MOSCOW, Dec. 29 (UPI) — Russia lost more than 200,000 people this year, the statistics service said Saturday. The population decline of 0.15 percent was slightly smaller than in 2006, RIA Novosti reported. The country’s population was estimated at 142 million as of Nov. 1, the Russian news agency said. While the death rate continued to exceed the birth rate, the number of immigrants was up 87 percent. Most newcomers were from former Soviet republics. The working age population was 75.1 million in November, or about 53 percent of the total population. United Nations demographers say if current trends continue, Russia’s population will be one-third smaller than it is now in 2050. President Vladimir Putin has pushed for policies to push the birth rate up, including increased maternity benefits and additional benefits for families with children, especially for those with a second child. Real income grew by 10.1 percent in the first 11 months of 2007, with the top 10 percent of the population receiving more than 30 percent of all income. More than 15 percent of the population had incomes below the subsistence level.
TEHRAN – – Russia has delivered a second consignment of nuclear fuel to Iran’s Bushehr power plant, the official news agency IRNA quoted the deputy head of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation as saying on Friday. ‘The second consignment of fuel for the Bushehr nuclear plant arrived in Iran on Friday,’ Ahmad Fayazbaksh said, adding that the delivery was the same amount supplied in the first consignment on December 17. Russia will deliver a total of 82 tonnes of nuclear fuel to Iran over two months in eight separate consignments. On December 20 a spokeswoman for the Russian contractor on the flagship project, Atomstroiexport, confirmed that it would take at least a year to start the power station. ‘We can predict that the Bushehr station will be launched no earlier than the end of 2008 due to the current situation,’ Irina Yesipova told AFP. Iran had said it hoped the 1,000-megawatt plant in the southern city of Bushehr could come on line within three months at up to 200 megawatts before being cranked up to full capacity nine months later. ‘Six months after the end of deliveries of fuel we will start tests with […]
People find all sorts of ways to lobby President Bush. Sometimes it comes in the form of a handwritten note slipped into his palm during a bill-signing ceremony. Sen. Thomas R. Carper (D-Del.) tried that last week when Bush signed energy legislation that will curb greenhouse gases. ‘Congratulations and good work,’ Carper recalled writing. ‘By the way, Joe Lieberman and John Warner have a very good global warming bill that needs your support and you ought to support it.’ Bush tucked the note into his pocket and promised to read it later. Carper hoped he would find it at the end of the day when he slipped his suit off. No one knows what effect such a note might have, but it was just one more small foray in a battle for Bush’s attention that has been raging for years, one in which European leaders, American governors, corporate executives, evangelical preachers and key lawmakers have pressed him to lead what they see as a bid to save the planet. For years, Bush bristled privately at what he considered sky-is-falling alarmism by the liberal, elitist Hollywood crowd. The clatter over climate change, according to friends and advisers, seemed […]
Molten iron raining down like cowpats; ice floes at New Orleans. The weather of 1783 was an extraordinary case of sudden climate change driven by atmospheric gases. ‘Around mid-morning on Pentecost, June 8th of 1783, in clear and calm weather, a black haze of sand appeared to the north of the mountains. The cloud was so extensive that in a short time it had spread over the entire area and so thick that it caused darkness indoors. That night, strong earthquakes and tremors occurred.’ Thus begins the eyewitness account of one of the most remarkable episodes of climate change ever seen. It was written by a Lutheran priest, Jon Steingrimsson, in the Sida district of southern Iceland. At nine o’clock that morning, the earth split open along a 16-mile fissure called the Laki volcano. Over the next eight months, in a series of vast belches, more lava gushed through the fissure than from any volcano in historic times-15 cubic kilometres, enough to bury the whole island of Manhattan to the top of the Rockefeller Centre. Pentecost is the Christian festival celebrating the appearance of the Holy Spirit to the Apostles with the sound, the Bible says, ‘as […]
Huge increases in water and sewer bills are on the way in many places as cities and towns try to repair aging pipes and correct artificially low prices. Atlanta, Detroit, New York and Tampa are among cities facing large rate increases. Many of the nation’s 70,000 smaller systems - from Monterey, Calif., to Charleston, W.Va. - are imposing major price hikes, too. The Environmental Protection Agency estimates that the nation’s water and wastewater systems need an investment of up to $1.2 trillion over 20 years. Also, arid states such as Arizona, Texas and Utah, where water costs more to provide, have fast-growing populations. ‘God made the water, but he didn’t make the pipes or have to comply with EPA regulations,’ says Nick DeBenedictis, CEO of Aqua America, a private water company that serves 3 million. Last year, the median annual residential bill was $278 for water and $276 for sewer service, reports the American Water Works Association, an industry group. The median rate increase was about 5%, says Doug Scott, a credit analyst at Fitch Ratings, which evaluates the debt of municipal utilities. Average rate increases of that amount are enough to finance the industry’s capital […]
Remote Viewing the Year 2060
