Polish PM wants to change constitution for euro entry

Poland's ruling Civic Platform (PO) wants to change the constitution as soon as possible to prepare the legal framework for euro adoption, Prime Minister Donald Tusk said on Friday.
However, initial reaction from the main opposition party, the eurosceptic Law and Justice party (PiS) whose support Tusk needs to amend the charter, suggested that change was unlikely before a parliamentary election due next year.
Tusk also unveiled plans both to reduce the president's powers to veto laws and to slash the number of deputies and senators as part of a wider reform of the constitution.
Read more: http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=7749120&subject=economic&action=article

Poland swine flu threat remains

Dr Mrukowicz said he had analysed the number of laboratory-confirmed cases and the mortality ratio in Sweden and Norway, where the governments decided to vaccinate the majority of the population, and in Poland, where the government decided against it.

In Sweden and Norway the rise of laboratory-confirmed cases has stopped; in Poland, it is still rising.

"We have to wait until the influenza season is over to make good research and analyse which countries made the right decisions," he said.

"It's way too premature to cheer about whether it was a good decision to reject the vaccines."

Read more: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8512475.stm

Poland, Belarus sign agreement on local border traffic

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski and his visiting Belarussian counterpart Syarhey Martynau signed here on Friday an agreement on local border traffic, Xinhua News Agency informed.
In line with the agreement, visa-free traffic in the border zone will require a permit valid for 2 years in case of the first permit and for 5 years in case of successive permits, according to a report of the Polish news agency PAP.

Readm more:  http://www.focus-fen.net/index.php?id=n209981

Polish police recover stolen US blood plasma

Polish police recovered 11 tons of human blood plasma that had been stolen from a U.S. company and was on its way to Austria, officials said Thursday.

The truck with a freezer unit carrying the plasma, worth more than euro1 million ($1.4 million), was stolen while the driver made a rest stop in Germany, Polish police spokesman Artur Chorazy said. It was taken across the border into Poland, where it was seized on Wednesday.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gGdXidG481wzc6_Uf2QG5S5MUjqwD9DQ6AHO0

Poland urges Belarus to respect Polish minority

Poland's prime minister is urging Belarus to do more to protect its Polish ethnic minority.

Donald Tusk spoke during a Friday visit to Warsaw by Belarusian Foreign minister Sergei Martynov.

Tusk said he hopes the visit will help thaw relations with Belarus and nudge Poland's autocratic eastern neighbor closer to the West. But he also said there were "scandalous elements of repression and obstruction of the Polish minority and their institutions" in Belarus.

Rad more:http://www.kyivpost.com/news/world/detail/59402/

Museum dedicated to Polish Jews subject of talk in Halifax

The Polish government has financed the unique, multi-media museum, being built in the former Warsaw Ghetto, with support from international donors.

The museum will commemorate and celebrate nearly 1,000 years of Jewish history and rich Jewish cultural life in Poland, the country to which more than 50 per cent of the world’s Jews can trace their roots.

The Halifax event takes place under the auspices of the Atlantic Jewish Council, the Consul General of the Republic of Poland in Montreal, Tadeusz Zylinski, who will be in attendance, and the University of King’s College.

It will feature a talk by Peter Jassem, Canadian representative of the Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Jassem will speak about the importance and history of the museum against the backdrop of the revival of Jewish life in Poland and his personal experience of discovering his Jewish roots.
Read more:  http://thechronicleherald.ca/ArtsLife/1167180.html

German row over WWII museum eased

A dispute over a museum on Germans driven from eastern Europe after 1945 that has caused friction with Poland looked to be over Thursday after the main expellees' body and Berlin reached a compromise.

Federation of the Expelled (BdV) head Erika Steinbach said she had agreed with the government not to seek nomination to the board organising the planned documentation and exhibition centre in Berlin.

Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski Thursday hailed the compromise. "It is a good day for Polish-German relations," Sikorski said in an official statement.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5j9LRRzD7dPc0tsjSdg6GwDzW7R9g

Unburied dead

At last, Russia marks the Katyn massacre

FIRST the crime, then the lie. After the massacre in April 1940 of 20,000-plus captured Polish officers by Stalin’s NKVD secret police, during the Nazi-Soviet carve-up of Poland, came five decades during which the Soviet Union blamed it on the Germans. Russian media still sometimes peddle Soviet lies, mostly amid official silence. The files are sealed. Victims’ relatives are suing Russia in the European Court of Human Rights.

But now Russia’s prime minister, Vladimir Putin, has invited his Polish counterpart, Donald Tusk, to attend a ceremony on the 70th anniversary of the massacre at its site, in Russia. That matters: Russian television viewers will for the first time see their leaders publicly accepting the true story.

Read more:http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15514833

Former Polish deputy PM sexually harassed job-seeker

A former deputy prime minister of Poland has been convicted and sentenced to 27 months in prison for sexually harassing a woman who wanted a job.

Andrzej Lepper, head of the agrarian Self Defence party, was found guilty of soliciting sex from a woman who worked for the party.

Also convicted was another party leader, Stanislaw Lyzwinski, who was sentenced to five years for sexually harassing the same women, as well as others.

Read more:http://www.torontosun.com/news/world/2010/02/11/12836901.html

Suspect in Auschwitz sign theft arrested in Sweden

Swedish police on Thursday arrested a former neo-Nazi leader that Polish investigators suspect of being involved in the theft of the "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign at Auschwitz.

Swedish Prosecutor Agneta Hilding Qvarnstrom said 34-year-old Anders Hogstrom was detained in Stockholm on a European arrest warrant.

Read more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/11/AR2010021101726.html

Poland Approves Gazprom Supply Deal After Year of Negotiations

Poland’s government approved an agreement between Polskie Gornictwo Naftowe i Gazownictwo SA, the country’s dominant gas company, and OAO Gazprom to increase imports of the fuel from Russia.

The contract, which increases annual deliveries to as much as 10.2 billion cubic meters from about 7.4 billion cubic meters and extends a previous deal by 15 years to 2037, was signed by the two companies on Jan. 27 following almost a year of talks.

Read more:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-11/poland-approves-gazprom-supply-deal-after-year-of-negotiations.html

Standard Life eyes property in Paris and Poland

Offices in Paris, shopping centres in Poland and high-yield logistics properties are on the radar of Standard Life Investments real estate fund manager James Rushworth, who is raising funds to buy such properties.

"It's a benign environment for real estate investment," he told Reuters on Wednesday, citing low inflation, low interest rates and low yields on investments in other asset classes.

Read more:http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLNE61A00E20100211

Kazakhstan to ship oil to Hungary via Poland

Kazakhstan will begin shipping oil to Hungary and Slovakia via Poland rather than Ukraine, a spokesman from Kazakh national oil transporter KazTransOil told Reuters on Thursday.

The company announced on Tuesday that it would suspend oil deliveries to Hungary and Slovakia via Ukraine as a result of a reported dispute with the latter country involving a 2010 transit agreement.

Read more:http://bbjonline.hu/?col=1004&id=51717

Armenian-Polish Intergovernmental Commission to be established

Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Karine Ghazinyan arrived in Warsaw on February 10 to participate in the political consultations between the Ministries of Foreign Affairs of Armenia and Poland.

On the first day of the visit the Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister met Marcin Korolec, Poland’s Undersecretary of State of the Ministry of Economy.

Read more:http://www.armradio.am/news/?part=off&id=16770

Poland Looks For Its Obama

A growing number of Polish voters and taxpayers were children, or not even born, before 1989 when communism collapsed in Poland. Their emergence means not only a rapid change of the country’s productivity and image.

It also means there’s now demand for a leader with fresh ideas, someone who speaks foreign languages, knows the world, shares the younger age group’s experience of living abroad, and who can relate better with the generation now in its 20s and 30s than with those people’s parents and grandparents whose representatives populate much of the Polish political scene.

In short, the search is on for the Polish version of Barack Obama.

