Statehood Day of Republic of Slovenia

Slovenia, country in central Europe that was part of Yugoslavia for most of the 20th century. Slovenia is a small but topographically diverse country made up of portions of four major European geographic landscapes—the European Alps, the karstic Dinaric Alps, the Pannonian and Danubian lowlands and hills, and the Mediterranean coast.

2021/06/25

Statehood Day of Republic of Croatia

Croatia, country located in the northwestern part of the Balkan Peninsula. It is a small yet highly geographically diverse crescent-shaped country. Its capital is Zagreb, located in the north. The present-day republic is composed of the historically Croatian regions of Croatia-Slavonia (located in the upper arm of the country), Istria (centred on the Istrian Peninsula on the northern Adriatic coast), and Dalmatia (corresponding to the coastal strip). Although these regions were ruled for centuries by various foreign powers, they remained firmly Western-oriented in culture, acquiring a legacy of Roman law, the Latin alphabet, and western European political and economic traditions and institutions. A part of Yugoslavia for much of the 20th century, Croatia suffered considerably from the disintegration of that federation in the early 1990s. The European trajectory of Croatia was finally realized in 2013 when it joined the European Union. As the Croatian Canadian scholar Tony Fabijančić writes, Croatia’s tumultuous first years as an independent country also have obscured its centuries-long history: Croatia (Hrvatska) is an ancient nation, yet a very young nation state. Once a formidable kingdom under Tomislav in the tenth century, a naval power in the sixteenth and seventeenth, and an awakening national entity in the nineteenth, it had to endure a thousand years of foreign meddling, subjugation, incursions, and outright wars before being recognized in 1992 as a distinct entity. Land The upper arm of the Croatian crescent is bordered on the east by the Vojvodina region of Serbia and on the north by Hungary and Slovenia. The body of the crescent forms a long coastal strip along the Adriatic Sea, and the southern tip touches on Montenegro. Within the hollow of the crescent, Croatia shares a long border with Bosnia and Herzegovina, which actually severs a part of southern Croatia from the rest of the country by penetrating to the Adriatic in a narrow corridor. Relief Croatia is composed of three major geographic regions. In the north and northeast, running the full length of the upper arm of the Croatian crescent, are the Pannonian and para-Pannonian plains. To the north of Zagreb, the Zagorje Hills, fragments of the Julian Alps now covered with vines and orchards, separate the Sava and Drava river valleys. To the west and south of the Pannonian region, linking it with the Adriatic coast, is the central mountain belt, itself part of the Dinaric Alps. The karst plateaus of this region, consisting mostly of limestone, are barren at the highest elevations; lower down, they are heavily forested. The highest mountain in Croatia, Dinara (6,007 feet [1,831 metres]), is located in the central mountain belt. The third geographic region, the Croatian littoral, is composed of the Istrian Peninsula in the north and the Dalmatian coast extending south to the Gulf of Kotor. Wedged between the Dinaric Alps to the east and the Adriatic Sea to the west, its 1,100 miles (1,800 km) of coastline are fringed by more than 1,100 islands and islets. Drainage Of the 26 rivers that flow for more than 30 miles (50 km) in Croatia, the Sava and the Drava, coursing through the Pannonian and para-Pannonian plains, are of particular importance—both because of their length and because, along with the Kupa River, they are in large part navigable. The Sava originates in Slovenia, passes Croatia’s capital city of Zagreb, and then forms most of the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina along the inside of the Croatian crescent. The Drava enters Croatia from Slovenia and forms all but a small section of the border with Hungary before joining the Danube, which in turn forms most of the border between Croatia and the Vojvodina province of Serbia. The Kupa, which forms part of the frontier between Slovenia and Croatia, and the Una River, which meanders along part of the border between Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina, both flow into the Sava. In Dalmatia the Krka and Cetina rivers are of particular importance because of their hydroelectric potential and because they flow into the Adriatic Sea. In addition, a great deal of water circulates in underground rivers and pools in the karstic regions of the central mountain belt and the littoral. These waters account for many of the unique geologic formations and the picturesque landscape of central and western Croatia. Soils The Pannonian and para-Pannonian plains are enriched with alluvial soil deposited by the Sava and Drava rivers. These plains are the most fertile agricultural regions of Croatia and form the country’s breadbasket. The soil of the central mountainous belt is rather poor but offers some cultivable land in the fields and meadows and some grazing land in the plateaus. The Croatian littoral is mostly mountainous and barren, with rocky soil and poor agricultural land. Climate Two main climatic zones dominate Croatia. The Pannonian