London’s Authorities and Services

The Greater London Authority (GLA) is the London-wide body responsible for coordinating the boroughs, strategic planning, and running some London-wide services such as policing, the fire service and transport. The GLA was created in 2000 as a replacement body for the former Greater London Council (GLC) which was created in 1965 and abolished in 1986 after political disputes between the GLC and the Conservative government of Margaret Thatcher. The GLA consists of the Mayor of London and the London Assembly.

The mayor is elected by the Supplementary Vote system while the assembly is elected by the Additional Member System. London is represented in Parliament by 74 MPs (members of Parliament). The territorial police force for the 32 London boroughs is the Metropolitan Police Service, more commonly referred to as the Metropolitan Police, or simply «the Met». The City of London has its own police force, the City of London Police.

Health services in London are managed by the national government via the National Health Service (NHS).

Transport is one of the four areas of policy administered by the Mayor of London, but the mayor’s financial control is limited. The executive agency which runs London’s transport system is Transport for London (TfL). The public transport network is one of the most extensive in the world, but faces congestion and reliability issues. The network is one of the most complex transit systems in the world with just over 1 billion journeys used every year on the underground alone.

As of mid-2005, in preparation for the 2012 London Olympic Games a total of £7 billion ($12 billion) will be spent on refurbishment and expansion of city links, mainly on the London Underground. Although the main reason for this is because of the increased traffic flow that will be caused by the 2012 Olympics, the work would still be completed if London had not won the games. By 2013 a new service called Crossrail is due to be opened. Also in planning is the Cross River Tram (CRT). It will depart in the south suburbs, cross the River Thames, through to the City of London (the financial district), and continue its journey to the northern suburbs. It is speculated that it will be the world’s longest tram.

The British media is concentrated in London and is sometimes accused of having a «London bias». All the major television networks are headquartered in London including the BBC, which remains Britain's most influential media organization. Partly to counter complaints about London bias, the BBC announced in June 2004 that some departments are to be relocated to Manchester. Other major networks include ITV and BSkyB, Channel 4 and Five are also based in London. Like the BBC, these produce some programmes elsewhere in the UK, but London is their main production centre.

The English newspaper market is dominated by national newspapers, all of which are edited in London. Until the 1970s, most of the national newspapers were concentrated in Fleet Street, but in the 1980s they relocated to new premises with automated printing works. Most of these are in East London, most famously the News International plant at Wapping. The last major news agency in Fleet Street, Reuters, moved to Canary Wharf in 2005, but Fleet Street is still commonly used as a collective term for the national press. Regional Editions of most national newspapers are available, including editions for northern England, Scotland and Wales.

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Business of London

The City of London is the financial centre of London, home to banks, brokers, insurers and legal and accounting firms. A second financial district is developing at Canary Wharf to the east of central London. This is much smaller than City of London, but has equally prestigious occupants.

Non-financial business headquarters are located throughout central London. Some are in City of London, but more are located further west, in and around Mayfair, St.James’s, the Strand and elsewhere. More than half of the UK’s top 100 listed companies are headquartered in central London and more than 70% in London’s metropolitan area.

London is a leading global centre for professional services, and media and creative industries. 31% of global currency transactions occur in London, with more US Dollars traded in London than New York, and more Euros traded there than every city in Europe combined. Tourism is one of the UK's largest industries, and in 2003 employed the equivalent of 350,000 full-time workers in London.

While the Port of London is now only the third-largest in the United Kingdom — rather than largest in the world, as it once was — it still handles 50 million tones of cargo each year. The main docks are now at Tilbury, which is outside the boundary of Greater London.

London’s economy generates $365 billion annually, and accounts for 17% of the UK’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) although this only refers to the city proper and the economic impact of the entire London metropolitan area is likely to be far higher, perhaps as much as $600 billion (equivalent to the GDP of the Netherlands).

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Sport in London

London hosts one of the world’s largest mass-participation marathons, the London Marathon, and has hosted the Olympic Games in 1908 and 1948. In July 2005 London was chosen to host the Games in 2012. London will be the first city in the world to host the Summer Olympics three times. The most popular spectator sport in London is football, and London has several of England’s leading football clubs.

Historically the London clubs have not accumulated as many trophies as those from the North West of England, such as Liverpool and Manchester United, but at present Arsenal, and Chelsea are regarded as two of the Premier League’s «Big three» alongside Manchester United. In 2003-04 they became the first pair of London clubs to finish first and second in the top flight, with Arsenal winning. In 2004-05 they did so again, this time with Chelsea winning.

There are also five London clubs in the fully professional Football League (the level below the Premiership). There are also numerous London clubs playing outside the top four divisions of English football, one or two of which are fully professional and many of which are part-time professional. Wembley Stadium in north-west London is the national football stadium, traditionally the home of the FA Cup Final as well as England national side’s home matches.

