Moscow invites Poland's Jaruzelski to VE Day celebrations

The administration of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev has invited Poland's general Wojciech Jaruzelski to the 65th anniversary celebrations of the end of World War II, the Polish Radio Foreign Service reported on Saturday.

It said 12 heads of state had already confirmed their presence at the anniversary.

General Jaruzelski was one of the nine former heads of state who had fought in World War II, including George Bush and Valery Giscard d'Estaing.

Read more:http://en.rian.ru/world/20100327/158329681.html

Poland's ruling party picks presidential candidate

Poland's center-right governing party has chosen Parliament Speaker Bronislaw Komorowski as its candidate for president.

The pro-EU Civic Platform chose Komorowski over Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski in Poland's first primary, modeled somewhat along U.S. lines.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gRR-2c1nm_b7JiuYNzibdYbTi7OQD9EMU1C00

Poles head to Britain for abortion

Polish women are being encouraged to travel to Britain for free abortions on the National Health Service as a way of avoiding strict laws prohibiting terminations in their home country.

Posters and flyers distributed by a pro-abortion group show a woman in her underwear with the words ''my choice'' scrawled on her stomach in English.

Around her are words mimicking the style of a MasterCard advertising campaign: ''Plane ticket to England at special offer - 300 zloty'', it reads. ''Accommodation - 240 zloty. Abortion in a public clinic - 0 zloty.''

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/world/poles-head-to-britain-for-abortion-20100326-r32y.html

Canadian brothers find MS treatment in Poland

Two brothers, one from Winnipeg and one from Ottawa, have emerged from surgery in Poland, expressing optimism for their hopes to alleviate the symptoms they have from multiple sclerosis.

Winnipegger Duncan Thornton, 47, travelled with his Ottawa brother Evan, 49, for a procedure not available in Canada.

The surgery, still considered experimental in the much of the medical community, involves increasing blood flow to the brain. In some cases, patients have reported promising results.

Read more:http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2010/03/25/mb-ott-brothers-ms-poland-surgery.html#ixzz0jHTKcAIJ

Poland Finds Nuke Material Hidden Behind Sofa

Poland has capacities to build a nuclear bomb, in fact it has enough fuel to build about a dozen. Shocking?

The country is not on the list of states with nuclear capacities such as the U.S. and Russia that are busy negotiating a new nuclear arms reduction treaty. Still, the Polish prime minister received an invitation to attend the April nuclear summit in Washington, DC.

As it turns out, Poland is among 44 countries included in an annex of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty that lists states with nuclear power or research reactors. According to a former chairman of the Polish nuclear administration, the country is capable of building nuclear weaponry thanks to a research reactor active since the early 1970s that has given it enough fuel for ten or more bombs.

Read more: http://blogs.wsj.com/new-europe/2010/03/26/poland-finds-nuke-material-hidden-behind-sofa/

Polish on cars

Poland's economy bucked the general European trend and didn't fall into recession last year, and its car industry also had an unexpectedly strong 2009, followed by an even better early 2010.

For the first two months of this year, Polish car factories produced 142,000 cars, a 20% increase over the same period a year earlier. For the whole of 2009, Polish factories churned out 833,000 cars, only a tiny fall from the record-breaking level of 864,000 reached in 2008.

Read more: http://businessneweurope.eu/storyf2025/Polish_on_cars

Platini Plea to Poland, Ukraine on Euro 2012 Preparations

UEFA president Michel Platini made a direct appeal to the heads of Poland and Ukraine's football federations Thursday, demanding they step up their efforts to ensure everything is ready for Euro 2012.

"Mr Surkis, Mr Lato it is imperative that you steer a steady course as you approach the final straight. I believe in you, we believe in you," Platini said in front of delegates from UEFA's 53 member nations.

Preparations in Ukraine have fallen five months behind schedule with particular problems in Kiev, which is due to stage the final, and the city of Lviv, where serious delays have restricted construction work on the stadium.

Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/03/25/sports/sports-uk-soccer-uefa-congress.html

Poland unhappy with EU's new growth plan

The EU's new 10-year growth strategy risks losing Poland's support, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk has told EUobserver on the eve of a summit that aims to discuss the economic masterplan.

"We have to take care that the strategy does not share the fate of the Lisbon Agenda," Mr Tusk said on Wednesday evening (24 March), referring to the EU's previous plan to become the world's top knowledge-based economy, which fell by the wayside due to lack of member states' support.

Read more: http://euobserver.com/9/29762

Civic Platform Could Win Polish Presidency

Either of the two probable contenders from Poland’s ruling Civic Platform (PO) party would defeat incumbent Lech Kaczynski of the Law and Justice Party (PiS) in this year’s presidential election, according to a poll by GfK Polonia. 52 per cent of respondents would vote for former defence minister Bronislaw Komorowski in a run-off, while 28 per cent would back Kaczynski.

In a separate scenario, current foreign affairs minister Radek Sikorski holds an 18-point lead over Kaczynski in a second round contest.

Read more:http://www.angus-reid.com/polls/view/35275/civic_platform_could_win_polish_presidency

Outcry over biography of noted Polish journalist

His dispatches provided fodder for numerous, big-selling books including "The Emperor: Downfall of an Autocrat" (1978), about Ethiopia's last emperor Haile Selassie or "Shah of Shahs" (1982), about the decline and fall of the last Shah of Iran.

Many were translated into some 30 languages, making him one of Poland's most translated contemporary writers.

Yet "some of Ryszard Kapuscinski's books should be placed in the category of novels rather than strict reportage," said author Artur Domoslawski, himself a journalist who was both an acquaintance and disciple of Kapuscinski.

Read more:http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5h73iu0tbM0U71-11EQb3FOkj9EGw

Polish group uses Swiss poster to protest new mosque

A Polish group calling itself "Europe for the Future" has refashioned a Swiss poster against minarets to demand a halt in the construction of a new mosque in the capital of mainly Catholic Poland.

In the posters, seen in several parts of Warsaw Wednesday, the Swiss flag is replaced with a Polish one and wording that translates into "stop the mosque of the radicals".

Switzerland voted in a referendum in November to ban the construction of new minarets, a move that drew criticisms worldwide including charges of Islamophobia.

Read more: http://www.expatica.com/ch/news/swiss-rss-news/polish-group-uses-swiss-poster-to-protest-new-mosque_33140.html

Poland's jobless rate rises to 13 percent in Feb

Poland's jobless rate has jumped to 13 percent in February from 12.7 percent the previous month, continuing a steady rise that began with the global economic downturn.Read more: http://www.businessweek.com/ap/financialnews/D9EKUANG0.htm

Polish Finance Minister: Road Map To Cut Deficit Best For Economy

Polish plans for a gradual reduction of the central government budget deficit to 2012 are the best for the economy, Deputy Finance Minister Ludwik Kotecki said Thursday.

The European Commission Wednesday said Poland may miss the 2012 deadline to cut its deficit to below 3% of GDP from over 7% of GDP last year, because the country's fiscal plans lack detail. Poland assumes that the deficit will stay relatively high until 2011 and fall steeply to 2.9% of GDP in 2012.

Read more:http://www.nasdaq.com/aspx/stock-market-news-story.aspx?storyid=201003241200dowjonesdjonline000434&title=polish-finance-ministerroad-map-to-cut-deficit-best-for-economy

Euro 2012 Delays Continue to Haunt UEFA

The nightmare scenario that Euro 2012 stadiums will not be ready in time continues to haunt UEFA on the eve of its annual congress, politicians and officials involved in the project have said.

Martin Kallen, UEFA's project director of the 16-team tournament being staged in Poland and Ukraine in just over two years time, said this week an emergency plan to hold matches in six venues rather than eight could be used if delays continued.

