Russian Railways and the German concern Siemens have signed a contract for the supply of 54 Desiro suburban trains, which will be used at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, for a total of about 580 million euros, the press service of Russian Railways reported on Wednesday. The first 38 electric trains will be manufactured by the Siemens plant in Krefeld (Germany), the remaining 16 trains will be partially produced in Russia. They are expected to begin operation in the fall of 2013.

Vedomosti has prepared a New Year's gift for its readers - a widget ( interactive wallpaper) for the Windows desktop. Every morning, the latest news will be waiting for you right on your desktop, completely free of charge! This small program is a modern and convenient way to obtain information for those who value their time. Registration required Only Readers Club members can participate in the discussion. If you have already registered, log in to the Readers Club .

The Roscosmos leadership will soon discuss a project to prevent a large asteroid from falling to Earth that will approach our planet in the 2030s, the head of the space agency, Anatoly Perminov, said on the air of the Voice of Russia radio station. Speaking about future Russian space projects, the head of the agency named the fight against asteroids among them.

The third snowfall of this winter, which lasted for two days in Moscow, was the heaviest before the New Year in the last 20 years. "The New Year has not been so snowy for a long time, the last time was in 1988, when more than 20 centimeters of snow fell. On December 29-30, 2009, 18-25 centimeters of snow fell in Moscow," Alexey Lyakhov, head of the Hydrometeorological Bureau of Moscow and the Moscow Region, told journalists on Wednesday.

Russian Minister of Health and Social Development Tatyana Golikova stated that Russia's natural population decline is "covered" by migrants. As of November 1, the population of Russia was 141.9 million people, which is more than last year, Golikova said in an interview with the Vesti TV channel. Speaking about the birth rate, the minister said that by the end of the year, 1.76-1.78 million children are expected, which is 3-3.5% more than last year.

U.S. retail sales at stores that have been open for at least a year rose 2.3 percent during the Christmas week compared with the same period last year, driven by last-minute gift shopping, according to data from the International Council of Shopping Centres (ICSC) and Goldman Sachs. The indicator will increase by about 2% for the whole of December, Bloomberg cites data from companies. Total retail sales excluding cars and fuel increased in the U.S.

December 30, 2009, 01:53 / Business Gazprom does not believe that it has lost Europe The minimum production in its entire history, a collapse in exports and a blow to its image in Europe - these are the results of the outgoing year for Gazprom. The concern is confident that this is temporary, but experts do not share its optimism Elena Mazneva “This crisis does not affect Gazprom in any way,” its director Alexey Miller assured last fall.

This year we have lost many of our compatriots who, by their very presence, made the life of the thinking part of society more meaningful. It is high time to bring back into common use the old phrase "moral authority". The influence of these people was determined not by ratings in glossy magazines and the number of mentions on the Internet, but by an impeccable human reputation and many years of service to the profession.

In terms of profitability, the gambling business left both metallurgy and oil far behind. In the fall of 2008, Renaissance Capital published a report on the business of one of the largest gambling companies in Russia – Ritzio Entertainment: the EBITDA profitability of Ritzio’s Russian business in the first half of 2008 was 50%.

Last year, President Dmitry Medvedev made 13 decisions on governors. Not counting the forced replacement of the head of the Irkutsk region after the death of Igor Esipovsky, in about half of the cases Medvedev did not change anything: five were reappointed, seven were dismissed. In 2008, there were many more resignations: 20 against two reappointments. Since 2009, candidates have been nominated by the party with the majority in the regional Duma.

December 30, 2009, 01:43 / Business All large metallurgical companies had to survive the crisis The outgoing year will be remembered by most metallurgical companies for debt restructuring and the struggle for survival. UC Rusal had the hardest time of all, owing $16.8 billion to creditors. But all the large holdings coped with the problems Yulia Fedorinova State banks also lent to metallurgists - VTB , Gazprombank , Sberbank , Krasnozhenov recalls.

newspaper The Vedomosti , in its annual Person of the Year column , chose me as one of the six “ persons” of 2009. For me this is a very significant assessment of my work. Registration required Only Readers Club members can participate in the discussion. If you have already registered, log in to the Readers Club . To become a member of the Readers Club, you need to register .

December 30, 2009, 03:42 / Finance The peak of banking problems will occur in mid-2010. With government assistance, banks managed to avoid a bad loan crisis. Some of them are hidden in restructured debt, so the peak of problems will be in 2010, analysts Anna Baraulina warn The most striking example of an aggressive but correct way to solve the problem of bad debts was shown by Alfa Bank ,” says Moody’s analyst Evgeny Tarzimanov.

Former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who is being held in the Matrosskaya Tishina pretrial detention center in connection with the investigation of a second criminal case against him, will not be able to celebrate the New Year, Khodorkovsky's lawyer Natalya Terekhova told RIA Novosti. According to her, New Year's Eve is no different from an ordinary night for those held in the pretrial detention center.

Who bought Southwestern Energy or XTO Energy 10 years ago? If you had invested $1,000 in them then, today you would have $57,500 and $34,570, respectively. And what stocks did the stock market professionals recommend? A quick look at the Washington Post shows: America Online, Cisco Systems , Qualcomm, WorldCom, Lucent Technology, Texas Instruments. Anyone who invested in a portfolio of these stocks would have lost two-thirds of their money.