Tag: research

Latest Gran Canaria News, Views & Sunshine

Foundation Investigated for Alleged Mismanagement of Public Funds Meant for Care of Unaccompanied Migrant Minors

The 7th Investigative Court of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria has opened a preliminary investigation into the Social Response Foundation Siglo XXI and four of its directors. The Anti-Corruption Prosecutor’s Office in Las Palmas filed a complaint against them, alleging crimes that could include forgery of commercial documents, mismanagement, and embezzlement of public funds. The investigation aims to determine whether this nonprofit organisation, and its officials, could have misused public funds intended for the care of unaccompanied migrant minors, during the migration crisis of 2020 that was precipitated by the pandemic confinement on the islands, leading to a build up of arrivals having to be assessed and cared for by the Canary Islands Regional Government, using hotels left empty due to the lack of tourism. The estimated amount involved in the alleged misuse stands at around €12.5 million between 2020 and 2022 on Gran Canaria alone.

 

Canary Islands Expect Rain and Potential Storm Weather Next Week

The Canary Islands are preparing for a change in the weather next week, as a significant increase in cloud is expected bringing higher probability of rain. The effects of a powerful storm forming in the Atlantic Ocean are likely to extend to the Canary Islands as well as neighbouring Madeira and The Azores.

 

The Canary Guide #WeekendTips 2-4 June 2023

June is here and that means that summer is just around the corner. The Patron Saints’ festivities in honour of San Juan de Bautista and San Antonio de Padua are just getting started on Gran Canaria, and in Pueblo de Mogán the main Romería pilgrimage for San Antonio El Chico is this first Saturday of June, as well as the start of the build up to those in Arucas, Santa Brígida and Moya. This weekend also brings the biggest outlet fair shopping experience back to INFECAR and a collectables fair in Gáldar.
OPERATION KILO is this weekend, at all participating supermarkets, asking you to add a few non-perishable food items to the Food Bank collection boxes to help families in need.

Vox Enters Canarian Politics, Stage Right: Anti-Migrant, Anti-Feminist, Anti-Green, Anti-Autonomy, Anti-LGBT, Anti-Multiculturalism, Pro-Franco politics find a foothold on The Canary Islands

The Canary Islands were unable to avoid the rise of the far right on Sunday, unlike in 2019, writes Natalia G. Vargas in Canarias Ahora. Vox, which previously had no representation on the islands, managed to make its presence felt in several municipalities and councils this May 28. They also secured seats in the Canary Islands’ regional parliament, securing four deputies. “Defending what is ours, our own, and fighting against insecurity” were the slogans that underpinned Vox’s campaign in The Canary Islands, along with “family, employment, and freedom.” This rhetoric, coupled with an electoral program that was repeated across all local elections in Spain, proved sufficient. Dozens of cities and towns on the islands welcomed their first far right candidates of the modern democratic era into Canarian politics, with urban areas serving as their main strongholds.

La Alcaldesa Bueno Secures Incredible Majority in Mogán

Mogán, May 29, 2023 – The often controversial incumbent, O Bueno, La Alcaldesa, has achieved an unprecedented and resounding victory once more in Mogán. The candidate who switched her party’s name, for these elections, to “Juntos por Mogán”, a local ally of the regionalist conservatives “Coalición Canaria” (CC), will once again assume the role of mayor. Her party has clinched a rather noteworthy 17 out of the 21 seats in the Municipal Council of this popular tourism destination located on the sunny southwest of Gran Canaria.

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New strain of coronavirus emerged in Spain, now most prevalent in second wave across Europe

A new strain of coronavirus that causes covid-19, which was identified as having emerged in Northern Spain “does not produce a more serious condition, nor does it compromise the effectiveness of possible vaccines, although it seems to facilitate the transmission of the virus,” according to a disease specialist at the CSIC Infectious and Clinical Genetics centre, Vicente Soriano, speaking to the Spanish news agency Efe.
Soriano is director of the Medical Centre at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR), and was referring to results published last week by a team of scientists in Switzerland working with the Spanish consortium SeqCovid-Spain, headed by the CSIC, which concludes that this new variant has spread across Europe over recent months, from Spain, primarily via agricultural workers, as well as tourists who visited in the month or two following the end of the State of Emergency and the relaxation of travel restrictions. Soriano believes the findings are of “virological” interest, but should not be any cause of alarm to the general public.
He has stated that this new strain of coronavirus is “an interesting finding from a scientific point of view and reflects that SARS-CoV-2 is adapting to humans, after jumping from another species, which was its reservoir, probably bats.”
The results published by the team will help scientists”to trace the origin, over time, of variants of the virus, which have spread from China, and then to Europe and then to the United States”, explained Soriano, who has worked for 25 years at the Carlos III Hospital in Madrid, where he has led research in infectious diseases.
He believes that, “looking at genome sequences from more than 15,000 European patients, there is evidence that, at one point, probably between April and May in Spain, a new strain was generated, with a protein S (spike) mutation in amino acid 614, from the envelope of SARS-CoV-2”.
During the summer and from Spain, he continued, “this strain has spread throughout Europe and, now, it is the one that circulates predominantly in the second wave of covid-19”.
This is what is called the “founder effect” and reflects that it is transmitted with some advantage over the strains that had circulated in the first wave, he says.
For him, from a public health point of view, “the important thing is that this mutation does not have significance in terms of causing greater virulence or severity of the disease, nor does it compromise the efficacy of the vaccines that are being tested”, but rather above all, it is a finding of scientific interest.
The research has also indicates that “the new SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus, although it is an RNA virus, like HIV or hepatitis C, mutates little, since it has a unique enzyme that corrects errors during viral replication.”  This observation regarding the new strain of coronavirus, he indicated, “allows us hope that we can produce a vaccine.”
Soriano is one of the top Spanish experts in infectious diseases, particularly in hepatitis and HIV. Publications from his research group are among the foremost in the world dealing with infectious diseases such as HIV/AIDS and Hepatitis. In 1992 he joined the Carlos III Hospital, where he led their research group on infectious diseases. He has been an advisor to the WHO and the National AIDS Plan. He serves on the editorial boards of several international infectious disease medical journals.

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