Demand for cyber exercises is growing in Russia, the manufacturer Beluga will produce snacks: the main thing on September 27

World

• French billionaire Xavier Niel confirmed that he helped Telegram founder Pavel Durov during his arrest in Paris on August 24. Le Monde wrote that the businessman provided Durov with “secret apartments” in one of the most luxurious hotels in the city.
• Belarus plans to develop a national telephone with its own software, the country’s president, Alexander Lukashenko, said.
• Arm Holdings Plc turned to Intel Corp. with an offer to buy one of its troubled chip-making divisions, but was rejected. Intel said the business is not for sale.

Russia

• The government will consider nominating especially outstanding IT specialists for state awards. At the same time, the opinions of experts in the field of information technology are divided on the importance of this type of degree.
• Russia occupies 59th place in the ranking of the Global Innovation Index in 2024. Experts from the Higher School of Economics of the National Research University did not agree with the conclusions of the study, who, based on the results of 2023, recorded the growth of science and innovation in the country.
• Google plans to maintain access to free services for Russian users. The company is also aware of the difficulties that Russians have when registering new accounts.
• The Moscow prosecutor’s office demanded that a criminal case be opened against the blogger Ilya Varlamov, recognized as a foreign agent, under part 2 of Art. 330.1 of the Penal Code (evasion of duties provided for by the legislation on foreign agents). The maximum penalty provided for in this article is up to two years in prison.
• The Moscow Central Diameters (MCD) will soon be expanded to the Kaluga, Smolensk, Tula and Yaroslavl regions. This was announced by the mayor of the capital, Sergei Sobyanin.
• The Bank of Russia has published a standard for the protection of mortgage borrowers. It will refer to legal relationships that arise after January 1, 2025.
• The registry of miners in Russia will be developed and maintained by the Federal Tax Service (FTS). This decision was made because the department has much more experience working with the cryptocurrency market, as well as miners, than the Ministry of Digital Development.
• Starting November 1, drivers will be able to park for free in central Moscow with minimum occupancy. This opportunity will appear on Ilyinka, New Square, Tverskaya Zastava, Rozhdestvensky Boulevard and Nikitsky Lane.
• During the six months of 2024, Russian budget expenditures for servicing the national debt reached 1.1 trillion rubles. This is 50% more than in the same period in 2023.
• Satellite operators proposed to the Ministry of Digital Development to include the cost of on-board Internet in the price of air tickets. It can account for around 5% of the cost of the flight.
• Tourists who were banned from leaving Russia due to errors in their passports are winning cases against authorities. There are already several cases in which they were not only compensated for the cost of the tickets, but also for moral damage.

Business

• Sales of sneakers in Russia in the first seven months of 2024 amounted to 44.8 billion rubles. This is the highest figure in at least the last three years.
• Russian alcoholic beverage company Novabev Group (formerly Beluga Group) has registered the brand Fox and Dogs for snacks and appetizers. This name corresponds to the whiskey brand of the same name in the company’s portfolio.
• 45% of hoteliers have noticed an improvement in their business and the same number of businessmen are confident that their financial situation will improve next year, the press service of Yandex Travel reported to RB.RU.
• The fortune of the CEO of the Russian mining company BitRiver, Igor Runts, was $230 million, Bloomberg estimated. The entrepreneur first learned about cryptocurrency mining at Stanford University, where he earned an MBA from 2015 to 2017.
• VTB plans to accelerate the merger of Post Bank: the agreement to buy out Russian Post’s stake will take place in 2024, the integration is planned for 2025, and all procedures must be completed by January 2026.

Services and technologies

• In January-September 2024, the demand for cyber exercises grew by 25% year-on-year. Those most interested in cyber training are manufacturing companies, financial organizations and transportation companies.
• Discord messenger may be blocked in Russia. Roskomnadzor issued five new decisions against him for violation of the law.

• The Ministry of Industry and Trade will develop a program for the production of processors for smartphones. Market participants note that creating individual CAD systems requires physical access to a factory, which does not yet exist in the Russian Federation.

• The number of problems for Google and its users in Russia continues to grow. Experts called on Russians to switch to Russian services, without ruling out the possibility that all of Google in Russia will suffer the same fate as its YouTube video hosting service.

• Smart TVs from Samsung and LG have started monitoring users: they take several screenshots per second to analyze the content.

Transport

• Yandex Go fined and blocked 120 thousand users in 2024 for driving scooters dangerously. Since the launch of the service in 2022, Yandex Go has invested more than 380 million rubles in security.