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Sir Elton John will be honoured with a Medal of Gratitude from Poland for his contribution to bringing down the Communist regime, it has emerged... He will be presented with the medal by former president and trade union leader Lech Walesa, whom he visited in 1984. The singer is believed to have shared a “morale-boosting” bottle of champagne in Mr Walesa’s flat, with Sir Elton opening praising his union Solidarity during a show. Magdalena Charkin-Jaszcza, of the European Solidarity Centre (ESC) in Gdansk, told a newspaper Sir Elton gave Polish people help in a difficult time.... “Elton John came here...

The European Parliament on Wednesday (13 June) approved draft laws that would strongly increase Brussels' power over eurozone countries' budgets. But they tempered the previously austere proposals with measures for growth, debt redemption and democratic scrutiny. "This is the core of a fiscal union," said Austrian MEP and socialist leader Hannes Swoboda. "This is the first time that there is a structural solution [to the eurozone crisis] on the table," said Liberal leader Guy Verhofstadt. His Green counterpart Daniel Cohn-Bendit called it a "milestone" for the strength of agreement among MEPs. The pair of laws—also known as the two-pack—is among...

Tensions were raised ahead of the European Championship match at the National Stadium as thousands of Russian fans marched to mark their national day. Tear gas, rubber bullets and water cannon were used to disperse fans at the end of the march. Riot police were also seen dragging people off as Polish fans chanted: ‘Russia whores, Russia whores’ and ‘Hit the red trash with a hammer, with a sickle’.

Poland produced a stirring performance in Warsaw to hold Russia to a draw and strengthen their hopes of qualifying for the knockout stages. The co-hosts came from behind during a thrilling second half, captain Jakub Blaszczykowski scoring the equaliser with a thunderous left-foot shot. Russia had taken the lead after 37 minutes, when Alan Dzagoev turned in Andrey Arshavin's curling free-kick. Although both teams had chances to win the game, the spoils were shared. The result leaves Group A wide open, with all four teams still mathematically able to qualify for the quarter-finals after a night of high drama...

A march ahead of the match by thousands of Russian fans to mark their national day had to be halted and some missiles were thrown. Police say they arrested at least 120 people and that 10 people were injured.A heavy police presence was in evidence around the stadium after the match as further clashes broke out.... Controversial historyRussia annexed most of Poland in the 19th Century and ruled it for more than 100 years. The Soviet Union dominated it during the Cold War, after World War II. The conservative Polish opposition condemned the march as a provocation, but it was...

Police in the Polish capital Warsaw are on full alert as Russia fans marched through the city centre in a celebration of Russian independence day. Poland and Russia were drawn together in the European Championships group stage.

SKIERNIEWICE, Poland -- Chinese companies have wowed the world with superhighways, high-speed trains and snazzy airports, all built seemingly overnight. Yet a modest highway through Polish potato fields proved to be too much for one of China's biggest builders. The A2 highway between Warsaw and Berlin was supposed to be an opportunity for Chinese construction to shine on a European stage after years of megaprojects at home and in the developing world. Poland badly wanted the project completed before the European soccer championships starting June 8, which Poland is hosting for the first time with Ukraine. Instead, a key 30-mile...

Press Secretary Jay Carney said “the President will not be apologizing. The fact of the matter is that the most infamous of the death camps—Auschwitz, for one—were located in Poland. These camps may have been run by the Nazis, but the Polish Government did nothing to stop them. It’s long past the time that they should have acknowledged their role in that war atrocity.” if you missed any of this week's other semi-news posts you can find them at... http://constitutionclub.org/2012/06/03/semi-news-a-satire-of-recent-news-22/

Last week, President Barack Obama rejected the world's most powerful living symbol of anti-communism, anti-Sovietism, and victory in the Cold War. The White House declined to have Lech Walesa stand in for the late Jan Karski, who posthumously received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Our president spurned Walesa, first president of free Poland, who had once risked everything to courageously join Ronald Reagan and Pope John Paul II in keeping Solidarity alive in Poland. Like Reagan and John Paul II, Walesa knew that Solidarity could be the wedge to split the Communist Bloc from top to bottom, as it indeed...

