Local superintendent may change face of educational ... - Krakow Post

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10 The Krakow Post W A R S A W DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 Digital headhunter Skyscraper to tower over Poland GFDL.1.2:Janusz J. Security system in Warsaw. the krakow post Criminals – it doesn’t matter if they are from the U.S., France, Germany, Poland or anywhere else – use the newest technology, including Internet and computers. To fight them, police must use the same high-tech equipment. Warsaw authorities have decided to test and perhaps buy a new system that allows the computer to recognize faces of pedestrians recorded by monitoring cameras. Here’s how it works: The digital monitoring photos are reworked by the computer system. The faces of the pedestrians are scanned and compared with faces in the police data base. The computer detects individual, characteristic features like intervals between eyes, ears and nose, etc., to make a geometrical map of a face. Then a computer program compares it with pictures of “wanted” criminals, which were also analyzed carefully. The most difficult challenge for the scientists was to “teach” the computer how to recognize those characteristic features of a face in every circumstance, such as a different haircut, mimicry, beard or make-up. Systems like these are expensive, but they can be worth it as they help to make video monitoring, which also costs a lot of money, more useful. An officer usually is able to watch a monitoring screen carefully for 20 to 30 minutes. The computer works all day long with the same efficiency and precision. If the system points out a suspect, it is never 100 percent correct. But for the police it is enough to check the suspect’s ID to confirm that he is indeed a wanted criminal. The police hope Warsaw authorities decide to buy this system. “We run many extradition cases in which the most difficult thing is to pinpoint a wanted man’s location,” said John Bienkowski, the FBI’s representative in Poland. “A system like this would do it faster and cheaper than traditional methods,” he told the daily newspaper Dziennik. The digital headhunter already has been working successfully in Great Britain. Airports in the U.S. also have started to use it. Tests of the headhunter will be done in Poland next year. Warsaw authorities have applied for EU grants to help finance the system. It is estimated that it would cost 230 mln zloty to install the digital headhunter in Warsaw. ANNOUNCEMENT CLASSICAL GUITAR MUSIC FOR TOP RESTAURANTS Our repretoire of Spanish, Argentinian and Italian classical music will create the special ambience you need to maximize your guests’ fine-dining experience. Good rates and top quality. guitarcatering@gmail.com the krakow post The Palace of Culture and Science, the tallest building in Warsaw and in all of Poland, is set to be overshadowed in four years’ time. A consortium led by Jan Kulczyk, one of Poland’s richest people, plans to build a 282.4-meter-high skyscraper, which would be the tallest building in continental Europe. According to the daily newspaper Rzeczpospolita, the skyscraper will be located in the very center of the Polish capital, just a few steps from the 230 meters-high palace built in 1955. The new building will have 68 floors filled with luxury apartments for sale and a hotel. The name of the building remains unknown, but it is likely to include one of the major worldwide hotel chain brands. The design for the skyscraper hasn’t yet started, and it‘s unknown who will do it. Usually, ventures like this hire the world’s most famous architects to gain credibility and quality and thus summon investors and clients. the krakow post Budget plans for next year suggest an additional one billion zloty will be spent on the judiciary. The Minister of Justice has also suggested regulation is needed to improve the status of judges. From July 1, 2008, a new statute is being enacted which will raise the artificial wage basis upon which judges’ salaries are decided. His Honor Slawomir Rozycki from the Ministry of Justice told Gazeta Prawna, the new budget will also extend to creating more positions for support staff required in the running of the judiciary. This will include 800 judges’ associates’ positions as well as 1,500 court staff and 200 support officers. According to Rozycki, the reason behind the creation of additional job vacancies is to lessen the workload of judges, who should only be concentrating on handing down judgments and not other administrative matters. The court process is to become more efficient. Among the new positions created, there are no plans to increase judiciary posts. The only increase in additional judges will be seen in the 293 law graduates who are completing their judicial exams and practical training. The estimated amount spent in next year’s budget on the judiciary is 9.5 bln zloty, a 12 percent increase to this year’s budget. The budget for 2007 was one million zloty less than the predicted budget for next year. Although the judiciary as a whole is pleased with the changes and the additional money, most claim the step is not big enough to put a stop to the large number of good judges leaving their posts. Currently judges receive wage increases every seven years. This period will be reduced to five years as of July next year. According to Gazeta Prawna, the problem lies in wages allocated to