February 14, 2014. MegaFon subscribers who are currently in Sochi used 100% more traffic over the first few days of the Olympics compared with the average daily use of mobile phones. According to the company's press service, their subscribers have spoken for about 19m minutes since the Olympics took off in Sochi. 'Our foreign visitors who used our roaming services followed suit and spoke for about 4m minutes,' the message states. Over the last five days, some 7.5m text messages and 180,000 multimedia messages have been sent, and about 120,000 gigabytes of traffic were

February 14, 2014. Over 150 self-regulatory organizations in the energy-saving sector are going to become unlawful on October 1, 2014, Head of Energy Efficiency Union Self-Regulatory Organization & Non-Commercial Partnership's Control Committee Mikhail Semenov said at a press conference dedicated to the creation of an investment market for the energy supply sector. 'Under the amendments to the Federal Act FZ-261 On Energy-Saving & Enhancing Energy Efficiency adopted by the Russian Federation Government, any self-regulatory organization operating in this field must have

February 13, 2014. Beloyarskaya Nuclear Power Station's partners from the World Association of Nuclear Operators (WANO) embarked on the pre-launch testing of Power Generating Unit 4 and the BN-800 reactor on February 10, 2014, the nuclear power station's information and PR department reports. The testing team comprises representatives of the WANO Hong Kong office for pre-launch partnership testing, Moscow office, and Russian, French, and Ukrainian nuclear power stations. Experts are currently looking into the following: organization and administration of the production process,

February 13, 2014. The Director-General of Yekaterinburg Municipal Enterprise of Water Supply and Waste Water Treatment Alexander Kovalchik told Yekaterinburg Duma deputies about the upgrade plan for the Southern and Western filtering facilities. Yekaterinburg Administration's press service reports the facilities are expected to be upgraded within the next six to eight years in the same way as the Northern aeration station was. According to Alexander Kovalchik, the further technical upgrade program will be implemented in several stages, since it is such a large-scale project while the

February 13, 2014. Aviaport experts included Koltsovo Airport of Yekaterinburg in the list of Russia's top five most comfortable airports, Kommersant reports. The rating, based on the data for the year 2013, featured twenty Russian airports all in all. In addition to Koltsovo, top positions were assigned to the airports of Sochi, Kazan, Vladivostok, and Novosibirsk. All of these were involved in large-scale investment projects on the construction or reconstruction of passenger terminals. For one,an international terminal was opened at Koltsovo in 2009. Last year, the domestic flights

February 13, 2014. Ural Airlines looked into its performance results for the first month of 2014. Between January 1 and January 31, 2014, Ural Airlines offered its services to 335,371 passengers, which was 33% more than a year earlier, the airline's press service reports. In January 2014, 2,739 flights were operated, including 895 international flights, 1,168 domestic flights, and 676 flights around the CIS. This was 25% more than in January 2013. The actual passenger traffic was 32% greater in January 2014 compared with January 2013 and came to 911,654,000 passenger-kilometers.

February 13, 2014. Starting next year, fingerprints will become a part of the Russian citizens' international passports, the Russian Federation Government's website states. 'Under the new decree, the list of personal data that are fed into the electronic chips contained in the staple identification documents of Russian Federation subjects that these subjects use to go out of and enter the Russian Federation (adopted by the Russian Federation Government's Decree 125 dated March 4, 2010) now gets complemented with an image of papillary pictures of two fingers,' the

February 12, 2014. Sverdlovsk Region is interested in strengthening its ties with Great Britain in the hi tech sectors such as machine-tool building, the aerospace industry, science, and education. Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeny Kuivashev and Her Majesty's Consul General for Ekaterinburg Neil Semple spoke about the two territories' cooperation prospects in the course of a business meeting, Governor of Sverdlovsk Region's Information Policies Department says. A trade delegation from Britain is going to arrive in Yekaterinburg in June. 'I have already asked those in

February 12, 2014. Governor of Sverdlovsk Region Evgeny Kuivashev asked Sverdlovsk Region Government to look into the possibility of putting up a utility pipe manufacturing plant in the area. According to the Governor of Sverdlovsk Region's Information Policies Department, Sukhoi Log will be considered as the possible site for the plant, as over 35,000 people there had no access to the central water supply system for over a week due to a recent accident. 'We always need things in this sector, including materials. This federal constituency has perhaps one of the longest water supply

February 12, 2014. 12.02.2014. MegaFon's MegaFaces Pavilion was opened in the Olympic park on the day the opening ceremony was held in Sochi. Volunteers from Russia, Japan, and Côte d'Ivoire became the first faces of the Olympics. Their large-scale 3D portraits were featured on the facade of the pavilion, the company's press service reports. On February 7, the long-awaited opening of MegaFon's innovative pavilion took place at the Olympic park. The enormous portraits on the facades aroused great interest in the visitors to the games, including Minister for Mass

February 12, 2014. Starting from 2014, Rosstat will no longer publish any data on foreign investments in Russia, Prime refers to head of Rosstat Alexander Surinov as saying. Prior to 2014, Rosstat and the Bank of Russia kept supervising foreign investments, but the data were quite different because different methods were used, and the respondents surveyed as well as the sources of information used were also different. The legislative changes now made the Bank of Russia the only official body to keep track of the foreign investments into the country. The new law came into effect in 2014.

