Poland

WARSAW, Poland -- A contentious report that accuses 14 European nations of being complicit in more than 1,200 CIA flights that were used to shuttle terrorist suspects to secret prisons around the world was adopted yesterday by the European Parliament. The vote in Strasbourg, France, was 382-256, with 74 abstentions. Parliamentarians who supported the resolution said the report exposed how European governments had turned a blind eye to human rights violations. Many of those who voted against it said the 76-page report was short on hard evidence and seemed to display an anti-American bias.

ROME -- As President Bush received an endorsement yesterday in Poland for placing missile interceptors there, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin presented a second alternative in two days for where the U.S. should install the missile-defense system. The Russian president, speaking at a news conference at the end of Group of Eight summit, said the interceptors could be located in Turkey, or perhaps in Iraq or at sea. A day earlier, he caught U.S. officials by surprise in suggesting that an existing Russian-run radar system in Azerbaijan be used to protect Europe from a possible attack by Iran.

WARSAW, Poland -- A national drama that embarrassed the Roman Catholic Church and roused Cold War memories ended in a spectacle yesterday when the new archbishop of Warsaw resigned before his Inauguration Mass after admitting that he collaborated with Communist secret police decades ago. The Vatican quickly accepted the resignation of the Most Rev. Stanislaw Wielgus, who waited until hours before the ceremony in St. John's Cathedral before capitulating to...

THE EXHIBITION of baroque art from Poland at the Walters Art Gallery is a major artistic, cultural, diplomatic and political event.Some 35 Polish museums lent 150 works for the exhibit that coincides with Poland's admission into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). East meets West; in Poland, it always did.The exhibition, "Land of the Winged Horsemen, Art in Poland, 1572-1764," goes on to four museums in this country and then to Warsaw in the summer of 2000. This is its East Coast venue.

JERUSALEM -- After spending World War II in Soviet work camps in Siberia and Uzbekistan, Jack H. Pechter and his family returned to their native Poland to find that all his parents' siblings were among the millions of Jews killed under the Nazis.Pechter believes the power of hate can be diminished only through education. So, the 65-year-old Baltimorean, who is an East Coast real estate magnate, has become the largest private donor to the new Yad Vashem International School for Holocaust Studies.

GDANSK, Poland -- Lech Walesa, legendary hero of the anti-Communist Solidarity movement, former president of Poland and winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, is sitting at his big wooden desk pretending to read a newspaper.He flips through the pages and rattles them impatiently. He sips his coffee, then rattles the paper again. Head down, eyebrows raised, he barely notices his visitors. Who has time to notice such things? Not Walesa, a busy man on the go.But on this recent gloomy day, Lech Walesa is going nowhere.

Bishop Alfred L. Abramowicz, 80, known as an international advocate for the Polish Catholic community, died Sunday of cancer in Chicago. He led the Catholic League for Religious Assistance to Poland for 35 years and was known for his tireless work for the Church in Poland while that country was under communist rule.Enrique Alferez, 98, an artist who gained almost as much fame for his travels with Pancho Villa as for his art deco sculptures that decorate New Orleans, died in New Orleans on Monday.

It is June 1983, time of the second papal pilgrimage to Poland. Tensions between the government and the Solidarity labor union are at their height. At a table in the Krakow archbishop's residence, a group of cardinals and Vatican officials are watching their soup get cold as they wait for a tardy Pope John Paul II.Finally, the pontiff breezes in, takes a few spoonfuls of soup, then hears a group of students calling to him from outside."

Here is a warrior you would not want to meet in battle. His chest, arms and head are protected by a suit of steel and brass armor, which would be enough to keep most of us at a safe distance. What's really intimidating about his martial wardrobe, though, is the presence of two eagle-feather-covered wings extending from the back of his armor and reaching high into the sky. As if that weren't sufficiently scary, a leopard skin is draped across his metal chest.This "winged hussar armor," as it's known, was worn by the Polish cavalry riding into battle in the late 17th century.

As many as 65 killed when gasoline truck explodes in PakistanADDA RODU SULTAN, Pakistan -- An overturned truck loaded with gasoline exploded in Pakistan yesterday as dozens of people were collecting fuel from the leaking tanker. As many as 65 people were killed and at least 75 others were injured, police said.Fire spread rapidly through the town of Adda Rodu Sultan in eastern Punjab province, engulfing shops and homes, and sending giant plumes of smoke and flames into the sky."People caught in that inferno were wailing and crying but none of us could help," said Sabir Hussain, a resident of the area.

