A third of the world’s population is expected to have some form of Internet access by the end of 2010, according to a survey. The gap between that haves and have-nots remains wide. – By the end of 2010, there will be 2 billion Internet users worldwide,
according to a report issued by the International Telecommunication Union, a
United Nations agency.
The report quot;The
World in 2010: ICT facts and figures, quot; released on Oct. 20, found the
number of Internet users wor…
In the year to June 2010, the population increased 1.8% to just over 5 million, marking the smallest rise since 2004 and a slowdown compared with 3.1% in the year to June 2009, government figures showed.
What lies behind the violence in Kyrgyzstan
CLASHES in southern Kyrgyzstan have spiraled out of control. Thus far 118 people have been confirmed dead, a further 1,500 as injured, and tens of thousands of ethnic Uzbeks have fled to neighbouring Uzbekistan. The number of those killed over the past four days are without a doubt significantly higher than these estimates suggest. Local Muslim custom requires that the dead are buried within 24 hours. Many people are burying family members immediately without registering their deaths.
Although Uzbeks make up only 15% of Kyrgyzstan’s population of 5.4m, most of them live in the southern part of the country, where they make up the majority. The Fergana Valley, where most of the killing happened, was divided arbitrarily by Stalin in the 1920s among Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. As a result, the Kyrgyz Soviet republic was left with a sizeable Uzbek population, the Uzbek Soviet republic with a Tajik population, and so on. While the Soviet Union existed and the republics were part of the same country, this made little practical difference. But when the Soviet Union fell apart, these artificially created borders became final, separating newly independent states and fomenting ethnic tensions. …
More people than ever live in slums, but matters are improving
THE proportion of the world’s urban population living in slums has fallen from nearly 40% a decade ago to less than a third today. China and India have together lifted 125m people out of slum conditions in recent years. North Africa’s slum population has shrunk by a fifth. But the absolute number of slum dwellers around the world, estimated to be some 830m, is still rising. And in a few countries the share of the urban population in slums has also grown. In Zimbabwe, economic collapse and the forced relocation of urban dwellers have lifted the urban slum population. In Iraq, as a result of conflict, the number of people living in slums tripled in ten years.
…
In 2008, 17 percent of the population in the EU was at risk of poverty, Eurostat, the EU’s statistical office has announced. According to the statistical data, the lowest at-risk-of-poverty rates in 2008 were found in Czech Republic – nine percent and the Netherlands and Slovakia – both 11 percent.
Russia’s population statistics are rising for the first time since 1995, says Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. Putin said that for the past five years the number of deaths had declined, while births had risen.
Australia’s koalas have suffered a sharp population decline because of development, bushfires and global warming, and could vanish within decades, researchers said on Tuesday. Mainland Australia’s wild koala population was between 43,000 and 80,000, well under previous estimates of
An Australian MP and former Immigration Minister, Kevin Andrews, has sparked off a row after suggesting that Australia needs to have a serious discussion about the growth of its Muslim population.
The Australian Greens have slammed the Liberal MP’s suggestion as “despicable.”
Andrews said the issue of a growing Muslim population was a topic that had to [...]
Fewer people would mean lower greenhouse-gas emissions
FAMILY planning is five times cheaper than conventional green technologies in combating climate change. That is the claim made by Thomas Wire, a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, and highlighted by British medics writing in the Lancet on September 19th.
Ever since Thomas Malthus, an English economist, published his essay on the principle of population in 1798, people have been concerned about population growth. Sir Julian Huxley, the first director-general of the United Nations Education, Science and Cultural Organisation when it was established in 1945, remarked that death control made birth control a moral imperative. Sir Julian went on to play a role in establishing what was then the World Wildlife Fund, a nature conservation agency, linking population growth to environmental degradation. …
Where foreigners fill prisons
NEARLY three-quarters of Saudi Arabia’s prison population is foreign born, the highest share in the world. Switzerland, another rich country with lots of foreign workers, has a similarly large proportion of non-natives behind bars. Migration within the European Union helps to account for the relatively high incidence of foreign inmates in some EU countries, though this may change. EU law now allows for repatriation of inmates to serve their sentences in their native countries. Over 40% of prisoners in Greece, Belgium and Luxembourg are foreigners. By contrast, only 6% of America’s inmates are from abroad.
…
Dragacevo Assembly of Trumpet Players starts today in GuÄa and will last until August 9. The small town of GuÄa, with the population of about 2,000, is expected to receive close to half a million visitors from the country and abroad and about 1,200 participants of the event.
