Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh and the husband of Queen Elizabeth II has died at the age of 99 after suffering ill health for a number of months. The world famous royal died yesterday at home at Windsor Castle with the Queen at his side.
Married to the Queen for 73 years and an accomplished sportsman as well as a veteran of the Second World War, Philip helped develop the equestrian event of carriage driving. He was a patron, president or member of over 780 organisations, and he served as chairman of The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, a self-improvement program for young people aged 14 to 24. He was the longest-serving consort of a reigning British monarch and the longest-lived male member of the British royal family.
He retired from his royal duties on 2 August 2017, aged 96, having completed 22,219 solo engagements and 5,493 speeches since 1952. Prince Philip had visited Poland twice during his lifetime, taking part in a carriage racing event at the Sopot racecourse in 1975 and a state visit to Warsaw in 1996 where he was a guest of the then president of Poland, Aleksander Kwaśniewski.
Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Friday that his country’s health system was efficient and coping well with a surge of infections amid a third wave of the coronavirus pandemic.
He added that around 3,300 hospital beds with ventilators were occupied, out of a total of 4,300 available to coronavirus patients nationwide. The president appealed to citizens to get vaccinated against the coronavirus as soon as possible amid an expected increase in vaccine supplies. Meanwhile, those with symptoms should seek medical attention without delay, he said, adding that a recent spike in deaths linked to COVID-19 was in part due to patients receiving hospital treatment too late.
Poland’s top officials are set to take part in events this weekend to mark the 11th anniversary of a fatal presidential plane crash in Russia – a disaster that scarred the national psyche and is still a source of controversy and recriminations.
Today marks exactly 11 years since a Polish plane carrying President Lech Kaczyński, his wife and 94 others, including top political and military figures, crashed near Smolensk, western Russia, killing all those on board. Due to safety precautions amid a coronavirus epidemic, this year’s anniversary events are expected to be less high-profile than in most previous years.
And finally, delays and acrimony continue to dog the ill-fated Mevo cycle hire scheme that was beset with problems and failed in spectacular fashion in 2019 when the parent company was declared insolvent.
The replacement scheme, Mevo 2 is now delayed again due to a mess up in the tendering process that means that the tender process must be repeated and users of the system will need to wait many more months before a new scheme is up and running. Many users of the original system are still due refunds that have not been paid to them.
Weather
Today will be a cloudy day with a gentle breeze and temperatures reaching 8 degrees centigrade (46 degrees Fahrenheit) during the day, dropping to 1 degree overnight. Sunday will be a much nicer day with sunny intervals and temperatures will reach a lovely 17 degrees during the day and 8 degrees overnight.
Martin Caren/ako
