Tag Archives: health

Los nuevos pasaportes británicos tras el ‘brexit’ se harán en Francia

En Diciembre del 2017, la primera ministra británica Theresa May ha anunciado que tras el ‘brexit’ el pasaporte británico, que calificó como un “símbolo de nuestra independencia y soberanía” dejaría de ser borgoña, el color recomendado por la Unión Europea, para recuperar el icónico azul que se usó en el país entre 1920 y 1988.

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Los nuevos pasaportes, sin embargo, serán hechos por la compañía franco-holandesa Gemalto, con sede en París, lo que ha provocado la indignación de muchos. El primero en quejarse ha sido Martin Sutherland, director de De La Rue, la empresa británica encargada de la producción de los pasaportes actuales, que ha perdido la contrata para los nuevos documentos.

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About Ebola virus

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As of July 2014, the ongoing Ebola virus epidemic in West Africa holds the record for being the worst outbreak in the recorded history of the virus. The outbreak – which has affected the countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone – now has more than a thousand cases, in which more than half of those are confirmed.

Infections of Ebola virus cause a viral hemorrhagic (bleeding) fever officially known as Ebola hemorrhagic fever or Ebola virus disease, a deadly disease with a fatality rate of up to 90%.

DEADLY VIRUS. This colorized transmission electron micrograph (TEM) obtained March 24, 2014 from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, reveals some of the ultrastructural morphology displayed by an Ebola virus virion. Photo by Cynthia Goldsmith/CDC/AFP

Though more concentrated in parts of Africa, history shows that cases of infection have popped up in other countries as well, particularly here in the Philippines.

Here are few things that you need to know about Ebola virus and the disease that it causes.

1. Ebola outbreaks commonly occur in Central and West Africa.

Ebola was first detected in 1976 during simultaneous outbreaks that occurred in Nzara, Sudan, and Yambuku in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The virus received its name from the Ebola River found in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

In the past 38 years, major outbreaks of the virus happened 6 times in the Democratic Republic of Congo, 3 times in South Sudan, 4 times in Gabon, Uganda, and the Republic of Congo, and once in Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa. The recent 2014 Ebola outbreaks are also in West African countries.

2. Ebola cases have also occurred in countries outside Africa, including the Philippines.

One case of human Ebola virus infection was recorded in the UK in 1976 after a laboratory accident.

In 1989, 1990, and 1996, the virus was detected in primate facilities in the Philippines that exported monkeys all over the globe, leading to 3 cases of viral infection among humans. In the same three years, monkeys exported from said facilities introduced the virus in the USA, causing 4 cases of human infection.
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What role do pressure groups play in the British political system?

In the last years the role of pressure groups in the political process have been broadly discussed as the groups roles today seems to be unclear and the level of influence is difficult to measure. This essay will discuss. What role do pressure groups play in the British political system? Why are some groups more influential than others?

As a common definition: pressure groups are voluntary organisations formed to advance or defend a common cause or interest. Therefore they are unlike political parties in that they do not wish to assume responsibility for governing the country; rather they seek to influence those who do so. [1]To some extend, pressure groups do not aspire to govern the country and are concerned with a relatively narrow range of problems; is has been argued that much of their work is non-political but as much as their concerns and aspirations are affected by government they seek to have an influence over the conduct of public policy. Another view is “Pressure groups seek to influence rather than power, yet pluralist argue that power is effectively dispersed through the widespread influence of countless groups on government and policy making”. [2] Additionally, groups seek to defend and advance their own interest or cause, and government policy or specific decisions may affect them adversely or beneficially. Therefore they have a strong motive to seek to influence government, especially as power in the British political system is concentrated with the core executive. However, the universe of pressure groups now requires more systematic subdivisions. The problem at once encountered is that the traditional ways of doing it hardly seem adequate. The oldest classification in the technical literature is the one introduced in 1935 by Harwood Childs of Princeton University[3], who distinguished between those groups “whose community of interests is based on such fundamental differentials as age, sex, occupation and race, from those existing merely to further special ideas or groups of ideas. Furthermore, because their concerns are liable to be affected by government decisions, they need to be organised in order to influence ministers and respond to what they propose. “In Britain the tendency is to use the term ‘pressure groups’ and then to sub-divide them into different categories. The world ‘pressure’ has an unfortunate connotation and many groups operate without resorting to any degree of coercion”.[4] In both case and its simplest; pressure groups are not counting political parties that influence or attempt to influence the public authorities, mainly the central government and they traditionally operated at four main levels, seeking to influence the Executive, the Legislature, the Judiciary and the public at large. In Britain and Europe, they tend to be more closely associated with government.

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