Abuse in Polish schools on the rise

From: NPE
Teachers abusing Polish school kids around the country is growing say new statistics.

According to the newspaper Metro, there has been an increase in the number of complaints made by students who claim that teachers using abusive language, skipping classes and turning up to work drunk is becoming more and more commonplace.

But it’s not only psychological abuse that is on the rise. The number of reported cases of physical abuse in the classroom has also increased says the paper.

During this year alone in the eastern city of Lublin, six teachers have been reprimanded as a result of using corporal punishment as a means of disciplining children.

In 2007, a disciplinary commission in Lublin received 13 calls to begin procedures against teachers - this year the total figure was three times that amount. Other cities have also witnessed the number of cases grow - Krakow’s individual cases have risen from 20 to 36 in the last two years.

In accordance with Polish law, teachers who abuse their powers can be punished in either one of three ways:

“There are three possibilities: reprimand with a warning, dismissal from work, and - most severe - expulsion from the profession,” explains Alexander Smith, from the Board of Education in Krakow, citing the Teachers’ Charter.

Last year in Krakow, 10 were reprimanded, three made redundant and one forbidden from teaching again.

Sex scandal in the Sejm

From: NPE
The 33-year old Civic Platform (PO) ex-MP, known as Miss Sejm after being voted Poland’s sexiest MP, told reporters that she suffered “indecent and immoral proposals” from a senior politician.

“It happened on the first day of my work in the Sejm. I was totally shocked,” she told the daily newspaper Gazeta Wyborcza.

“One of the MPs, not from my party, accosted me in a very direct way, he may even have used the word ‘baby’, and asked me for my room number at the hotel I was staying in.

“It was a miracle I didn’t slap him in the face,” she added, declining to reveal the identity of the pervy MP.

“It’s terrible, disgraceful and completely unworthy of our politicians,” said lawyer Jacek Kondracki, adding there may be a criminal investigation.

“If he served as a senior member to Mrs Mucha then we are dealing with the sexual harassment of a subordinate, which is a crime,” he said.

A few months after the incident, Mucha says she moved out of the hotel reserved especially for Sejm members.

“Through the thin walls you can hear everything - at night it is horrible. One can neither work nor sleep. I wanted privacy because I came to Warsaw to work - you just can’t live there,” she revealed.

It has yet to be decided whether criminal proceedings will begin.

Police launch murder probe as dad nicked

From: NPE
Police in the town of Deblin have launched an investigation into a shocking multiple murder, that left three members of a family, including an 89-year-old woman, dead.

The bloody bodies of 15-year-old Karol J. his mother Halina J. and his grandmother Wenceslas S. were found in their home. All had been killed by knife or axe wounds.

Police reported that the killer had tried to hide the crime by attempting to set fire to the family home. After murdering the three he had, apparently, lit a candle and then opened a gas canister in the hope that an explosion and fire would obliterate traces of the crime.

Although a small fire broke out the gas failed to ignite.

So far police and prosecutors’ attention has focused on Karol’s father Zbigniew J. Prosecutors from Lublin confirmed that they have placed the 46-year-old man, who was the first to alert the police about his family’s brutal slaying, in detention for three months as they investigate a crime that has left friends and neighbours of the family stunned.

“Just yesterday I talked with Mrs. Halina. I asked her how her mother felt, and to pass on my greetings. Several hours later, I learned that she was murdered,” one neighbour told the television channel TVN24.

Just why the three died has left investigators perplexed.

Living in modest circumstances they had little in the way of valuables that could have attracted thieves.

They were not wealthy,” said another neighbour. “There are many richer people living on the street. You know that by just looking at the houses.”

Police said that the house showed no sign of forced entry, indicating that the victims knew the killer, adding that the family were respected in the local community and therefore may not have fallen victim to somebody with a grudge or bent on revenge.

“Karol never had trouble with anyone,” said a friend, Przemek. “He was an ordinary, likeable pupil; I still see him standing before my eyes now. A few days ago we played football together. It’s difficult for me to believe in everything that has happened.”

A stalwart of the community before made frail by ill-health, Karol’s grandmother had sung on the local choir and was known in the town for the warmth of her hospitality and the quality of her cakes.

