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    590 business conference in Rzeszów a path to modernisation

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    redakcja
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    590 business conference in Rzeszów a path to modernisation
    Telewizja Republika

    The figure 590 is the barcode number denoting Polish made goods. It is also the name of the Polish Economic Congress, that is held in the south eastern Polish city of Rzeszów.

    The city of Rzeszów serves as an example of Polish modernisation, particularly the notable aviation valley. This region has a heavy concentration of the aerospace industry, scientific research centers, as well as educational and training facilities. Aviation Valley is one of the best places in Central Europe for the development and fulfillment of aerospace projects.

    The president, PM, and CEOs of the largest Polish companies have gathered for a prestigious two day conference in South East Poland to promote business and celebrate the strengthening economy .

    Speaking at the 590 Congress held near Rzeszów, President Duda said: “We have our Strategy of Responsible Development. Owing to this, many programmes are being implemented now. What more can be said about this development?” the president asked and stressed it should be perceived particularly positively.

    The president added that he had just met with a group of Polish businessmen and was very glad to hear “that generally, they are satisfied with the current economic situation and that their businesses were developing, with regard to the number of jobs, investments and incomes.”

    “Of course, we also spoke about the future, about what we expect and want,” President Duda stressed that Poland needed more capital; “this is what we have lacked from the very beginning,” he underlined.

    President Duda also emphasised the special nature of this year’s congress given the fact that it is being held in the centenary year of Poland’s independence.

    The deputy head of the President’s Office, Paweł Mucha told PAP, the congress is designed to promote Polish economic patriotism and Polish enterprise.

    He said: “One could even say that this is a presidential project, as the President’s Economic Prize is being presented to leading Polish enterprises for the third time in Jasionka.”

    The third edition of the conference will host 94 talks, debates and workshops over the coming days aimed in part at helping small to medium sized business owners

    Special panel sessions such as ‘Will Poland be a superpower or a dwarf in 2118?’, ‘Storytelling in the age of social media’, and ‘Rebuilding the global balance 1918 – 2018’ are scheduled to address Poland’s history, its current challenges and the economic future of the country.

    The President of Poland is an official patron of the 590 economic congress, so Andrzej Duda handed the Presidential Business Awards, Duda said the winners were examples for others to follow and testimony to a great Polish business tradition.

    Poland's LOT Airlines new route to Beirut, Lebanon

    By
    redakcja
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    Poland's LOT Airlines new route to Beirut
    wikipedia

    105 th link of Poland’s LOT Airline connects Warsaw with Beirut, Lebanon.

    Poland’s state-owned airline LOT is planning to launch a connection from Warsaw to Beirut.The carrier said it planned to offer flights to the Lebanese capital from June 14 to September 15, 2019. LOT transported over 6.8 million passengers in 2017, more than 25 percent up on 2016. This year, the carrier expects to carry around 9 million passengers. Since the start of 2016, LOT has announced the launch of over 60 direct flights, including from Warsaw to Miami, Los Angeles, Newark, Seoul, Tokyo and Singapore

    Exuinox Data Center investment in Poland

    By
    redakcja
    -
    Exuinox Data Center investment in Poland
    equinix.com

    The Puls Biznesu daily reports that Equinix, a leading global supplier of data centres and internet connection services, plans to invest 45 million dollars to develop its Polish centre over the next five years. The Warsaw facility will be the company’s third product development centre worldwide, after one in Silicon Valley in California and another in Singapore. The paper says that Equinix will use its Warsaw centre to develop and test technologically advanced network solutions.

    According to company’s website “More than 325 companies have colocated inside our Poland International Business Exchange™ (IBX®) data centers to connect with business partners and customers across their digital supply chains. Described by Business Week as “Europe’s Most Dynamic Economy”, Poland has developed into one of the region’s most attractive locations for foreign investment. Warsaw’s growing business community boasts economic and political stability, a highly-educated workforce, and a large domestic market. Poland has benefited from continuous gross domestic product (GDP) growth every quarter since 2007, avoiding the economic downturn experienced by most European nations.”

