CORDOBA, Spain, Oct 8, 2008 (AFP) - EU measures to cut CO2 emissions must be changed given the global financial crisis as nations cannot now afford higher energy, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said Wednesday during a visit to Spain.

WARSAW, Oct 7, 2008 (AFP) - Poland is calling for a more gradual introduction of EU measures to slash CO2 emissions by 2020, a government spokesman said Tuesday.

The country, which joined the EU in 2004, supports the measures but would prefer to see them implemented more slowly to protect its economy, Environment Ministry spokesman Michal Milewski told AFP.

WARSAW, Oct 7, 2008 (AFP) - With sales suffering due to the global financial crisis, automaker Opel, the German arm of General Motors (GM), has temporarily halted production at a Polish plant based in Gliwice, a spokesman for GM Poland said Tuesday.

WARSAW, Oct 7, 2008 (AFP) - Poland is calling for a more gradual introduction of EU measures to slash CO2 emissions, a government spokesman said Tuesday.

'We are not blocking the EU plan, in fact we fully support it,' Polish Environment Ministry spokesman Michal Milewski told AFP.

DUBLIN, Oct 5, 2008 (AFP) - 'It's hard at the moment,' said builder Mariusz Makula, pulling on a cigarette as he considers how the credit crunch has forced many Poles who flocked to Ireland during its economic boom to go home.

DIWANIYAH, Iraq, Oct 4, 2008 (AFP) - Poland ended its Iraq mission at a formal ceremony in the Shiite province of Diwaniyah on Saturday and said it will pull its 900 troops out of the country by the end of the month.

DIWANIYAH, Iraq, Oct 4, 2008 (AFP) - Poland formally ended its Iraq mission in the Shiite province of Diwaniyah on Saturday leaving US troops to take their place, as an Iraqi commander warned insurgency could re-emerge.

WARSAW, Oct 3, 2008 (AFP) - Thousands of Polish shipyard workers threatened with joblosses marched in the streets of the Polish Baltic Sea port city of Szczecin Friday as the European Commission mulled the fate of two Polish shipyards.

PESHAWAR, Pakistan, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) - Taliban militants active in northwestern Pakistan are holding a Polish engineer who was kidnapped at the weekend, a militant spokesman said Thursday.

The Pole, identified as Piotr Stanczak, was kidnapped by gunmen on Sunday who shot dead his two drivers and a security guard in northern Attock district.

WARSAW, Oct 2, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's last communist-era dictator, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, 85, Thursday pleaded not guilty to communist crimes for having imposed the 1981 martial law crackdown on the anti-communist Solidarity union.

TOKYO, Oct 1, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's foreign minister said Wednesday the Georgia conflict signalled a more assertive Russia and warned Moscow's actions towards Ukraine should be watched carefully.

WARSAW, Oct 1, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's Treasury Minister Aleksander Grad on Wednesday called on European Competition Commissioner Neelie Kroes to order a fresh expert review of plans to restructure two troubled Polish shipyards.

WARSAW, Sept 30, 2008 (AFP) - The WIG-20 main index of the Warsaw Stock Exchange, central Europe's largest bourse, was in the green Tuesday, gaining 0.45 percent or 2,344.71 points in midday trading after having opened down 2.94 percent.

On Monday the WIG-20 index tumbled to close at 5.03 percent.

WARSAW, Sept 30, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's robust economy is immune to the crisis stemming from the United States and stalking global financial markets, Poland's Finance Minister Jan Rostowski said Tuesday.

'The Polish economy is especially immune to the influence of financial markets,' Rostowski told reporters in Warsaw.

WARSAW, Sept 29, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's last communist leader, General Wojciech Jaruzelski, won't end up out of pocket even if the current government pushes through a new law to slash his pension, his former spokesman pledged Monday.

WARSAW, Sept 29, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's President Lech Kaczynski has alleged in an interview that Russia's military action in Georgia was aimed at toppling the Georgian government and that it sealed his country's decision to host a US missile shield vehemently opposed by Moscow.

WARSAW, Sept 29, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's iconic former Solidarity leader and ex-president, Lech Walesa, Monday marked the 25th anniversary of the Nobel prize which honoured his peaceful struggle against the communist regime.

WARSAW, Sept 29, 2008 (AFP) - A Polish firm which employs an engineer kidnapped in northern Pakistan said Monday that it was poised to pull its staff out of the troubled country.

'We're preparing the withdrawal from Pakistan of our 18 other employees,' Leopold Sulkowski, boss of Geofizyka Krakow, was quoted as saying by Poland's PAP news agency.

ISLAMABAD, Sept 28, 2008 (AFP) - Gunmen on Sunday kidnapped a Polish engineer in northern Pakistan, and shot dead his two drivers and a security guard during the abduction, police said.

The kidnapping took place near the village of Pind Sultani in Attock district of Punjab province, about 110 kilometres (68 miles) northeast of Islamabad, police said.

ISLAMABAD, Sept 28, 2008 (AFP) - Gunmen kidnapped a Polish engineer in northern Pakistan on Sunday, shooting dead his two drivers and a security guard during the abduction in the latest violence to hit the nation, officials said.

ISLAMABAD, Sept 28, 2008 (AFP) - Gunmen kidnapped a Polish engineer in northern Pakistan on Sunday, shooting dead his two drivers and a security guard during the abduction in the latest violence to hit the nation, officials said.

ATTOCK, Pakistan, Sept 28, 2008 (AFP) - Gunmen on Sunday kidnapped a Polish engineer in northern Pakistan, and shot dead his two drivers and a security guard during the abduction, police said.

The kidnapping took place near the village of Pind Sultani in Attock district about 110 kilometres (68 miles) northeast of Islamabad, police said.

WARSAW, Sept 23, 2008 (AFP) - Centre-left parties in the 27-nation European parliament are planning a single, bloc-wide campaign for next year's elections to the EU chamber, Poland's Social Democrats announced on Tuesday.

'We will have joint slogans, the same programme and the same message,' Social Democrat spokesman Tomasz Kalita told AFP.

WARSAW, Sept 23, 2008 (AFP) - Museum authorities at the former Nazi German Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp in Poland said Tuesday they had published their first-ever guide for blind and other visually-impaired visitors.

VILNIUS, Sept 22, 2008 (AFP) - Lithuania is eyeing four firms, France's Areva, Canada's Candu as well as the US-based General Electric and Westinghouse, as candidates to build a nuclear power plant by 2016, the Lithuanian Electricity Organisation (LEO) said Monday.

WARSAW, Sept 17, 2008 (AFP) - John Lennon's wife Yoko Ono said Wednesday the world's small countries should be given a chance, as she launched a retrospective exhibition of her art work in the Polish capital.

STOCKHOLM, Sept 17, 2008 (AFP) - Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk insisted Wednesday that Warsaw would complete its preparations for adopting the euro by 2011, saying the timetable was realistic.

'We plan to be ready by 2011. It's a very ambitious plan but it is do-able. It is realistic,' Tusk told reporters in Stockholm following talks with Swedish counterpart Fredrik Reinfeldt.

WARSAW, Sept 16, 2008 (AFP) - Polish prosecutors have charged three teenaged Georgian judo competitors with the sexual assault of a Polish woman in the capital Warsaw, prosecutors said Tuesday.

'Three judo competitors have been charged with sexual assault,' prosecutor Robert Myslinski told AFP.

WARSAW, September 15, 2008 (AFP) - Polish 12-month inflation was steady at 4.8 percent in August, the same as in July, after a 0.4 percent monthly price fall, Poland's GUS official statistics office announced Monday.

In 2007, annual average inflation was 2.5 percent. Finance Ministry and European Commission estimates suggest it could climb to a 4.5 percent average for 2008.

WARSAW, September 15, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's Baltic Sea port city of Gdynia has launched an Internet site hoping to discover the fate of its 120,000 pre-World War II residents, the majority of whom were expelled or killed under Nazi occupation.

MINSK, September 12, 2008 (AFP) - Poland's Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski on Friday paid a surprise flash visit to Belarus to discuss relations between Minsk and the European Union, the Belarussian foreign ministry said.

WARSAW, September 12, 2008 (AFP) - Poland on Friday inked deals with private investors aimed at saving shipyards in Gdynia and Szczecin and forwarded the restructuring plans to the European Commission, meeting a crucial EU deadline.

ZAGREB, September 12, 2008 (AFP) - A Polish national died and two others were injured, one seriously, in a brawl on their sailboat in a port of the southern Croatian island of Hvar, police and media said Friday.

WARSAW, September 12, 2008 (AFP) - The trial restarted Frdiay of Poland's last communist leader Wojciech Jaruzelski, 85, accused of 'communist crimes' for imposing the 1981 martial law crackdown re-opened.

Several senior officials in Jaruzelski's regime, including Stanislaw Kania, 81, the communist party's (PZPR) former first secretary, are on trial with the retired general.

WARSAW, September 11, 2008 (AFP) - Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov accused the United States on Thursday of seeking to encircle Russia, and reiterated Moscow's opposition to US plans to install a missile shield on Polish soil.

WARSAW, September 11, 2008 (AFP) - US Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama has said he will only proceed with installing a US missile shield base in Poland if it does not target Russia, Poland's foreign minister said Thursday.