A few men have stolen 4 WW2 T-34 tanks (made in USSR) from a military training ground of a Polish army. Those 4 old wrecked famous WW2 soviet tanks were used as a training targets in the military training ground in Jagodne. They have illegally entered military area with big lorries with the carriages and they intended to bring those tanks to the scrap metal purchase center.

T-34 Source: Wikipedia. Photo: Antonov14

In terms of scrap metal those 4 tanks are worth of 60,000.00 PLN roughly (about 13,333.00 Euro). The thievs were spotted in Lublin city and the one of the tanks was found about 40 km away of the military grounds.

One of the sources in Polish: http://www.tvn24.pl/12690,1585972,0,1,czolgi-jechaly-na-zlom,wiadomosc.html

As TVN24.pl informed yesterday, the one of the leading ISPs in Warsaw – Aster -  that has just added an anti piracy paragraph to the customer contracts signed with its customers, has been affected in the massive loss of them. Changing the agreement gave the customers an extra occasion to cancel the contract without suffering the consequences of theirs conduct (even if they have just signed a long period contract).. The ISP called Aster has added anti piracy paragraphs that will allow them to cut off P2P networks’ users. Many customers took it as an attempt to invigilate them. The crowd is queuing in the front of the offices of Aster Internet and Cable TV services provider.

Source in Polish: http://www.tvn24.pl/-1,1585368,0,1,rezygnacja-odpowiedzia-nanbspantypiracki-regulamin,wiadomosc.html

According to the website of the leading Polish TV news channel TVN24 and German newspaper Die Welt, Central European countries and new members of EU are threaten by the possible economical crush. Die Welt points out the dangers of the strategy of the Polish government to relief the effects of the economical crisis. In fact, the government strategy to save as much money as possible can bust the speed of drop of the value of Polish Zloty by next 10 percent.

The drop is easy to trace even here on my blog. 2 weeks ago I have compared the prices of MacBooks in Ireland and Poland (MacBooks are cheaper…). At that time, 1 Euro was 4.40 PLN. Today 1 Euro is 4.65 PLN. The economical forecast for the next weeks is rather bad. People expect Euro to cost 5 PLN in the couple of weeks.

Following Die Welt: “Weakening currencies will increase value of debt and a strengthened capital flight, which aggravates the already critical economic situation and may lead to further decreases the value of the Zloty, Forint and Crown“. Die Welt blames the governments and the central – national – banks.

Source in Polish: http://www.tvn24.pl/-1,1584910,0,1,polsce-grozi-krach,wiadomosc.html

Reading the articles that waited to be opened for the last couple of days I have found the one published by the local office of Gazeta.pl (website of the leading Polish newspaper) about the plans of the local Lodz authorities to connect to the Internet all of the households in Lodz and surrounding towns and villages. According to Gazeta.pl in Lodz district there is 851000 households, and only 138000 (about 16 percent) is connected to Internet – in Lodz in major (against the small towns and villages usually not connected). Local authorities want to provide the Internet to about 90 percent of households in Lodz district in the year 2013.

The city itself has relatively good Internet coverage. There are at least 4 major ISPs, there are hotspots in some parts of the main street (Piotrkowska) of Lodz, many restaurants and pubs have hotspots as well. The new town square at Manufaktura (revitalised factory of Izrael Poznanski) is also well covered with the wireless access.

More about the plans of local authorities: http://miasta.gazeta.pl/lodz/1,35136,6220921,Cale_Lodzkie_z_internetem.html

According to website of TVN24 news channel – tvn24.pl - 48 percent of Polish citizens want to pay in Euro. Most of them expects Euro to be introduced in the next 3 – 4 years. Over half of half of the entire population (52 percent) is of the opinion that introduction of Euro will be profitable in the long term. 41 percent of the respondents are of the opinion that together with introduction of Euro their private economical situation will turn to worse.

