Poland News in few days

Aug. 31, 2014

European Union leaders name Poland's Prime Min Donald Tusk to replace Herman Van Rompuy as the president of the European Council; represents first time bloc has nominated an Eastern European to the post.

Aug. 26, 2014

Warsaw journal; most popular Polish sports tend to avoid physical contact, but football team Warsaw Eagles are cultivating a crowd that enjoys the rougher stuff; Polish American Football League is network of more than 70 teams in 36 cities across Poland drawing tens of thousands of fans.

Jul. 25, 2014

European Court of Human Rights rules that Poland violated rights of terrorism suspects Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri by allowing their transfer to secret Central Intelligence Agency in Poland, where they were tortured.

Jun. 26, 2014

Polish Parliament votes to retain embattled government of Prime Min Donald Tusk, despite an embarrassing scandal involving several top officials whose private, often profane conversations in upscale Warsaw restaurants had been bugged for more than a year.

Jun. 24, 2014

Polish Prime Min Donald Tusk says that he will not dismiss any of the ministers whose bluntly politically and occasionally profane conversations were caught on tape, unless they are caught engaging in illegal behavior; Tusk says government will focus on uncovering who had made the recordings.

Jun. 23, 2014

Polish Foreign Min Radoslaw Sikorski is heard in secretly recorded conversation describing his country's security relationship with United States as 'worth nothing' and 'even harmful,' along with more vulgar terms; deepening scandal over leaked conversations has threatened survival of Prime Min Donal Tusk's center-right government.

Jun. 20, 2014

Polish Prime Min Donald Tusk warns he might be forced to call early elections if scandal over secretly taped conversations of senior government officials continues to escalate.

Jun. 17, 2014

Tapes of high-level Polish officials discussing what seem to be unsavory deals are threatening careers of some of country's most prominent leaders and perhaps even survival of current government; transcripts of recordings were published by newspaper Wprost; Prime Min Donald Tusk criticizes recordings, describing them as attempt at coup d'etat.

Jun. 11, 2014

Foreign ministers of Russia, Poland and Germany signal progress toward a cease-fire in Ukraine, even as up to 40 separatists are reported to have been killed in fierce battle in the east of the country.

Jun. 4, 2014

Pres Obama flies to Poland to unveil $1 billion security plan intended to demonstrate the United States' commitment to stand with Central and Eastern Europe against Russian aggression; visit arrives at tense time in region, with nerves still rattled by crisis in neighboring Ukraine.

Jun. 3, 2014

Pres Obama will find in his visit to Poland that the intensity of its love affair with the United States has diminished; Poland has shifted from a Washington-centric focus to an increasingly vigorous engagement in the European Union, although it is still a warm haven of pro-American sentiments.

Jun. 2, 2014

Pres Obama leaves for trip to Poland, Belgium and France cautiously optimistic that Ukraine's election of pro-European Pres Petro O Poroshenko and Russia's pullback of troops from border may have begun to diffuse crisis there; analysts warn that Russia is still vying for power in region, suggestion that looms over possibility of unplanned meeting between Obama and Russian Pres Vladimir V Putin in Europe.

May. 31, 2014

Polish Pres Bronislaw Komorowski, former Pres Aleksander Kwasniewski and former Pres Lech Walesa attend funeral mass for Gen Wojciech Jaruzelski, one of the most polarizing figures in modern Polish history.

Apr. 19, 2014

United States plans to carry out small ground-force exercises in Poland and Estonia; exercises are an attempt to reassure NATO's Eastern European members worried about Russia's military operations in and near Ukraine.

Mar. 30, 2014

Illegal mining continues in Poland's Lower Silesia region despite fact that mines were shuttered in the late 1990s because they had become dangerous and unprofitable; activists estimate that as many as 3,000 miners continue to dig illegally and by night, despite perilous conditions, driven by high demand on the black market in country that continues to derive more than 88 percent of its electricity from coal power. (http://topics.nytimes.com)