young judges who are just starting their profession. Stanislaw Dabrowski, president of the National Judicial Council, reminds that According to the plans, the building will cost 1 bln zloty (278 bln euro), with construction to start by the end of 2009 and completion scheduled in 2011. Chmielna Development, a company owned by Kulczyk, will cover only 9 percent of the cost. The rest is to be financed by banks. The current tallest European building is the Commerzbank Tower in Frankfurt, Germany (258.7 meters not including antenna on the top). The Warsaw structure will be 260 meters high, topped by a 22.4- meter spire. But it’s already known that by the time the Warsaw skyscraper is complete, the new London Bridge Tower will exceed its height. The 310-meter London building should be finished by the end of 2009. Currently, Warsaw has 14 buildings higher than 100 meters. The tallest is still the Palace of Culture and Science, which was built between 1952 and 1955 as a gift of the Soviet Union to Communist Poland. It became one of symbols of the city even if many consider it an awful example of social realism in architecture. Today, skyscrapers are also being planned and built in other major cities in Poland. Leszek Czarnecki, the richest Pole according to the most recent “Forbes” ranking, is investing in a residential building in Wroclaw called Sky Tower. It will be 258 meters high and should be ready by 2010.In Gdynia, two 138-meter Sea Towers are already at an advanced level of construction and will be opened in February 2009. They will contain luxury apartments and are located close to the coast. In nearby Gdansk, a 202-meter skyscraper called Big Boy is to be finished in 2011. In Krakow, plans for a skyscraper district are being discussed by architects and local authorities. It would be located close to Czyzyny in Nowa Huta, far away from the city center in order not to disrupt the architectural balance of the old town. For now, the tallest building in Krakow is Blekitek on Rondo Grzegorzeckie at 105 meters and 20 floors. Judges to earn more nationwide judges who are at the start of their careers are usually in their early 30s at – an age when they are beginning to have families and major financial responsibilities. And it is this group of judges who are mostly discriminated by the wage allocation directives. Dabrowski suggests young judges’ wages should be comparable to the average wage in the private sector. Currently judges’ wages are decided on an artificial scale, which calculates base wages. To solve this problem and to raise the earning power of a judge on a market that is quickly increasing average wages across the board is to somehow balance the wages of a judge to that of the average earnings on the market. According to judges, to retain a high level within the judiciary and to solve the chronic problem of judges leaving the bench to enter private practice, wages would have to increase to around 12,000 zloty per month.
DECEMBER 13-DECEMBER 19, 2007 K R A K O W The Krakow Post 11 Plaque commemorates Wladyslaw Szpilman Kinga Rodkiewicz Staff Journalist A plaque to commemorate the great Polish pianist and composer Wladyslaw Szpilman was unveiled in Sosnowiec Dec. 5. The plaque, made by Stanislaw Wozniak and Arkadiusz Koniusz, was placed in the tenement house in which the Szpilman family lived before World War II. “A good thing for us (not for him, as one has to admit) that Wladyslaw Szpilman, our Cole Porter, Gershwin, McCartney, was born in Poland,” said Wojciech Kilar, composer of movie music. “Szpilman’s songs evoke the sound of an era of elegance, of good manners, of gracious women and of jazz music.” Also dedicated to the composer is part of the main square in Sosnowiec, where local authorities have placed a piano that automatically plays Szpilman compositions. Works by Wladyslaw Szpilman include Waltz in the Olden Style (1936) for orchestra, Concertino (1940) for piano and orchestra, Little Overture (1968) for orchestra. In the 1950s, he wrote about 40 children’s songs, for which he received an award from the Polish Composers Union in 1955. In 1961, he initiated and organized Sopot International Song Festival in Poland and founded the Polish Union of Authors of Popular Music. The pianist was born in Sosnowiec in 1911. After early piano lessons with his mother Esthera, he continued his piano studies in the early 1930s at the Warsaw Conservatory under A. Michalowski and at the Academy of Arts (Akademie der Künste) in Berlin under Artur Schnabel and Leonid Kreutzer. He also studied composition with Franz Schreker. On April 1, 1935, he joined Polish Radio, where he worked as a pianist performing classical and jazz music. His career was abruptly broken off by Germany’s attack on Poland in 1939. He and his family, with all people of Jewish roots, were forced to move to the Ghetto, where he continued to work as a pianist in the restaurants of the Ghetto. When the rest of his family was deported to Treblinka, an extermination camp in the east, Szpilman managed to flee from the transport loading site with the help of a friend, who grabbed him from the crowd and took him away from the waiting train. None of his family members survived the war. As set out in his memoir, Szpilman found hiding places in Warsaw and survived with the help of friends from Polish Radio and by a German captain, Wilm Hosenfeld, whose real name Szpilman discovered in the early 