%, 20%, and 12%, respectively, of the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 2, 2018. Workers of Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) and MMK Group’s other member enterprises whose children start school this year are going to receive an allowance to help get their children ready for school, MMK press service reports. ‘Families with seven-year-olds will receive RUR 2,000 to RUR 2,500 to buy school supplies between July and September as part of the company’s mother-and-child and pro-natalist programs,’ the press service says. More than 2,000 families are expected to receive the allowance. The money is paid to either one of the parents or

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 2, 2018. Ural Airlines reintroduced its Saint Petersburg-Namangan flights at the end of July, the air carrier’s press service reports. All flights get operated on the modern and comfortable Airbus 320 liners every Wednesday; departure time (Pulkovo Airport): 10:00 PM; arrival time (Namangan Airport): 4:45 AM. ‘Namangan is Uzbekistan’s second largest city, the first one being Tashkent. This is the center of Namangan Region. The city is famous for its ancient history: for one, you can see the ruins of the old Mongolian city of Aksikent there. There’s also Chartak

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 1, 2018. New ticket offices opened in a building next to Arena Metallurg in Magnitogorsk just in time for the new hockey season, reports Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works/MMK (the company that contributed greatly to the stadium (re)construction). Arena Metallurg hosted a junior world hockey championship this year. It was first decided to move the ticket offices to a separate building several years ago; the construction itself started last year and got fully finished this month, shortly before the start of the Continental Hockey League’s eleventh season. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 1, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) now offers mortgage options to customers based in seven more cities: Izhevsk, Nizhniy Novgorod, Samara, Togliatti, Saint Petersburg, Saratov, and Orenburg. According to the bank’s press service, these cities got selected based on their real estate/mortgage market situation and on the UBRD’s business potential there. As of June 1, 2018, the Central Bank stated that Leningrad Region, Nizhniy Novgorod Region, Samara Region, Orenburg Region, and Saratov Region were all among the country’s top thirty

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, August 1, 2018. MMK Group’s Metallurg Charity Foundation directed RUR 125.6m to support the South Urals-based children in the first half of 2018, MMK Information & PR Department reports. Metallurg has been coordinating its children’s charity project for seventeen years now, with primary focus on supporting children’s recreational/educational organizations, promoting bigger families, coordinating mother-and-child welfare programs, helping families with three and more children, and investing in state-run clinics and daytime/live-in schools for special-needs children in

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, August 1, 2018. Ural Airlines are going to resume their flights from Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport to Karshi, Uzbekistan, on August 1, 2018. According to the air carrier’s press service, the flights will be operated every Wednesday and the flight from Karshi back to Moscow every Thursday. Starting October, the flights will also be available up to two times a week. ‘The scheduled flight to Karshi gives our customers better business and recreational travel planning options. Once in Moscow, they can also transit to connecting flights to other locations in Russia and abroad.

UrBC, Moscow, August 1, 2018. TagilBank’s clients will get a total of RUR 852m in deposit insurance money, the Deposit Insurance Agency reports. According to the agency’s data, some 5,600 people are likely to apply for their repayments. There are also 180 businessmen and women who had business accounts with the bank (total amount: RUR 32m). AO TagilBank got registered in Nizhniy Tagil on November 25, 1991. The bank’s license got annulled by the Bank of Russia on July 20, 2018. Based on the bank’s reports, it was Russia’s 409th largest bank in terms of asset volume.

UrBC, Chelyabinsk, July 31, 2018. MetalloInvest and ChelPipe Group agreed to set up a new research/engineering center together to work on new, innovative steel types and to focus on their steel produce’s quality improvements, ChelPipe Group’s press service reports. The decision to set up the center was taken during the coordination committee meeting at MetalloInvest’s member enterprise Ural Steel. ‘MetalloInvest has, in fact, been doing business with ChelPipe Group for many years now; a new research/engineering center will help take this long-time partnership to a new level: the Group’s

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 31, 2018. MMK Group’s Shlakservis is about to start making a new type of ground-granulated slag mix that is currently unique to Russia and other NIS member states, MMK’s Information & PR Department reports. The slag is used in the process of steel-pouring at CC machines. Shlakservis has been making this product since 1992 and has had both the granulated slag and the technology patented by the Russian Patent & Trademark Agency. Last year, the company researchers cooperated with casting labs at G.I. Nosov Moscow State Technical University and Peter the Great

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 31, 2018. MegaFon Ural’s engineers recently completed a large-scale upgrade of the mobile commutator in charge of processing calls within Sverdlovsk Region, the company press service reports. MegaFon’s new equipment has expanded the network’s overall capacity by five times to ensure ever more traffic can get handled even at maximum workload points, that is, during large-scale sports and entertainment events and festivals. Substituting the appliances relating to the company’s mobile commutation center came to be called SWAP, to imply change and replacement. It took