Two days after the murder television news showed the handcuffed father being taken away by the police for questioning.

Polish man Reszpondek faces life for murdering 'Tati'

From: The Leader

Lukasz Reszpondek

THE Polish cheese-cutter found guilty of murdering Ermatati Rodgers of Wrexham now faces a mandatory life sentence.

Lukasz Reszpondek showed no emotion as the majority verdict was announced in Mold Crown Court yesterday.

Sentencing was adjourned until Friday.

Mr Justice Lloyd Jones told him: “You will know that by law there is only one sentence for murder and that is life imprisonment.”

The 11-strong jury took seven hours and 17 minutes to convict the defendant by a majority of ten to one at the end of the three week trial.

After the verdict, the officer who led the inquiry branded Reszpondek as determined and cold, and said he had done everything he could to protect himself.

“All he was concerned about was self-preservation, not the recovery of Tati’s body or the feelings of her family and friends,” said Det Chief Insp Wayne Jones.

The court heard how he strangled her and buried her – but 14 months later tried to dig her up again as police closed in on him.

Reszpondek spent three hours digging with a spade, a fork, and his bare hands but he could not recover the body.

So, in the early hours one day in March he went to police to tell them where the body was – and claimed she had simply dropped dead of natural causes at his home.

He buried the woman in panic, he claimed. But the jury rejected his story and found that he had murdered her and then disposed of the body in a bid to get away with the crime.

The court heard how 41-year-old Mrs Rodgers, known as Tati, who lived in Gwersyllt, was missing for 14 months before her body was eventually found by police at a beauty spot at Erddig in March.

Police had set up covert cameras in the countryside and watched the defendant visit the shallow grave. He claimed he went there to pray.

But after a long operation the police changed tactics to try and spook the defendant to lead them to the body – and it worked.

Prosecuting barrister Michael Chambers, QC, said that quite simply innocent people did not bury bodies.

He then set about disposing of the body and might well have got away with it if he had not made certain fundamental errors, the prosecutor claimed. Using his credit card, which police were able to trace, he bought a spade, a large suitcase and other items used to help him bury the body.

Secondly, he buried her body in clay which had the effect of preserving the body.

Thirdly, Mr Chambers said, the defendant had recorded the approximate area of the burial site at Erddig in the memory of his car satellite navigation system in the list of his favourite locations and named it “Tt”, an abbreviation of her name.

He kept returning to that area in his car but the police did not know precisely where the body was buried.

On Thursday, March 19, this year after months of surveillance, the police made a big show of digging in the fields around that area, looking for the body of Ermatati Rodgers, with a lot of Press publicity.

“The defendant made the error of taking the bait,” Mr Chambers said.

“The defendant watched the police looking for the body from the top of a nearby slag heap, hiding in bushes, wearing camouflage clothing and using binoculars.

“What he did not know was that the police were watching him, watching them,” he said.

By Sunday afternoon, March 22, the police digging was getting perilously close to the actual field which contained the body, Mr Chambers told the jury.

“The defendant must have thought that on the Monday morning they were likely to move into the actual field and find the body.

“So, on that Sunday night, he tried to move it.

“However it was more difficult that he anticipated and after about three hours he had to stop. It was only at that stage that he went to Wrexham police station.
“He told them where they could find the body.”

Home Office pathologist Dr Brian Rodgers conducted a post mortem examination and he said that there was no sign of any natural decease which could have explained her sudden death.

But he did find bruising and fractured thyroid cartilage horns consistent with strangulation.

Mrs Rodgers met the defendant in the summer of 2004 when they both worked together at a dairy at Marchwiel near Wrexham.

The prosecution said that they formed a close relationship which continued after the defendant’s wife came over from Poland to join him in Wrexham.

It was alleged that they had a sexual relationship although that was denied throughout by Reszpondek.

At Christmas 2007 the defendant – a married father of two – returned to Poland. His family travelled by plane but he went separately by car. He, apparently, did not like flying and he would also have the use of the car in Poland.

He returned from Poland early without his family in order to work and drove back again.