1950s, when Hosenfeld’s wife wrote him a letter. Despite the efforts of Szpilman and other Poles to rescue Hosenfeld, he died in Soviet captivity in 1952. Outside Poland, Szpilman is widely known as the protagonist of the Roman Polanski film “The Pianist: The Extraordinary True Story of One Man’s Survival in Warsaw, 1939-1945, by Wladyslaw Szpilman,” recounting how he survived the Holocaust. Krakow without barriers сс:sa:Mohylek New Year competition among cities the krakow post Krakow may become a friendlier city for the disabled. The City Council hopes to adapt the city to the needs of disabled people through technical improvements. The first discussion will take place during December’s City Council session. Krakow is an old town with old architecture. With each step we encounter stairs, gates with high entry portals and steps down to many cellars. Museums, offices, schools and other institutions are situated in old buildings not easily accessible for wheelchairs. Apartments built in the 1970s are equipped with elevators which are situated above ground level and accessible only by climbing a flight of stairs. Pawel Sularz, an author of a new project on removing barriers, says the most important improvements needed are those that deal with public transportation and the ability of disabled people to board trams. A few years ago, Krakow introduced low-floor buses and trams to assist children and the elderly in addition to the disabled. Now the City Council is planning to install in all trams devices which announce the next stop; the blind will be equipped with personal vehicle identifications, giving signs of approaching cars, and convex maps with Braille descriptions. The next barrier to fall will be the curb stones that obstruct wheelchairs. There must be a compromise, however. Completely flat surfaces are best for wheelchairs. But the blind prefer different levels for sidewalk and street that they can detect with their walking sticks. Jan Otryl, a member of the Blind Union in Malopolska, has other complaints. Timetables at bus stops Quality Accommodation for Less TOURNET Guest Rooms ul. Miodowa 7 Kazimierz District, Krakow Tel.: (0) 12 292-0088 www.accommodation.krakow.pl are too high, and people with vision defects cannot read them. There are too few traffic lights with sound signals. The disabled would also like to see in Krakow the Wien system that has been used in Lodz, Bydgoszcz and Poznan. The system was invented in Wien to give the blind remote controllers similar to those for cars. They switch them on when they hear an approaching tram. Near the tram’s door is a chip which reacts to the remote controller signal and announces the tram number and its direction. In the budget proposed for 2008, one mln zloty would be spent on removing barriers. Some things can be done during new construction, too, such as building ramps when building stairs. And some improvements cost nothing, such as hanging a street name plate a bit lower so that it can be seen by people in wheelchairs. CALL TO ADVERTISE: Andrzej Kowalski, Marketing Manager, +48 (0) 798-683-160 Urszula Ciolkiewicz Staff Journalist The biggest Polish cities are competing for the title of the best New Year’s party organizer. Television stations are participating in the parties in Krakow and Wroclaw. Thanks to TV support, the budgets for these parties are as high as 3 mln and 5 mln zloty. Last year’s New Year’s parties attracted 100,000 participants in Wroclaw and more than 140,000 in Krakow. Warsaw’s party costs 5 mln zloty, while Lodzspends only 250,000 zloty. The Warsaw party will be televised on TVN. In front of the Palace of Culture and Science we will have the opportunity to see, among others: Tatiana Okupnik, Kasia Kowalska, Lady Pank, T. Love, Bracia, Feel, Jet Set and Zygmunt Kukla Orchestra. Warsaw’s New Year’s party will be transmitted from 20:00 to 01:00 from what promises to be a gorgeous stage design. There wasn’t any party in Warsaw the two previous years because the City Council feared the risk of a terrorist attack and because of a lack of regulations governing mass audience events. Last year’s New Year’s party in Krakow had the biggest TV audience of all. “It was watched by one out of three Poles,” said Agata Mlynarska of Polsat TV. This year is supposed to be even better. Last year’s TV program lasted for five hours, and this year’s will be longer. “We hope to promote Krakow as a modern and beautiful city,” said Mlynarska. According to organizers and the Polsat channel, the success of the party is guarantied by both the participants and the TV program. Krakow has invited, among others: Shakina Stevensa, Lou Bega, Boney M., Bajm, Budka Suflera, Czerwone Gitary, Golecu Orkiestra, grupa Kashmir, Vox, Urszula and Szymon Wydra. After midnight the audience will hear a classical singing concert by Andrzej Lampert and Alicja Wegorzewska-Whiskerd. Wroclaw vows not to be outdone. “We decided to show the party on five huge TV screens,” said Malgorzata Wojciechowska, a Wroclaw City Council official. “We are preparing a professional fireworks show as well,” she added. Partygoers and party watchers should remember two important conditions for a successful celebration: delightful company and morning headache pills. krakowpost.com
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Local superintendent may change face of educational ... - Krakow Post

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