February 12, 2014. According to experts' estimates, the Olympics-hosting countries usually experience a stock market increase, while their national currency grows stronger thanks to a greater foreign investment inflow, Bank Koltso Urala reports. Head of the bank's Planning & Analytics Department Igor Zadorin says that the foreign media are currently taking a greater interest in the Olympics and in Russia on the whole. These current conditions are quite conducive to business negotiations and attracting new investments into the country. For one, there still remains a question of

February 11, 2014. Ural Airlines announced a sale on the summertime flights bound for popular tourist resorts on the coast of the Black Sea. Between February 10, 2014 and March 10. 2014 tickets from Yekaterinburg to Sochi, Gelendzhik, Anapa, and Simferopol are available for only 4,000 RUR, the airline's press service reports. Ural Airlines' customers can buy the cheapest tickets for Yekaterinburg-Sochi flight for 4,000 RUR (excluding the fees and charges), the cheapest tickets for Yekaterinburg-Anapa are available for 7,000 RUR,the same goes for Yekaterinburg-Gelendzhik flights, and

February 11, 2014. The solemn opening ceremony of the Sochi 2014 Olympics proved that this year's Games are going to become the most mobile ones in history. Of all the visitors to the event, 15% used their 4G networks to share their emotions with the whole world. These were precisely these mobile phone users who generated half of all the traffic within MegaFon network, says the telecommunications provider's press service. The Winter Olympics in Sochi were the first-ever games to offer visitors high-speed mobile Internet connection within the 4G network. The ceremony was attended by

February 11, 2014. A phase-out of imports program for spare parts, equipment, and expendable materials was implemented successfully at Chelyabinsk Tube Rolling Plant (ChTPZ) Vysota 239 department last year. Thanks to the 'white metallurgists' new improvement suggestions that were put to practice, the enterprise saved some 50m RUR, ChTPZ press service reports. For one, switching from the German supplier of spare parts for the working tools to a Russian one made it possible to halve both the expenses and delivery time. Then, the department's repair team learned how to make

February 11, 2014. Yekaterinburg police are now looking for a man who used another person's passport to take out 294,000 RUR worth of loans from a bank and decided not to pay them off. Criminal action was taken, with charges of fraud, so the suspect could face up to two years in prison, says the Russian Internal Affairs Ministry's Main Administration in Sverdlovsk Region's press service. According to the investigative team, the man inserted his photograph into somebody else's passport and used it to take out loans in five local banks, using one the same scheme every time.

February 11, 2014. Turkish Airlines Istanbul-Yekaterinburg flight was delayed by two hours, Yekaterinburg Airport's press service informed UrBC. Koltsovo Airport representatives explained that the friction coefficient was insufficient for this particular aircraft of Turkish Airlines, even though the other air carriers' liners were fit enough for landing. According to the airport's interactive announcement board, the flight arrived in Yekaterinburg at 10:05 AM.

February 10, 2014. 1,777,000, or about 14.1% of all Sverdlovsk Region-based households had their property insured against fire and other damage in 2013. This figure is compatible with the country’s average (14% excluding Moscow and Saint Petersburg), SOGAZ Insurance Group’s Analytic Research & Market Forecast Center reports. As for Ural Federal District, Sverdlovsk Region proved second best insured federal constituency, preceded by Tyumen Region with its 14.5%. 12% of private households are insured in Kurgan Regaion, and 11.1% are insured in Chelyabinsk Region. Accorrding to SOGAZ

February 10, 2014. The number of participatory share lending contracts for the construction of apartment buildings in Sverdlovsk Region rose by 45.9% in 2013 compared with a year earlier, Deputy Head of Sverdlovsk Region division of Rosreyestr Larissa Gashkova said. ‘The increase in the number of such contracts mainly has to do with the fact that there are very few ‘frozen’ construction sites in Yekaterinburg. Besides, the government adopted a number of measures last year to make these deals even more secure. Starting from January 1, 2014, the developer must provide evidence of third-party

February 10, 2014. Sverdlovsk Region Legislative Assembly adopted a draft bill on cooperating with Kostanai Region and Karaganda Region of Kazakhstan. This is a framework agreement that is expected to build more trust in business communities on both sides, the Mid-Urals Ministry for International and Foreign Economic Relations reports. ‘These are framework agreements that do not cost our budget anything, this is only about the legal situation. The agreement is signed not on behalf of this or that person but when the mutual interest of both parties is in place. A cooperation agreement between