SEX AND DEATH IN MOTHER RUSSIA

The Globe goes inside, while the Citizen and the Star (not available online) brief Russia’s announcement that it has developed a vacuum bomb powerful enough to rival nuclear bombs. Russian state TV yesterday showed footage of a Tupolev Tu-160 bomber dropping ordnance, followed by a massive explosion and footage of a multi-storey apartment building lying in ruins. "The defence ministry stresses this military invention does not contradict a single international treaty. Russia is not unleashing a new arms race," the TV broadcast stated. Vacuum bombs work by unleashing a massive shock wave that flattens its surroundings. Dubbed “the father of all bombs”—in reference to the US’s less powerful MOAB, or “mother of all bombs”—the new Russian weapon is being touted as a bomb that “does not contaminate the environment, in contrast to a nuclear one,” a Russian official is quoted as saying. While the world scratches its head over the notion of an “environmentally friendly” bomb, the Star and the Globe go inside with an Associated Press story reporting that Russians in the country’s Ulyanovsk region are set to celebrate the third annual “Conception Day.” Responding to Russia’s plummeting birth rate, which threatens to halve the country’s population in a few generations, the Ulyanovsk region’s governor is offering women of child-bearing age a half-day off to conceive children. Mothers of children born nine months after the holiday—on June 12, Russia’s national day—will receive prizes such as money, refrigerators or even a locally-made SUV called the UAZ-Patriot. The birth rate in Ulyanovsk is up 4.5 percent year-on-year.

Daniel Tencer is a Toronto-based MediaScout writer for Maisonneuve Magazine.