and para-Pannonian plains and the mountain regions are characterized by a continental climate of warm summers and cold winters. In the plains, temperatures average in the low 70s F (low 20s C) in June and in the low 30s F (around 0 °C) in January—although they can range from a low of −5 °F (−20 °C) in the winter to a high of 105 °F (40 °C) in the summer. The central mountain regions of Lika and Krbava have slightly cooler summers and cold winters, with a milder climate in the valleys. The average temperature range is between about 65 °F (about 18 °C) in June and the upper 20s F (about −2 °C) in January. Considerable rainfall, turning to snow in winter, is characteristic of the region. The Dalmatian coast, Istria, and the islands have a mild Mediterranean climate. In southern Dalmatia, where the sirocco winds (known there as the jugo) bring a moderating influence from Africa, summers are sunny, warm, and dry, and winters are rainy. In the north the winters are drier and colder as a result of the cold northeast wind known as the bora (bura). In the summer the mistral wind has a cooling effect on the coast and the islands. The average temperature ranges from the low 40s F (about 5 °C) in January to the low 70s F (low 20s C) in June. Rainfall is moderate and occurs mainly in the winter. Reflecting the country’s diverse geography, the flora and fauna of Croatia are highly varied. On the Dalmatian coast, grapes and olives are grown to produce wine and oil, while Istria is dominated by firs, and Slavonia has many oak forests. In terms of animal life, lizards are found on the coast, while wolves and even bears can be found in the inland forests. Hares, foxes, boars, wildcats, and mouflons (wild sheep) also inhabit Croatia. Sea life in the Adriatic is rich as well, with many coral reefs and underwater caves serving as habitats. People of Croatia - Ethnic groups and religions A variety of ethnic groups coexist within the republic. Croats constitute about nine-tenths of the population. Serbs make up the largest minority group; however, their proportion fell dramatically as a result of the 1990s war of independence—from more than one-tenth of the population before the war to less than half that figure in 2001. In addition to the Croats and the Serbs, there are small groups of Bosnian Muslims (Bosniaks), Hungarians, Italians, and Slovenes as well as a few thousand Albanians, Austrians, Bulgarians, Czechs, Germans, and other nationalities. It has been estimated that the number of Croats living outside the borders of Croatia is comparable to the number living inside the country. Many ethnic Croats reside in Bosnia and Herzegovina, where Croats have lived since the Slavs first migrated to the western Balkan Peninsula in the 6th and 7th centuries ce. Although there has traditionally been a yearning for unification with Croatia among the Croats of Herzegovina (a region contiguous to Dalmatia), this sentiment has not generally been shared by Croats within Croatia or even by Croats in Bosnia. Many of the Serbs in Croatia are descendants of people who migrated to the border areas of the Holy Roman Empire between the 16th and 18th centuries, following the Ottoman conquest of Serbia and Bosnia. There is traditionally a close correlation between ethnic identity and religious affiliation. The Croats are overwhelmingly Roman Catholic and more Western-influenced than the Serbs, who are overwhelmingly Eastern Orthodox. A small minority of people are nonreligious or atheist. Bosniaks constitute most of the Muslim population. Languages Croats speak Croatian, a South Slavic language of the Indo-European family. Croatian is quite similar to Serbian and Bosnian, but political developments since the collapse of Yugoslavia have encouraged the three ethnic groups to emphasize the differences between their languages. The clearest distinction between the Croatian and Serbian variants of what was previously called the Serbo-Croatian language is the script, with Croatian written in the Latin alphabet and Serbian in the Cyrillic. Distinctions of grammar and pronunciation also occur, as do more striking differences in vocabulary, which result partly from differential historical patterns of foreign domination. For Croats, this has resulted in a sprinkling of German, Hungarian, and (in Dalmatia and Istria) Italian vocabulary, while the Serbs’ speech shows Turkish and Russian influences. In addition, there have been various movements to “purify” the Croatian language, which have led to further differences. Another linguistic distinction, reflecting the legacies of history as well as the effects of geography, can be heard in the colourful medley of regional dialects and subdialects that survive to this day. The standard Croatian literary language, based on the Shtokavian dialect, emerged in the second half of the 19th century as a result of an effort to unite all South Slavs. Although all three major branches of Serbo-Croatian (Shtokavian, Chakavian, and Kajkavian) were spoken by Croats (as they still are today), the Shtokavian dialect was the most widely heard in Croatian regions of eastern Slavonia, the Adriatic littoral from Makarska to Dubrovnik, and Herzegovina, as well as Montenegro and Serbia. It was therefore adopted by leading Croatian national intellectuals of the 19th century. More … https://www.britannica.com/place/Croatia

