Psychic animals’ football championship failures

From RIA Novosti in Russia:

‘Psychic’ Animals Vie for Euro 2012 Oracle Honors

MOSCOW, June 9

Following the success of Paul the ‘psychic’ Octopus, who correctly predicted the results of the 2010 World Cup, a pig, a cow and an elephant are among creatures attempting to guess the results of matches at the Euro 2012 football championships in Ukraine and Poland.

A swine named Funtik, who is a mainstay in the fan zone in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev, had said co-hosts Poland would beat Greece on Friday – a prophesy which did not however come true as the tournament’s dramatic opener ended in a draw – but successfully predicted Russia’s victory over the Czech Republic later that night. Funtik divines, simply enough, by choosing between plates of corn chips, each bearing the flag of the two teams set to play.

A meerkat in Russia’s Urals town of Yekaterinburg, too, forecast his homeland’s triumph, but a deer in the northern town of Syktyvkar, not to be outdone, looked much farther ahead, saying Russia will reach the semi-finals.

Fred the Ferret

Poland’s own Citta the Elephant in the Krakow Zoo has also been credited with psychic powers, but they seemed to fail her after she picked her side to win at the National Stadium in Warsaw.

In Germany, Yvonne the cow has foretold defeat in the team’s opening match against Portugal to be played on Saturday night, a forecast countered by a psychic otter in the country’s small eastern town of Aue. Dutch elephant Nelly also indicated a win for Germany.

This music video is called Nellie The Elephant (Toy Dolls).

There is also Fred the Ferret in Kharkiv, one of Euro’s host cities in eastern Ukraine, whose prognostications are not yet known but who will surely be voted the cutest animal oracle of the tournament.

And last but not least, the successor to Paul, who sadly died of natural causes in 2010, is Paulus the Octopus, who was born in Germany but now lives – and works – in a tank in Portugal.

See also here.

Inspired by Paul the Octopus, animal owners across Germany are turning to their pets to predict the outcomes of European Championship matches. Germany’s animal protection agency says the trend is getting out of hand and singles out the use of a python and two live rats as especially tasteless: here.

Good Belgian tree frog news

This video is about European tree frogs in Poland.

Translated from Knack weekly in Belgium:

The endangered tree frog is doing quite well now in Flanders. This spring, a record number of 1,250 calling males were counted. This says Hyla, the reptile and amphibian group of [conservation organization] Natuurpunt. The number of calling males has increased tenfold in ten years.

Polish workers fight austerity

This video is called Polish unionists take pension protest to parliament.

Tens of thousands of workers from across Poland noisily demonstrated outside parliament in Warsaw on Friday against plans to raise the retirement age to 67: here.

Polish industrial salt food scandal

This video from the USA is called Ban On Salt In Food At Restaurants?

Polish health authorities ordered the withdrawal of more than 230,000 kilogrammes of pickles, bread and other foodstuff suspected of containing industrial salt today: here.

Undernutrition and Overnutrition: Who’s Feeding Whom?. Jennifer Clapp, TripleCrisis: “De Schutter’s policy recommendations include a range of measures: impose taxes on unhealthy foods, regulate the amount of fats, salt and sugar in processed foods, curb advertising on junk food, cut agricultural subsidies and support local food systems that promote sustainable, diverse and healthy diets. All these suggestions are excellent. But there is one potential hitch that may slow down progress on these fronts: the vested interests of the transnational food companies”: here.

Dutch government hindered Philips corruption investigation

This is a Dutch video on the Philips corruption scandal.

Translated from Dutch NOS TV:

Justice department slow about Philips

Added: Monday, June 13, 2011, 8:05

By reporter Gert-Jan Dennenkamp

The Polish prosecutor has asked the Netherlands in 2008 unsuccessfully for help in the investigation of corruption at Philips. Documents in the possession of the NOS prove this.

Poland wanted to know if the head office of Philips Medical Systems in Best was involved in the bribery. The Netherlands did not respond to several requests. When Philips in the Netherlands was searched at last, the investigation had been already completed in Poland.

Today in Katowice the corruption trial of three former Philips employees accused of bribery begins. In addition, a large number of hospital directors are being prosecuted for taking bribes.

The Dutch Justice Department later proposed “given the seriousness” to examine the bribery scandal together, but this cooperation did not materialize. …

Frustration

In a broadcast by the NOS, witness Marian Kulig said recently: “All profits by Philips in Poland have been obtained by crime.” Kulig said he had distributed more than one million euros in bribes. That money came partly from the Philips plant in Hamburg, where according to the Polish prosecutor’s a special bribery fund was managed.

Samsung, Philips, LG and others reportedly set to face EU regulatory fines for CRT price fixing: here.

Saudi Arabia: Report – King quietly launches anti-corruption campaign; 12 civil servants arrested: here.

