Great Britain

Great Britain

Great Britain (official name — the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) is situated on two large islands, the larger of which is Great Britain, the smaller is Ireland. In addition to these two islands Great Britain includes over five hundred small islands. The total area of Great Britain is 240,000 sq. kms, its population is 56,000,000 people.

In the north-west and west the country is washed by the Atlantic Ocean and the Irish Sea, in the east — by the North Sea. The island of Great Britain is separated from France by the English Channel. Northern Ireland, which is a part of Great Britain and which is situated on the island of Ireland, is separated from Great Britain by the North Channel.

The island of Great Britain is divided into two parts: mountainous (in the north and west of the island) and lowland (in the south and east). There are no very long rivers in Great Britain. The most important rivers are the Thames (the deepest) and the Severn (the longest). The rivers seldom freeze in winter. Due to the moderating influence of the sea Great Britain has an insular climate, rather humid and mild, without striking discrepancy between seasons.

Great Britain consists of four main parts: England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Administratively Great Britain is divided into 55 counties. The biggest cities of Great Britain are London, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh, and Cardiff.

England is tlie laigest part of Great Britain (it occupies over 50% of the territory and its population amounts to 83 % of the total population of Great Britain). Wales is a peninsula in the south-west of the island of Great Britain. It occupies about 9 % of its tenitoiy with a population of 4.8 % of the total population. Scotland is the most northern part of Great Britain with a territory of 32 % of the total tenitoiy and with a population of 9 % of the total population of Great Britain. Northern Ireland occupies the north-east part of the island of Ireland. Its tenitoiy amounts to 5.2 % of the total tenitoiy of Great Britain. The main cities of Nothern Ireland are Belfast and Londonderry.

'*- The Welsh have their own language. However, many Welsh people do not know Welsh, and English is spoken by everyone in Wales. Scotland and Ireland also have their own languages, but they are rarely spoken and English is known by everyone there.

Great Britain is a parlimentaiy monarchy. Officially the head of state is the Queen (or the King). However, the power of the Queen in Great Britain is not absolute. She acts only on the advice of the ministers and Parliament. There is no written constitution in Great Britain. The main principles of British legislation are expressed in other documents, like "Magna Carta", "The Habeas Corpus Act", "The Bill of Rights", the Parlimentaiy Act which decided the position of the House of Lords, and the Judicature Act British legislation does not provide written guarantees of individual political rights.

Parliament in Great Britain has existed since 1265 and is the eldest Parliament in the world. It consists of two Houses — the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The House of Lords consists of 1000 peers who are not elected by the people. The House of Commons is a nation-wide representative body which is elected by the people at a general election, within 5 years of the last election. After the general election the Queen appoints the head of the government — the Prime Minister. As a rule the Prime Minister is the leader of the party that has won the election. The Prime Minister appoints the ministers to make up the government.

There are two main political parties in Great Britain: the Conservative parly and the Labour party. The Conservative party came into being in the 19th century as a result of the evolution of the Toiy : party. The Labour party was founded in 1900. But since 1906 it has borne the name of the Labour Party. The Labour Party won the election for the first time in 1945.

Great Britain is a highly-developed industrial country. The main , fields of British industiy are machine-building), ship-building, metal- | lurgy, and electronics.

 

 

 

 

The United States of America

After its 200th birthday the United States of America still holds the leading position in the western world. A country that inspired many appelations — "Land of Opportunity," "Melting Pot," "God's Country," is still referred to us as a land of superlatives — "the richest," "the greatest," "the most."

What makes the USA the leader of the western world is its economic, political and military dominance over other countries.

The United States lies in the central part of the North American Continent between two oceans: the Atlantic Ocean to the East and the Pacific Ocean to the West. Friendly Canada to the north and friendly Mexico to the south are the only countries bordering it.

The USA consists of three separate parts. These are the Hawaiian Islands, situated in the central part of the Pacific Ocean, Alaska separated by Canada, and the rest of the USA. The states differ veiy much in size, population and economic development.

There are many big cities and towns in the USA: New York, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago and Los Angeles are the biggest.

The United States of America is a parliamentaiy republic. The government is divided into three branches: legislative (the US Congress), executive (the President and his Administration) and judicial (the US Supreme Court).

There arc two main political parties in the USA: the Democratic (symbolized by a "donkey") and the Republican (its symbol is an "elephant"). The US President is both head of state and government. He is electcd for a four-vear term. Presidential elections are held every leap year on the first Tuesday, following the first Monday in November. The President is assisted by Secretaries who are the heads of the executive departments.

The Supreme Court consists of the Chief Justice and eight Associate Justices who are appointed for life. It is supposed to decide whether a law of the Congress or an executive order of the President is constitutional or not.

The form of US government is based on the Constitution of September 17, 1787, adopted after the War of Independence. In December 1791, the Congress adopted ten amendments to the Constitution, known as the Bill of Rights.