MAREK EDELMAN, 90 Leader of 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt Marek Edelman, the last surviving leader of the ill-fated 1943 Warsaw ghetto revolt against the Nazis, died Friday of old age in Warsaw. Mr. Edelman also fought the Nazis in the Warsaw Uprising in 1944. And for decades he fought communism in Poland. The uprising at the Warsaw ghetto was the first act of large-scale armed civilian resistance against the Germans in occupied Poland during World War II. The Nazis in November 1940 crammed some 460,000 Jews from the city and from across Poland in inhuman conditions in the ghetto.

Mildred Poland Billig Graveside services were held in Florida on Sunday August 30. The family will receive visitors at 2403 Still Forest Road, 21208 on Tuesday from 6 to 9 P.M. Contributions to the charity of your choice.

On March 23, 2009, Diane Mary aniel Contributions may be made in memory of Diane to Hospice of the Valley Hospice House in Poland, Ohio, 9303 Sharrot Road, 44514

Obama report to detail Blagojevich contacts WASHINGTON: President-elect Barack Obama will offer details this week about his transition staff's contact with Illinois Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich, who is facing federal charges of plotting to sell Obama's vacated Senate seat for cash or a job. One Democratic official said yesterday that an internal report Obama ordered would be released no later than tomorrow. The official, who requested anonymity because the report is not yet public, said transition aides were eager to make public their findings about discussions with Blagojevich's office and move past the distraction of the scandal.

Edwards found 'refuge' in her health care work 3 NEW YORK: Elizabeth Edwards said yesterday that her passion for reforming the nation's health care system has been "a great refuge" for her during the recent turmoil over her husband's extramarital affair. Edwards, who has incurable breast cancer, also said medical tests this week showed that her condition hadn't worsened since March 2007, when she and her husband, former Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, announced her cancer had returned and spread to her bones.

BRONISLAW GEREMEK , 76 Ex-d issident, foreign minister Bronislaw Geremek - a key figure in the Solidarity trade union that helped topple communism and, later, Poland's foreign minister - was killed in a car accident yesterday, police said. Mr. Geremek was driving a Mercedes that collided head-on with a van yesterday afternoon near the western Polish village of Miedzichowo, said Hanna Wachowiak, a regional police spokeswoman. The activist-turned-politician had been serving as a member of European Parliament since being elected in 2004.

Catherine Myers, a retired paint laboratory technician whom Nazi soldiers forced to work at a labor camp during World War II, died of heart disease in her sleep Monday at Locust Lodge in Riviera Beach. The Pasadena resident was 77. Born Katarzyna Prokopczyk, she was raised in a village about 25 miles outside Pinsk, Poland. She lived in a log cabin lighted by a kerosene lamp and heated by a wood stove. By the time she was 8, she was learning Russian in her village school as Soviet soldiers were beginning to occupy Poland.

Zbigniew Adam Piatek, a Polish freedom fighter who fought the Nazis during World War II and the communists who swept into Poland in the late 1940s, before leaving his native country and settling in the West, died of sepsis Friday at Good Samaritan Hospital. The Abingdon resident was 80. Mr. Piatek, who was born and raised in Zdunska Wola, Poland, was a teenager when he joined the Polish underground during World War II. "It was called the Home Army in English and AK - Armia Krajowa - in Polish.

It was 1986, and Richard Hollander was emotionally spent after cleaning out the home of his parents, who had died suddenly in an automobile accident a few weeks before. He pulled a nondescript suitcase out of a crawl space and almost threw it on the trash heap with the other luggage. But he felt that there was something inside and opened it. Inside were row after neat row of envelopes, along with his father's Polish passport and other documents. Each envelope contained a letter written in words he could not understand, Polish and German.

ROME -- As President Bush received an endorsement yesterday in Poland for placing missile interceptors there, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin presented a second alternative in two days for where the U.S. should install the missile-defense system. The Russian president, speaking at a news conference at the end of Group of Eight summit, said the interceptors could be located in Turkey, or perhaps in Iraq or at sea. A day earlier, he caught U.S. officials by surprise in suggesting that an existing Russian-run radar system in Azerbaijan be used to protect Europe from a possible attack by Iran.