Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki announced yesterday that Poland would assist in the evacuation of some 100 people from Afghanistan as the situation there continues to deteriorate.
Talking to reporters in Żabia Wola, Morawiecki said he had spoken to his defense, interior, and foreign ministers about an ongoing evacuation of people who once worked with the Polish military contingent in the Asian country.
According to Morawiecki, 10 families have already been relocated to Poland or „other places of their choosing. „They have been taken care of as part of Poland’s „obligation” to those who assisted Polish and NATO efforts in Afghanistan.
Following the withdrawal of US forces from Afghanistan and the capture of the country by the Taliban, a large-scale evacuation was underway on Tuesday at Kabul airport, which remained in the hands of the US Army.
Since Sunday, thousands of Afghans, desperate to flee abroad, have been storming the tarmac at the airport in Kabul, forcing their way into planes and clinging to moving jets. At least seven people have died amid the chaos.
Source: Radio Poland
A top aide to the Polish prime minister recently announced that Poland is sharing its COVID-19 vaccine surplus with several other countries, including Australia, Spain, Portugal, Norway, and Ukraine.
According to Michał Dworczyk, who serves as the government commissioner for the national vaccination program, Poland has already sent 2.4 million Pfizer vaccines to Spain and 600,000 to Portugal, as well as 1 million doses of Moderna jabs to Norway.
An additional 650,000 doses of AstraZeneca vaccines were also scheduled to be sent to Ukraine yesterday. Earlier this week, Australia’s Prime Minister Scott Morrison publicly thanked Poland for sharing 1 million doses of Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccines with his country „on a not-for-profit basis.”
Source: Radio Poland, PAP
Ten institutions of higher education in Poland, including the Gdańsk University of Technology, have been ranked among the top 1000 universities in the world.
According to the 2021 Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU), the top-ranked institutions in Poland are the University of Warsaw and the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, both of which are ranked in the 400-500 group. They are followed in the ranking by AGH in Kraków and the Medical University of Warsaw in the eighth hundred rankings, with the Gdańsk University of Technology in the nine-hundred bracket.
The prestigious ranking, also known as the Shanghai List, has been published since 2003 and is compiled by the Jiao Tong University in Shanghai, China. The list includes the top 1,000 universities from around the world, with US institutions, such as Harvard, Stanford, and MIT dominating the top ten, along with the UK institutions of Oxford and Cambridge.
The ranking is based on several indicators such as the number of graduates and employees who have won the Nobel Prize or the Fields Medal; the number of publications in Nature and Science journals; the number of highly-cited academics and publications included in selected indexes; as well as achievements in relation to the size of the institution.
Source: Radio Gdańsk, Radio Poland
Polish documentary filmmaker Paweł Łoziński is celebrating this week after winning the Grand Prix award at Switzerland’s 74th annual Locarno Film Festival last weekend.
Łoziński’s acclaimed film „The Balcony Movie” is a full-length documentary featuring two years of interactions with various passersby walking under the director’s balcony. As the 56-year-old writer and director goes on to explain, he turned two years of these impromptu meetings „into a film about people, about what they wanted to say about themselves and about a curious director.”
At the age of 56, Łoziński is one of Poland’s leading documentary filmmakers, with prestigious awards at festivals in France, Germany, and Poland. „The Balcony Movie” is set to premiere in Poland as part of the upcoming Millennium Docs Against Gravity Festival, which is scheduled to run from September 3-12 in cities across Poland, including Gdynia.
Source: Radio Poland, mdag.pl
Weather
Today will be cooler and overcast, with winds coming in from the southwest and a good chance of rain again in the late evening. Temperatures will peak around a high of 21°C, or 69°F, cooling off overnight to a low of 15°C or 59°F. There will be a chance of rain again overnight and tomorrow afternoon, with scattered showers set to continue through Friday.