Related articles

• No bribes please! We’re British (itv.com)
• Foreign bribery fines should go to global legal empowerment, not domestic coffers (fcpablog.com)
• News International could face charges over bribery allegations (telegraph.co.uk)
• Bribe-givers can’t get away: Manmohan (thehindu.com)
• House measure to punish bribe-givers, too (newsinfo.inquirer.net)
• For France, mixed grades in the battle against bribery (fcpablog.com)

Gay pride and homophobia in Italy, Croatia, Poland

This music video is called Lady Gaga Live Roma Europride 2011. Born This Way. The Edge Of Glory.

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

Massive turnout at Rome gay parade

Added: Saturday, June 11, 2011, 20:04

Hundreds of thousands of people marched in Rome in a gay parade. They went through the city center to the Circus Maximus, where Lady Gaga played.

The parade, which was the highlight of EuroPride, went smoothly.

Differently from this, the first gay parade in the Croatian city of Split was attacked. The approximately 300 participants were pelted with eggs, stones and bottles. Five of them had to go to a hospital.

In Warsaw, a gay rights parade was disrupted as well. Far-right protesters insulted participants and threw fireworks at them.

Lady Gaga joins one million people at gay pride parade in Rome: here.

Homophobia in Croatian football: here.

Plans to erect the world’s biggest statue of Jesus on a hill overlooking Croatia’s second-largest city sparked a backlash in the staunchly Catholic country, with thousands opposing it on Facebook Monday: here.

Gay Murder Rates Soar in Brazil, Honduras: here.

Hotel workers win compensation over anti-gay bullying: here.

A Familiar Story: Anti-Gay Alabama Attorney General Allegedly Caught Being Gay: here.

American Indian tribe approves gay marriage: here.

Philips in Poland suspected of bribery

Translated from NOS TV in the Netherlands:

Philips in Poland suspected of bribery

Added: Tuesday, May 17, 2011, 6:01

By reporter Gert-Jan Dennekamp and Marc Bessant

Philips employees in Poland are accused of systematically bribing hospital administrators. The coming months three former executives of Philips will be on trial in Poland on charges of bribery. The Polish prosecutor suspects the electronics group of setting up a special fund for bribes. This shows from documents in the possession of the NOS and the Financieele Dagblad daily.

“All profits of Philips in Poland have been obtained by crime,” said a witness for the Polish public prosecutor, Marian Kulig. He worked as a broker and delivered Philips CT scanners and other equipment to hospitals.

Kulig said he had distributed more than one million euros in bribes. That money was partly from the Philips plant in Hamburg, which, according to the Polish prosecutor’s, managed the special fund of bribery money.

Quarrel

Between 2000 and 2007, Kulig bribed hospital managers. The directors then changed the technical requirements in their contracts so that only Philips equipment would fit. The equipment was then delivered through Kulig’s company or by Philips itself.

After he fell out with the Polish Philips bosses, Kulig in 2007 went with his accusations to the Polish public prosecutor’s. On June 13 23 people, including three Philips executives, will stand trial at the court in Katowice.

The bosses now no longer work for Philips. Philips acknowledges the investigation, but does not want to comment with the trial pending.

Investigation in the U.S.

The company also launched its own investigation because the American justice department has asked Philips for clarification on this matter.

The headquarters of the medical department of Philips are in the U.S.A. The past two years the government there has focused mainly on addressing corruption in the medical sector.

This case could have major financial implications for Philips. In investigations into other companies, U.S. Justice has imposed big fines. Thus in 2008, Siemens received a record fine of 600 million U.S. dollars more, according to The Guardian

for bribing public officials. This spring the medical company Johnson & Johnson was fined $ 70,000,000.

According to the New York Times, $81 million.

See also here.

UPDATE: according to StatCounter, people at the Groenendael Philips Management Training Center in Amsterdam have read this blog post. It is to be hoped that it will stimulate them to do something against this culture of corruption.

UPDATE 18 May 2011: also Philips kickbacks in other east European countries? Here.

Viji Sundaram, New America Media: “U.S. pharmaceutical companies have moved their operations overseas in the past decade, testing their drugs on poor people in such lands as Russia, China, Brazil and Romania… One country that has experienced a boom like no other in this industry is India, with its widely spoken English, an established medical infrastructure and welcoming attitudes towards foreign industry. Most importantly, these pharmaceutical companies are exploiting the country’s vast number of illiterate and poor people who are willing to become guinea pigs”: here.

Related articles

• ANALYSIS-US foreign bribery penalties for drugmakers may lack bite (vancouverdesi.com)
• Poland accuses Britain of blocking budget (express.co.uk)
• [Focus] EU to Poland: artists should be free to ‘shock’ (euobserver.com)

Breivik’s alleged Polish accomplices arrested

This video is called Norway massacre suspect ‘had links to right-wing groups’.