    $260 mln for rail carriages upgrade

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    redakcja
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    $260 mln for rail carriages upgrade
    wikipedia

    PESA – rail vehicle manufacturing company will upgrade 82 more carriages for PKP. New deal bring the total investment up to $260 mln USD.

    The Polish rail vehicle manufacturing company PESA is due to modernize another 82 rail carriages for PKP Intercity, the state-owned railway company. It’s possible that an additional 42 carriages will also be included in the offer. PESA has already won an order for the modernization of 163 carriages. The new order will raise the total spending by PKP to 1 billion Zloty, that’s around 260 million dollars. The modernized railway carriages will be equipped with cameras, air condition, power outlets and wifi. PKP Intercity is the firm responsible for long-distance rail transport in Poland. In 2017, it served 43 million passengers.

    The Czech Republic withdraws from the UN Global Compact for Migration

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    redakcja
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    The Czech Republic withdraws from the UN Global Compact for Migration

    The Czech Republic won’t sign the United Nationals Global Compact For Migration.
    The Deputy-Prime Minister Richard Brabec stated during a press conference that the document does little to differentiate between legal and illegal migration. The decision follows a trend of scepticism toward mass migration by countries in Central Eastern Europe belonging to the Visegrad Group and the Three Seas Initiative.

    The Czech Republic has announced that the country will not join the UN Compact for Migration which is to be signed by a vast majority of UN member states next month in the city of Marrakech in Morocco. Opposition to the UN compact is growing in many countries. Street protests have recently been organized in Germany but the country’s leadership remains determined to sign the document.
     
    The decision was announced by the Deputy Prime Minister of the Czech Republic at a press conference following a vote in the Cabinet. Earlier, the US, Hungary, Austria and Bulgaria have declared that they will sign the document. The Polish government has indicated that it won’t put pen to paper either and is expected to make a decision in the coming days. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced that the government is leaning toward not signing the document during a joint press conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on November 2nd  following the conclusion of the Polish-German Intergovernmental Consultations in Warsaw.

    On Monday, the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, criticized the countries which are withdrawing from the compact.
     
    „If the two or three countries in doubt of the U.N. migration pact had read it, they would have remained inside.”  -Jean-Claude Juncker
     
    The Czech government argues, just as the other reluctant countries, that the compact doesn’t make enough of a distinction between legal and illegal immigration and that the document in general is encouraging mass migration flows across the world.

    Will Poland support the creation of an EU Army?

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    redakcja
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    Will Poland support the creation of an EU Army?
    Gazeta Polska

    During a speech in the European Parliament, German Chancellor Angela Merkel called for the establishment of an integrated European Union Army. Just a few days prior, the French president Emmanuel Macron propagated the idea as well. The EU, which set out as an organization meant to facilitate economic cooperation and maintaining peace between European states, seems to be on its way to becoming a state in its own right.

    The German Chancellor stressed that 160 defense and weapons systems exist in the EU while only 50-60 such systems are in use in the US.

    “We have made a lot of progress in the area of structural military cooperation. That’s good and is mostly supported here. But we should, and I’m saying this also because of developments in recent years, we should work on a vision of one day establishing a real European army.” – Angela Merkel

    Merkel threw in her support behind the idea, which  French president Macron unsuccessfully tried to sell to President Trump, when they met in France to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War.

    Macron had angered Trump by stating in a radio interview that a new EU Army should be created “in order to protect ourselves with respect to China, Russia and even the United States”. Trump tweeted in response that the words were very insulting and tbat Europe should first pay its fair share of Nato, which the US subsidizes greatly.

    The situation didn’t improve following the meeting between the two presidents. After Trump returned to Washington DC from France, he tweeted again “Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two – How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along. Pay for NATO or not!”

