Poland is set to establish a new contiguous zone in the Baltic Sea, resulting in new borders for the country.

Up until now, Poland does not have a clear, well-defined maritime border – with neither geocentric, nor geodetic coordinates.

A recently-approved bill aims to rectify the fact that the country does not have a precise territorial sea baseline.

Amendment to the Act stems from the need to adapt Poland to requirements made by the European Parliament and European Council.

The Poland volleyball team defeated Italy 3:1 in Rio on Thursday evening.

By doing so the national team secured promotion to the medal zone of the World League Final Six tournament.

Trainer Stéphane Antiga’s team now play Serbia on Friday. To take first place in the group Poland needs to win by at least two sets.

Poland began the Italy match as if it meant business, and carried on in the same vein for much of the rest of the match, winning 25:15, 27:25, 20:25, 25:20.

A woman has been detained four days after she allegedly left parts of a pig both within and outside a newly opened Muslim centre in Warsaw.

Police have confirmed that the 29-year-old suspect was arrested in the capital on Wednesday, and that she may be charged with offending religious sensibilities.

Surveillance footage from the Centre of Muslim Culture recorded a woman wearing sun glasses and white trainers entering the site on Saturday 11 July.

She apparently left a pig’s head in the car park and another body part within the centre.

The institution, which includes a mosque, was opened on 6 July in Warsaw’s Ochota district.

The consumption of pork is forbidden by Islamic teaching.

About 25,000 Muslims live in Poland at present. The centre provides the headquarters of the Muslim League of the Polish Republic. Arabic language courses as well as courses on Islamic culture are due to held within the complex.

A new survey indicates that 46 percent of young Poles are considering emigrating once they have completed their studies.

The survey, which was carried out by the Polish Human Resources Management Association (PSZK), suggests that the trend of Poles leaving their homeland following Poland’s 2004 accession to the EU is far from over.

“These results are extraordinarily high,” noted PSZK chairman Professor Janusz Czapiński, in an interview with the Rzeczpospolita daily.

However, he stressed that “it is not clear how many of these people will actually decide to emigrate.”

He added that under 23 percent of prospective graduates actually confirmed that they intended to leave Poland within the next two years.

Czapiński said that generally, young Poles believe that Polish companies “have them much less to offer than their competitors in the West.

“They claim that companies in the UK, Ireland and Germany offer them better opportunities for development and work in their chosen profession.”

Poland has said it is prepared to accept 2,000 people as part of the EU plans to resettle refugees.

Deputy Interior Minister Piotr Stachańczyk said in Luxembourg that Poland had offered a thousand places for refugees to be resettled from camps outside the EU and a thousand for immigrants coming across the Mediterranean to Italy and Greece.

At an informal meeting of interior ministers in Luxembourg, EU countries pledged a total placement of over 20,000 people from refugee camps outside the EU.

Several other countries will submit their offers in the coming days and another meeting is planned of foreign ministers on this issue on 20 July, the deputy minister said.

The number of refugees Poland would accept is lower than proposed in May by the European Commission. According to the original proposal, Brussels wanted Poland to take in 2,659 from Italy and Greece and 962 refugees from camps outside the EU.

At an EU summit in late June leaders decided that plans to resettle 60,000 refugees would not be based on quotas imposed by the European Commission, but on voluntary decisions of EU member states.

„We have spent a very busy last few weeks analysing the possibilities of our system – and not just about the acceptability of these people, but also how best to give them a path to integrate in Polish society,” Stachańczyk said.

According to the deputy minister, there is no guarantee that there will be the same number of refugees as places offered. „Especially in the case of the resettlement programme from camps outside the EU, which is voluntary,” he added.

The plans are part of the new immigration policy strategy in the EU and are a response to the growing wave of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa.

Southern EU countries have long appealed for solidarity and support in solving the problems of immigration.

According to the agreed plans, which are to be implemented over the next two years, the Italians will be able to send to other EU countries 24,000 immigrants and Greece 16,000. To facilitate this the European Commission intends to earmark an additional EUR 240 million, or EUR 6,000 per refugee. For resettlement of refugees from outside the EU the Commission will allocate EUR 53 million.

If elections were held last weekend, 36 percent would vote for the opposition Law and Justice (PiS) and 29 percent for ruling Civic Platform (PO).

According to the latest opinion poll by CBOS, political newcomer Paweł Kukiz would get 11 percent and no other parties would breach the five percent necessary to have parliamentary representation.

PiS is up five percentage points on the previous month and PO up four percent. Kukiz, who won a surprise 20 percent in the first round of May’s presidential election and is now leader of Ruch JOW, was down eight percent on May.

Ryszard Petru’s ModernPL (NowoczesnaPL), supported by the architect of Poland’s post-communist economic transition, Leszek Balcerowicz, would win four percent, unchanged from May. The junior governing coalition party, the Polish People’s Party (PSL), would get three percent, as would the leftist Democratic Left Alliance (SLD), both also unchanged from May.

