President Andrzej Duda and First Lady Agata Kornhauser-Duda have headed to Italy and the Vatican on their first foreign trip since his re-election in July.
Beginning today, their three-day trip is set to include meetings with Italian President Sergio Mattarella and Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, as well as a later meeting at the Vatican with Pope Francis and a mass at the tomb of Pope John Paul II, the Polish-born pope who died in 2005 and was canonized in 2014.

While in Rome, Duda is scheduled to attend a ceremony marking Poland’s decision to officially join the International Fund for Agricultural Development, according to Duda’s chief of staff, Krzysztof Szczerski. As Szczerski told reporters last week, Poland’s decision to become a member of the UN agency is „a gesture of solidarity and a desire to help all starving people around the world.”

The President and First Lady are also expected to stop at the Polish war cemetery at Monte Cassino to pay tribute to World War II military leader Władysław Anders, who died 50 years ago last May.

President Duda has signed into law rules under which tourists can be reimbursed from a special fund for holidays they paid for but cancelled because of the coronavirus epidemic.

In another move to help the tourism industry, the new rules will also allow hotel operators, coach companies, and travel agencies to be exempt from paying social security contributions.

The Polish labor minister said last week that some 6 million jobs have been saved in Poland thanks to measures including a massive relief and stimulus package that aims to shield the economy from the coronavirus.

Amid the COVID-19 pandemic, the Polish economy contracted 8.2 percent in the second quarter of this year, the country’s Central Statistical Office (GUS) reported last month.

An exhibition about the Ładoś Group, the story of how a group of Polish diplomats and Jewish activists in Switzerland saved thousands from the Holocaust, opened yesterday in Prague at the historic Maisel Synagogue.

Led by Polish diplomat Aleksander Ładoś, the Ładoś Group provided fabricated passports to thousands of people of Jewish origin in an effort to save them from the Nazis during World War II. A book version of the “Ładoś List” was published in Polish last December by the Pilecki Institute, with an English-language version appearing the following February.

Among those helped by the Bern-based group was Yosef Burg, a Jewish man who later became one of the founding fathers of the state of Israel.

Gdańsk officials recently announced several changes to regulations pertaining to electric scooters in an attempt to address complaints that the devices were littering streets and blocking the flow of pedestrian and bike traffic.

Some 200 scooter parking areas will be built near existing Mevo metropolitan bike stations and e-scooter companies will begin “rewarding” users for putting scooters away in designated locations.

The parking areas will be marked by rectangles painted on the pavement, with painting set to begin this week. Officials also stated that scooters would also be limited to an electronic speed of “walking” within the city center of Gdańsk.

The Gdańsk airport recently announced a competition to name their seagull mascot, with prizes for participants ranging from plushies to a pair of tickets on Wizz Air.

The “Name the Seagull” competition is underway from now until September 27 on the Instagram and Facebook channels of the Gdańsk airport. The two most interesting proposals (as chosen by a jury) to be decided by an audience vote during the Trefl Gdańsk volleyball match on October 3 in Ergo Arena.

For more information on how you can submit your ideas, visit https://www.facebook.com/AirportGdansk

Wednesday will be sunny and quite warm, with a light breeze coming in from the south, and very little chance of rain. Temperatures will be warmer than yesterday with a high of 26°C, or 78°F, and an overnight low of 13°C or 59°F. The good weather is set to continue through tomorrow, with clouds and some rain appearing on Friday and continuing on into the weekend.

Elizabeth Peck/ako