Seven Continents

The seventh continent has 93% of its length covered by the Pacific Ocean and is inhabited by only five million people.

Africa, America, Asia, Europe, Oceania and Antarctica. These are the six continents, right? Well, it may not be so. A group of scientists claims that there are actually seven continents and one sub-continent (India). According to a study published in the scientific journal Geology, there is a continent that is partly submerged and that they named Zealand.

According to the study, to be considered a continent, the piece of land must have more than one million square meters, not be connected to other continents and be elevated above the surrounding area. Now, “Zealand is a continent submerged in the Pacific Ocean and from it we can only glimpse its highest mountains, the islands of New Zealand and New Caledonia”, explains Laia Alegret, a paleontologist at the University of Zaragoza and co- author of the study. “What differentiates this continent from the remaining six is ​​that it has a very unusual geography since most of its extension is under water, a kilometer deep.”

Zealand has an extension of about 5 million square kilometers and only 7% of its extension is above the water line, in the form of thousands of islands. All of these archipelagos are then mountain tops that rise to about 1,000 meters in altitude from the main piece of land.

The continent is inhabited by five million people, being the second less populous, after Antarctica.

The study also reveals that about 60 or 85 million years ago, the tectonic plates that constituted the super-continent Gondwana separated and gave rise to Australia and Antarctica. A few million years later, a new movement caused part of the mass that gave rise to Oceania to sink a kilometer. This activity took place in the Pacific Ring of Fire, an area that encompasses a large cluster of tectonic plates.

EU Commission

European Commission, Assembly (2014) of 28 independent Commissioners, one from each of the EU Member States.

The commissioners are politicians, not civil servants, and usually have a political background in their home country. The Commissioners are elected by the governments of the Member States, but after their appointment they are not allowed to take instructions from their respective home countries and must act in the best interests of the Community.

The Commission shares the various responsibilities between the individual Commissioners. The Commission has an almost complete monopoly of initiative in addition to significant control obligations towards the Member States.

According to Countryaah.com, any country joining the EU has the right to be a member of the Commission. By the Treaty of Amsterdam, the European Parliament was given an important role, with Parliament approving the Council of Ministers’ recommendation on the appointment of the President of the Commission and the other Commission.

By the Treaty of Nice, the role of the President of the Commission has been strengthened, with a Commissioner having to resign if the President so requests, following the approval of the College.

The Lisbon Treaty directly links the outcome of the European elections to the election of the President of the Commission. At the same time, a post of Vice-President of the Commission responsible for external relations is created. This title, entitled EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, must also be the European Council’s mandate for the EU’s Common Foreign and Security Policy.

The Commission was hit by a scandal in 1999 when an independent expert committee published a report on fraud and neglect. Since then, the Prodi Commission in 2000 has adopted a code of conduct and initiated a reform program covering key areas of the Commission’s administration, which has been continued by the Barroso Commission after 2005.

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Source: ABBREVIATIONFINDER