A study by statisticians at Oregon State University (OSU) in the US has determined that family planning is important to reduce the “carbon footprint†of people.
According to the study, some people who are serious about wanting to reduce their “carbon footprint†on the Earth have one choice available to them that may yield a large [...]
We understand toasting your country with a frosty beverage. But, one salute will probably be sufficient in getting the point across.
About half the US population should be vaccinated against the H1N1 virus with pregnant women and health workers the top priority, US officials have said.
A US government advisory committee said health officials should prepare to vaccinate 160 million people.
The vaccination campaign, which will involve two doses of vaccine per person, is due to begin in mid-October.
In the event that not enough vaccine is available, a tighter group of high-risk patients will receive it.
This group also includes people who care for babies, health workers and children between the age of six months and four years.
‘Natural immunity’
"The main message is that it’s half the population. And it’s the younger half of the population, as well as health care workers," said Kathy Neuzil, of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices.
Young adults aged 19 to 24, and adults – not old people – who have high-risk medical conditions are among a wider group of those to get priority for vaccinations.
Health workers say that old people seem to have higher levels of natural immunity to the virus.
The BBC’s Daniel Sandford, in Washington, says swine flu cases are actually decreasing across the US, having peaked 10 weeks ago.
But, our correspondent adds, scientists expect that cases will pick up again during the colder autumn months.
A recent study carried out by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, published on Wednesday, suggests that pregnant women are far more likely to need hospital treatment after contracting H1N1.
They are four times as more likely to be hospitalised from swine flu than the general public and can risk complications without speedy anti-viral treatment, the study warned. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
About half the US population should be vaccinated against the H1N1 virus with pregnant women and health workers the top priority, US officials have said.
A US government advisory committee said health officials should prepare to vaccinate 160 million people.
The vaccination campaign, which will involve two doses of vaccine per person, is due to begin in mid-October.
In the event that not enough vaccine is available, a tighter group of high-risk patients will receive it.
This group also includes people who care for babies, health workers and children between the age of six months and four years.
‘Natural immunity’
"The main message is that it’s half the population. And it’s the younger half of the population, as well as health care workers," said Kathy Neuzil, of the Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices.
Young adults aged 19 to 24, and adults – not old people – who have high-risk medical conditions are among a wider group of those to get priority for vaccinations.
Health workers say that old people seem to have higher levels of natural immunity to the virus.
The BBC’s Daniel Sandford, in Washington, says swine flu cases are actually decreasing across the US, having peaked 10 weeks ago.
But, our correspondent adds, scientists expect that cases will pick up again during the colder autumn months.
A recent study carried out by the US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, published on Wednesday, suggests that pregnant women are far more likely to need hospital treatment after contracting H1N1.
They are four times as more likely to be hospitalised from swine flu than the general public and can risk complications without speedy anti-viral treatment, the study warned. </p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
By Paul Moss
Radio 4′s The World Tonight
Nikola shuffles his feet nervously, gazes around at the town where he has lived all his life, and tells me that he wants to leave.
Then he tells me he will not leave. Then he seems to change his mind and say that he will.
We are in Gracanica, a Serb enclave in the middle of Kosovo, surrounded on all sides by the majority Albanian-speaking population.
"Belgrade hasn’t done anything for the survival of Serbs in Kosovo"
Budmir Nicic
And Nikola, like most people you meet here, talks as if he is living under siege.
"There are threats from Kosovo Albanians, trying to kidnap people," he says.
"I don’t feel safe here. My mother has trouble with the neighbour – he’s Albanian. You don’t have the things here you need for a normal life."
‘Endangered’ community
The tables have certainly turned.
During the late Slobodan Milosevic’s time as president of former Yugoslavia and, later, Serbia, ethnic Serbs in Kosovo were accused first of removing the rights of Kosovo’s Albanian-speaking population, and then of attempting to ethnically cleanse them from the province altogether.
But when Kosovo unilaterally declared independence last year, its Serb population found themselves a minority in the new country. Many, perhaps half, left their homes.
And now they have a new source of anxiety.
The Nato-led Kosovo Force (K-For) deployed to keep the peace in Kosovo has just announced it is reducing troop numbers from 14,000 down to 10,000.
It is a move that the Serbian Foreign Minister, Vuk Jeremic, warns will leave Serbs in Kosovo badly exposed.