The journey was more than 900 miles and involved taking the car ferry from Dunkirk to Dover. He arrived on Friday, January 4, and instead of resting after his long journey the defendant took the opportunity of his wife being away to see Mrs Rodgers.

Interviewed after the body was found in March, the defendant denied that he had murdered her.

He said that on the night of January 4 he had gone upstairs to take a shower, leaving her downstairs. The defendant said that he came back down to discover that she had collapsed and was dead.

Jeffrey Samuels, QC, put forward the theory that she may have died of sudden death syndrome. Or her crash dieting may have caused a fatal cardiac condition, he added.

LUKASZ RESZPONDEK was last year jailed for possessing indecent images on his computer.

They were found by detectives when he became their number one suspect in the murder of Ermatati Rodgers.

Officers seized his computer as part of the investigation – but also found child porn images. He was charged and jailed for 32 weeks in October of last year.

Reszpondek was ordered to register as a sex offender for 10 years.

At the time, Judge Philip Hughes also made an indefinite Sexual Offences Prevention Order which, among other things, restricts his use of the internet and particular file sharing software.

He took into account the defendant’s guilty pleas to 12 offences of making and possessing the 83 images and the fact that he had no previous convictions.

Sex tape delivered to family of Farrell's Polish girl

From: New Poland Express

The family of Polish model Alicja Bachleda-Curus is shocked by the sex scandal

A banned sex tape showing Hollywood star Colin Farrell romping with a Playboy model has been sent to the family of his girlfriend Alicja Bachleda-Curus, it emerged Wednesday.
Farrell and Alicja - who has just given birth to the star's baby son- are said to be furious over what they see as an attempt to horrify her traditional Polish family.

The film - showing Farrell and model Nicole Narain in a frantic sex session - was shot more than six years ago and has been banned since the star won an injunction in 2005.

But Polish media report that a copy of the tape has arrived at the home of Alicja's cousins in remote Zakopane, in a plain package with no clues as to who sent it.

"They are simple mountain people who are pretty conservative and this video just confirms for them what they thought all along - that Farrell is a corrupt bastard," a friend of the family told the daily paper Fakt.

"They don’t see him as a superstar - but as a person who has hurt the pride of their family," they added.

Friends say there was already tension between Alicja’s family and Farrell who has been accused of seducing the actress with his louche lifestyle.

"Her mother Lydia went to America to see her daughter and the couple’s son Henry Tadeusz, but she ignored his English name and just called him Tadeusz.

"She is determined to persuade Alicja to grow up and bring her baby back to Poland so that he can be raised away from the Hollywood," added the family friend.

Corruption is background of Polish gambling law

From: Earth Times
The Polish government, in a draft law it approved on Tuesday, is taking on the gambling industry and corruption weeks after a scandal broke involving high-ranking politicians accused of lobbying for casino owners. The draft law, which requires the approval of the parliament and president before it can take effect, would ban slot machines outside casinos and raise taxes for the industry.

The scandal saw four top politicians depart on October 7 amid reports of politicians' lobbying to block provisions in a bill that would have increased taxes the gambling industry pays to the state.

But experts warn that the country needs long-term solutions to tackle corruption in politics, and that Warsaw is focusing on the gambling problem to steer attention away from government corruption.

Anna Urbanska, chairman of Transparency International in Poland, had a favorable view of the draft law, but she said that Warsaw needs to address corruption with a permanent system that will outlast the current government and continue beyond the next elections.

"More important now is a national strategy of a couple years - a national anti-corruption strategy - where NGOs and other organizations and watchdogs would monitor every year if progress has been made," Urbanska said.

Transparency International, based in Berlin, monitors corruption worldwide.

Last month, Prime Minister Donald Tusk dismissed the head of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau amid charges the official overstepped his powers during an investigation in 2007. That same day Tusk accepted resignations from the justice minister, deputy economy minister and deputy prime minister in connection with the gambling scandal.

Those sweeping changes in the government came after the sports minister resigned and the head of Tusk's Civic Platform, Zbigniew Chlebowski, was dismissed after publication of wire-tapped conversations between Chlebowski and gambling industry leaders.

Despite these drastic moves, one analyst said, Tusk is taking a milder approach to battling corruption than one of his predecessors, former prime minister Leszek Miller, who conducted sweeping purges of his Democratic Left Alliance.

