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Muslims displace Catholics at the top

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 11:44:52 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: A monumental time in history.

THE number of Muslims has overtaken that of Roman Catholics for the first time, according to the Vatican.

Muslims account for 19.2% of the world's population, while Catholics make up 17.4%, according to the Vatican's new statistics yearbook, which is based on figures for 2006.

"For the first time in history we are no longer at the top: the Muslims have overtaken us," said Monsignor Vittorio Formenti, who edited the yearbook.

"While it is known that Muslim families continue to have many children, Christian families are having fewer," he told the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano.The Vatican data showed that Christians as a whole, including Orthodox and Protestant groups as well as Catholics, made up 33% of the world's population.

Applying the percentages to the 2006 world population of about 6.5 billion, Muslims would have made up 1.25 billion of the total, Catholics 1.13 billion and all Christians 2.15 billion.

Tags: religion

Airline pays customers to fly

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:49:26 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: No, it probably doesn't fly anywhere near where you live or want to go.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

Flybe has given the term low-fare airline an entirely new meaning: it is paying 172 people to fly back and forth across England and the Irish Sea to help it meet a target for passenger numbers at Norwich airport.

Flybe was narrowly falling short of a target to deliver at least 15,000 passengers on the Dublin-Norwich route in the 12 months ending on Monday, which meant it would have to forego a 280,000 pound ($608,000) rebate from the airport.

After the airport rejected a request for a partial rebate for almost hitting the target, Flybe hired 172 temps for 30-40 pounds each, plus a free bar and in-flight entertainment, though it admitted "it probably sounds like an early April fool".

But Richard Jenner, managing director of the airport in eastern England, called the British carrier's move "ludicrous" and said the target had to be met by regular fare-paying passengers.

Legs, pygmies and cheese top British odd book poll

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:46:20 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Bit of a giggle at nothing.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

According to a new poll, the oddest book title of the year in Britain was If You Want Closure In Your Relationship, Start With Your Legs.

The book - described as a "self-help manual written by a man for the benefit of women" - pipped I Was Tortured By The Pygmy Love Queen, which came in second, followed by Cheese Problems Solved in the poll for Bookseller magazine.

"The winner ... makes redundant an entire genre of self-help tomes. So effective is the title that you don't even need to read the book itself," said Joel Rickett, deputy editor of the publishing industry weekly.

The Bookseller's diarist Horace Bent, who organises the awards, questioned his bosses' decision a few years ago to change the way the winner is selected - from a decision by him to an online poll, which this year drew 8,500 votes.

"The public: you just can't trust them," he said.

Tags: humour

Humans causing new extinction event: academic

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 09:40:11 GMT

clipped by: tabsey
clipper's remarks: Professor Steffen says the Anthropocene age will continue for some considerable time.

"Even if we cut down emissions to zero or close to zero tomorrow, there would be significant amounts of extra CO2 up there for centuries into the future, and I think also in terms of biodiversity loss, there is what some people call committed biodiversity loss, or species that are on their way to extinction and there probably isn't much we can do to turn them around," he said.

Clip Source: www.abc.net.au

An Australian National University scientist says the planet is losing species at a similar rate to the period when the dinosaurs were wiped out.

Will Steffen from the Fenner School of Environment says the planet is in the midst of a new geological age, the Anthropocene, in which humans are causing mass species extinction.

He says the era began with the industrial revolution and accelerated in the 1950s as humans began burning more fossil fuels and consuming more resources.

Professor Steffen says the current levels of species extinction are at least a hundred times greater than natural loss rates.

"There've been five big extinction events in the past, the most famous one was the loss of the dinosaurs and so on, but this one appears to be as fast and as extensive as those and that's why people who do do a lot of work on biodiversity are now saying that we're probably now in the earth's six greatest extinction event," he said.

Tags: extinction, rulz