From Associated Press:

Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2011

19 held in probe launched after Norway killings

WARSAW, Poland — A Polish security agency said Wednesday that 19 people have been arrested across the country on suspicion of producing and possessing explosives.

The Internal Security Agency said the arrests were part of a wider investigation into the illegal production and sale of explosives that was launched after Norway asked Poland to investigate people with links to mass killer Anders Behring Breivik, who has confessed to two attacks that killed 77 people in July in Norway.

The agency said the arrests were also the result of an analysis of a manifesto that Breivik had posted on the Internet.

In the summer, Poland was asked to provide information on a man who was mentioned by Breivik as a possible source of substances that could be used in the production of explosives. An investigation revealed that Breivik had bought small quantities of two different chemical substances from an online vendor in Poland.

The vendor, Lukasz Mikus, admitted in August that Breivik ordered at least 50 kilograms (110 pounds) of aluminum powder from his company early this year and appeared to be a legitimate trade representative from a Norwegian company.

The agency did not say Wednesday whether Mikus was among those arrested.

The agency statement said, however, that large quantities of explosives were seized on Tuesday and Wednesday during a search of some 100 homes and houses and dozens of cars and garages across the country. The search was carried out by the agency, police, border guards and firefighters.

A few dozen people, who were obtaining chemicals at a warehouse near the western city of Poznan, are suspected of using the substances to make explosives.

Anders Breivik’s Bomb Suppliers Arrested in Poland: here.

See also here. And here.

In a challenging new book, a collection of Australian and British writers respond to the terrorist attack by Anders Breivik, and attempts by the Right to depoliticise it: here.

Protoceratops dinosaur discovery

From the BBC:

14 September 2011 Last updated at 00:45

Protoceratops Dinosaur found with its own tracks

By Victoria Gill

Science reporter, BBC Nature

A fossil housed for half a century in a Polish museum has turned out to be the first dinosaur skeleton preserved in its own tracks, say scientists.

A recent examination of the 80-million-year-old specimen revealed a single footprint preserved in the rocks encasing the fossilised bones.

Polish and Mongolian fossil hunters first unearthed it in 1965 in Mongolia.

Scientists now report the results of its re-examination in the journal Cretaceous Research.

The dinosaur is a Protoceratops, and since this is one of the most common dinosaurs found in the rich fossil beds of the Gobi Desert, it was not deemed to be very significant. But the scientists say it is the first example of a dinosaur being preserved with its own footprints.

Polish palaeontologists Grzegorz Niedzwiedzki and Tomasz Singer spotted the footprint while they were preparing the fossil for display at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw.

His colleague, University of Colorado at Denver geologist Martin Lockley, told BBC Nature that this really was “a first”.

“Generally, we find it very hard even to match dinosaurs with their footprints at the species level,” he explained.

“We have a couple of examples in the literature where we say, ‘we’re almost certain that this footprint belongs to this species’, but this is an animal actually dead in its tracks.”

A single, preserved footprint can be seen in the rocks encasing the fossil. Prof Lockley suggests that some of the rock discarded when scientists prepare dinosaur skeletons could contain ancient clues about the lives of the extinct beasts.

“Traditionally, palaeontologists look for nice skeletons, and in order to get those out of the rock, they’re discarding the matrix. So lots of tracks have been overlooked.”

Splitting sediments

Since the 1990s, and with some spectacular fossil footprint discoveries from China, research into dinosaur tracks has received much more attention.

But the deposits that often contain trackways have not been the same as those that contain skeletons, as Dr Paul Barrett, a palaeontologist from London’s Natural History Museum explained.

“Whereas trackways usually come from beach deposits, bones are normally found in river channels, where perhaps the animals drowned and were quickly buried and preserved,” Dr Barrett told BBC Nature.

“So this discovery is a neat one-off.”

See also here.

Anti-racist demonstration in Poland

This video about Poland is called Legacy of Jedwabne.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Bialystok‘s walking anti-racism protest

Monday 05 September 2011

Hundreds of people participated in a “march of unity” in the Polish city of Bialystok on Sunday to express their opposition to a spate of racist and anti-Semitic attacks in the area.

Participants in the rally, which was organised by MPs from the governing centre-right Civic Platform party, walked in silence from the city centre to a monument of Ludwik Zamenhof, a Jewish doctor born in Bialystok who invented the Esperanto language.

The protesters gathered signatures under a manifesto calling for an end to a “wave of thoughtless hatred.”

A small counter-demonstration was staged by skinheads chanting neonazi slogans.

Last Wednesday, vandals desecrated a monument to hundreds of Jewish people who were burned alive by their Polish neighbours in Jedwabne village during World War II.

Other recent anti-Semitic or racist attacks in Poland have targeted a synagogue in the village of Orla, a Muslim centre in Bialystok and the Lithuanian minority in the Punsk region.

October 2011 election results in Poland: here.