"Politicians and governments that battle corruption in a spectacular way are doomed to failure, because it's hard to prove later that they were effective," said Grzegorz Makowski, an analyst at the Institute of Public Affairs, a Warsaw-based think tank.

Tusk's strategy is different from Miller's, Makowski said, as he quickly shifted from the gambling scandal to tackling slot machines and under-age gaming.

"Tusk hasn't engaged himself in the scandal. He got rid of those closest to the scandal, but there wasn't a thorough cleaning up of his entire party," Makowski said. "He covered the problem of corruption with the problem of gambling."

Some 76 per cent of Poles say corruption is widespread in their government, according to polls by Gallup of 1,000 adults conducted in 2006 and 2007.

Poland was near the bottom of a 2008 Transparency International study of 31 European nations, with only Romania and Bulgaria scoring worse.

But the individual score for Poland in 2008 was an improvement compared to its 2007 score, and that could be due to the creation in 2006 of the Central Anti-Corruption Bureau, Transparency International said.

Poles are quite conscious of corruption, Urbanska said, which puts pressure on government to work towards transparency.

"Poles talk more about corruption and are more aware of it, which has a big influence on government reforms," Urbanska said. "That leads to our feelings that it's getting better. And maybe we don't have many successes, but something is being done."

An investigative commission, which is being led by Civic Platform, was recently set up to probe the gambling lobby scandal. Urbanska said it is not appropriate for Civic Platform to be leading the commission.

Poles are doubtful that the commission will examine everything, because there have been so many different commissions over the years that they have lost value, Urbanska said. Often, she added, they are used as a field for political battles.

Women traffickers prey on jobless in Poland

From: The News
Four people have been detained in northern Poland and charged with human trafficking and forcing women to work as prostitutes.

A dozen Polish women, who applied for a cleaning job in Germany, have been sold to escort agencies by a human trafficking ring from northern Poland.

Police detained two women and two men who recruited young women in financial straits, promising to give them employment in Germany.

As soon as they crossed the Polish border, they took away their IDs, saying they will arrange the formalities themselves. The unsuspecting women were then placed in escort agencies and forced to work as prostitutes.

“The women were intimidated and kept in a closely guarded house,” Jan Kosciuk, spokesman for police in northern Poland said. What made matters worse, they did not speak German.

The detained persons, aged from 27 to 41, face from 3 to 15 years in prison.

Women trafficking for sex is a thriving business in Europe, valued at 7 to 13 billion dollars. Over the past 10 years its profits rose by an estimated 400 percent. According to the United Nations, about half a million women in Europe are forced to work as prostitutes but the real figure may be much higher.

Criminal turns up on talent show

From: The News
The judges were not the only ones to spot talent on a popular TV show - so did the police.

It was hardly the kind of career that a 24 year old man from Bytom, southern Poland, had in mind when he decided to appear on the popular Poland’s Got Talent television show.

His singing did not impress the jury but his performance caught the eye of …. the police.

“A few weeks ago, one of our police officers watched a television show and to his surprise he saw a wanted criminal, who has been in hiding since September last year,” says a spokesman for the Bytom police force Adam Jakubiak. The man was wanted for robbery, theft and damage of property.

The watchful policeman who recognized the criminal aspiring to become a pop star received a cash prize from his superiors.

Big Poland is watching them

From: RT
A scandal is gathering steam in Poland after it was revealed security services illegally wiretap journalists and politicians. Critics say the extent of bugging in the country is an attack on human rights.

Wiretapping is making it tougher to be an investigative reporter in Poland. A few years ago, a journalist from the newspaper Wyborcza, Woiceijh Czuchnowski, found himself in the middle of a wiretapping scandal. One of his contacts was eavesdropped on by the Security Services and they also placed a bug on Woicejh’s phone.

Woiceijh Czuchnowski told RT that, “Now most of our informants are now refusing to talk on the phone. Not only secret informers, but just people who have valuable information, but prefer to keep a low profile. They’re scared, because of all the wire-tapping hysteria.”