"Today, in Europe, the Kosovo Serb community is probably among the most endangered," he says.
"When they move around, they feel they need to be accompanied by international security forces. It would be bad if the numbers were diminished."
"We don’t want to exclude any options. We need to come to the table and see what happens"
Vuk Jeremic
Serbian Foreign Minister
But despite Mr Jeremic’s protestations on behalf of Kosovo’s Serbs, he himself has made a diplomatic shift that could well leave them with even more worries.
Until now, the government in Belgrade has insisted that Kosovo is entirely and eternally a part of Serbia.
But speaking to the BBC’s World Tonight programme, Mr Jeremic proffered a new possibility of compromise.
He said he now wanted to negotiate with the Kosovan authorities, and promised that he would be "very flexible".
Asked explicitly if he might recognise Kosovo’s independence, perhaps in return for some of its land being returned to Serbia, Mr Jeremic once again refused to rule anything out.
"We don’t want to exclude any options," he said. "We need to come to the table and see what happens."
Abandonment fears
It may sound like a subtle shift of emphasis, but for many Serbs living in Kosovo, Mr Jeremic’s comments amount to nothing short of treachery.
"They play a game of ‘saving Kosovo’. They just say they love Kosovo because of their political careers," says Budmir Nicic, who lives in Caglavica, another Serb enclave within Kosovo.
"Because Serbs won’t accept Kosovo as their own state, this brings a lot of Albanians to view them as a threat to the state"
Agron Bajrami
Editor of Koha Ditore
"Belgrade hasn’t done anything for the survival of Serbs in Kosovo," he complains. "They just say things to win over voters in Serbia."
Mr Nicic’s scathing views reflect a common anxiety among Kosovo’s Serb population.
Fearful though they may be of their Albanian neighbours, Serbs here are often even more suspicious of the "motherland", to which they are supposedly loyal.
Many are convinced that Serbia will eventually abandon its claim on Kosovo, perhaps in order to curry favour with the European Union.
As far as Agron Bajrami is concerned, Kosovo’s Serbs have only one option.
The editor of Kosovo’s leading Albanian-language newspaper, Koha Ditore, Bajrami argues that Serbs living in Kosovo must accept the country’s independence, and make their peace with it.
"The majority of Albanians are willing to accept Serbs as part of this country," he says at his office in Pristina.
"But because Serbs won’t accept Kosovo as their own state, this brings a lot of Albanians to view them as a threat to the state."
Opening minds
That idea, that Serbs will be forced to integrate, was echoed by another Kosovo resident, who is herself an ethnic Serb.
"Nobody can live in isolation for ever"
Danijela
Danijela works for one of the country’s myriad international organisations.
And unlike most of her fellow Serbs, she travels regularly to the capital, Pristina, scoffing at the idea that she might be in danger of attack.
As far as Danijela is concerned, it is self-interest and, in particular, the lure of business that will eventually coax Serbs out of their ghetto and into a more integrated existence with their ethnic-Albanian neighbours.
"Nobody can live in isolation for ever," she insists. "To improve our living standards, Serbs will start trading more. And naturally, opening of the market is going to open the minds of people."
"We will stop thinking about ethnicities, stop dividing ourselves as we are divided now," she adds.
Danijela smiles slightly as her train of thought reaches its conclusion:
"It’s a time in the Balkans to think about the future," she says. "We can’t live in the past for ever."
Hear Paul Moss’s report from Kosovo onThe World Tonight.</p
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The City of Santa Cruz, California, is situated on the northern part of Monterey Bay about 74 miles south of San Francisco and 30 miles from San Jose.
Santa Cruz is the county seat for the County of Santa Cruz.The City has of an area of 12 square miles and an estimated population of 56,300 (1/1/04 [...]
Pakistan would be the fourth most populated country in the world in 2050 if its population continues to grow with the current rate, The United Nations Population Division has said.
Pakistan would add another 335 million people to its current population and would thus overtake Brazil and Indonesia as the world’s fourth most populated nation in [...]
Immigrants who want to become British citizens will win bonus points if they go to live and work in Scotland, where the population is ageing, Jim Murphy, the Scottish secretary, announced today.
A draft Home Office consultation paper, due shortly, on the government’s new policy of “earned citizenship”, singles out the fact of “having lived or worked in a part of the UK in need of increased population [such as Scotland]” as a point worthy of “favourable treatment”.