    Poland is yet to give its opinion on the matter. The head of the ruling party, Jarosław Kaczynski, was positive towards the notion a couple of years ago but much has changed recently. An increasing number of countries are starting to fear the EU being dominated by a Franco-German alliance. Poland may also feel discouraged from supporting such an idea given that the Polish government is in advanced talks with the US to create a permanent US military base in Poland.

     

    ARTSHERLOCK – Polish mobile application that recognizes lost art during WWII

    By
    redakcja
    -
    ARTSHERLOCK – Polish mobile application that recognizes lost art during WWII
    www.artsherlock.pl

    Poland is a nation that identifies with its cultural creations, they are an inseparable part of what characterizes the nation. The majority of Polish artwork was stolen during the World War II by Germans and Russians.

    70 years have passed since the end of the WWII and some of the stolen Polish properties are slowly returning to Poland. The goods that Poland is after are called Polish Wartime Losses, lost from public, private and church collections, from within the post-1945 borders of Poland, as a result of the Second World War.

    In recent years, Germany has returned several stolen works of art to Poland. In 2014, the then German Foreign Minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, returned the painting “Palace Stairs” of the Venetian painter Francesco Guardi, stolen from the National Museum in Warsaw during the Nazi occupation. The canvas was in Staatsgalerie in Stuttgart. In 2015, the Bavarian authorities returned a medieval liturgical book – Pontifical Płocki, which had been looted by the Germans and stored in the Bavarian State Library in Munich. This, however is only a drop in the ocean and Polish authorities remain persistent in the quest to retrieve what was lost.

    To help recognize the stolen art, The Ministry of Culture and National Heritage along with Communi Hereditate Foundation and The Kronenberg Foundation designed a mobile app ArtSherlock. This enables automatic recognition of paintings, drawings and fabrics lost from public, private and church collections in Poland during the second World War. The 516,000 pieces of looted works of art by Germans and Russians from Poland in the years 1939-1945 have an estimated value of 30 billion dollars. Around 43% of Polish cultural heritage was stolen or destroyed. It includes 2,800 paintings by European painters, 11,000 paintings by Polish painters, 1,400 sculptures, 75,000 manuscripts, 25,000 maps, 90,000 books.  

    The application ArtSherlock draws from the official registry of Polish cultural properties lost in the wake of World War II. The electronic database of Polish wartime losses is available via the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage. The app is available at www.artsherlock.pl

    The story of the Polish National Anthem

    By
    redakcja
    -
    The story of the Polish National Anthem
    Wikipedia

    The Polish National Anthem “Dabrowski’s Mazurka” was written in Reggio Emilia, Cisalpine Republic in Northern Italy, in 1797 by Józef Wybicki. Two years after the Third Partition of Poland.

    The third and final  Partition of Poland took place in 1795 thereby ending Polish–Lithuanian national sovereignty until 1918. The representatives of partitioning powers; Austrian, Prussian, and Russian met on October 24, 1795 and agreed to permanently erase Poland’s name from existence in any historical context including the encyclopedias, in an attempt to restrain Polish people from dissidence and nationalistic behavior. 

    The anthem “Dabrowski’s Mazurka” was written in July of 1797 by Józef Wybicki, who was one of the organizers of General Jan Henryk Dąbrowski’s Polish Army in Italy. The theme of the original poem “Dabrowski’s Mazurka” expressed the idea that the nation doesn’t have to exist on the map of the world or on pages of history books to be a nation, as long as the Polish people have Poland in their hearts and are willing to fight for it. It didn’t take long for the “Dabrowski’s Mazurka” to become one of the most popular patriotic songs in Poland. The Polish nation went through multiple partitions and vicious attacks and so this Anthem still stirs the spirits of all generations to this day.

    The original lyrics refer to several Polish war heroes of the time, as well as heroes of past Polish wars. The Napoléon Bonaparte, a French statesman and military leader is mentioned in the original poem, as the commanding officer of Dąbrowski and as an example to be held up.