Woiciech's case isn't isolated. The Reczpospolita newspaper claims one of its reporters – along with two other journalists – have had their phones intercepted by the police, without the proper authorization.

"If my conversations were listened to without proper court permission, if the tap was illegal, then my fundamental rights have been broken," Bogdan Rymanovski, a TVN reporter, claims.

One of the targeted journalists is suspected of blackmailing his contacts, but two others were believed to be absolutely innocent and thus had no legal right to be bugged.

In Poland, security services must first obtain permission for wire-tapping from a court. But the head of the Polish domestic security agency has admitted this system seldom works properly.

“Courts usually grant these concerns post factum. In almost 100 percent of cases,” Adam Bodnar, from the Helsinki Human Rights Foundation, says “They are not perfectly regulated and there’s a great risk to human rights. Every 2-3 months we have such affairs involving Special Services.”

According to Polish law, unless recorded conversations are to be used as evidence they must be destroyed. In this case they weren’t, and could’ve been used for other purposes.

Now Prime Minister Donald Tusk has ordered checks on the Polish security services.

Newspapers in Poland are speculating whether this could lead to the intelligence head’s early retirement.

The opposition says both men must go for what they call breaching the freedom of the press.

This latest wire-tapping case has created a political storm in Poland, even forcing the prime minister’s intervention. But human rights activists fear that, until eavesdropping is officially regulated in Poland, no journalist can work freely without being watched.

Poland at work: Ten-man gang jailed for £1m car theft crime ring

From: northantset.co.uk

Pawel Wodecki, Ricky England, Jumroz Khan, John McCulloch and, bottom row, from left, Zbigniew Nowak, Tomasz Nowak, Matthew Harrison and David Clatworthy,

The detective who helped jail an organised £1m car-crime ring from Wellingborough has warned criminals: "You're not untouchable".
Det Insp Jon Gilbert led Operation Pleat which saw a 10-man gang who made more than £500,000 by stealing high value cars and exporting them to Poland locked up for a total of 35 years.

And he said he believed the gang could be responsible for a further £1m of thefts.

DI Gilbert said: "People who previously thought they were untouchable, aren't. There are no international or national borders."

The gang, masterminded by polish national Pawel Wodecki, 29, of Hatton Park Road, Wellingborough, and crime boss Abdul Hussain, 26, of Pioneer Avenue, Burton Latimer – were jailed at Luton Crown Court on Wednesday for burglaries resulting in the theft and exportation of 23 high specification cars.

Automatic number plate recognition and mobile phone analysis were some of the methods used to prosecute the gang.

Polish brothers Zbigniew Nowak, 25, and Tomasz Nowak, 21, provided the transport links to Poland.

Gang members broke into homes in Northamptonshire, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire from July 2008 to January this year, stealing keys for high value vehicles. Laptop computers, war medals, cash and credit cards were also taken.

The men were finally arrested and charged after early morning raids involving 130 police officers on January 28..

DI Gilbert said: "We are prepared to invest significant resources – human and financial – to bring these people to justice."

Jail sentences were also handed out to Ricky England, 21, of Gordon Road, Wellingborough, Matthew Harrison, 21, of Knox Road, Wellingborough, David Clatworthy, 23, of High Street, Rushden, who would pick up the stolen cars from Junction 11 of the M1, where they were left by burglars Jumroz Khan, 30, from Bedford and John McCulloch, 28, from Bletchley.

DI Gilbert said: "We hope this case reassures the public of our ability to dismantle organised crime operations and put offenders behind bars."

The tenth gang member, Dennis Skiller, 28, of no fixed address, will be sentenced at a later date due to the ill health of his defence barrister.

Poland at work: Grave listed in accused's sat nav

From: BBC

Lukasz Reszpondek admits preventing the lawful burial of Ermatati Rodgers

A man who buried a female colleague's body on farmland put the location of the shallow grave in the "favourites" list on his sat nav, a court has heard.

Lukasz Reszpondek, 30, denies killing Indonesia-born Ermatati Rodgers, 41, whose body was found in March in a field at Erddig, near Wrexham.

Polish-born dairy worker Mr Reszpondek, a married father-of-two, admits preventing Ms Rodgers' lawful burial.

