Court finds recent Walesa biography slanderous

A Polish court says a biography of former President Lech Walesa is slanderous and has fined the publisher and ordered it to apologize.

The Krakow court ruled Friday that allegations in the 2009 biography "Lech Walesa: The Idea and History" by Pawel Zyzak that Walesa served as a communist informant were slanderous. A 2000 special court already cleared Walesa of collaboration allegations.

The court says publisher Arcana must apologize to Walesa's daughter, who brought the suit, and pay a 5,000 zlotys ($1,800) fine to a charity.

Read more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031901047.html

EU won't block Poland-Russia gas deal-commissioner

The European Union does not see any reason to block a long-delayed gas delivery deal between Poland and Russia, the block's new energy commissioner Guenther Oettinger said on Friday.

Polish media have speculated that the European Union could object to the agreement, which ensures gas deliveries to Poland for the next 22 years, because it fears the deal breaches EU rules on third party access to gas transit.

Read more:http://uk.reuters.com/article/idUKLDE62I12J20100319

Bison in southern Poland face TB threat

Authorities say a herd of bison in southeastern Poland is at risk from tuberculosis after one recently died of the disease.

Spokesman Edward Marszalek of the forest supervisors in Krosno says six bison that appear to be sick will be shot and their bodies tested for the disease.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/19/AR2010031901067.html

MS surgery draws Ottawa man to Poland

An Ottawa man with multiple sclerosis is cashing in his retirement savings to go to Poland on Monday for controversial surgery he hopes will relieve his symptoms.

Evan Thornton, 49, is a busy community activist, online newspaper publisher and father. But MS has been slowing his pace. The condition has left him with numbness on the right side of his body, and his headaches and fatigue, common MS symptoms, have been getting worse.

Read more: http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2010/03/18/ott-ms-surgery.html#ixzz0iiuOfdxg

Polish aircraft violates Turkey's air space over Aegean, army says

A Polish aircraft violated on Friday Turkey's air space over the Aegean, Turkey's General Staff said.

A statement posted on the General Staff web-page said a Polish M-28 aircraft, which took off from Kos island of Greece, violated Turkish air space over the Aegean province of Aydin three times early on Friday.

Read more: http://www.worldbulletin.net/news_detail.php?id=55726

Polish conservatives aghast at Human Rights Court verdict

Polish conservatives have long warned that cozying up to western Europe may help the country’s economy and security, but carries grave dangers of importing western values that are anathema to traditionalists.

They have been proven correct by a recent decision of the European Court of Human Rights, which ruled on whether a common law spouse of a deceased man could take over his rights to rent a low-cost apartment from the government of the western Polish city of Szczecin.

The common law spouse was a man, Piotr Kozak, and Polish law, which only recognizes marriage as “a union of a man and a woman,” makes no provision for same-sex couples.

Read more:http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/poland/100317/human-rights-court-gay-rights

Incompetent visionaries

Twenty years after declaring independence, Lithuania is discovering the value of pragmatism

All post-independence Vilnius governments have had trouble with Poland. Despite centuries of common history, ties between the countries are oddly twitchy. Poles, more mindful of their own suffering than that of others, forget that from a Lithuanian point of view they can seem like a bullying cultural hegemon. Lithuanians, also prone to introversion, have never delivered on repeated promises to sort out arcane disputes about spelling and property rights affecting the country’s ethnic Poles, who number nearly a tenth of the population. (For example, may they write their names with Polish letters such as “ę” “ą” and “ł”, or are they restricted to the Lithuanian alphabet?) That is all the odder given the avowed pragmatism of Lithuania’s foreign policy under Dalia Grybauskaite (pictured, above), the country’s steely and popular president, who was elected last year.

Read more: http://www.economist.com/world/europe/displaystory.cfm?story_id=15716044

Document lists former Polish leader as military informer

Warsaw - Poland's last Communist leader was an informer for the country's military intelligence, according to an official document found at a prominent Polish institute. The document from East Germany's secret police archives said General Wojciech Jaruzelski was recruited in 1952 while studying at the military academy of the Polish army's general staff in Warsaw.