The Congress of the United States is composed of two houses, the Senate and the House of Representatives. The Senate represents the states and the House represents the population according to its distribution among the states. All states have electoral requirements of the same nature. First of all they are residence requirements.

Through its power over the purse, the US Congress can control much that relates to foreign policy, also it is a governmental body that determines taxation.

Each of the fifty states of the USA has a constitution patterned after the federal Constitution, with its divisions of power: legislative, executive, and judicial.

The Presidency means not only a man: it means an institution—the "executive branch" of the government.

The Supreme Court is the highest court in the country and the head of the judicial branch of the US government. The federal and state courts have the power of "judicial review." Also there are about ninety

district courts in different parts of the United States. American judicial practice is firmly committed to the idea of jury trials. The Constitution guarantees them for both criminal and civil cases. According to the US judicial doctrine, "justice is a relationship in which each citizen or group receives due respect and return."

 

 

 

 

The Internet

The Internet, a global computer network which embraces millions of users all over the world, began in the United States in 1969 as a mil- itaiy experiment. It was designed to survive a nuclear war. Information sent over the Internet takes the shortest path available from one computer to another. Because of this, any two computers on the Internet will be able to stay in touch with each other as long as there is a single route between them. This technology is called packet swithing. Owing to this technology, if some computers on the network are knocked out (by a nuclear explosion, for example), information will just route around them. One such packet-switWng network which has already survived a war is the Iraqi computer network which was not knocked out during the Gulf War.

Most of the Internet host computers (more than 50 %) are in the United States, while the rest are located in more than 100 other countries. Although the number of host computers can be counted fairly accurately, nobody knows exactly how many people use the Internet

There are millions worldwide, and their number is growing by thousands each month.

The most popular Internet service is e-mail. Most of the people, who have access to the Internet, use the network only for sending and receiving e-mail messages. However, other popular services are available on the Internet: reading USENET News, using the World-Wide Web, telnet, FTP, and Gopher.

In many developing countries the Internet may provide businessmen with a reliable alternative to the expensive and unreliable telecommunications systems of these countries. Commercial users can communicate cheaply over the Internet with the rest of the world. When they send e-mail messages, they only have to pay for phone calls to their local service providers, not for calls across their countries or around the world. But who accually pays for sending e-mail messages over the Internet long distances, around the world? The answer is veiy simple: users pay their service provider a monthly or hourly fee. Part of this fee goes towards its costs to connect to a larger service provider, and part of the fee received by the larger provider goes to cover its cost of running a worldwide network of wires and wireless stations.

But saving money is only the first step. If people see that they can make money from the Internet, commercial use of this network will drastically increase. For example, some western architecture companies and garment centers already transmit their basic designs and con- ccpts over the Internet into China, where they are reworked and refined by skilled — but inexpensive — Chinese computer-aided-design specialists.

However, some problems remain. The most important is security. When you send an e-mail message to somebody, this message can travel through many different networks and computers. The data is constantly being directed towards its destination by special computers called routers. However, because of this, it is possible to get into any of the computers along the route, intercept and even change the data being sent over the Internet. In spite of the fact that there are many good encoding programs available, nearly all the information being sent over the Internet is transmitted without any form of encoding, i.e. "in the clear". But when it becomes necessary to send important information over the network, these encoding programs may be useful. Some American banks and companies even conduct transactions over the Internet. However, there are still both commercial and technical problems which will take time to be resolved.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Canada

Canada consists of almost all of the North American continent north of the US except Alaska. Its total land area of more than 9 mln sq. km makes it the second largest countiy in the world.

Canada's topography is dominated by the Canadian Shield, an ice- scoured area covering half the countiy. Most of northern Canada has subarctic or arctic climates, with long cold winters lasting 8 to 11 months, short sunny summers, and liThe total population according to the 1981 census was about 24 mln people with an average population density of 2.8 per sq. km.

English and French are the official languages of Canada and have equal status, lights and: privileges as to their use in all governmental institutions.

Canada is a federation of 10 provinces and 2 northern territories. The federal Parliament is made up of the House of Commons and the Senate. The leader of the party that wins the largest number of seats in a newly elected House of Commons is asked to form the government.

The civil law follows English common law everywhere except in Quebec, where it follows the Napoleonic Code.

Canada is a world leader in {lie production of asbestos, nickel and other elements and forestry products. It ranks first in the world in export of minerals. Although no longer the foremost sector of the cconomy, agriculture is of major importance to the economy as a whole. Canada is among the world's leading wheat producers and is second in the export of wheat

Basically, Canada has a free-enterprise economy. A recurrent problem for Canada has been the dominant position of US corporations and investors.ttle precipitation. In contrast, the populated south has a variety of climaticlogical landscapes.