Currently, Wembley is being completely rebuilt, so Cardiff’s Millennium Stadium has been the venue* for recent FA Cup finals, while England plays at various venues around the country. Wembley was one of the venues for the 1966 World Cup, and the 1996 European Championship, and hosted the final of both tournaments. As well as football matches, Wembley has hosted many other sporting events, including the Rugby League Challenge Cup final.

Rugby Union is also well established in London, especially in the middle-class suburbs to the north and west of the city. The English national Rugby Union stadium is in Twickenham. Three of the twelve clubs in the elite Guinness Premiership have London origins.

There are also London teams in the top-flight British leagues in ice hockey (London Racers) and basketball (London Towers), but neither of these sports draws nearly the large number of spectators that football and rugby union do. There are two Test cricket grounds: Lord’s, home of Middlesex and the Marylebone Cricket Club. The All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, home of the Wimbledon Championships, is in Wimbledon in South West London.

*место совершения действия

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Tourism in Russia

Tourism in Russia has been growing rapidly in the years following the collapse of the former Soviet Union in 1991. Most of the tourism is centered on the cities of Moscow and St. Petersburg, since these cities are the sites of some of the most famous attractions of Russia.

Tourists are attracted by a very rich cultural heritage and rather tumultuous history of Russia, and this is reflected in the popularity of Russia’s most famous attractions. Popular tourist destinations in the major cities include the following:

§ The Tretyakov Gallery (Moscow)

§ The Bolshoi Theatre (Moscow)

§ The Red Square (Moscow)

§ The Kremlin (Moscow)

§ St. Issac's Cathedral (St. Petersburg)

§ The canals and waterways of St. Petersburg, located on the river Neva. St. Petersburg is sometimes known as the «Venice of the North» and is famed for its «white nights» during the summer

§ The Summer Palace of Peter the Great (outskirts of St. Petersburg)

§ The Russian Museum, the largest repository of Russian fine art in St. Petersburg.

The Russian countryside tends to be quite rural and undeveloped. Vast stretches of tundra, taiga, woodlands, and steppe stretch across vast expanses of the Eurasian continent — Russia is a country that spans 11 time zones.

In the countryside, there are many little towns with old castles. Some notable cities and towns, which have their own own rich cultures and traditions, include Kalinigrad (formerly Königsberg) on the Baltic Sea coast, Novgorod (a famed midieval town), Tver, Nizhni Novgorod, Ekaterinburg, Rostov and Kazan.

Tourists are also drawn to the cruises on the big rivers like Volga, Lena or Yenisei as well as journeys on the famous Trans-Siberian railway, the third-longest continuous service that stretches from Moscow to its eastern terminal of Vladivostok at the coastline of the Pacific Ocean. Other destinations include the Golden Ring region towns of Yaroslavl, Vladimir, Rostov, Suzdal.

Russia, as a whole, may be the coldest country in the world, parts of the country have temperate climates, and most of the country has temperate weather during the summer. The coasts of the Black Sea and the Caspian Sea occur near the temperate mediterranean climate zone due to its adjacency to the Mediterranean Sea. A popular vacationing destination is the city of Sochi, known for its beaches.

The Crimea is also a favourite vacation resort; even though this autonomous region is in the Ukraine, many people associate it with Russia because of its long historical connection to Russia. Yalta is the best known vacation center, though Sevastopol is also well known.

Russian cuisine is rich and varied, due to the vast and multicultural expanse of the country. It draws its foundations from peasant food of the rural populations and tends to be dominated by cabbage, sour cream, root vegetables, and seasonal produce, fish, and meats.

Some of the more distinctive Russian dishes include borscht, pirozhki, shashlyk, and pelmeni. Russia is also famous for its caviar, though severe overfishing has threatened the fisheries (primarily sturgeon) that provide the source of this delicacy. Despite these attractions, travelling in Russia presents many logistical challenges for foreigners, particularly those coming from Western countries. First and foremost challenge that greets new visitors to Russia is the language barrier.

The Russian language uses the Cyrillic alphabet, so reading and interpreting signs often present a challenge, since these signs frequently do not have the transliteration equivalent written in the Latin alphabet familiar to most Westerners. Furthermore, English is not spoken or understood except in the major cities, and even then, most people know perhaps just a few words if at all (though this is slowly changing).

So, the way people live in the modern society requires new standards of communication and that is why it is an essential demand of the contemporary society to be able to speak foreign languages (including Russian for foreigners), because it is the direct access to the world cultural treasures, ability to understand and accept other nations’ values while you are travelling.