Just a month ago, it seemed like Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk was certain to once again grab the imagination of the younger group.

Read more:http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2010/02/10/poland-looks-for-its-obama/

Warsaw expects dialogue with 'democratically elected' Yanukovych

Poland hopes for "constructive cooperation" with Viktor Yanukovych, Ukraine's "new democratically elected president," a top Polish Foreign Ministry official said on Wednesday.

Opposition leader Viktor Yanukovych narrowly won Ukraine's presidential election with 48.95% of the vote, with his rival Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko garnering 45.47% of the vote, 3.48 points behind Yanukovych, according to preliminary results announced on Wednesday after election authorities finished counting ballots following Sunday's runoff.

Read more:http://en.rian.ru/world/20100210/157838072.html

What to expect from Poland's 2010 privatisation plan

Poland has added 1.1 billion zlotys ($370 million) to the total amount it has raised from privatisations so far this year after it priced a 16-percent stake in power group Enea ENAE.WA near the bottom of an earlier range. 
In the first six weeks of 2010, the centre-right government managed to collect 3.5 billion zlotys, or about half of last year's total. It aims to raise at least 25 billion as it struggles to find funds to plug a growing budget deficit.
Read more: http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE61911Y20100210

Polish church uses TV motto to lure young

A Roman Catholic order in Poland has started to advertise its religious retreats by using the motto of a popular TV programme "I've Got Talent."

The order Salvatoris, established in Poland in the late 19th century, has devised a poster that reads "I've got talent -- I can be a saint!," in an echo of the programme's catchword, in order to lure more young people to the religious life.

"I've Got Talent," like its UK counterpart "Britain's Got talent," presents previously unknown acts who compete against each other for audience support.

"We used the slogan bearing in mind how popular the programme is," Damian Pankowiak, the priest responsible for religious vocations at the order, told Reuters.

Read more:http://af.reuters.com/article/oddlyEnoughNews/idAFTRE6182XU20100209

Cadbury moving production to Poland

Kraft is set to essentially close down the plant which is near Bristol in England's south, although it could retain a skeleton crew. It is estimated that around 400 jobs remain at risk.

Cadbury had planned to close the factory in 2010, moving its production to Poland, but when the US food giant made its initial bid for Cadbury that it said it “would be in a position to continue to operate” the factory.

Read more:http://www.foodmag.com.au/Article/Cadbury-moving-production-to-Poland/510996.aspx

America Is Not Yet Lost

We’ve always known that America’s reign as the world’s greatest nation would eventually end. But most of us imagined that our downfall, when it came, would be something grand and tragic.

What we’re getting instead is less a tragedy than a deadly farce. Instead of fraying under the strain of imperial overstretch, we’re paralyzed by procedure. Instead of re-enacting the decline and fall of Rome, we’re re-enacting the dissolution of 18th-century Poland.

A brief history lesson: In the 17th and 18th centuries, the Polish legislature, the Sejm, operated on the unanimity principle: any member could nullify legislation by shouting “I do not allow!” This made the nation largely ungovernable, and neighboring regimes began hacking off pieces of its territory. By 1795 Poland had disappeared, not to re-emerge for more than a century.

Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/opinion/08krugman.html

Poland Recalls Ambassador to Belarus

Poland recalled its ambassador to Belarus on Tuesday in a deepening dispute over an ethnic Polish organization in the neighboring country.

Tensions have periodically erupted between Minsk and Warsaw over Belarus' treatment of its large Polish minority, which numbers some 400,000 people in a country of 10 million.

Warsaw's latest protest came a day after police seized control of a building used by the Union of Poles in the town of Ivenets. Polish newspapers said Belarussian police, acting on a prosecutor's orders, used "brutal force" to empty the building.

"By recalling our ambassador for consultations, we want to send a strong political message," Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said.

