Brief News Stories Of Polish Interest

By Robert Strybel

Poland’s ruling Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwosc) party has been running neck and neck in opinion polls with the main opposition party, the pro-business Civic Platform (Platforma Obywatelska) in the run-up to early elections two years ahead of schedule. In its election campaign, PiS has pledged an all-out fight against the post-communist sleaze network it says has infiltrated the country’s political and economic structures. The PO claims the Kaczynski twins’ two years in power have been a wasted period marked by authoritarian rule and a failure to solve the nation’s ills.

Poland hopes to opt-out from those provisions of the European Union’s proposed 54-point Charter of Fundamental Rights which run counter to accepted Polish legal and moral norms. Britain set the precedent by rejecting the charter’s immigration and labor provisions, while Poland is fearful the charter might be used to impose homosexual marriages, abortion on demand and euthanasia on Polish society. One of the points prohibiting expropriation without compensation could force Poland to fully compensate Germans and Jews demanding the return of their pre-war property.

KGHM Polska Miedz SA and China Minmetals Corporation have clinched their biggest deal ever by agreeing to join forces to jointly develop copper mines in Poland, China or other countries. Poland, the world’s sixth largest copper supplier, will contribute its mining and processing expertise, while the Chinese will supply their capital and sales channels to the venture. Minmetals has imported 400,000 tons of electrolytic copper ($1.1 billion worth) from KGHM over the past decade, accounting for nearly half of China's total imports from Poland.

Poland risks losing the Euro 2012 soccer tournament to Italy if it does not get its act together in time. Polish political turmoil, snap elections and indecision on upgrading the country’s antiquated infrastructure have thrown the plans into doubt. Latest plans call for building Warsaw’s National stadium not on but next to the site of the crumbling 50-year-old Ten Year Stadium, which will be turned into a multi-purpose sports arena, but construction if not expected to get under way until spring 2009. In May, Poland and Ukraine won the right to co-host the 2012 European Championships.

“China Incorporated”, as Asia’s newest economic giant is often known, has been called on to get Poland’s long-delayed infrastructure development under way. Nearly 40 private Chinese companies are vying for contracts to build and upgrade roads and highways worth up to $33 billion. There had been talk of employing Ukrainians, Polish convicts and women at the construction sites in preparation for the Euro 2012 soccer tournament, but such a piecemeal approach would hardly do justice to such a vast undertaking.

A controversial radio priest been accused by Krakow’s Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz of dividing Polish Catholics and pushing the Church to the brink of a serious crisis with his right-wing views some consider to be anti-Semitic. But Prime Minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a practicing Catholic, believes Father Tadeusz Rydzyk’s on-air evangelizing has performed a valuable service. Poland’s bishops themselves are far from anonymous as to whether the director of Radio Maryja and Telewizja Trwam should be backed, silenced or simply left alone.

Poland could lose a huge chunk of European Union aid as a result of delays in the infrastructure projects for which the money is intended. As of June 2007, Poland had absorbed only 27 percent of the $1.5 billion allocated for transport and infrastructure investment in 2004-2006. But regional development minister Grazyna Gesicka, who reported that 55 percent of the funds had been used by August, was hopeful the full amount would be absorbed on time. EU aid is given to countries for specific projects requiring extensive talks and paper work to obtain.

Ex-president Aleksander Kwasniewski temporarily united the governing Law and Justice party, the largest opposition group (Civic Platform) and other political parties for his remakrs published in the German edition of “Vanity Fair” magazine. After saying Berlin should reconsider its restrained approach towards Poland if the current government remains in office, he was condemned by all but the post-communists for urging a foreign power to get tough with Poland. Kwasniewski apologized, saying his remarks had been taken out of context and sensationalized.

A 17th-century Polish monk, Father Stanislaw Papczynski, was beatified recently at the Marian Shrine in Lichen, Poland. The pope’s representative Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone officiated at the ceremony. Known for his devotion to the Blessed Virgin and his help to the needy, Papczynski founded the Marian Order of priests after the Piarist Order he had joined earlier proved too lax in terms of discipline. Today the Marian Fathers operate in Poland and 16 other countries including The US, Germany, Italy, Ukraine and African mission lands.

The Supreme Court of Belarus has sentenced four Belarusian military personnel to prison terms of 7-10 years in prison for spying on behalf of Poland. They were found guilty of organizing the collection of classified information and passing it on to a foreign power. Relations between Poland and its eastern neighbor have often been strained over Warsaw’s support for pro-democracy Belarussian and Polonian activists. Belarussian strongman Alexandr Lukashenka has frequently accused Poland of meddling in his country’s internal affairs.

Two Polish tourists were among the six people killed when a helicopter crashed in the wilds of Siberia in Russia’s far-eastern Magadan region. Only one person, the aircraft’s commander survived the crash with serious burns and injuries. In recent years, the antiquated Soviet-designed Mi-8 helicopters, the workhorse of the Russian military and Siberian bush pilots, have often been involved in crashes.

A Danish “help wanted” bus is touring the Polish countryside touting the advantages of working in Denmark, a country that could use some 100,000 more workers. In this unique employment agency on wheels, prospective Polish guest workers learn what opportunities are available and can obtain leads for jobs as bus and truck drivers, plumbers, carpenters, electricians and masons. Those fluent in German or English get first crack at jobs that pay four to five times what workers earn in Poland.

Former German chancellor Gerhard Schröder has been applauded in Russia for his book, in which he warned the European Union was becoming “a hostage of nationalistic interests” of countries such as Poland. This, he said, was disastrous to German-Russian relations and the EU as a whole. The ex-chancellor, who now heads a German-Russian company building an underwater pipeline circumventing Poland and the Baltic states, also lambasted Poland and the Czech Republic for considering US anti-missile installations on their territory.

