EU population over half-a-billion

The European Union's population reached the half-a-billion mark at the beginning of 2010, with immigration pushing it up higher than the net increase would have been following the year's births and deaths, new figures from the EU's statistics agency, Eurostat, showed on Tuesday (27 July).

The EU's population as of January 2010 was estimated to be 501.1 million, compared to 499.7 million last year. The EU gained an additional 1.4 million residents, with 900,000 immigrants entering the bl...