The credit of living in Scotland will rank alongside skills in short supply, as well as special talents, in science or the arts, and a “proper attitude” towards the adopted country.
Writing in Scotland on Sunday, Murphy reminded fellow Scots that their average age was now 45 – “almost four years older” than his age – and that such a demographic profile put pressure on the welfare state and on future competitiveness.
Scotland’s population has shown a slight increase, from 5,057,400 in 2003 to 5,168,00 last year, and a better-performing economy under devolution has started to reverse decades of outward migration. But Murphy said: “Our need for a growing population is ranked alongside the need to recruit to occupations where we have a shortage.”
He added: “Over the summer we will be consulting on this new points-based route to citizenship, and I am pleased to say living and working in Scotland is proposed as one way to earn points.
“The new Scotland should be a melting pot, embracing long-established immigrant communities from Ireland and Italy, as well as more recent arrivals from the Indian sub-continent and young eastern Europeans. They’ve changed us for the better and widened our horizons.”
Newly retired move to cultural cities or the shires
God’s waiting rooms are undergoing a transformation. For decades, many of Britain’s coastal towns have been synonymous with blue rinses, bingo and tea dances. Places such as Bournemouth, Eastbourne and Worthing have been seen as retirement havens for generations of pensioners, keen to take the sea air just as their Victorian predecessors used to.
But according to an analysis of demographic data, many of today’s wealthier pensioners are turning their backs on traditional retirement destinations with a “grey influx” into upmarket towns and cities in some of the UK’s most sought-after inland locations – such as in the Cotswolds, and parts of Hampshire and Kent.
The shift is driven by an increase in the number of people reaching retirement age, coupled with rising levels of wealth. In 1945, life expectancy at birth for men and women was 63 and 68 respectively. In 2009 it is 78 and 82.
The dramatic increase in the number of over-65s means that by 2019 there will be 2.4 million more than today. But the traditional coastal retirement resorts, which grew to meet burgeoning demand from the postwar middle classes, have not been able to accommodate the demographic shift.
Research from Experian, the consumer research and credit rating agency, charts the trend. Changes to its giant Mosaic database – which divides the UK population into socioeconomic and lifestyle groups – show a much larger proportion of older people moving to the most desirable parts of the country, often funding this by selling their mortgage-free homes. And where coastal destinations were once the vogue, many are now looking to inland market towns, historic cities and major cultural destinations.
“People want to spend more of their retirement in the country, in areas of attractive scenery,” said Richard Webber, visiting professor of geography at University College London, who helped develop Mosaic. “And they are choosing to live a long way from London and other major population centres.”
Webber said around half of those reaching retirement age choose to carry on living in their own home, or at least in the same area. But of those with above-average wealth, around 60 per cent choose to live somewhere else. Half of these now select less traditional retirement destinations.
“A lot more older people want to retire to places of historic importance, places that have orchestras and festivals,” said Webber. “They’re looking at historic market towns and cities, places like Bath and Cheltenham, cathedral cities and university towns where there are beautiful buildings.”
As a result of its extensive social mapping of the UK, Experian has identified five new types of retiree.
Beachcombers
This group reflects the growing trend for the middle-class retired to select smaller communities, many on the coast or a river, rather than larger resorts. Popular destinations: Barnstaple, Newport (Isle of Wight), Carmarthen, Inverness, Kendal, Newton Abbot.
Balcony downsizers
Higher-status retired people in their 70s and 80s, who live in privately owned or leasehold apartments in purpose-built blocks of flats suitable for those too fragile to cope with the upkeep of houses and gardens. Popular destinations: Worthing, Boscombe, Edinburgh, Southend-on-Sea, Barnet, Kingston upon Thames.
Golden retirement
People with accumulated assets, who pick prestigious retirement communities. They lead busy social lives, drive and garden. Popular destinations: Exeter, Southampton, Poole, Chichester, Norwich, Canterbury and Ipswich.
Bungalow quietude
Retirees with modest pensions, living in older-style bungalows, often in less well-off areas unattractive to younger families. Popular destinations: Blackpool, Rhyl, Scarborough, Plymouth, Nottingham, Peterborough, Newcastle upon Tyne, Lincoln, Leicester.
Country-loving elders
People on comfortable incomes living in former farms or older-style properties in quiet villages and market towns. Popular destinations: Truro, King’s Lynn, Hereford, Carlisle, Shrewsbury.