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 31, 2018. Ural Airlines and Belavia are now offering their customers tickets for code-shared connecting flights to and from Minsk. According to Ural Airlines’ press service, Minsk-bound flights will be available from any of the airports where the air carrier is active, with a stopover in Moscow’s Domodedovo Airport or Saint Petersburg’s Pulkovo Airport starting August 1. ‘Working together with Ural Airlines means our customers can enjoy new travel options. Thanks to these new code-sharing agreements, our Belarus-based passengers can choose among a wide range of

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 31, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) allocated RUR 2.8m to help local schools get overhauled/remodeled in time for the new academic year, MMK Information & PR Department reports. The money was directed to new sanitary fixtures, building materials, and construction work that is currently in full progress at the schools involved. MMK Group’s member enterprises have been supporting local schools for quite a while now. In addition to helping with repairs and improvements, the companies also get engaged in job counseling events, offer guided tours of

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 30, 2018. Rimera Group’s Rimera Service in Noyabrsk (part of ChelPipe Group’s oilfield division) made and supplied to the plant its first pilot batch of 177 pumping and compression pipes (diameter: 73 mm) made by order of Chelyabinsk Pipe Rolling Plant/ChelPipe. The pipes come with wear-resistant retaining devices. According to ChelPipe Group’s press service, the retaining devices ensure that the threaded parts of the pipe remain airtight even after numerous landings and pulling out of strings; they also prevent any damage to the pipe surface, which expands the

UrBC, Magnitogorsk, July 30, 2018. Magnitogorsk Iron & Steel Works (MMK) Rolling Department was founded eighty-five years ago on Saturday, July 28, MMK Information & PR Department reports. The plant’s first Blooming/Billet Mill 2 was launched on July 28, 1933. This was the beginning of the plant’s rolling production facilities. The German company Demag was in charge of designing and manufacturing all the necessary blooming equipment. The USSR People’s Commissar for Heavy Industry G.K. Ordzhonikidze attended the launching ceremony. Mill 2 and two consecutive Continuous Billet Mills 630

UrBC, Moscow, July 30, 2018. A new law might be adopted in Russia in April 2019 that will make it obligatory for smartphone and computer manufacturers to preinstall Russian-developed web browsers, mail services, audio playing programs, and other apps on their products, Kommersant reports. This initiative is part of a ‘roadmap' on promoting competition that the Federal Antimonopoly Service presented to the government. The bill is to be elaborated by the Communications Ministry and co-elaborated by the FAS and the consumer rights watchdog Rospotrebnadzor. According to the proposed

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 30, 2018. The air in Yekaterinburg still contains dangerous amounts of formaldehyde first recorded on June 22; the concentration is believed to be hazardous to human health. According to Ural Weather Service, the formaldehyde content index stood at 1.8 points on average throughout the last thirty-plus days. On June 18-20, 2018, the index peaked at 2.4. ‘The formaldehyde index stood at the standard 1.8 points on July 23-25, 2018, which is indicates an increased emission status,’ the Service says.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 30, 2018. Yekaterinburg’s Kirovsky Court ruled that OOO Lukoil Permnefteprodukt would have to pay a local driver RUR 210,000 in compensation for the damage done to her car after it had been filled with the wrong kind of fuel, Sverdlovsk Region Court’s press service reports. The woman had her Hyundai Creta filled by an employee at a Lukoil station at 49 Vysotsky St in Yekaterinburg in January 2018; the motor died on the same day and wouldn’t restart. The driver took her car to a mechanic, where it was determined that the tank had been filled with the wrong fuel. The

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 27, 2018. The Ural Bank for Reconstruction & Development (UBRD) and VTB Strakhovaniye Zhizni are offering their customers Family Fund life insurance program. According to the bank’s press service, the program is meant to help a family build up on their savings and put aside enough of a safety cushion for a rainy day. Life insurance is a long-term investment mechanism that helps to save up for something big like your child’s education or retirement on the one hand and is an insurance product that grants you access to your reserves in case of an insured event.

UrBC, Yekaterinburg, July 27, 2018. Miners at EVRAZ Holding’s Yerunakovskaya 8 Mine are now working on new Long-Face 48-6, with estimated 2,900,000,000 kg of valuable GZh coal reserves, the company press service reports. Long-Face 48-6 is located more than five hundred meters below the ground. The mine is fully fitted with highly productive stoping appliances supplied by Joy to ensure output of 250,000,000 to 300,000,000 kg of coal a month, depending on the mining and geological conditions. The Australian controlled drilling machine VLD 1000 was used to drain out excess gas within the mine