The leader of the UK Independence party (UKIP) has been challenged to a duel by a Polish aristocrat who grew up in Great Britain.

Jan Żyliński stated in a short film published on youtube that he has ”had enough of the discrimination against Polish people in this country.

”The most idiotic example I have heard of has been Mr. Nigel Farage blaming migrants for traffic jams on the M40.”

Drawing his father’s sabre, Żyliński clarified that he would like to ”resolve this matter in the way that an 18th century Polish aristocrat and an English gentleman would traditionally do.”

The nettled nobleman suggested London’s Hyde Park as a suitable location for the duel.

Żyliński noted that if Farage’s sword is ”a little bit rusty,” the two could meet for a ”duel of words” in a TV studio in the run-up to the 7 May general election.

The challenger grew up in the UK as his family was compelled to live in exile owing to the installation of a Moscow-backed communist regime in Poland following World War II.

After making a successful career as a businessmen, he built a replica of his family’s Polish palace (which did not survice the communist era) in the London district of Ealing.

Police data shows that a large majority of bicycles are taken from sheds and cellars.

Around 20,000 bicycles are stolen in Poland every year, police data shows, with around 70 percent of those taken from sheds and cellars.

“Bicycle owners should use a bicycle chain with a padlock, or a special mechanism, so that they can protect their two-wheelers, especially when leaving them on the street,” said police spokesperson Iwona Kornicz.
Authorities add that “Every police station can engrave a unique number into the bicycle frame or other location. The owner and bicycle are then placed in a police database.”

Thieves of bicycles valued at more than PLN 430 (EUR 106) can face up top five years in prison, while other charges like burglary, could double jail time.

President Bronisław Komorowski told Ukrainian MPs on Thursday that Poland will support Ukraine with its European aspirations.

Speaking to the Verkhovna Rada, Komorowski said that “Poland holds out its hand not just due to political will, but because of our [bilateral] understanding of historical processes which encourage to regard Ukraine as an equal and important partner and neighbour”.

“This is not about the past, but rather about the future of Polish-Ukrainian relations,” Komorowski added.
The comments were made by Poland’s head of state in a speech which was attended by Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko as well as Prime Minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.

President Komorowski stressed the historical ties linking Poles and Ukrainians, recalling also the difficult and even tragic moments between both nations, especially during World War II.

“Let us remember that whenever Poles and Ukrainians turned against each other, this always played into the hands of some third party which lurked on our independence and freedom,” Komorowski told MPs.

Komorowski voiced hope that the present dialogue between Poland and Ukraine will not be disrupted by former historical feuds, speaking with respect of the sacrifice of Ukrainian people have made in the ongoing conflict in the Donbas.

“Today, when the sons of Ukraine are dying in the east of their country in the defense of national independence, they are also defending Europe,” Komorowski underlined.

“They are defending it against the return of imperial thinking, against policies that pose a threat to the freedom of all Europeans,” he added.

Komorowski added that the doors of the European Union should always remain open for Ukraine. At the same time, he encouraged Ukrainian authorities for a bolder approach towards radical reforms.

Five years after the crash, Warsaw city councillors have agreed on the site where the monument to the victims of the Smolensk catastrophe will be situated.

The memorial will be placed on the edge of Piłsudski Square on the corner of Trębacka and Focha streets, also in close proximity to the Presidential Palace on Krakowskie Przedmieście in Warsaw’s downtown.

The site was previously proposed by Warsaw mayor Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz, who called the extraordinary councillor’s session to decide on where the monument should be placed.

In a vote, 30 councillors voted for the site, while 22 voted against while two abstained.

The monument itself is to be decided on through a competition.

The move come as President Bronisław Komorowski met earlier this year with representatives of families affected by the Smolensk catastrophe, which killed 96 people, including President Lech Kaczyński, his wife, and other high-ranking Poles on 10 April 2010.

However, not everyone is pleased with the location, arguing that the monument should stand on Krakowskie Przedmieście itself, although city conservators have discounted such an option.

Police have reported that between Good Friday and the end of Easter Monday, 23 people died in car accidents on Polish roads, down from 33 in 2014.

In a total of 217 accidents, 23 people died and 291 were injured, with Police also stopping 1,118 drunk drivers.
In 2014, meanwhile, there were 293 accidents in which 33 people died, with police stopping 1,324 drivers under the influence of alcohol.

Dawid Marciniak from Police HQ in Warsaw told Polish Radio that the bad weather was probably a major factor in the lower number of accidents, as drivers generally took more care on the roads.

According to Police statistics, Easter Monday was the most tragic of all, with 32 accidents causing seven deaths.