Source in Polish: TVN24.pl: http://www.tvn24.pl/12692,1583420,0,1,polowa-polakow-chce-placic-w-euro,wiadomosc.html
Euro Banknotes – Source: Wikipedia

According to Onet.pl, kids of the former Polish emigrants have problems in school due to the differences in the education policy in Poland and in the UK and Ireland. Kids that left Polish schools couple of years ago, had to get used to the completely different system in UK and Ireland, and now, they have to go through it again, here in Poland after they returned to Poland with their parents. Ministry of Education is working for special act that will assure the program of adaptation to the Polish system that will also help the kids to make up at school. However the Polish schools are facing the problem right now. The costs of additional courses for each kid of former emigrants are rather high – 5000 PLN (1250 Euro) per year. Those costs are not refunded by school-board, so the help is reduced to those schools that can afford. it

Source in Polish (onet.pl): http://wiadomosci.onet.pl/1903769,28350,wiadomosceu.html

Usually Apple products are realtively more expensive in Poland. Last may 2008, on my Polish blog I compared the prices of MacBooks here in Poland and in Ireland. The difirences in prices were clearly visible at that time. At present, due to the waekness of Polish Zloty (PLN) the prices of new unibody MacBooks are almost the same and they are even cheaper in Poland.

Let’s take the prices of the MacBooks alu unibody available through the website of Apple Ireland and compare them with the prices of the same products available through one of the Polish official Apple reselers – Cortland.

The aluminium 13-inch MacBook.

* Intel Core 2 Duo
* 2GB DDR3 Memory
* 160GB hard drive1
* NVIDIA GeForce 9400M graphics
* Standard keyboard
* Aluminium unibody

Apple.ie (Ireland):

Cortland.pl (Poland):

Apple.ie (Apple Ireland): €1,199.00 gross * 4.40 (today’s value of Euro in Polish Zloty) = PLN 5,275.6 gross
Cortland.pl (Cortland online store): PLN 5,122.23 gross / 4.40 = €1,164.14 gross

So we have €1,199.00 (Ireland) vs €1,164.14 (Poland) or PLN 5,275.6 (Ireland) vs 5,122.23 (Poland).

In May 2008 I was considering trip to Ireland to buy a MacBook white. Even with the costs of the 2 days trip it was still cheaper than in Poland. Nowadays it is more expensive for us to go for shopping to Ireland. Maybe UK is still more attractive due to the weakness of Pound Sterling.

Ryanair is going to cut more connections from Poland. According to TVN24.pl 12 connections from 6 Polish cities are to be closed. Ryanair cuts the connections from Gdansk to Bristol and Liverpool, from Szczecin to Bristol, Birmingham, Luton and Liverpool, from Lodz to Liverpool, East Midlands and Shannon, from Poznan to East Midlands, from Wroclaw to Bournemouth and from Katowice to Bristol. Those connections won’t be available in the spring and summer season due to the very high navigation charges in Poland, which occurred in 2008. According to TVN24.pl Ryanair can not accept these costs, while offering the lowest prices. This is about the fees for the assistance during the take offs and landing procedures introduced by Polish Air Navigation Services Agency (Polska Agencja Żeglugi Powietrznej). According to the Ryanair’s spokesman, this will affect the Polish economy and end up in jobs cuts in Ryanair (about 500 employees).

Source in Polish: http://www.tvn24.pl/-1,1582889,0,1,ryanair-zawiesza-loty-do-polski,wiadomosc.html

The markets are still on crisis, every rumor can destroy the worth of each company, especially bank. That has happened to Barclays. The rumor that the British bank will need another injection of pubilc money effected the fall of the value of the symbol of British banking. The share of Barclays is now worth of 70 GBP against the 200 GPB at the begining of the year. The overall value of Barclays is 7 billions GPB that is less than the Polish PKO BP.  The tendency can end up with the nationalisation of some of the banks.

Source: Gazeta.pl: http://gospodarka.gazeta.pl/gospodarka/1,33181,6189331,Trwoga__brytyjski_Barclays_wart_mniej_niz_PKO_BP.html

One of the oldest news agencies – Routers – is making a reportage about Dell in Lodz (Poland), its movement from Limerick to the second biggest city in Poland (or third now). According to Gazeta.pl, Routers’ journalist went first to Warsaw to the Dell HQs in Poland to find out why Dell chose Poland and Lodz. The have also filmed the revitalized commercial, cultural and art complex of Manufaktura – the former factory of Izrael Poznanski. The reportage will be available for the other news agencies.

Source in Polish: Gazeta.pl