Read more: http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/314695,document-lists-former-polish-leader-as-military-informer.html#ixzz0id6yBTSE

Poland convicts 3 men in theft of Auschwitz sign

A Polish court has convicted three men of the theft of the notorious "Arbeit Macht Frei" (Work Sets You Free) sign from the Auschwitz memorial site last December.

The men were given prison sentences ranging from six months to two-and-a-half years.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ii_ZLAJ4rZ0EsaYbE_Iotl7aPiVQD9EH0MPG0

Prince Charles meets Afghanistan-bound Polish troops

Prince Charles and his wife Camilla met on Wednesday with Polish soldiers who are due to be sent to Afghanistan, as they wound up a three-day visit to the central European nation.

The prince and Camilla, the Duchess of Cornwall, reviewed troops at the base of Poland's 1st Armoured Brigade, in Wesola near the Polish capital Warsaw.

Charles chatted with a sniper from an elite unit who, fittingly for the snowy weather, was dressed in a white winter camouflage uniform.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iY1F46egDNUV_q3QPgpfgGtSbnMQ

Poland's tiny Muslim Tatar community taps deep roots

But three crescents mark it out as a mosque, and a rare footprint of Islam in this overwhelmingly Catholic nation of 38.5 million people.

Kruszyniany is home to the descendants of Muslim Tatars who came here three centuries ago.

The village of 160 people on the Belarussian border played host Tuesday to Britain's Prince Charles, on an official visit to Poland.

Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h6nNtqKK2D2WcXy_UMuw_LsrxTXA

Poland to build first nuclear power plant

The Polish government announced Tuesday that the country's first nuclear power plant would be built in the northern town of Zarnowiec.

Deputy Economy Minister and atomic energy adviser Hanna Trojanowska told a Warsaw news conference the town was chosen from a pool of 28 locations in the northern part of Poland near the Baltic Sea, Poland.pl reported.

Read more:http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2010/03/16/Poland-to-build-first-nuclear-power-plant/UPI-84471268744367/

Prince Charles views Polish bison, without Camilla

Prince Charles' wife, Camilla, canceled plans to visit a Polish forest and a mosque with him due to back pain, his office said Tuesday.

Camilla has a pinched nerve in her back, Clarence House said. It said that, on medical advice, she canceled plans to travel with her husband from Warsaw to eastern Poland, where the prince is to visit a bison reserve in a primeval forest and a mosque belonging to Poland's tiny Muslim Tatar community.

Camilla instead will visit the British Embassy in Warsaw and view a new museum on the life of Polish piano composer Frederic Chopin.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hbkhR81xclddigutv2MPYlqmQH2gD9EFMPFG0

Polish Defesne Minister Klich Wants NATO Bases in Poland

Poland knows what kind of NATO is needed in the 21st century: according to government proposals, it is to be a strictly military alliance protecting Poland and its allies in Europe, the USA and Canada.

Accepting Russia into the pact is out of the question, even though such proposals have been raised in Germany.

Read more:http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=18089

Armenia - An economic cooperation agreement signed between the governments of Armenia and Poland

RA Prime Minister Tigran Sargsyan welcomed the delegation to the Office of Government where he had private talks with Donald Tusk, followed with a meeting of extended format.

In his opening remarks, Tigran Sargsyan greeted the guests stating in part: “I am confident that the arrangements made will help shape a new framework of cooperation. The agreement tabled for signing today and the planned establishment of the joint panel will allow us to discuss in more detail the business projects of mutual interest. The traditional Armenian-Polish ties of friendship are the pledge of strengthened interaction between the two governments. These ties are described thoroughly in the Armenian textbooks of history starting from the 11th century putting on record the favorable attitude of Polish Tzars toward the Armenian community, highlighting the Seim’s decree of the 14th century which reaffirmed the fundamental rights of the Armenian community, including their freedom to exercise justice on the basis of the legal procedure code by Mekhitar Gosh. Therefore, it is a twofold pleasure for us to welcome you to Armenia.”

Read more:

'No provision' on Polish abortions

There is no provision for Polish women to travel to the UK for abortions, the Government said, as controversial adverts declared the procedure was free.

Feminist group SROM reportedly distributed posters and flyers which mimicked Mastercard adverts, saying of the UK: "Abortion in a public clinic - 0 zloty."