The murder trial continues at Mold Crown Court.

The court has heard that the defendant travelled to Wales in 2004 to look for work and met Ms Rodgers, who was known as Tati, at Dairycrest near Wrexham.

The prosecution alleges Mr Reszpondek strangled Ms Rodgers at his home in Rhostyllen, near Wrexham, in January 2008, before burying her body. The body was discovered 14 months later, in March this year.

Giving evidence on Tuesday, defendant said he had dug a trench exposing Ms Rodger's legs so that he could show police precisely where he had buried her, and then handed himself in to police.

The body of Ermatati Rodgers was found buried on farmland

The court heard he was also concerned that the police excavations with heavy machinery would damage the body and might destroy evidence that might help him, because he had been unable to explain how Ms Rodgers died.

He said he had told the truth in the three days of police interviews that followed as there was no reason for him to lie any more.

When asked directly if he had murdered Ms Rodgers, he replied: "No. I did not murder her. I did not see any reason why I should do that."

The court heard that one reason he said he had not alerted police when he said he found Ms Rodgers dead in his living room, was that he did not want to lose his job.

Grave location

He agreed that at the time he had been selfish, thinking of himself, not of Ms Rodgers.

He spent that night on the sofa thinking what he should do, the court was told, and in the morning took the view that it was too late to ring the police as he would have to explain why he had not contacted them earlier.

The court was told he therefore decided to hide the body.

He picked a "quiet and nice place," the jury was told, but it was not easy to dig the grave and he may have been there for five or six hours.

When asked why he had not simply abandoned the body, he said: "I had not done anything wrong to her and did not see any reason to do anything wrong to her body."

He said that another reason his did not abandon the body was that his faith as a Roman Catholic meant bodies were usually buried.

'Blocked mind'

He agreed that he had put the location of the grave in his sat nav under "favourite" locations.

The defendant said that he had "a blocked mind" and tried to carry on as normal.

The court heard Mr Reszpondek returned to the grave many times, which he claimed was to pray.

Earlier on Tuesday, Mr Reszpondek told the jury he had not had a sexual relationship with Ms Rodgers.

He said on one occasion she had kissed him but he said he made it clear he did not want a relationship.

He admitted they could have been in bed together once after a party at his landlord's house but he said they never had sexual intercourse.

Asked about his semen found on Ms Rodgers's mattress, he said it got there when he slept in her bed with his wife when they were staying with Ms Rodgers while searching for a family home.

He said he moved to the UK looking for a normal life and he missed his wife until she joined him.

Poland at work: Polish basketball star says he was mistaken for drug dealer

From: OC Register

Michael Jordon enjoys the same type of celebrety as Jerry Reschke, a picture of whom, unfortunately, could not be found

A Polish American basketball star wants Newport Beach to pay for plastic surgery he says is needed for injuries suffered when police mistook him for a drug dealer and forcibly drew blood from his arm.

Jerry Reschke, 56, says he was the victim of a rear-end traffic accident in 2007 and that his "dazed and confused" condition led to a "demeaning and demanding line of questions" about selling or possessing drugs.

The Laguna Beach resident has no criminal record in Orange County, according to court records.

Reschke "is a law-abiding citizen who is well-known in his home country and parts of Europe as a basketball star, and is easily recognized in Poland and other parts of Europe as such, not unlike the manner in which Michael Jordan is recognized in the United States," says a legal claim filed against the city Oct. 2.

Reschke, according to the claim, "remembers being unable to coherently respond to questions and recalls that he was dazed and confused at the scene – notwithstanding his excellent physical condition as a world-class athlete."

That resulted in the officer demanding that a blood sample be taken, an order Reschke says he resisted in vain. Reschke "squirmed as best he could and as much as he dared when confronted with a needle placed in proximity to his arm, and fought to avoid giving blood," the claim says.

While the results of any blood test were never provided, Reschke "knows the blood sample came out 'clean,' since he has never used drugs in his life, nor has he ever bought or sold drugs," the claim says.

Reschke "has a permanent hernia or hematoma at the site where the needle was inserted … as a result of his squirming and fighting," says the claim, which is a required precursor to a lawsuit.