Paweł Kukiz, who won a fifth of the votes in the first round of May’s presidential election, wants to change the Polish constitution if he can win enough votes in the forthcoming general election.

Speaking with daily Rzeczpospolita, veteran rock star Kukiz said he believes that opposition party Law and Justice, which is currently topping opinion polls, would join forces in such a bid.

Kukiz stressed that he wants to strengthen the executive powers of the president.

However, on the subject of cutting state funding for political parties, one of the key issues in a forthcoming referendum, Kukiz said he is prepared to back the current model for a further four years.

Asked whether he feels it is too late to remove officials with a communist past from public life, he replied that 26 years after the fall of the Iron Curtain, the question of judgement is now in God’s hands.

However, he argued that “people who have the potential to be decent are still susceptible because they did not make confessions about their past.”

Correspondingly, Kukiz stressed that he wants his candidates to be between 25 and 45, and thus too young to have been entangled in the pre-1989 system.

Nevertheless, he acknowledged that this is not “an iron rule” and that he is still prepared to run candidates from an unlikely mixture of affiliations.

These include former presidential candidate of the Democratic Left Alliance Magdalena Ogórek, as well as Polish nationalists (also presidential candidates) Marian Kowalski and Grzegorz Braun.

When reminded that the latter had been accused of anti-semitism, Kukiz claimed that he finds anti-semitic views offensive.

He meanwhile said that there is a need “to consolidate a second Poland abroad,” alluding to the millions of immigrants.

“We need to do everything to create a similar lobby abroad to what the Jews have,” he said.

„Women’s Davos,” otherwise known as the Women’s World Summit, will be held in Warsaw in 2016.

The initiator and organiser of the summit, Irene Natividad, stressed the significant role of women in Polish politics, but its lack in big business.

„Poland has made progress in terms of the presence of women in politics, which many countries have not been able to do. It’s important for us to visit countries that are ruled by women,” Natividad said. “You have a woman prime minister and most likely wil also after the elections.”

Ewa Kopacz has been Polish PM since December 2014 and Beata Szydło is the leader of the opposition party, Law and Justice’s (PiS), general election campaign in the autumn.

„In my country, the United States, only 22 women are CEOs of the 500 largest companies, a mere four percent. Therefore it should not surprise anyone that, during business meetings at the international level, whether at the World Trade Organisation, World Bank or the World Economic Forum, women are absent. That is why we created the Women’s World Summit, unofficially the ‘Female Davos’,” Natividad added.

Seventeen percent of the participants at this year’s World Economic Forum in Davos were women (up from 15 percent in 2014). Of heads of state six percent are women and in eight percent of countries is a woman the head of government.

The summit is aimed at improving the position of women in the economy.

A survey has indicated that Poles are strongly in favour of permitting the use of marijuana for medical treatment, with some 68 percent backing the policy.

According to the PBS survey, 42 percent of respondents said the drug should be provided if doctors recommend such treatment, while 26 percent said it should be available unconditionally.

Only 18 percent supported the continuation of the current restrictions, while 14 percent said that they did not know either way.

At present there is only one exception to the law in Poland, in cases where patients are suffering from multiple sclerosis. However, the cost of the monthly prescription is about PLN 4,000.

Ongoing research has shown that medical marijuana can be used to alleviate a variety of problems, including chronic pain and muscle spasms, while also helping to reduce nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy and delaying the progression of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s disease.

Senators spent 11 hours debating a bill on IVF on Wednesday, in what has proved one of the most divisive issues in current Polish politics.

The bill, which was passed in the lower house of parliament in late June and regulates state funding for couples seeking the treatment, has been flatly opposed by chief opposition party Law and Justice.

During Wednesday’s session at the Senate, representatives of various parties called for amendments to the bill, while others said that as Roman Catholics the prospective law is wholly unacceptable.

Law and Justice senator Dorota Czudowska claimed that “we are opening the gates of hell wity this act”.

Several senators, including those from the ruling Civic Platform/Polish People’s Party coalition, suggested an amendment that would only allow the treatment for married couples.

However, Józef Pinior of Civic Platform argued that “this law does not force anyone to use this method,” and that is is concerned with “freedom of choice.”

He said that the debate had often been carried out as if all fellow countrymen had one worldview and that all were practising Roman Catholics. He noted that the Roman Catholic Church also rejects divorce, and yet that it is still sanctioned by law.

The debate finally closed at 1:00 am on Thursday. Proposed amendments have been sent to the Senate’s health committee, which will review the bill on Thursday afternoon.

Although the bill was only passed in parliament last month, a pilot IVF programme was introduced in July 2013. This was done via a loophole in the law by which IVF was classified as an ordinary medical procedure such as a tonsillectomy. Over 2000 babies have been born as a result of the programme so far.