Read more:http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/poland-recalls-ambassador-to-belarus/399356.html

House Hunting in ... Poland

A TWO-BEDROOM APARTMENT IN LODZ’S CITY CENTER 910,000 POLISH ZLOTYS ($306,000)

This 130-square-meter (1,399-square-foot) apartment is on the second floor of a three-story tenement building built in 1923. Staircases and other portions of the indoor common areas are original and have been restored recently.

Original details like crown molding and wooden doors in the apartment were restored about two years ago during a major renovation that also included a new kitchen, bathroom and floors.

Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/10/greathomesanddestinations/10gh-househunting.html

1 Mar 2010 Frédéric Chopin born 200 years ago

Polish-French composer and pianist Frédéric Chopin was born on 1 Mar 1810, and plans are under way in Poland for a year of concerts, recitals and conferences marking the bicentennial of his birth. The country's parliament has declared 2010 the Year of Fryderyk Chopin. A Chopin Centre and renovated Chopin Museum will be inaugurated to honor the great Romantic composer, whose work is regarded as a Polish cultural treasure.

The year will see around 1,300 Chopin concerts in locations ranging from northern Norway to Florida, listed on the dedicated website www.chopin2010.pl.

Poland expects an influx of visitors to the dozens of sites in the country where the composer lived and worked, particularly to the manor house in Zelazowa Wola where he was born. Now a museum, it has become a Chopin shrine. Warsaw is to have a new-look Chopin Museum. The Milan-based Migliore & Servetto company won the international competition for the design of the facility.

Read more:http://www.newsahead.com/preview/2010/03/01/poland-1-mar-2010-frdric-chopin-born-200-years-ago/index.php

Poland Raises Growth Forecast, Says Debt Will Stay Below Limit

Poland’s government increased its forecast for economic growth this year to 3 percent from 1.2 percent and said public debt won’t exceed the threshold that would force spending cuts or higher taxes.

The European Union gave Poland until 2012 bring the budget gap within the 3 percent of GDP limit for adopting the euro. The shortfall swelled last year as slowing growth curbed tax revenue and the government stepped up spending to avoid a recession. The Finance Ministry said yesterday it planned to send the document to Brussels that evening.

Public debt will peak at 56.3 percent of GDP in 2011 according to EU accounting rules, the plan said. By local standards, it won’t exceed 55 percent, the level at which Polish law requires the government to reduce borrowing.

Read more:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-09/poland-raises-growth-forecast-says-debt-will-stay-below-limit.html

Poland recalls ambassador to Belarus over activists' HQ seizure

Poland called its ambassador to Minsk back to Warsaw on Tuesday for consultations on a property dispute between the Belarusian government and a Polish minority group in the former Soviet state.

On Monday, police and legal authorities seized the Polish House, owned by the Union of Poles in Belarus. Police cordoned off the building, ownership of which has always been contested by the Belarusian authorities, and Union activists were forced out.

"The ambassador was recalled over the conflict around the Polish House in Ivenets [some 60 miles west of Minsk]," a spokesman for the Polish Embassy in Minsk told RIA Novosti.

According to the Polish Embassy, Belarusian Ambassador to Poland Viktor Gaisyonok was summoned to the Polish Foreign Ministry on Monday. Polish Deputy Foreign Minister Andrzej Kremer expressed his concerns over police measures in Ivenets.

Read more:http://en.rian.ru/world/20100209/157820400.html

Poland's 1st post-communist foreign minister dies

Poland's government says Krzysztof Skubiszewski, a legal expert who became Poland's first foreign minister after communism's collapse and helped the country chart a pro-Western course, has died. He was 83.

The Foreign Ministry made the announcement Monday but did not give the cause of death.

Read more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/02/08/AR2010020801285.html

Poland May Meet EU’s Budget-Deficit Limit in 2012

Poland may fulfill European Union demands to cut its budget deficit below the 3 percent of gross domestic product cap required for euro adoption in 2012 as economic growth accelerates, a senior government official said.

The government raised its growth forecast to 3 percent this year from an earlier 1.2 percent estimate, said the official, who declined to be named because the forecasts haven’t been officially approved. Output may expand more than 4 percent in 2011 and 2012, helping trim the gap to 6.9 percent of GDP in 2010 and 2.9 percent in 2012 from 7.2 percent in 2009, he said.