Three Chechen girls died of exposure on the Polish-Ukrainian border in the Lesko area of SE Poland. Their chilled and exhausted 36-year-old mother holding a two-year-old son asked Polish border guards for help, but it was too late to save the starving girls, aged 6, 11 and 13, who had spent the night in light summer clothing in near-freezing weather. The refugees from war-torn, Russian-occupied Chechnya had been wandering the rugged Bieszczady wilderness for days after being smuggled in from Ukraine and were hoping to make it to Austria.

Novice author Krystian Bala has been sentenced to 25 years in prison for the murder of his wife’s lover, after he wrote up the crime in a pulp-fiction novel. Investigators had been baffled by what appeared to be the perfect crime until being tipped off to read his best-selling murder mystery entitled “Amok”. The similarity of many of the book’s details to the actual case prompted them to take a closer look at its author. It was the victim’s cell phone, which Bala had hocked at a local pawn shop, that enabled police to track him down.

Ukrainians are teaching English in a growing number of Polish schools due to a shortage of Poles willing to work for so little. Many Polish teachers of English have left the public-school system for private language schools, and some even prefer to mind children, wash dishes or perform other menial jobs in Britain. But what to Poles are starvation wages is decent pay to teachers from Ukraine where salaries are even lower.

A $1.7 million prize has been awarded to Dr. Maciej Wojtkowski, a young scientist from Torun’s Copernicus University for perfecting a non-invasive optical coherence tomographic technique. His break-through makes examination of the retina 100 times quicker and safer than had been the case to date. Wojtkowski, who beat out 112 candidates from across Europe and became the first Pole ever the win the European Young Scientist’s prize, said he considered the money to be a grant to help finance his further research.

$9 million worth of heroin has been seized by Polish customs inspectors at the border crossing with Ukraine at Hrebenne. The stash was discovered in a special compartment built into the roof of a truck in which 270 packages of the illegal drug were to have been smuggled into Poland. The Turkish driver of the Turkish-registered vehicle was detained for questioning, and an investigation was launched into the largest heroin-smuggling attempt ever recorded in Poland.

Five Poles parachuted to safety from a blazing aircraft whose exhaust collector had caught fire during a training flight. The two pilots of the Soviet-designed AN-2 landed in a meadow near the SE city of Rzeszow and managed to extinguish the blaze before fire-fighters arrived at the scene. A week earlier, two stunt pilots were killed when their planes collided head-on during an aerial acrobatics display at an air show in the central city of Radom as thousands of spectators looked on in horror.

Poland will be represented at the next Miss World Pageant by a 21-year-old student, Barbara Tatara, of Lodz, who was chosen this year’s Miss Polonia. The stunning 175 cm (5’9”) tall beauty won a Spanish-built Seat (VW Group) car and diamond jewelry valued at more than $9,500. A Slavic Language and Literature major, besides her native Polish Barbara is fluent in Russian, Bulgarian, Serbian and English. The title includes the word “Polonia” because that is Poland’s name in the greatest number of different languages.

A replica of a medieval fortified town has been officially opened at Biskupice in SW Poland’s Opole region along the Czech border. Known as the Polish-Czech Knightly Training Center, the site hosts medieval tournaments and pageants, re-enacted for the benefit of medieval hobbyists and tourists. The timber stronghold surrounded by a timber wall will eventually be expanded to include a medieval-style inn, forge and armory. The European Union has provided half of the $1.6 million needed to finance the heritage-restoration project.

Czestochowa’s Jasna Gora Monastery will be among the major religious shrines served by the Vatican’s new low-cost airline, the world’s first for Catholic pilgrims. The Vatican aims to serve 150,000 pilgrims a year on its chartered Boeing 737, run by Italy's Mistral Air. Other destinations include the shrine of Our Lady of Fatima in Portugal, Lourdes in France and Egypt’s Mount Sinai, where Moses is believed to have received the 10 Commandments.

Poland has opposed a European Union proposal to proclaim October 10th the annual European Anti-Death Penalty Day. Polish Foreign Minister Anna Fotyga said there was no need for such a move, since capital punishment no longer exists in Europe. She said the issue should form part of a broader discussion on life and death, including abortion and euthanasia. The Polish position has rattled the EU’s politically correct delegates who oppose the death penalty but believe abortion on demand and euthanasia to be “human rights”.

A 72-year-old retired professor of architecture has swum across of the Bay of Gdansk, a distance of 18 kilometers (11 miles), in 11 hours’ time. Believed to be the oldest person to accomplish the feat, Prof. Jacek Damiecki of Warsaw braved the bay’s 55°F waters to call public attention to children afflicted with mucopolysaccharidosis, a rare metabolic disorder. The septuagenarian said he had been in training for the challenge for three months, during which he had covered a total of 280 km (173miles) in Poland’s lakes and rivers.

An apple-tree, donated by Bavarian schoolchildren, has been planted near the Warsaw Ghetto Heroes’ Monument in honor of Irena Sendler, a Polish social worker who saved some 2,500 Jewish children from the Holocaust. The symbolic tree was brought to Warsaw by a group of youngsters from Hohenroth, Germany, whose school has been named after the 97-year-old wartime heroine, now confined to a nursing home. Among those attending the tree-planting ceremony was Sendler’s daughter, Janina Zarzembska.

Polish fisherman have been catching piranhas in the Vistula near the southern city of Krakow, Gazeta Krakowska daily reported recently. The Amazon’s razor-toothed predators, a school of which can strip an animal or human body to bare bones in minutes, were apparently pets released into the wilds. Fishermen who catch them are being urged not to throw them back, and biologists hope any remaining piranhas will be killed off by the approach of cooler weather, so unlike their natural tropical habitat.