An expert has warned that Poland’s ageing gas infrastructure is approaching the end of its service date and will be unable to cope with future increases in demand.

“The majority of the network was built under the Polish People’s Republic [communist Poland,” Dominik Smyrgała, director of postgraduate studies in energy security at the Collegium Civitas university, told Newseria Biznes.

“We have to lay down new gas pipes, or at the very least, replace those which already exist as their service life is ending. As a result of which they are going to be ever more frequently suffering from problems.”

Smyrgała was referring specifically to the network operated by the Polish Gas Company, the major gas distributor in Poland which is responsible for 170,000 km of gas pipes.

According to the expert, over half of these pipes are at least twenty years old, of which 49,000 km of the infrastructure is over 25 years old.

However Smyrgała pointed out that these investments will not be cheap, explaining “they will cost a lot of money, which could be tens or hundreds of millions of złoty, potentially even billions if the entire infrastructure is replaced.”
He added that the Polish Gas Company may have problems in raising the money as the tariffs it can charge have to be approved by a regulatory agency which usually opposes increases.

A meeting billed in April of the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Issues, which was set up to look into the countries’ joint history and address challenging areas of bilateral relations, has been postponed indefinitely.

The announcement was made by former foreign minister and co-chair of the Group, Adam Daniel Rotfeld, who underlined that the decision was taken by both himself and his Russian opposite number Anatoly Torkunov.
The meeting was expected to be held on 9-11 April, although the date clashes with the fifth anniversary of the Smolensk catastrophe on 10 April, which killed President Lech Kaczynski and 95 other top-ranking Poles on their way to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the Katyn Massacre.

“It is certain that the meeting will not go ahead on 10 April,” Rotfeld told the PAP news agency, adding that “we have not decided upon a future date when the meeting may take place”.

Rotfeld underlined that the meeting of the Group was expected to be routine and address continuing archival research on the countries’ bilateral history.

“In the current atmosphere, any discussions on this issue would be something totally abstract, if not absurd,” Rotfeld said, adding that “we came to the conclusion that we will present our research at a moment when the atmosphere will be calmer”.

This is the fourth time the meeting of the Polish-Russian Group for Difficult Issues has been postponed. “It was supposed to take place in June last year, but it was then moved back three times before now,” Rotfeld added.

A new report released on Monday by the ‘Perspektywy’ Education Foundation shows that women account for 37 percent of the student body enrolled at Poland’s technical universities.

The report, entitled “Women at Technical Universities 2015”, reveals that since the 2007/8 academic year, the number of women opting for technical sutides has risen from 30.7 percent to 37 percent.

In the same period, the number of women rising by over 20,000 while the number of men choosing technical studies has dropped by over 16,000.

“The drop [in the number of men] was caused by the scrapping of compulsory military service and a demographic drop for this age group,” comment the authors of the report.

The highest percentage of women – 51.7 percent – can be found at the Kazimierz Pulaski University of Technology and Humanities in Radom, with an even 50 percent of students being women at the University of Bielsko-Biała.

However, a number of subject areas – mostly purely technical, such as electrical engineering – are still lacking in women students. The report finds that at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering at the Silesian University of Technology, for example, only 4.32 percent of the student body are women.

Mechanics, electronics, electrical engineering and automatics are not popular with female students, although the report shows that women accounted for 13.44 percent of IT studies in Poland in the previous academic year.

However, in the 2014/15 academic year the report shows that 39 percent of all doctorate students at technical universities are women, a total of 2,892 students.

The “Women at Technical Universities 2015” report was drafted on the basis of data from the GUS Central Statistical Office as well as research undertaken by the ‘Perspektywy’ Education Foundation.

Polish-born sportsman Babatunde Aiyegbusi has signed a contract with the Minnesota Vikings, joining the National Football League, the highest level of American football.

According to the Vikings, „Aiyegbusi went from obtaining a visa to travel to the United States to signing an NFL contract in a seven-day span”.

Born in Oleśnica, Lower Silesia, to a Polish mother and a Nigerian father, Aiyegbusi initially seemed destined for a career as a professional basketballer with his imposing height of six foot nine.

However, after being repeatedly booked for fouling, in 2005 he decided to switch to a less dainty sport.
He left basketball side Słąsk Wrocław, and in 2007 won his first cap for American football team Giants Wrocław.

In 2014 he joined German side the Dresden Monarchs, helping the tean reach the semi-finals of the German league. Although signed to play for Warsaw Eagles in December 2014, he was soon invited for a tryout by Minnesota Vikings.

The 26-year-old has now become the fifth Polish-born player to join an NFL team.

„Feeling stoked”, the rising star commented on his Facebook profile.