Same-sex ceremony total unveiled

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/scotland/6206466.stm

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Almost 1,000 same-sex couples have tied the knot in Scotland since the law changed last December.

Figures released by the Registrar General for Scotland showed that 284 civil partnerships were registered between July and September.

That took the total to 942 since the Civil Partnership Act came into effect on 5 December last year.

The Scottish figure accounted for 6% of the UK total of 15,000 civil partnerships over that period.

The Registrar General for Scotland, Duncan Macniven, said the number of ceremonies in the last quarter had fallen slightly from the previous three-month period.

This was "probably because long-term couples have already registered their partnerships", he suggested.

Birth rate

He has published provisional figures for births, deaths, marriages and civil partnerships registered during the third quarter of 2006.

A comparison with figures for the same period in 2005 showed that there were 14,183 births, down 43, marriages fell from 12,334 to 12,171 and deaths decreased from 12,811 to 12,667.

There was a drop in the number of deaths from Scotland's three main killers - cancer (down by 3.3%), coronary heart disease (down by 9.5%) and stroke (down by 1.4%).

Mr Macniven acknowledged that there had been a slight fall in the birth rate in the third quarter.

However, he added: "The total for the first three quarters of 2006 is still 1.6% higher than for the same period in 2005, so the slight increase seen over recent years is still continuing."