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Ecology

Ecology, or ecological science, is the scientific study of the distribution and abundance of living organisms and how the distribution and abundance are affected by interactions between the organisms and their environment. The environment of an organism includes both physical properties, which can be described as the sum of local abiotic factors such as solar insolation, climate and geology, as well as the other organisms that share its habitat. The term oekologie was coined in 1866 by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel, although it seems that Henry David Thoreau had already invented it in 1852; the word is derived from the Greek οικος (oikos, «household») and λόγος (logos, «study»); therefore «ecology» means the «study of the household [of nature]". The word «ecology» is often used in common parlance as a synonym for the natural environment or environmentalism. Likewise «ecologic» or «ecological» is often taken in the sense of environmentally friendly.

Ecology is usually considered a branch of biology, the general science that studies living organisms. Ecology is a multi-disciplinary science. Because of its focus on the higher levels of the organization of life on earth and on the interrelations between organisms and their environment, ecology draws heavily on many other branches of science, especially geology and geography, meteorology, chemistry, and physics. Agriculture, fisheries, forestry, medicine and urban development are among human activities that would fall within explanation of the definition of ecology: «where organisms are found, how many occur there, and why».

As a scientific discipline, ecology does not dictate what is «right» or «wrong». However, ecological knowledge such as the quantification of biodiversity and population dynamics have provided a scientific basis for expressing the aims of environmentalism and evaluating its goals and policies. Ecology is a broad discipline comprised of many sub-disciplines. A common, broad classification, moving from lowest to highest complexity, where complexity is defined as the number of entities and processes in the system under study, is:

§ Physiological ecology and Behavioral ecology examine adaptations of the individual to its environment.

§ Population ecology studies the dynamics of populations of a single species.

§ Community ecology focuses on the interactions between species within an ecological community.

§ Ecosystem ecology studies the flows of energy and matter through the biotic and abiotic components of ecosystems.

§ Landscape ecology examines processes and relationship across multiple ecosystems or very large geographic areas.

Ecology can also be sub-divided according to the species of interest into fields such as animal ecology, plant ecology, and so on. Another frequent method of subdivision is by biome studies, e.g., Arctic ecology (or polar ecology), tropical ecology, desert ecology, etc.

The primary technique used for investigation is often used to subdivide the discipline into groups such as chemical ecology, genetic ecology, field ecology, statistical ecology, theoretical ecology, and so forth. Note that these different systems are unrelated and often applied at the same time; one could be a theoretical community ecologist, or a polar ecologist interested in animal genetics.

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Ecological crises

Generally, an ecological crisis occurs when the environment of a species or a population evolves in a way unfavourable to that species survival. It may be that the environment quality degrades compared to the species needs, after a change in an abiotic ecological factor (for example, an increase of temperature, less significant rainfalls).

It may be that the environment becomes unfavourable for the survival of a species (or a population) due to an increased pressure of predation (for example overfishing). Lastly, it may be that the situation becomes unfavourable to the quality of life of the species (or the population) due to a rise in the number of individuals (overpopulation).

Ecological crises may be more or less brutal (occurring within a few months or taking as long as a few million years). They can also be of natural or anthropic origin. They may relate to one unique species or to many species. Lastly, an ecological crisis may be local (as an oil spill) or global (a rise in the sea level due to global warming).

According to its degree of endemism, a local crisis will have more or less significant consequences, from the death of many individuals to the total extinction of a species. Whatever its origin, disappearance of one or several species often will involve a rupture in the food chain, further impacting the survival of other species.

In the case of a global crisis, the consequences can be much more significant; some extinction events showed the disappearance of more than 90% of existing species at that time. However, it should be noted that the disappearance of certain species, such as the dinosaurs, by freeing an ecological niche, allowed the development and the diversification of the mammals. An ecological crisis thus paradoxically favored biodiversity.

Sometimes, an ecological crisis can be a specific and reversible phenomenon at the ecosystem scale. But more generally, the crisis impact will last. Indeed, it rather is a connected series of events that occur till a final point. From this stage, no return to the previous stable state is possible, and a new stable state will be set up gradually.

Lastly, if an ecological crisis can cause extinction, it can also more simply reduce the quality of life of the remaining individuals. Thus, even if the diversity of the human population is sometimes considered threatened few people envision human disappearance at short span. However, epidemic diseases, famines, impact on health of reduction of air quality, food crises, reduction of living space, accumulation of toxic or non degradable wastes, threats to keystone species (great apes, panda, whales) are also factors influencing the well-being of people.

During the past decades, this increasing responsibility of humanity in some ecological crises has been clearly observed. Due to the increases in technology and a rapidly increasing population, humans have more influence on their own environment than any other ecosystem engineer.

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