Read more:http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-02-08/poland-to-approve-program-to-meet-euro-adoption-target-today.html

101st Airborne to Command French, Polish Troops in Afghanistan

As part of the 101st Airborne’s deployment preparations, officers are training directly with the French and Polish troops who will be under their command in Afghanistan.

Brigadier General Pierre Chavancy has had his staff working side-by-side with headquarters personnel at Fort Campbell for the last two weeks. Chavancy’s 3,000 troops will be one of six brigades under the command of the 101st Airborne Division.

Read more:http://wpln.org/?p=14701

Polish debt under 55pct/GDP till 2012-convergence plan

Poland's public debt will rise in the 2010-2012 period but will not top the key 55 percent of gross domestic product safety level, according to the updated euro convergence plan obtained by Reuters on Monday.

The government's plan, which is expected to be approved on Tuesday, also envisages the debt, as calculated by different, European Union rules, to stand at 53.1 percent in 2010, 56.3 percent in 2011 and at 55.8 percent in 2012 - below the EU's 60 percent ceiling.

Read more:http://www.iii.co.uk/news/?type=afxnews&articleid=7741926&subject=markets&action=article

Poland's Pension Cuts - Cue for Former Eastern Bloc

Poland’s pension cuts on tens of thousands of former communist functionaries and secret police officers are adding fillip to campaigns in other East European states for similar legislation.

Starting January, Poland slashed the monthly payments of as many as 40,000 communist-era police officers, border guards, prison wardens and other state workers by an average of more than half.

Polish rights groups have praised the legislation as providing "justice" to victims of the former communist regime in the country, some of whom have been forced to live in poverty while former communist officials draw, in some cases, pensions of almost 2,000 euros (2,727 US dollars) per month - four times the national average.

Now campaigners in the former communist bloc want to see similar legislation in their own countries.

Read more:http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=50246

Euro 2012 on track, insist Poland and Ukraine

Joint Euro 2012 hosts Poland and Ukraine on Sunday brushed aside concerns about their readiness for Europe's top football tournament, as the qualifying draw marked their first real-time test.

"It's three years since UEFA awarded the hosting of the 2012 European football championships to Poland and Ukraine," Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

"These three years have been a period of hard work in both countries," Tusk told an audience of top officials from the continent's football governing body and its 53 national associations assembled for the draw.

"Euro 2012 infrastructure is being constructed, including stadia, airports, motorways and hotels," the ardent football fan and Sunday league player insisted.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jTpXFPLAVGjC5fl2is75mmxNw7iA

Poland's Increased Social Benefits Increase Polish Unemployment

A new year’s increase in unemployment benefits caused unemployment to grow 0.9 per cent in January compared to December, the Ministry of Labor and Social Policy said.

“Last year, from January to Decemer,” it was 1 percentage point,” Minister for Labor and Social Policy Ms Fedak said.

According to the ministry, unemployment went from 11.9 to 12.8 per cent.

“The increase is seasonal in nature, it’s difficult to predict anything, we have to wait until spring,” Ms Fedak said.

Read more: http://www.masterpage.com.pl/outlook/201002/social-benefits.html

Euro 2012 qualifying draw throws up England v Wales

The Euro 2012 qualifying draw in Warsaw got off to a mixed start with a less than tuneful performance from a Polish boyband.

However, when we finally reached the main event, those famous coloured balls did not disappoint with Andriy Shevchenko (who surely should have been voting in Ukraine’s election) helping dish out some fabulous encounters like England v Wales. Germany, Turkey and Austria are in the same group while Denmark, Norway and Iceland will also all meet.

Here’s the full draw. What do you reckon? England in the group of death? Interestingly, Armenia were switched from the same group as Azerbaijan on political grounds.

Read more:http://blogs.reuters.com/soccer/2010/02/07/euro-2012-qualifying-draw-throws-up-england-v-wales/