(OOC: In population stories I tend to go by CNRP rules - in-game times one thousand.)

Top Stories

14 Towns To Be Granted City Status

SYKTYVKAR - in a press conference called by Jarkko Salomäki yesterday, representatives from the Uralican Tribal Council addressed Uralica's growth going by monthly census data.

"Our current population is roughly 37 778 000 going by the monthly census," said Dr. Ovdey Shlomov. As far as population goes though, there are many towns with more population than some settlements with city status have. Take Inta for example. Inta only has around 32 000 people. Now look at a "town" like Kirovo-Chepetsk or Luusiva (Lys'va) that has more people. Right now we have taken in 36 potential city charters for ratification. Having looked through them, we have decided that only fourteen of these are ready for city status, however it is better than nothing. We are planning to look over villages putting in application for incorporation into towns in January."

Factors for city charter include having adequate infrastructure, something some large centres of population - most notably Pazhga, Vuktyl, Trakt, and Gubakha - do not have. All of these were rejected for having "inadequate road systems and facilities that a city should have." Others were too small - Uralican city laws require at least 20 000 people within the city proper, something centres like Kudymkar, Emva, Orlov, Öskölömi, and Troitsko-Pechorsk couldn't claim yet.

The fourteen that were accepted are as follows:

- Pechora

- Krasnokamsk

- Kotlas

- Sosnogorsk

- Votka

- Mozhga

- Vaahruše

- Koryazhma

- Isoustiuki

- Veliski

- Yulser-Ola

- Sokol

- Kungur

- Serov

They will receive their city status on 1 November, with various members of the Council on hand for the tape-cutting ceremonies.

Official census city populations are as follows (counting the new cities):

(UA = Unitary authority. Only UAs centred around one city are shown.)

* - denotes new city

500K+:

Yekaterinburg - 2,468,000 (UA - 3,702,000)

Perm' - 1,568,000 (UA - 1,810,000)

Izhevsk - 928,000 (UA - 1,050,000)

Kirov - 802,000 (UA - 909,000)

Syktyvkar - 774,000 (UA - 774,000)

Cheboksary - 602,000

Nizhny Tagil - 531,000 (UA - 600,000)

Total (counting UAs): 9,378,000 (roughly 1/4 of Uralica's population)

200K-499K

Arkhangel'sk - 498,000

Yoshkar-Ola - 457,000

Cherepovets - 399,000 (UA - 429,000)

Vologda - 382,000 (UA - 400,000)

Berezniki - 329,000

Ukhta - 257,000

Solikamsk - 219,000

Total (counting UAs): 2,589,000

<200K

Glazov - 176,000

Pervouralsk - 130,000

Vorkuta - 119,000

Severodvinsk - 110,000

*Serov - 102,000

*Votka 100,000

Chaykovsky - 95,000

*Kotlas 80,000

*Krasnokamsk 71,000

*Kungur 66,000

*Yulser-Ola 60,000

*Sosnogorsk 53,000

*Pechora 46,000

*Vaahruše 44,000

*Mozhga 42,000

*Koryazhma 41,000

*Sokol 40,000

*Isoustiuki 33,000

Inta 32,000

*Veliski 30,000

Total: 1,470,000

Rejected city applicants population, reasons for rejection:

Sarapul - 109,000, charter needs re-write

Kirovo-Chepetsk - 89,000, too few public music schools, schools too crowded

Lysva - 72,000, charter needs re-write

Punaturjin - 62,000, hospitals too small

Chusovoi - 51,000, charter needs re-write

Novodvinsk - 49,000, still needs to adjust charter to that of Arkhangel'sk-Severodvinsk UA

Usinsk - 45,000, told to come back when the highway access plan was finished.

Gubakha - 30,000, road system and commercial district insufficient

Trakt - 22,000, road system insufficient

Naryan-Mar - 20,000, insufficient infrastructure all-around.

Sheksna - 19,000, too small

Kudymkar - 18,000, too small

Emva - 16,000, too small

Pazhga - 15,000, too small

Usovuori - 15,000, too small

Vuktyl - 14,000, too small

Aleksandrovsk - 14,000, too small

Öskölömi - 13,000, too small

Orlov - 12,000, too small

Konosha - 12,000, too small

Zheshart - 11,000, too small

Troitsko-Pechorsk - 10,000, too small

Total population within above-mentioned towns: 718,000

As for the town incorporation, the rules for being incorporated as a town in Uralica are:

- must have at least 2,000 population

- must have town hall

- must have police department with at least 30 staff

- must have volunteer fire department with at least 30 staff

- must have medical clinic (city requires hospital)

- must have an elementary school, a middle school, and a secondary school

- must have at least two music schools, private or public

- must have an all-purpose sporting complex, although it doesn't have to be particularly large and only has to contain an ice-hockey arena, a soccer pitch, and a small all-purpose gymnasium

Education

UY Course Of The Week

ESTN 461

A Sociolinguistic Seminar: Võru - Dialect or Language?

3 semester hours

Võru is taught in Uralica as a separate language, but is it really? This course examines lexical, morphosyntactic, phonological, and phonetic arguments from both sides of this argument, as to whether the South Estonian speech is a language of its own or simply an Estonian dialect.

Tourism And Travel

Uralica Unveils Ninth National Park

NARYAN-MAR, NENETSIA-NORTH URALICA - a result of much lobbying has come to pass. Mere weeks after the Pechora River was declared "100% clean" by the Tribal Council, the western half of the Pechora Delta has been made a national park. This will not affect the northeastern Uralican summer shipping lane, though, because the main shipping route down the Pechora River starts in the eastermost inlet, which is the Pechora River proper.

It is actually the second national park along the Pechora River, with the first being Virgin Komi Forests National Park (a former UNESCO World Heritage Site) which meets the source of the Pechora River in Central Uralica. (The park itself, for those foreigners who don't know, spans three counties, Central Uralica, Pechora, and Northeast Uralica, and also contains Uralica's highest peak, Mount Narodnaya.) Another point of note is that Pechora Delta National Park is also the fourth national park within Nenetsia alone - Polar Bear National Park is on the western border with Northwest Uralica, the islands of Zemlya Frantsa-Iosifa have been made a national park, and there is a small national monument at Ground Zero of where Tsar Bomba was detonated over Novaya Zemlya.

Sports

Draw Puts SiPS Promotion At Risk

Sikkivukarin Palloseura kept top spot in Liga Mundo's Serie Segunda with a 3-3 draw against AM Adepts after a late surge from the home side, which goalkeeper Mattias Hammevik wrote off as "done through gamesmanship" (and was promptly fined for doing so). However, the two teams behind SiPS at the moment, Jekerger and AM Adepts, both play on closing day. Jekerger plays against Irlande, a team moved to Uralica's TOOL compatriots of the same name, while the Adepts play against Spartak MK, who are also very much in the running.

A draw between Spartak and the Adepts will secure promotion for SiPS regardless of how Jekerger fares, however should Jekerger also lose, SiPS will take the Segunda title, something Jarkko Salomäki says, "while nice, isn't something [they] should get [their] hopes up about."

With SiPS' focus to be changing to winning a third Bolakliiga and second Kanslerinkilpi in the spring, it is the opinion of some pundits that they need to get up into the bigs now as opposed to later.