The Obama administration, in its never-ending quest to embarrass itself and America, has insulted one of the pivotal figures in ending Communism in Europe, Lech Walesa: According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no. Administration officials told the Journal that Walesa is too “political.” A man who was...

Leadership: The perils of reading scripts written by hacks from teleprompters were shown by a president who has a habit of insulting and betraying allies. He has succeeded in making his vice president look eloquent. Maybe President Obama was just tired from campaigning for re-election in all 57 states where he said he campaigned in 2008. But on Tuesday, while presenting World War II Polish resistance hero Jan Karski with a posthumous Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest American honor that can be given a civilian, he made a reference to "Polish death camps." The president, so good at apologizing...

Some of Barack Obama's best friends are Jews. He says so himself. (Who knew?) The Poles, not so much. Mr. Obama is afflicted with golden tongue disease (croesus tungitus, but not in medical dictionaries), which is common to those with an eloquent tongue, particularly if the tongue is forked and bleeds around the edges. The tongue is sometimes off and running before the brain is fully engaged. In the president's case, the disease is probably terminal. The president and his croesus tungitus have had a rough week. First he offended the Polish government with a reference to "Polish death camps"...

Lech Walesa was once a trade-union activist. He was often arrested for speaking his mind against Communist oppression behind the Iron Curtain in Poland and for defying the Soviet Union. He was an electrician who, with no higher education, led one of the most profound freedom movements of the 20th century — Solidarity. He became president of Poland and swept in reforms, pushing the Soviet Union out of his homeland and moving the country toward a free-market economy and individual liberty. And President Obama doesn’t want him to set foot in the White House.

WARSAW, Poland (AP) — President Barack Obama has written a letter to the Polish president expressing "regret" for an inadvertent verbal gaffe that caused a storm of controversy in Poland this week. Obama on Tuesday used the expression "a Polish death camp" while honoring a Polish World War II resistance hero rather than wording that would have made clear that he meant a death camp that Nazi Germany operated on Polish soil during its wartime occupation of Poland.

President Obama wrote a letter to the president of Poland in which he expressed regret for his words during the Medal of Freedom ceremony in which he referred to World War II-era “Polish death camp” instead of a Nazi death camp in Germany-occupied Poland. “In referring to ‘a Polish death camp’ rather than ‘a Nazi death camp in German-occupied Poland,’ I inadvertently used a phrase that has caused many Poles anguish over the years and that Poland has rightly campaigned to eliminate from public discourse around the world,” President Obama wrote. “I regret the error and agree that this moment...

According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Polish officials requested that Walesa accept the Medal of Freedom on behalf of Jan Karski, a member of the Polish Underground during World War II who was being honored posthumously this week. The request makes sense. Walesa and Karski shared a burning desire to rid Poland of tyrannical subjugation. But President Obama said no. Administration officials told the Journal that Walesa is too "political." A man who was arrested by Soviet officials for dissenting against the government for being "political" is being shunned by the United States of America for the same reason 30...

How can we ever be surprised at anything that comes out of the mouth of Barack Obama (or whatever his name is)? Yet, his latest, gaffe almost leaves me speechless. Almost. It was at a ceremony at the White House on Tuesday where Obama was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom to the late Jan Karski, a Polish officer of the resistance during World War II who gave early eyewitness reports of Nazi Germany's genocide of European Jews. Obama said this, “For years, Jan Karski’s students at Georgetown University knew he was a great professor; what they didn't realize was...

Picture a scenario, where members of your family helped a new neighbor establish a household. Just after helping that neighbor, your family experienced a long illness which caused your entire family to be quarantined and your home foreclosed upon. Then, after several years, you were finally able to return home, plant a garden, and rebuild your family’s life. Just as your household was beginning to prosper again, a heavily armed neighbor named John Wayne Gacy took over your front yard. Instead of using his own house and its crawl space to commit his horrific crimes, he used your yard and...

Poland had earlier insisted that Washington must do more than simply express the "regret" offered by another White House spokesman late on Tuesday, hours after Obama's use of words deemed offensive by Warsaw.... Poland's Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Obama's words had hurt all Poles and he expected more from Washington than just regret. "I am convinced that our American friends can today allow themselves a stronger reaction than a simple expression of regret from the White House spokesman -- a reaction more inclined to eliminate once and for all these kinds of errors," Tusk told reporters in Warsaw. "Today,...