2021/06/25

Konsulat Hiszpanii w Krakowie oficjalnie otwarty

Pan Radosław Fronc swoją działalność jako Konsul Honorowy Hiszpanii w Krakowie rozpoczął już w listopadzie ubiegłego roku. Oficjalne otwarcie Konsulatu musiało jednak poczekać na bezpieczniejszy epidemiologicznie okres. Uroczystość odbyła się 17 czerwca w obecności Jego Ekscelencji Ambasadora Królestwa Hiszpanii w Polsce Javiera Sanabrii Valderramy, przedstawicieli władz miasta i regionu, licznych przedstawicieli korpusu dyplomatycznego i zaproszonych gości.

2021/06/24

Wywiad dla „Trybuny" udzielony przez Yao Dongye - chargé d'affaires Ambasady Chin w Polsce

Sekretarz generalny Xi Jinping wskazuje, że "Komunistyczna Partia Chin, będąc największą partią polityczna na świecie, musi również na taką wyglądać". Znajduje to odzwierciedlenie nie tylko w liczbie członków Partii i wielkości samej organizacji, ale także w jej charakterze, obranych celach, ideałach i przekonaniach, jej woli, duchu i szerokich horyzontach.

2021/06/24

Saint John the Baptist Day

Hospitallers, also spelled Hospitalers, also called Order of Malta or Knights of Malta, formally (since 1961) Sovereign Military and Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem, of Rhodes, and of Malta, previously (1113–1309) Hospitallers of St. John of Jerusalem, (1309–1522) Order of the Knights of Rhodes, (1530–1798) Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights of Malta, or (1834–1961) Knights Hospitaller of St. John of Jerusalem, a religious military order that was founded at Jerusalem in the 11th century and that, headquartered in Rome, continues its humanitarian tasks in most parts of the modern world under several slightly different names and jurisdictions. Heraldic flagsBanner: The blazon of the shield is applied to the whole surface of a square or a vertically or horizontally oriented rectangular flag. This is the Royal Banner of Scotland, which follows the blazon of the second quarter of the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom. Although it is the banner of the sovereign, it is widely but incorrectly used today as the national symbol.Fork-tailed pennon: Shown here is that of the Sovereign and Military Order of the Knights of Malta, in heraldic terms gules a cross argent.Standard: The Cross of St. George at the hoist identifies this as English. The profusion of badges, the diagonally placed motto, and the border of alternating tinctures are typical. This is the standard of Sir Henry Stafford, c. 1475. Drawing by Wm. A. Norman, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. The origin of the Hospitallers was an 11th-century hospital founded in Jerusalem by Italian merchants from Amalfi to care for sick and poor pilgrims. After the Christian conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 during the First Crusade, the hospital’s superior, a monk named Gerard, intensified his work in Jerusalem and founded hostels in Provençal and Italian cities on the route to the Holy Land. The order was formally named and recognized on February 15, 1113, in a papal bull issued by Pope Paschal II. Raymond de Puy, who succeeded Gerard in 1120, substituted the Augustinian rule for the Benedictine and began building the power of the organization. It acquired wealth and lands and combined the task of tending the sick with defending the Crusader kingdom. Along with the Templars, the Hospitallers became the most formidable military order in the Holy Land. When the Muslims recaptured Jerusalem in 1187, the Hospitallers removed their headquarters first to Margat and then, in 1197, to Acre. When the Crusader principalities came to an end after the fall of Acre in 1291, the Hospitallers moved to Limassol in Cyprus. In 1309 they acquired Rhodes, which they came to rule as an independent state, with right of coinage and other attributes of sovereignty. Under the order’s rule, the master (grand master from c. 1430) was elected for life (subject to papal confirmation) and ruled a celibate brotherhood of knights, chaplains, and serving brothers. For more than two centuries these