Questões de Inglês

1.4 Million Ebola Infections Possible by January, U.S. Forecasts

By Reuters

Filed: 9/23/14 at 3:27 PM | Updated: 9/23/14 at 3:41 PM

Extracted from: http://www.newsweek.com/us-forecasts-more-500000-ebola-cases-west-africa-272763

 1 NEW YORK/GENEVA (Reuters) - Global experts issued stark new warnings of the scale of West Africa's Ebola outbreak on Tuesday, with the U.S. government estimating between 550,000 and 1.4 million people might be infected in the region by January.

2 The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said its projection was based on data from late August and did not take into account a planned U.S. mission to fight the disease, so the upper end of the forecast was unlikely.

3 However, it followed research by experts from the World Health Organization (WHO) and Imperial College, which estimated that 20,000 people risked infection within six weeks – months earlier than previous forecasts. It warned that the disease might become a permanent feature of life in West Africa.

4 The worst Ebola outbreak on record has already killed over 2,800 people –more than the combined total of all previous outbreaks. The disease has marched across much of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone, killing dozens of health workers and crippling economies recovering from years of conflict.

5 Outbreaks in Nigeria and Senegal appear for now to have been contained. But nations across the region fear contagion and, against expert advice,  have shuttered borders and restricted travel,complicating international efforts to fight the disease.

6"I am confident the direst projections will not come to pass," CDC director Dr. Thomas Frieden told reporters.

7"Asurge now can break the back of the epidemic," Frieden said. "If you get enough people effectively isolated, the epidemic can be stopped."

8 Amid complaints from aid workers and regional leaders that the world was doing too little, U.S. President Barack Obama last week announced plans to send 3,000 troops to build 17 treatment centers and train thousands of healthcare workers.

9 The U.S. move has been welcomed, but it was accompanied by calls for other nations to follow suit, since the disease was still spreading faster than the moves being made to contain it.

10 Underscoring this gap, a senior U.N. official in Liberia, the worst-hit nation, said on Tuesday that 150 foreign experts were in the country but another 600 to 700 were needed.

11 Antonio Vigilante, head of the U.N. Development Programme in Liberia, said Liberia now had 350 to 400 beds for Ebola patients, but that fell far short of the 2,000 needed.

12 "We have announcements that more will come but very small numbers," Vigilante added. "The American military are bringing in a camp hospital, but it is for 25 beds with medical staff.And so there are still very few. Even if we are at 2,000 beds two or three weeks from now, the cases we\\\'ll have in any single day may be more than that," he said.

13 Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf called the CDC predictions "horrendous" and "scary." But now that structures had been put in place, she said, the U.S. effort would help ensure the outbreak would decline as fast as it spread.

14 "I believe that, given another couple of weeks, we shall see that this major effort begins to show results," she said, via Skype to an audience at Georgetown University inWashington, DC.

15 In a bid to fill the void, Liberia is now planning to train some 40,000 community workers.

Anxiety and sadness may increase on anniversary of a traumatic event

Anniversary dates of traumatic events can reactivate thoughts and feelings from the actual event, and survivors may experience peaks of anxiety and depression, according to psychologist Susan Silk, PhD, of APA\\\'s Disaster Response Network. Around the anniversary of a traumatic event, people are likely to remember events clearly and many will feel emotions more intensely than usual. Reliving the sadness is a very natural part of the healing process. But there is no one right way to heal. Try not to compare your reactions to those of others. Each person is different, and each individual will find his or her own way of coping with the memories. Some of the reactions those affected may experience as the anniversary date nears include difficulty concentrating, loss of appetite, irritable outbursts, nightmares, difficulty falling or staying asleep and feelings of detachment from others. APA offers the following coping strategies to help people through traumatic anniversaries:

Recognize and acknowledge feelings you may experience. Understand that your feelings are part of the recovery process.

Find healthy ways to cope with your distress. Share memories and feelings with someone you trust or just spend time with friends and family. Activities that allow your mind to focus on something other than these memories (…)

Engage in an activity that honors lost loved ones. You may want to plant a tree in their memory, make a donation to their favorite charity, participate in activities your loved onewould have enjoyed or share happy memories with others. Consider volunteering; you may find that helping others actually helps you.

Use your support system. Reach out to friends and family. Don’t isolate yourself.

Disponível em: <http://www.apa.org/helpcenter/anniversary.aspx>. Acesso em: 15 set.2014

The legacy of the war outside the British empire

Outside Britain and its empire, the First World War also ushered in a period of uncertainty and change. Empires fell, to be replaced by republics based on nationalist principles of self-determination. Monarchs fled into exile. People everywhere experienced new rulers and new hardships. The legacy of the First World War, though positive in some respects, was ultimately a dangerous one. Many of the bitter and unresolved grievances that it aroused cast a long shadow over inter-war Europe. The aftermath of the First World War had a number of themes common to the countries that had fought in it: the decline of monarchism and the concomitant rise of republicanism; the emergence of new 'nation states'; the growth of unemployment, inflation and general economic instability; and the continued use of violence to resolve political disputes.

Disponível em: <http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pathways/firstworldwar/aftermath/legacy_war.htm >. Acesso em: 15 set. 2014.

A war that crosses national boundaries - Iraq and America have pushed back the Islamic State, but it will take much more to quash the threat of it across the wider region.

TEN days after America carried out its first air strike on August 8th against the Islamic State (IS) on Iraqi territory, government forces regained control of the biggest dam in the country, near Mosul, the country’s second city. A ferocious al-Qaeda-inspired jihadist group that controls swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq and wants to turn the entire region into a caliphate, IS looks as if it is at last on the defensive in northern Iraq.

With American aerial help and the advice of nearly 400 American advisers on the ground, Iraq’s government forces and the Kurdish Peshmerga have made gains elsewhere, too. Most of the tens of thousands of Yazidis stranded on Sinjar mountain since IS raided their towns at the start of August have been carried to safety. Erbil is secure. The Americans, who have now carried out at least 60 air raids on IS, have revived the morale of the Iraqi government forces, who fell apart at the start of the jihadist offensive in June. On August 19th Iraq’s army said it had started a campaign to recapture Tikrit, Saddam Hussein’s home town, which lies about 180km (112 miles) north-west of Baghdad.

But IS is far from contained, let alone defeated. It continues to massacre people belonging to non-Sunni sects in a string of villages around Mosul, which it captured in June, and along the border with Kurdistan. In Tikrit it may be beating back the government’s forces. It still holds a slew of towns in Anbar province and along the Euphrates river on both sides of the border with Syria. Even hitherto anti-American Iraqis, such as Hakim al-Zamili, a parliamentarian from Muqtada al-Sadr’s populist Shia movement, want the Americans to increase their air attacks on IS.

The Economist, August 23, 2014. Adapted.