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Around the bloc: Russian Pilot: Turkish Jets Fired Without Warning
Russia slaps restrictions on agricultural imports in first concrete action against Ankara.
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Russia slaps restrictions on agricultural imports in first concrete action against Ankara.
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Has Lukashenka forgotten his warnings about the dangers of free market reforms?
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Obama tells Putin, Erdogan to stop trading insults, get on with task of combating terrorism.
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Unverified accounts say Amiran Georgadze opened fire after officials rejected his demand for a giant bribe.
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Watchdog EIA says the timber company Schweighofer is illegally overcutting Romania’s virgin forests.
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The aim of the article is to discuss the possibilities of applying social research methods in the analysis of seniors' tourism activity. It emphasises the fact that research related to the participation of seniors in tourism is of major significance in many countries with rapidly changing population. The author mentions the methodological determinants of conducting social research that derive from two basic paradigms: quantitative and qualitative. Based on examples from the literature, the article presents the benefits and limitations of their use in conducting research on seniors' tourism activity. In the final part of the article, the author lists the methodological postulates regarding the implementation of the research among seniors as a specific segment of tourism activity.
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Counterurbanisation as a deconcentrating process of settlement systems is connected with population migration from cities to their geographically distant hinterland located beyond the external border of suburbs, i.e. beyond the metropolitan zones. Many authors consider it a low-intensity process empirically hard to identify. Still, in the South Bohemian region of České Budějovice (RCB) counterurbanisation was confirmed, although it is not a dominant but rather a highly variable process with some effect on the character of settlements. It seems that after a long period of population and socio-economic decline a new rise started in several municipalities of the RCB rural area. The smallest rural settlements (less than 200 residents) boast now the top population growth rate along with the top net migration rate. In general, the volume of immigration flows to the rural area from the centre and suburbs of České Budějovice is higher in absolute figures than the volume of emigration flows from the rural area. The detailed anonymised database of migrants of the Czech Statistical Office makes it possible to analyse the migration volume and direction by municipalities.
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The paper attempts to describe the issues related to the phenomenon of social housing in Poland. The projects launched in the years 2007 -2013 by Cracow Municipality have been used to illustrate that problem. In the studied period, the housing resources of Cracow Municipality were constantly shrinking. It should be said that the technical condition of those resources was also deteriorating. The paper highlights the objectives set for the management of the housing stock of Cracow Municipality as stipulated by the Great Financial Forecast for Cracow Municipality till 2033,which was set to fend off the negative tendencies which emerged within that period.
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Metropolitan areas are the poles of economic growth of regions and countries. These areas are characterized by specific development cycles, which are related to the direction of population migrations. Accordingly, there is a phase of urbanisation, suburbanisation, disurbanisation and re-urbanisation. Studies show that most Polish metropolitan areas are undergoing the process of suburbanisation, which means the movement of population from the central city to its suburban area. This process entails a number of demographic, social and economic consequences. One of the main demographic consequences of suburbanisation is the change in the structure of the central city and its suburban area. The reason for this is the fact that migrations from the centre are usually undertaken by young people. Thus, the number of inhabitants of the central city declines and the population is ageing. Migrants from the city bring new patterns of social and demographic behaviour, which may be shown in, among others, the tendencies of indigenous people to change the traditional family model. This paper attempts to determine the reproductive behaviour patterns of the population of the Krakow Metropolitan Area (KMA) in the light of the survey. The surveys were conducted in selected KMA municipalities in 2013. The analysis of qualitative data, divided into two categories of respondents: immigrant and indigenous inhabitants, will give an answer to the question, what are the reproductive attitudes of the population and how they may affect the further development of these areas?
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The purpose of the paper is to present already observed as well as expected changes in the condition and age structure of the population of Śląskie voivodeship. The analysis concerns the years between 1990 and 2050. The paper presents changes in population in the years from 1990 to 2013 and the projection of the population situation in 2050. Special attention is focussed on the process of changes in population functional age groups, also the dynamics and the level of ageing advancement of population in total as well as of particular age groups which are significant from the point of view of labour market and future births are presented.
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The analysis presented herein addresses the issue of social and religious diversity within the Catholic Church and its influence on voter turnout and Sejm election results in Poland. The paper covers election results from 2001 to 2007. Both organizational-institutional characteristics and social-religious characteristics of the Church have been taken into account when assessing the impact of the Church on regional differences in political support for selected political factions in 2005. The impact of each factor on the support level for a given party or political orientation in a regional (spatial) context was assessed on the basis of the degree of coincidence of the factors of interest, measured using the coefficient of correlation.
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The first part of the paper provides a new approach to measuring a spatial structure of world city network (WCN). Based upon the results of media-popular 'global city rankings' produced by several international think tanks, our calculation allowed to reveal global urban hierarchy and identify several subnetworks inside of world cities. The second part of the paper devotes to recent discussions on nature of globalization and urban macrosystems, bearing in mind ranking results. It is shown that a typological approach can provide more insights to a role of city as part of WCN from functional and relationships prospective.
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Tourist ascents of mountain peaks before sunrise are increasingly popular. Babia Góra (Western Carpathians) is a peak on the Polish-Slovak border frequently visited by a great number of tourists at sunrise. The main objective of our research, based on the case study of Babia Gora, was to answer a more general question whether the sunrise can be considered a tourist attraction. The research included the observation and description of every sunrise at summer holiday weekends during 2012 from the peak of Babia Góra as well as the collection of data on the number of tourists and weather conditions. Survey interviews, using questionnaire, with randomly selected hikers present on the peak of Babia Góra at sunrise (269) were conducted. The investigation showed that during summer holiday sunrises there were a maximum of 130 people on the summit of Babia Góra at the same time. Most of the surveyed people (84%) agreed that the opportunity to observe the sunrise was one of the pull factors for them. This confirms the hypothesis that sunrise constitutes a tourist attraction.
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Traffic congestion is a major and growing problem in urban areas acrossthe globe. It reduces the effective spatial interaction between different locations.To mitigate traffic congestion, not only the actual status of different routes needsto be known but also it is imperative to determine network congestion in differentspatial zones associated with distinct land use classes. In the present paper,a new formula is proposed to quantify traffic congestion in the different spatialzones of a study area characterized by distinct land use classes. The proposed formulais termed the Traffic Congestability Value (TCV). The formula considersthree major influencing factors: congestion index value, pedestrian movement androad surface conditions; since these parameters are significantly related to landuse in a region. The different traffic congestion parameters, i.e. travel time, averagespeed and the proportion of time stopped, were collected in real time. Lowervalues of TCV correspond to a higher degree of congestion in the respective spatialzones and vice-versa and the results were validated in the field. TCV differsfrom the previous approaches to quantifying traffic congestion since it focuses onthe causes of network congestion while in previous works the focus was generallyon link flow congestion
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The property tax reform in Poland and transformation from area based property tax towards ad valorem model has long been discussed in the literature. One of the major topics, but still relatively understudied is tax burden for households in major metropolitan areas. In this context the main purpose of this article is to demonstrate the impact of property tax reform on housing costs in Poland – both in terms of overall affordability and structure. Paper is based on literature review and empirical research based on case study method (simulation based on two housing cooperatives located in Krakow).
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The paper briefly describes the idea of cohousing communities built and managed by their owners and residents. The Author introduces special features of cohousing, which distinguish it from other forms of housing, i.e. non-profit construction and management by owners-users, creation of the sense of a community and strong social ties. It has been emphasized that the concept of cohousing incorporates realization of sustainable and ecological houses as well as sustainable communities, and is part of contemporary economic and social trends of limiting consumption – degrowth. The paper includes an analysis of conditions facilitating more extensive realization of housing in this formula in Poland as well as barriers, especially legal and mental ones – lack of social capital required to create close and cooperating cohousing communities.
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The concept of energy security embraces three main dimensions: security of supply (technical dimension), competitiveness of the energy market (economic dimension), and sustainable development (environmental dimension). In this article the concept is extended onto the fourth dimension—social. This is verified empirically through opinion polls and in-depth interviews as well as a questionnaire with energy experts. The results of those surveys confirm relations between all four dimensions of the energy security concept. The environmental dimension is most important for society and the technical one for energy experts, while both groups perceive the social dimension as less crucial.
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Successful entry into new markets and creating new market niches is the new challenge for organizations arising from global competition and can become a test of their stability. This statement is particularly relevant in this moment of a financial crisis and uncertainty. Difficulties in the successful implementation in new markets or the formation of new market niches are numerous and of various types. This is especially true of innovative products or services, the market performance success has an uncertain outcome and contains risk, but difficulties for many market participants namely entering a new market segment is the outcome of a protracted stagnation for too long. This study focuses on the research of circumstances of the entry of new and innovative products on the market and/or the opening of a new market niches for such products. There are well-established models (Johanson/ Vahlne – Uppsala model), which give a clear idea of how the market penetration works. The product research includes the study as one of the most important sources of innovation and new scientific knowledge (Peter Drucker). The purpose of this paper is to present a method for assessing the marketing of scientific institutions products.
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In this article are represented the main economic problems in the mechanism through which EC decides on corporate concentration. The underlying conclusion is that this mechanism does not work in favour of the small ( and poor ) EU member countries.
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The aim of this article is to examine the influence of the determinants on the 19 euro zone countries’ credit ratings assigned by Standard & Poor’s Financial Service. The hypothesis was posed that: If the level of economic, trade development and the economy stability increase, the country’s credit rating rises. There are proposed static panel data models based on data from the years 2000-2015 obtained from Reuters Eikon. As the dependent variable short-term and long-term credit ratings given by S&P’s are used. The ratings are decomposed lineary on the numeric variables. As the dependent variables the macroeconomic factors are used. The results are compared with forecasts of Standard & Poor’s Financial Service. In addition, results are compared with trends in countries’ credit ratings.
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