Knights of Rhodes were the scourge of Muslim shipping on the eastern Mediterranean. They constituted the last Christian outpost in the East. By the 15th century the Turks had succeeded the Arabs as the protagonists of militant Islam, and in 1522 Süleyman the Magnificent laid final siege to Rhodes. After six months the Knights capitulated and on January 1, 1523, sailed away with as many of the citizens as chose to follow them. For seven years the wandering Knights were without a base, but in 1530 the Holy Roman emperor Charles V gave them the Maltese archipelago in return, among other things, for the annual presentation of a falcon to his viceroy of Sicily. The superb leadership of the grand master Jean Parisot de la Valette prevented Süleyman the Magnificent from dislodging the Knights from Malta in 1565 in one of the most famous sieges in history, which ended in a Turkish disaster. What was left of the Turkish navy was permanently crippled in 1571 at the Battle of Lepanto by the combined fleets of several European powers that included the Knights of Malta. The Knights then proceeded to build a new Maltese capital, Valletta, named after la Valette. In it they built great defense works and a hospital of grand dimensions that attracted many physically and mentally ill patients from outside Malta. Thereafter the Knights continued as a territorial sovereign state in Malta but gradually gave up warfare and turned wholly to territorial administration and to medical care. In 1798, however, their reign in Malta came to an end, when Napoleon, on his way to Egypt, occupied the island. The order’s return to Malta was provided for in the Treaty of Amiens (1802) but eliminated by the Treaty of Paris (1814), which assigned Malta to Great Britain. In 1834 the Knights of Malta became permanently established in Rome. From 1805 they were ruled by lieutenants until Pope Leo XIII revived the office of grand master in 1879. A new constitution containing a more precise definition of both the religious and the sovereign status of the order was adopted in 1961, and a code was issued in 1966. Although the order no longer exercises territorial rule, it issues passports, and its sovereign status is recognized by the Holy See and some other Roman Catholic states. Membership is confined to Roman Catholics, and the central organization is essentially aristocratic, being ruled chiefly by a primary class of “professed” knights of justice and chaplains who can prove the nobility of their four grandparents for two centuries. More …. Score: https://www.britannica.com/event/Siege-of-Rhodes

2021/06/24

H.E. Mr. Chettaphan Maksamphan, Ambassador of Thailand to Poland, met with H.E. Mr. Waldemar Kraska, Deputy Minister of Public Health and Chairman of Polish – Thai Parliamentary Group ...

On 15 June 2021, H.E. Mr. Chettaphan Maksamphan, Ambassador of Thailand to Poland, met with H.E. Mr. Waldemar Kraska, Deputy Minister of Public Health and Chairman of Polish – Thai Parliamentary Group, and the representatives from the Group, namely, Senator Paweł Arndt, Vice Chairman of the Group, and Senator Jerzy Chroscikowski to discuss further promotion of bilateral cooperation in all dimensions by utilizing the auspicious celebration of 50th Anniversary of diplomatic relations next year.

2021/06/23

SADC ambassadors in brazil pay tribute to Kenneth Kaunda

The SADC group of Ambassadors in Brazil have described Zambia’s late First President Dr. Kenneth Kaunda as a true liberation icon and selfless Leader who greatly sacrificed for the Peace and Security the region was enjoying today.

2021/06/23

Obchody 81. rocznicy chrztu bojowego 1 Dywizji Grenadierów

W dniu 17 czerwca 2021 roku Ambasada Francji, reprezentowana przez podpułkownika Sébastiena Gorce, uczestniczyła w obchodach 81. rocznicy chrztu bojowego 1 Dywizji Grenadierów w bitwie pod Lagarde. Ta licząca ponad 16 tys. żołnierzy polska dywizja, dowodzona przez gen. Bronisława Ducha, walczyła u boku armii francuskiej w Alzacji-Lotaryngii w 1940 roku.

2021/06/23

New Ambassador-designate assumes duties

2021/06/23