Read more:http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2010/03/24/sports/sports-uk-soccer-uefa-euro.html?_r=1

Polish soldiers to take part in VE-day parade

Polish soldiers will take part in the VE-Day parade in Moscow as the Polish army was the forth in number of soldiers in the Anti-Hitler coalition during WW2, stated Poland’s presidential spokesman Pavel Vypyh.

Read more: http://english.ruvr.ru/2010/03/23/5557006.html

Grenade-shaped lighter evacuates 1,000 from Polish airport

A grenade-shaped cigarette lighter in a 13-year-old boy’s checked luggage forced the evacuation of 1,000 people from an airport in Poland and delayed four international flights.

A spokesman for the airport in Katowice said passengers and workers were evacuated last Wednesday from the airport after a grenade shape was detected in a suitcase on its way to Dortmund, Germany.

Read more:http://www.universitychronicle.com/briefly/grenade-shaped-lighter-evacuates-1-000-from-polish-airport-1.2162562

Germans travel to Poland for work

Unemployed Germans have begun travelling to Poland in search of jobs - in a dramatic reversal of the usual trend for immigrant workers.

Thousands of people from eastern Germany are now commuting across the border into western Poland in an effort to escape the downturn afflicting the region.

The strength of the Polish economy and the weakness of its once all-powerful German peer is behind the change in fortunes.

As many as 2,500 Germans are now registered to work in the region surrounding the north-western city of Szczecin but officials believe the real figure is far higher due to people working on the black market.

Read more:http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/7498417/Germans-travel-to-Poland-for-work.html

 

World Agenda: Is Radoslaw Sikorski the new face of Polish politics?

Mr Sikorski is glamorous, and not just by the rather modest standards of Central Europe. He claimed asylum in Britain as an 18-year-old after the declaration of martial law, helped out in a pub, was quickly accepted at Oxford to study philosophy, politics and economics and was soon befriending Margaret Thatcher and working as a war correspondent for the British media in Afghanistan and Angola.

By 1992, at the age of 29, he was already deputy Defence Minister of Poland. He picked up Cabinet positions in subsequent governments, and is currently Foreign Minister.
Read more: http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/world_agenda/article7071207.ece

Documents concerning Auschwitz guards found

WARSAW, Poland -- The Auschwitz memorial says that documents related to the daily life of the death camp's commanders and guards have been found at a nearby house.

Museum spokesman Pawel Sawicki said Monday that historians have checked through documents such as food coupons, a map and death certificates, and they have more to look through.

Read more:http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/22/AR2010032201149.html

Bollywood Film festival in Poland from Mar 22-28

3rd edition of the Bollywood Film festival will be held in Poland from March 22-28. Eight Hindi films will be screened in twelve theatres across the country under the common slogan ‘Discover the true taste of India’. The films which will be screened in the festival are Videsh, Blue, Jannat, Amal, Dulha Mil Gaya, Love Tandoori, Singh is King and Laga Chunari Mein Daag.
Read more:http://dearcinema.com/news/3rd-edition-bollywood-film-festival-poland

Polish Catholic leader visits Yad Vashem

Cardinal Dziwisz comes to Israel on journey of remembrance, to promote Catholic-Jewish relations; meets key religious and government officials on Israel pilgrimage

A group of 700 Polish pilgrims and their leader, the archbishop of Cracow, visited Yad Vashem during their time in Israel last week, arranged by the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) Israel Office.

Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz, who heads Poland’s Catholic-Jewish Dialogue, was the longtime personal secretary and friend to Pope John Paul II, whom he accompanied on the pope’s historic visit to Israel 10 years ago, in March 2000.

Read more: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3865563,00.html

Polish Public Debt Will Not Exceed 53% Of GDP In 2010

Poland's debt-to-gross domestic product ratio won't exceed 53% in 2010 and will likely stay below 55% in coming years, Finance Minister Jacek Rostowski said Friday.

Read more ($): http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100319-704037.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines