Feminists Slam Breast Cancer Campaign As Sexist

Polish feminists have objected to a hospital’s breast cancer prevention slogan which they say encourages workplace harassment, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily said on its website.

The slogan “I check the breasts of my workers on my own” was devised by a cancer hospital in the southern town of Opole and aimed at convincing employers to encourage their female workers to have their breasts checked regularly for cancer symptoms.

“This is a sexist slogan that obviously brings sexual molestation to mind,” the head of the Feminoteka foundation, Joanna Piotrowska, was quoted on the website as saying.

“This campaign treats women as objects and is not far removed from advertisements in which girls flaunt their breasts over car bonnets. I wonder if this would be equally funny if it were changed to ‘I check the penises of my workers on my own’.”

Eurovision 2010 Update: Poland Chooses Marcin Mroziński

The decision is made in Poland. Marcin Mroziński with the song Legenda will be the Polish representative in the 2010 Eurovision Song Contest.

Out of ten entries in the final, the song received almost 34% of the votes.

The winning song for Poland is performed by Marcin Mroziński as a soloist, with backup on stage from folk dancers. The song, with the title Legenda, has lyrics in Polish and contains ingredients from folk music as well as opera. It is composed by Marcin Nierubiec, with lyrics from Marcin Mroziński.

The final included songs performed in Polish as well as English.

Priest Checks Fingerprints For Mass Attendance

A Polish priest has installed an electronic reader in his church for schoolchildren to leave their fingerprints in order to monitor their attendance at mass, the Gazeta Wyborcza daily reported.

The pupils will mark their fingerprints every time they go to church over three years and if they attend 200 masses they will be freed from the obligation of having to pass an exam prior to their confirmation, the paper said.

The pupils in the southern town of Gryfow Slaski told the daily they liked the idea and also the priest, Grzegorz Sowa, who invented it.

“This is comfortable. We don’t have to stand in a line to get the priest’s signature (confirming our presence at the mass) in our confirmation notebooks,” said one pupil, who gave her name as Karolina.

Poland is perhaps the most devoutly Roman Catholic country in Europe today and churches are regularly packed on Sundays.

Dog Washed Out To Sea Rescued By Polish Boat

A dog had a lucky escape when a Polish boat rescued him from an ice floe that had carried him more than 100 miles up a river and out onto the icy waters of the Baltic Sea.

“My crew saw… a shape moving on the water and we immediately decided to get closer to check if it was a dog or maybe a seal relaxing on the ice,” Jan Joachim, senior officer aboard the Baltica, told Reuters Television.

“As we got closer to the ice floe we saw that it was a dog struggling not to fall into the water.”

Ship engineer Adam Buczynski managed to scoop the dog off the floe onto an inflatable dinghy and wrapped him in a blanket.

“He didn’t even squeal. There was just fear in his big eyes,” said Buczynski.

The dog was first seen on the ice floe some 100 km (70 miles) inland to the south on the Vistula river but firemen were unable to rescue him. When the Baltica crew found him, he had already drifted some 24 km (18 miles) out to sea.

“We were in the right place at the right time,” said Joachim, noting that they rescued him shortly before night fall.

The crew are now trying to locate the dog’s owner.

Poland is in the grip of bitterly cold weather, with night temperatures in some areas falling as low as -34 Celsius (-31 Fahrenheit).

Today’s Top Eurotastic Song By Ich Troje

Here’s Poland’s very own Ich Troje singing Follow My Heart:

You’ll notice that Follow My Heart is performed in 5 different languages, English, Polish, German, Russian and Spanish. The song placed 11th in the 2006 Eurovision Song Contest.

‘Cavemen’ Go On Display At Warsaw Zoo

Visitors to Warsaw’s zoo are being greeted by two “Homo sapiens” peering out from a cage — humans in animal skins trying to spark interest in man’s caveman ancestors.

Organizer Maria Mastalerz says the weeklong “performance” aims to attract interest in a play, “Caveman,” showing in the Polish capital. But she says it also carries a message that humans today are not all that different from their prehistoric ancestors.

Dressed in furs and animal skins, the young woman and man smoked a fish over a fire, poking it with a stick, or stared from behind bars at startled zoo visitors.

Toilet Inspectors Roam Through Poland

Patrols of two, wearing white overalls, are boldly entering toilets across Poland to check whether the country is loo-ready for the 2012 EURO soccer championships.

Lots of loos pass the test, they say, but others — particularly those that date back to pre-1989 Communist days — are less enticing.

The toaketa2012.pl project, organized by a company manufacturing toilet equipment, aims to encourage ordinary Poles to join the patrols.

The project is looking ahead to 2012 when thousands of fans will come to Poland and Ukraine for the European Soccer Championships.

So far the patrols have visited 200 toilets in Poland’s six major cities and have conducted a survey among foreign tourists, which showed hotels and airports provide good quality toilets, while railway and bus stations lag behind.

The Dziennik Gazeta Prawna newspaper commented drily that the country’s toilets were, however, still better prepared for the championship than its soccer players — who failed to qualify for the 2010 World Cup in South Africa.

Man In Poland Tries To Rob Bank With A Spoon

A would-be bank robber held a teaspoon to the neck of a cashier pretending it was a knife, a Polish news website reported.

But gazeta.pl said the two women behind the counter at the bank in the southern Polish city of Lublin were not fooled, and scared the man away with their screaming.

Police have compiled a photo-fit of the suspect.

Poland Okays Mandatory Castration

Poland has approved a law making chemical castration mandatory for pedophiles in some cases, sparking criticism from human rights groups.

Under the law, sponsored by Poland’s center-right government, pedophiles convicted of raping children under the age of 15 years or a close relative would have to undergo chemical therapy on their release from prison.

“The purpose of this action is to improve the mental health of the convict, to lower his libido and thereby to reduce the risk of another crime being committed by the same person,” the government said in a statement.

Prime Minister Donald Tusk said late last year he wanted obligatory castration for pedophiles, whom he branded ‘degenerates’. Tusk said he did not believe “one can use the term ‘human’ for such individuals, such creatures.”

“Therefore I don’t think protection of human rights should refer to these kind of events,” Tusk also said.

His remarks drew criticism from human rights groups but he never retracted them.

An Old Fashioned Prison Break

Two Polish prisoners broke out of a German jail after tying their bed sheets together to abseil down a 15 meter (50 foot) wall, authorities said.

“The wall is pretty high,” a spokesperson for the prison in the southern city of Nuremberg said. “If you fall, you’re dead.”

The two men aged 30 and 37, who were being held on remand, broke through the ceiling of their shared cell to reach the prison roof, then lowered themselves to freedom on the bedding.

Police caught the older man shortly afterwards, but his younger accomplice remains at large, authorities said.