    The source of the melody is not known for sure, although historians often credit Michal Kleofas Oginski as the creator. It is most likely based on an anonymous folk melody, due to the unusual mazurka tempo, which is faster than most type of melodies. Mazurkas originated in Poland and have always been associated with the nation.
    When Poland regained its independence in 1918, “Dabrowski’s Mazurka” officially became the national anthem of the Republic of Poland on February 28, 1927.

    One step closer to a permanent US military base in Poland

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    redakcja
    -
    One step closer to a permanent US military base in Poland
    Gazeta Polska

    The US Ambassador to Poland, Georgette Mosbacher, and the Ambassador of Poland to the United States, Piotr Wilczek have co-written a letter published in the newspaper ‘Rzeczpospolita’ weekly. The letter includes details about the consideration of the US Congress and the Pentagon regarding the further steps needed for the construction of a permanent US military base in Poland. It was underlined in the letter that the Poland is ready to financially support the new project. 

    The letter is another step forward towards a final decision being taken regarding the construction of the base.   

    Excerpt of the letter:
    “The Congress of the United States and the Pentagon are considering further steps in the matter of a permanent American military base in Poland and the Polish side is ready to support this investment financially. We believe that these actions will help to strengthen the determent in the region, but also will pay attention to president Trump’s priorities concerning the division of defense loads.”

    There have been a lot of rumors in recent years about locating a permanent American military base in Poland, but the matter sped up after a mutual declaration for strategic cooperation between Poland and the United States was signed in Washington on September 28th by both presidents: Donald Trump and Andrzej Duda.

    Jan Maria Jackowski, an MP for the ruling Law & Justice Party has told Poland Daily that information from the Polish government clearly shows that intensive talks over this project are ongoing. He also believes that the quicker the base is built, the better for Poland’s safety and for NATO

    Rzeczpospolita Weekly, leaning on unofficial sources, claims  that the decision about a the permanent American military base in Poland has already been made. 

    Zbigniew Gryglas, an MP who also serves at the vice-President of the Polish-American bilateral group says that project has now reached an advanced stage and that the US Congress has ordered a report from the Pentagon on the feasibility of a US base in Poland. The report is to be presented by March 2019. 

    In the letter published in ‘Rzeczpospolita’ weekly, the two ambassadors also announced that contracts concerning Poland’s purchase of American natural gas is just the beginning of closer economic relations between Warsaw and Washington. The letter states that as a part of the Three Seas Initiative, US companies will engage Central Eastern Europe in the development of energy, transport and communication infrastructure. Until now, this part of Europe has primarily seen investments  financed by EU structural funds.

    A positive decision taken in 2019, regarding the construction of a Us base in Poland would be highly symbolical as 2019 will mark the centenary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Poland and the United States.

    Polish military circles launch blood-donating project on the centenary of regaining independence

    By
    redakcja
    -
    Polish military circles launch blood-donating project on the centenary of regaining independence
    Gazeta Polska

    Independent Poland is in our blood” was the slogan of the blood donation initiative organised by the Polish Military Publishing Institute and the Association of Honorary Blood Donation “Legion” on the centenary of Poland regaining independence. The initiative took place in 6 Polish cities. 1700 people participated, donating around 800 litres of blood.

    The event was held under the auspices of the Minister of National Defence, Mariusz Błaszczak and the Minister of Health, Łukasz Szumowski. On the whole, 830 litres of blood were donated.

    One of the organizers, Izabela Borańska-Chmielewska from Polska Zbrojna Monthly, stated that 1700 people took part in the event, and what’s most important, many of them donated blood for the first time in their life.

    The initiative was not only about donating blood, but also organized to promote Poland’s history. Participants could also admire historical graphic arts entitled “With arms for the Independent”.

    Ms. Chmielewska argues that the historial perspective is what made them connect the event to the centenary of Poland regaining independence. People, who donated blood and then signed in on the initiative’s website also took part in a lottery, in which they could have won several prizes, including parachute jumping with a special forces unit.

     

     

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