Neither Reschke nor his attorney could be reached for comment, and city officials did not have an immediate comment.

The claim seeks $5,000 for surgery to address the injury, and says Reschke "will make himself available at any time for interview, deposition, lie detector test, medical examination or anything else to further or assist the city in the investigation and processing of this claim."

Film about anti-Semitism in Poland sparks uproar

From: JPost
A film about the rise of anti-Semitic movements in Poland has recently been met with censure by members of the country's parliament and public.

Hitler's Daughter, directed by Aro Korol and produced by Korol's London-based Awesome Industry, focuses on right-wing radio station Radio Maryja, as well as its founder, Tadeusz Rydzyk, a Roman Catholic priest.

"Father Rydzyk sees no contradiction between wearing a collar and spreading his politics via satellite," Korol wrote on the film's Web site, hitlersdaughtermovie.com. "One of Radio Maryja's many anti-Semitic commentaries suggested that Jews were sabotaging the struggle of democracy in Ukraine and Belarus. The station also made very nasty, anti-Semitic remarks accusing Jews of making a business of Holocaust reparation payments."

Hitler's Daughter has caused a media frenzy in Poland, and Korol has received death threats.

Marek Jurek, a former speaker in the Polish parliament now representing the Right of the Republic party, called on Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski to intervene, saying that "[such a film] should not only be met with severe political reaction, but also legal steps, to prevent insults addressed at Polish institutions to an international audience."

Jurek's comments were based on a four-minute clip of Hitler's Daughter available on the Internet. The film will be officially released in the fall of 2010.

"I find it deeply worrying that Polish politicians have taken such measures against me and that my film has been subject to such harsh judgment," Korol said in a statement. "I consider it essential to expose the anti-Semitic machinations of organizations in a country where racial and religious tolerance should be universal and unchallenged. My hope is that I can now produce and finalize this film within the next 10 months."

Man Tries to Rob Bank With a Spoon, Gets Laughed At

From: short News

Everyone in the bank dived for cover as the would-be robber charged in bellowing that this was a stickup

Police are hunting for a ginger-haired man who attempted to hold up a Lublin bank armed with a spoon.

Everyone in the bank dived for cover as the would-be robber charged in bellowing that this was a stickup. It was quickly realised that his weapon was a spoon, not a gun, and he was laughed out of the bank.

"It's a weird one but he broke the law and we want to find him," said Renata Laszczka-Rusek, a spokesperson for police.

Three Polish border guards killed in chopper crash

From: Reuters

The wreckage of a border-guard helicopter that disappeared last night with three officers on board was discovered on Sunday morning in Belarus some 200 metres from the Polish border

Three Polish border guards were killed when their helicopter crashed on the Belarussian side of the border, fire-brigade rescuers said on Sunday.

"The wreckage of a border-guard helicopter that disappeared last night with three officers on board was discovered on Sunday morning in Belarus some 200 metres (yards) from the (Polish) border," PAP news agency reported regional fire-brigade spokesman Marcin Janowski as saying.

PAP said the cause of the accident, which occurred during a routine patrol of the border in the north-eastern corner of Poland, was not immediately known.

Why are we paying child benefit in Poland?

From: Telegraph
Here's a puzzle for you: what are we doing paying benefits for children who do not live in Britain, and may have never visited our shores? The Treasury says it cannot put a figure on the amount, but the best guess is that about £20 million in child benefit was coughed up by British taxpayers last year to support almost 38,000 children living in Poland.

It's hard to blame people who come to work in Britain for claiming benefits for children they have left behind. In Poland, for example, the government pays only a quarter of the amount offered by the Treasury. But we do criticise our Government. Children living elsewhere in the European Union qualify for benefits from those governments, just as children living in Britain get benefits at British levels. It makes no sense to hand our taxpayers' money to Poles living in Poland.

The Treasury blames the European Union, whose rules derive from a patently false belief that all member economies are at the same level. They are not; all the regulations do is encourage people from poorer EU countries to go and work in richer ones, such as the UK, which will pay more generous benefits to their children back home. The result is irrational and unjust – and yet another issue on which the Government should stand up to the EU, and refuse to abide by its ridiculous diktats.