It went on: "Relief after a procedure carried out in decent conditions - priceless."

Currently Polish women who are not resident in the UK would be expected to pay for a termination that was not an emergency.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ukpress/article/ALeqM5iqb8mrGtZxuW8-l-uccnNBLv9obw

New US troops to join Poles in Afghanistan

Poland's Defense Ministry says about 1,000 elite US troops will come under Polish command within the NATO mission in Afghanistan later this year. Ministry spokesman Janusz Sejmej said Monday that the move is aimed at strengthening NATO operations in an area with a high Taliban presence.

Read more: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3862879,00.html

Black Hawk helicopters manufactured in Poland

The first Black Hawk S-70i helicopter was manufactured in Poland. This is first time this aircraft was ever produced outside the United States, Bulgarian media reported on March 15 2010.

Sikorsky Aircraft, a major US defence contractor, purchased the Polish factory PZL Mielec in 2007, which at the time was in derelict condition, but after extensive reformation and overhaul, the factory rolled out the first combat helicopter.

Read more: http://www.sofiaecho.com/2010/03/15/873441_black-hawk-helicopters-manufactured-in-poland

Rasmussen In Poland: Expeditionary NATO, Missile Shield And Nuclear Weapons

The civilian chief of the world's only, and history's first self-proclaimed global, military bloc is having a busy month.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen delivered an address in Washington, DC on February 23 on the military alliance's new 21st century Strategic Concept along with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her predecessor twice-removed Madeleine Albright and National Security Adviser James Jones, the last-named a former Marine Corps general and NATO Supreme Allied Commander.

Read more: http://australia.to/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=1517:rasmussen-in-poland-expeditionary-nato-missile-shield-and-nuclear-weapons&catid=52:world&Itemid=166

Israel decries Holocaust desecration in Poland

Israel's ambassador to Poland Sunday deplored the desecration of a Holocaust memorial in southern Poland and criticised world leaders who deny Israel's right to exist.

"This is a disgrace not only to all Jews but also to the Just Poles who risked their lives to save them," Zvi Rav-Ner told a gathering of some 1,000 Poles and Jews on the site of Nazi Germany's former forced-labour camp in Plaszow on the outskirts of Krakow.

Read more:http://af.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idAFTRE62D18020100314

Polish Left Gets Transfusion of Young Blood

On a recent Saturday night at Brave New World, an expansive, smoke-filled bar and leftist club that has become one of the capital’s hippest venues, clutches of stylishly dressed young people expounded on the virtues of Karl Marx and social democracy, in between gyrations on a dance floor and copious shots of vodka.

The ritual would not be notable, except that this is conservative Poland, where Ronald Reagan and unbridled free markets are still treasured icons.

Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/13/world/europe/13iht-poland.html

Prince Charles to visit bison-filled Polish forest

The British Embassy in Warsaw said the environmentally minded prince, along with his wife, Camilla, will visit a bison reserve where they will be guaranteed a view of several of the hefty beasts that are Europe's largest land mammals and less-hirsute cousins of the North American buffalo.

They will then go to a feeding point where they may — or may not — see some of the imposing animals wandering freely.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5ird5k1hM98kHTrjlC1yIxr2WWO7wD9EEDE300

Rare beetle holding up road works in Poland

Road officials say that concern for a rare beetle is holding up construction on a local road in northern Poland that is largely funded by the EU.

Ecologists say the protected hermit beetle in living in some 60 trees growing along a road that is to be widened this year at the cost of some 50 million zlotys ($17 million) with 85 percent coming from EU funds.

Read more:http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9ED3E2G0.htm

Anti-Semitic slogans paint at concentration camp memorial monuments near Krakow

Anti-Semitic graffiti were sprayed Saturday on monuments in the Plaszow concentration camp memorial, near the city of Krakow, in southern Poland. 

Words including "Jude Raus" — German for "Jew Out" — and "Hitler Good!" in English, were found in red paint on a large monument at the former camp. A smaller memorial plaque was also painted with a swastika and "Jude Raus."

It happened on the eve of a march commemorating the 67th anniversary of the liquidation of the Krakow's Jewish ghetto in World War II.

Read more:http://www.ejpress.org/article/42881