With the Act on the Polish Card Poland followed the pattern of some European states (mostly Central and Eastern European ones) of enacting specific domestic legislation conferring special treatment and benefits to persons who are recognized as its kin-minorities. The most important analysis of this phenomenon from the perspective of international law was the 2001 Venice Commission’s report entitled “Report on the Protection of National Minorities by their Kin-State.” The Polish legislation was adopted in 2007, so for obvious reasons it was not considered by the Venice Commission. However, a rather unexpected and unusual examination of the Polish kin-state legislation from the perspective of international law came from Belarus. The Constitutional Court of the Republic of Belarus (CCRB) conducted a comprehensive examination of the Act on the Polish Card in 2011. The main aim of this article is to present and comment on the reasoning of the CCRB. Beginning with the broader context, this article starts with a presentation of the origins and a short description of the Act on the Polish Card, followed by a discussion of why the Polish Card and other kin-state legislation instruments are topics of concern in international law. The main part of the article is devoted to the presentation and assessment of the 2011 CCRB decision on the Act on the Polish Card. The author’s assessment confirms at least some of the concerns put forward by the CCRB, i.e., that both the Act on the Polish Card and the practice based on it contradict some norms and principles of international law, namely the principle of territorial sovereignty, the norms of consular law, and several bilateral treaties in force between these two states. Bearing in mind that despite those concerns more than a quarter-million Polish Cards (also sometimes called Pole’s Cards) have been issued so far by the Polish authorities, the article ends with a discussion of why such a prolonged nonconformity with international law is possible.

Geographical names reflect a complex intermingling of language, culture, history, and economics. The disappearance of names for small physiographical features, known only to small local communities, is driven in part by changes in economic activity – a process that may be observed in the micro-toponymy of the Hutsul region in Ukraine

Could the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth have been rescued in the eighteenth century? If certain social strata had not been so excluded, might the partitions of Poland never have come to pass?

Prof. Wojciech Burszta from the PAS Institute of Slavic Studies discusses what has remained of the ideals of the cultural revolution that took place in the 1960s.

Not everything which comes from the sky is good for us. But if we’re worried about comets or meteorites crashing into Earth, we should also remember that much of what comes to us from the sky can be the source of momentous discoveries.

The paper presents a detailed theoretical background for coordinate measurement uncertainty evaluation by means of Type B evaluation method, taking into account information on accuracy of a coordinate measuring system given with the formula for maximum permissible errors of length measurement and verification test results. A proposal for evaluation of the verification test results is made. A measurement model based on the point-plane distance equation is presented. A detailed analysis of the partial derivatives (sensitivity factors in an uncertainty budget) of the measurement model is presented. The analyses of measurement uncertainty for different geometrical characteristicswere conducted using this measurement model. Examples of uncertainty evaluation for geometrical deviations are presented: position of a point related to a datum plane and flatness in the case of convex or concave surfaces. The examples include detailed uncertainty budgets.

The mid-Ludfordian pronounced, positive carbon isotope excursion (CIE), coincident with the Lau/kozlowskii extinction event, has been widely studied so far in shallow-water, carbonate successions, whereas its deep-water record remains insufficiently known. The aim of this research is to reconstruct the sedimentary environments and the palaeoredox conditions in the axial part of the Baltic-Podolian Basin during the event. For these purposes, the Pasłęk IG-1 core section has been examined using microfacies analysis, framboid pyrite diameter and carbon isotope measurements. The prelude to the event records an increased influx of detrital dolomite interpreted as eolian dust, coupled with a pronounced decrease in the diameter of the pyrite framboids, indicating persistent euxinic conditions across the event. The event climax is recorded as the Reda Member and consists of calcisiltites, composed of calcite microcrystals (‘sparoids’), which are interpreted as suspensoids induced by phytoplankton blooms in the hipersaturation conditions present in the epipelagic layer of the basin. Both the prelude and climax facies show lamination, interpreted as having resulted from periodical settling of marine snow, combined with hydraulic sorting within a ‘benthic flocculent layer’, which additionally may be responsible for a low organic matter preservation rate due to methanogenic decomposition. Contrary to the observed basinward CIE decline in the benthic carbonates in the basin, the Reda Member records an extremely positive CIE (up to 8.25‰). Given the pelagic origin of the sparoids, the CIE seems to record surface-water carbon isotope ratios. This points to a large carbon isotope gradient and kinetic fractionation between surface and bottom waters during the mid-Ludfordian event in a strongly stratified basin. The Reda facies-isotope anomaly is regarded as undoubtedly globally triggered, but amplified by the stratified and euxinic conditions in the partly isolated, Baltic-Podolian basin. Hence, the common interpretation of the basin record as representative for the global ocean needs to be treated with great caution.