The aim of this article is to assess the military operation started on 24 February 2022 by Russia against Ukraine in light of the law on use of force, having in mind all the justifications officially expressed by Russian authorities and in light of international humanitarian law. The author claims that there is no justification for the Russian military action and thus it must be qualified as aggression. This, due to the serious violation of the peremptory norm, implies obligations on the part of states and international organizations (i.e. the international community). In addition, the current conduct of hostilities clearly shows that it is mainly Russian forces which neglect international humanitarian law principles, which might amount to war crimes.

The Green Deal and the New Industrial Strategy for Europe recognize the access to raw materials and the security of supply from secondary and primary sources as essential for Europe’s transition to sustainability. It can be expected that with the development of the circular economy approach, the extraction of primary resources would be diminished, but it is emphasized that a circular economy may need a wider range of metals and other raw materials critical to the new environmentally friendly technology, especially in renewable energy and mobility. Therefore, the latest global initiatives and EU policies focus on ensuring resource efficiency in a holistic manner, from the extraction of raw materials to the re-use of the end products, which requires data transparency not only on material and waste flows, but also on financial and economic burdens including incentives and subsidies. In addition, for sectors with significant environmental impacts, the transparency of information on payments to central governments and local authorities can increase social acceptance and accountability and allow for further development. The paper analyzes regulations and initiatives supporting the disclosure of wider data than required in financial and corporate social responsibility reporting related to the implementation of a circular economy. As circular economy indicators take upstream resource flows into account, the transparency of environmental and economic data in the value chain is required, for example for the calculation of the environmental footprint. Moreover, transparency is important for mining companies’ stakeholders to increase social acceptance of mining activities and facilitate the transition to a circular economy.

The current rockburst hazard conditions in the copper mines are the consequence of mining-induced seismicity of the rock strata whilst the majority of registered rockbursts have been caused by high-energy seismic events. T he analysis of seismic activity in recent years indicates that the region of the Rudna mine is the region of the highest seismic activity. This paper is an attempt at evaluating the seismicity levels in the Rudna mine in the period from 2006-2015, within the entire mine and in its particular sections. Key parameters of seismic activity include the number of registered seismic events, total energy emission levels, and a unit energy factor. The variability of Gutenberg -Richter (GR) parameters are analyzed and the epicenters’ locations are investigated with respect to the stope position. T he distinction is made between low-energy (103 ≤ As < 105 J) and high-energy (As ≥ 105J) seismic events ahead of the stope, in the opening-up cross-throughs and in the gob areas. It appears that the risk level of a high-energy event occurrence in the R udna mine has not changed in recent years and has remained on a high level whilst the differences in seismic activity, in particular mine sections, are attributed to the varied extraction height and varied thickness of rockburst-prone carbonate layers in the roof of the copper ore deposit. The analysis of the epicenters’ locations with respect to the stope reveals that no matter what the seismic energy levels, the largest number of rockbursts are registered in the opening-up cross-through zone. Low-energy tremors are mostly located in the gob areas, high-energy events occur mostly ahead of the stope. T hus, the evaluation of the seismicity conditions in the Rudna mine seems to positively verify the relationship between the number of registered events and the levels of generated seismic energy, taking the local geological and mining conditions and the specificity of the room and pillar mining method into account.

The summary of research activities concerning general theory and methodology performed in Poland in the period of 2015–2018 is presented as a national report for the 27th IUGG (International Union of Geodesy and Geophysics) General Assembly. It contains the results of research on new or improved methods and variants of robust parameter estimation and their application, especially to control network analysis. Reliability analysis of the observation system and an integrated adjustment approach are also given. The identifiability (ID) index as a new measure for minimal detectable bias (MDB) in the observation system of a network, has been introduced. A new method of covariance function parameter estimation in the least squares collocation has been developed. The robustified version of the Shift-Msplit estimation, termed as Shift-M*split estimation, which enables estimation of parameter differences (robustly), without the need of prior estimation of the parameters, has been introduced. Results on the analysis of geodetic time series, particularly Earth orientation parameter time series, geocenter time series, permanent station coordinates and sea level variation time series are also provided in this review paper. The entire bibliography of related works is provided in the references.

The equipment mounted on the carbody chassis of the railway vehicles is a critical component of the vehicle in terms of ride comfort. The reason for that is their large mass, able to visibly influence the vibrations mode of the carbody. The paper examines the influence of the equipment upon the mode of vertical vibrations of the carbody in the high-speed vehicles, reached on the basis of the frequency response functions of the acceleration in three carbody reference points – at the centre and above the bogies. These functions are derived from the numerical simulations developed on a rigid-flexible coupled model, with seven degrees of freedom. As a rule, the results herein prove the influence of the equipment mounting mode (rigid or elastic), along with the speed regime, upon the level of vibrations in the carbody reference points, at the resonance frequency of the symmetrical bending mode. Similarly, it is also demonstrated how the equipment mass and the damping degree of the suspension system affect the level of the vibrations in the carbody.

The paper presents the figure of the archivist Janina Kozłowska-Studnicka. In 1914–1920, she was connected with the archives in Vilnius. Subsequently, in 1921, she was appointed the manager of the archives in Grodno – a function she very successfully fulfilled until the outbreak of the Second World War. At the beginning of the occupation, Janina Kozłowska-Studnicka was relocated deep into the USSR and returned to Poland in 1946. She connected the last period of her life with the Kórnik Library, devoting herself to the ordering and cataloguing of its collection of manuscripts.