Maronite Patriarch Beshara al-Rahi reiterated on Tuesday from the airport that the Parliament should approve a new electoral law ahead of any technical term extension.

“The stance that was taken by the Maronite bishops council and our agreement with officials states that the parliament should approve a new electoral law ahead of approving any technical extension for the legislature's mandate,” al-Rahi told reporters ahead of leaving to Poland on a four-day pastoral visit.

With too many people chucking their garbage into neighbors' bins -- or worse, the woods -- to avoid paying for disposal, Poland has taken on a massive overhaul of its laissez-faire waste management system.

The new greener setup, which enters into force in July, will lower the incentive to litter by requiring everyone to pay a municipal disposal tax for a service that up to now has been left up to each household to coordinate.

The exhumation of a Stalinist-era mass grave in the heart of the Polish capital Warsaw believed to contain the remains of around 200 victims of a post-war campaign of communist terror resumed on Monday following a winter break.

"During the first phase of work last summer we managed to exhume the remains of more than 100 victims," Krzysztof Szwagrzk, an official with Poland's Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) overseeing the project told Agence France Presse Monday at the site.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday he has "a problem" with his justice minister, who sparked a row by accusing Germany of embryo traffic and experimentation.

"Regarding Minister (Jaroslaw) Gowin, I admit there's a problem," Tusk told reporters, saying he was annoyed by the remarks.

A television miniseries brought World War II horrors back to German living rooms this month and provoked a furious reaction from Poland, which accused it of playing down Nazi guilt.

The 14-million-euro ($18-million) production "Our Mothers, Our Fathers", shown in three parts on public broadcaster ZDF, tells the story of five Germans in a story spanning the Nazis' declaration of war on the Soviet Union in 1941 to their ultimate defeat in 1945.

Clutching a gaudy homemade doll in flames, students gathered Thursday on a frosty footbridge in central Poland to toss it into the river -- an ancient rite repeated across the country every March 21.

Chanting "Evil winter begone!", the students joined winter-weary Poles nationwide in the centuries-old tradition of burning "Marzanna" dolls to cast away the cold, illness and all other misery.

In Poland, speaking out in parliament is a privilege mostly reserved for lawmakers, but the opposition has skirted that regulation with the help of a hand-held tablet computer.

Nationalist opposition party leader and lawmaker Jaroslaw Kaczynski has introduced a non-confidence motion against the Cabinet of Prime Minister Donald Tusk, and a vote is expected Friday.

Nearby the big city rumbles, but one feels almost transported to a quiet forest village when standing amid a colony of Finnish wooden houses in Warsaw's government district.

The homes, erected as temporary housing in the destroyed capital just after World War II, have dwindled over the years from 90 to about 25. Now the surviving structures have become a point of contention between their inhabitants and a city government keen on tearing them down to make way for new developments.

Behind the bars of a prison on Poland's eastern fringe, a dozen women serving time are lost in concentration as they learn the intricate art of icon-writing in the Orthodox Christian tradition.

The centuries' old craft, which typically displays the Virgin with the baby Jesus, saints and Christ in rich strokes of dark red, green and gold is being used for the first time as part of a social reintegration program at a major correctional facility in Bialystok.

It was the place where Jewish women did their ritual bathing. It was a tuberculosis clinic. It survived the German onslaught and became a gathering point for Holocaust survivors.

Now "the white building," the headquarters of the Jewish community and one of the few surviving remnants of the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, could be torn down to make way for a multistory tower that would fit seamlessly into a modern city skyline.