Ural Airlines is going to keep operating its Yekaterinburg-Barcelona flight in winter for the first time this year. In the summertime, the flight was operated twice a week and proved extremely popular with passengers. In the second half of the year, the flight will be operated every Saturday. This is, in fact, not the only scheduled Europe-bound flight the airline offers for the winter 2010-2011. The carrier will also operate flights to Rome, Prague, Munich, Paris, and Salzburg.

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court keeps looking into OAO Avtoland’s bankruptcy case. The hearing, however, had to be postponed until October 19, 2010 because the plaintiff had to provide the court with some additional documents, the court’s press officer reports. The company’s stockholders decided on May 27, 2010 that their business should go into liquidation, so a liquidation committee was set up for the purpose. The committee placed OAO Avtoland’s insolvency application with the court in June 2010; the application was grounded on the fact that the company had not been making any profit

Deposit Insurance Agency, a state-run corporation, predicts the interest rates offered on ruble bank deposits will keep going down during the rest of 2010 as well as in the year 2011. ‘The interest rates offered by Russia’s largest banks on ruble deposits will have equaled the current inflation rate by the end of the year. This is the conclusion that can be drawn from looking at the private individuals’ deposits dynamics: these deposits are coming in stably and en masse, so our banks just don’t know where to direct this money flow. To counterbalance the influx, they will have to lower the

The First Ural Industrial Biennale of Contemporary Art, dubbed Shockworkers of the Mobile Image. Fifty-nine works by fifty-four artists from Russia, France, Great Britain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark, Israel, Spain, Mexico, Poland, the United States, Finland, and China are displayed. The exhibition’s main venue is the building of Ural Worker Printing Press at 49 Lenin St. Visitors to the show can see production prints, copies, and reproductions, as well as bits of video, documentaries, and feature films. The biennale’s site-specific projects are housed at Yekaterinburg’s four largest

OAO SKB-Bank launched five new ATMs in different Russian cities last week; three of them are located in Sverdlovsk Region. The citizen of Nevyansk can now use the 24/7 ATM at Machine-Building Plant at 2 Oktyabrskiy Ave. and the machine that is available from 9 AM to 10 PM at 8a Malyshev St. In Irbit, a 24/7 ATM can be found in Vostok shopping mall at 12a Marshal Zhukov St. Another 24/7 ATM can now be found at 46 Remisov St. in Tobolsk; finally, the machine was introduced in the bank’s newly opened office at 15 Lenin St. in Irkutsk. Each of SKB-Bank’s ATMs allows the cardholder to take out

Rosselkhoznadzor (the state agricultural watchdog) imposed some temporary bans on the import of meat from seven farms based in Brazil, the United States, Argentina, and Poland on September 8, 2010. The ban has to do with the prohibited and harmful substances detected in the foods supplied by the companies, RIA Novosti reports. The ban involves four Brazilian enterprises run by JBS S/A, the U.S. Swift Beef Company, the Polish Zaklad Przemyslu Miesnego Biernacki, and JBS ARGENTINA SA. Brazilian veterinary authorities promised to Rosselkhoznadzor in October 2009 that all the Russian veterinary

‘Fifteen to twenty people are killed in Sverdlovsk Region’s mining and metallurgical enterprises every year; in 2009, fifty-one people were also seriously injured. In any case, it’s too early to speak of decreasing casualty figures just now: a tragedy can happen any minute, with new names added to the list,’ says A. Sokolov of Russia’s Mining & Metallurgical Trade Union. ‘Most accidents happen at enterprises which employ a large number of workers. For one, Vysokogorskiy Ore Mining & Processing Enterprise (VGOK) and Nizhniy Tagil Iron & Steel Works (NTMK) are two of the most

OAO Svoboda Cosmetics Company will have to pay a 4.97-million-ruble fine for unfair competition, Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled. The Service declared that the company had violated Article 14 (part1, paragraph 4) of the Federal Competition Protection Act through the market launch of a hand cream whose packaging carried images nearly the same as those of the registered trademark No. 383251. The trademark belongs to OAO Concern Kalina. The fact that the Service confirmed the violation of Article 14 (part1, paragraph 4) of the Federal Competition Protection Act serves a legal ground

OAO Ural Airlines business class passengers can now enjoy the new service of a tea list – a selection of several kinds of exceptional quality tea in exquisite packaging that can be complemented with lemon, cream, or cognac. The company’s flight attendants can now offer the passengers the traditional black English Breakfast, Assam, and bergamot-flavored Earl Grey teas as well as the green kinds: Green Sencha and Jasmine Blossom or fruit tea with wild rose and hibiscus. ‘We’d like to note that, apart from the tea list choices, our passengers can also enjoy a wide range of beverages and strong

Rostechnadzor (the state technological, environmental, and nuclear safety watchdog) is to carry out a scheduled inspection of OAO UralChem United Chemical Company. The agency intends to check the enterprise and its daughter companies’ compliance with the safety rules; the order to this extent has already been signed by Rostechnadzor’s management. The inspection at Voskresenskiye mineral fertilizers company and the mineral fertilizers plant of Kirovo-Chepetsk chemical works will start on September 6, 2010 and must be completed by October 1, 2010. OAO Azot will be undergoing inspection from

Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court supported the ruling pronounced by the region’s division of Rospotrebnadzor (the state consumer rights watchdog) against Yekaterinburg-based Koltsovo Airport. Rospotrebnadzor insisted that the airport create a special protective sanitary zone on its premises. Now the airport took legal action in order to contest Rospotrebnadzor’s order 01-01-15-09-05/6522 regarding its alleged non-compliance with the sanitary norms that was issued by the agency on January 20, 2009. Sverdlovsk Region Arbitration Court partially sustained the airport’s claim as to

A fatal accident at Evraz Group’s Yestyuninskaya mine left one person dead this morning, head of Sverdlovsk Region Department of Internal Affairs’ press service Valeriy Gorelykh informed UrBC. The news was reported to Nizhniy Tagil’s Leninskiy Department of Internal Affairs at 7:45 AM; A fact-finding police work team and a representative of the public prosecutions department’s Investigative Committee arrived at the scene at once. It was detected that the victim of the accident was a forty-two-year-old overman named Sergey Sidorov. The man’s body was found in the crushing section area;

The Titanic Cinema, a movie theater located in Greenwich Trade & Entertainment Center in Yekaterinburg, now has a new owner. OAO VUZ-Bank sold the movie theater to ZAO Profit Cinema. The shopping mall’s management expects positive changes only, since the business was never a core one for the bank, whereas Profit Cinema runs a movie theater network throughout the entire country. ‘No changes for the worse are likely to occur. We hope for better things, because this movie theater is going to be the investor’s core asset. VUZ-Bank treated this business as a secondary one. We also hope that

OOO Koltso Urala Commercial Bank came up with some much improved consumer loan offers: the interest rates on all the loans for private individuals have been decreased to 12% a year. The bank used to offer its loans for 19.9% a year, now it’s only 12%. The bank’s Retail Director Konstantin Bogatyrev explains the unprecedented drop in the interest rats is seen as a special offer for customers who need the money for a short time period. Most other banks usually offer such borrowers the so-called express loans: expensive loans for a short period of time. Koltso Urala came up with an alternative:

Russia’s Federal Antimonopoly Service ruled that OOO Tagil Beer should pay a 19.2-million-ruble fine for unfair competition. The Service stated in March 2010 that the company’s actions were classed as unfair competition in accordance with Article 14 (part 1, paragraph 4) of the Federal Competition Protection Act. The offense consisted in the fact that the labels on the bottles of GOLD beer, sold by OOO Tagil Beer, looked too much like the trademark registered under No. 370605. The trademark in question belongs to OOO Krasniy Vostok-Solodovpivo Brewery and is used by the trademark owner to

Sverdlovsk Region’s public prosecutions department instituted criminal proceedings against a fraudster who is suspected of doing damage to OAO Uralelectrotyazhmash Scientific Research, Design, and Technological Institute (OAO NII UETM). The prosecutions department claims the company had its legal papers containing data on the company’s General Director and its address edited by a third party in May 2010. It is alleged that the suspect, who bears no relation to the institute whatsoever, applied to a tax department asking to make some changes in the company’s data and provided a full set of

Following the request of Plenipotentiary Representative of Russian Federation President in Ural Federal District, Deputy Representative Sergey Smetanyuk coordinated an extended work team session on the organization of Russian-Ukrainian Interregional Forum in Ural Federal District. The meeting was dedicated to rounding up the preparations for the forum and to defining the tasks for the remaining time period. The forum is to be held on September 28-30, 2010 in the Plenipotentiary Representative’s residence in Yekaterinburg. The most important events will take place on September 29, 2010. The

The former director of SV-Barrisol has been shot in Yekaterinburg, Alexander Shulga, the official representative of the Investigative Committee’s Investigative Division under Sverdlovsk Region’s department of the Russian Federation public prosecutions office, confirmed today. It is rumored that the victim in question is a man named Andrei Sokolovskiy. The businessman’s body was found by his mother in Technicheskaya St. SV-Barrisol is the official dealer of Normalu S.A. in Yekaterinburg and the Urals and Siberia Region; the company offers its customers Barrisol stretched ceilings (made in

OOO Space Company, a computer store, was faced with an administrative lawsuit after running an ad banner that featured the images of cannabis leaves and the caption that read, ‘… A legal trip to Amsterdam’. The legal action was taken by the officers from Sverdlovsk Region’s division of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Service, with charges based on Article 6.13 of the Russian Federation Administrative Offense Code, the spokesperson for the Service reports. The Article in question presumes offenders should be prosecuted for propagating drugs, mind-altering substances, or their precursor. The

Despite the 38% revenue growth in the first half of 2010 (the figures reached $6.38bn), Evraz Group did not resume making profit. The enterprise’s net loss amounted to $270m in January-June 2010 due to assets re-evaluation and their resulting depreciation, RBC daily reports. The company’s affairs don’t look as good as they could since Evraz failed to leave its losses in the past: even though these losses shrank by 3.7 times in the first half of the year, they still come to the impressive $270m.