According to Witold Bańka, the future head of the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA), the decision to ban Russia from all international sporting events for the next four years was made unanimously.

The sanctions are to remain in force until 2023 and also cover other major international events, including world championships like the 2022 World Cup in Qatar.

The WADA decision means that Russian athletes will not be able to compete under the Russian flag at the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 or the Winter Olympics in Beijing in 2022. Just like the Olympics in Pyongyang last year and in 2016 in Rio de Janeiro, however, it will still be possible for Russian athletes not involved in doping to compete under a neutral flag.

WADA has already confirmed that the sanctions will not affect plans for Russia to host next year’s European Football Championship matches in Saint Petersburg or the UEFA football Champions League final in 2021.

The doping crisis in Russian sports has been ongoing for the past five years, with the latest sanctions resulting from the discovery of mass data manipulation and falsification of records at a Moscow anti-doping laboratory.

Bańka, who will take over as the head of the WADA Executive Committee on January 1st, emphasized that the decision sends “a strong message when it comes to combating doping in the future.”

Source: PAP

Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk meets with translators in Stockholm

In the runup to the annual Nobel banquet this evening, Polish Nobel laureate Olga Tokarczuk was in Stockholm yesterday to meet with translators of her books.

The group of international translators – including some from Greece, Portugal, France, Israel, the Czech Republic, the Netherlands and Belarus – each read aloud fragments of the Polish Nobel Prize winner’s book in their own language. „It was like a symphony of Tokarczuk’s prose in different languages,” reported Jan Henryk Swahn, the Swedish translator for much of Tokarczuk’s work.

According to Swahn, the group also discussed the art of translation and the particular challenges posed by Tokarczuk’s books and the Polish language.”It is very easy to fall into the trap and make her language too flat and clean,” explains Swahn, who says he tried to stay close to Tokarczuk’s original wording yet at the same time keep the complex structure of her long connected sentences.

Two of Tokarczuk’s most popular works are currently available in English, including the novel “Flights” (Bieguni) which won the 2018 International Man Booker prize, and the eco-thriller “Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead” (Prowadź swój pług przez kości umarłych) which was later adapted by Agnieszka Holland as the film “Pokot” (Spoor). Tokarczuk’s most recent work, the nearly thousand-page historical novel “The Books of Jacob” (Księgi Jakubowe) is currently being translated and is set to be published in March 2021.

Source: PAP, guardian.com

President Duda announces construction of new gas terminal

In a speech to residents of Brzozów, Podkarpackie yesterday, President Andrzrej Duda announced the construction of a new gas terminal to be built in Trójmiasto.

“We will build another gas terminal in Gdansk or Gdynia,” stated Duda, because “we want Poland to be secure in terms of gas supplies and thus energy security” along with other Central European nations, including “Slovakia, Ukraine and further south.”

The President went on to emphasize the importance of such investments for creating energy security in “our part of Europe” and fulfilling the “task of building a modern and, as a result, wealthy Poland.”

Duda’s claims were supported by Grzegorz Strzelczyk of Lotos Petrobaltic in an interview with Radio Gdańsk yesterday. Strzelczyk emphasized the growing popularity of Liquified Natural Gas (LNG) due to the fact that its is logistically easier to transport, claiming that “many countries” are considering investing in LNG hubs, including Poland’s Baltic neighbors Estonia and Latvia.

How to broadcast your season’s greetings on air this Christmas

If you are living in Pomerania or listening from abroad, you can record personal holiday greetings to your friends or family to be broadcast on air during a special holiday program on Radio Gdańsk.

To send a greeting via the “Bridge of Wishes” program, just record your wishes or greetings on your smartphone or other device and email them to us at zyczenia@radiogdansk.pl or via private message on our facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/RadioGdansk/. We will then air your recorded greetings at set times during our Christmas broadcast.

Weather

Today will be mostly cloudy and cold with a chance of light rain midday and into the early afternoon. Temperatures will continue to hover around 3-5 degrees Celsius or the high 30s Fahrenheit, with perceived temperatures close to freezing due to a strong wind coming from the northeast. The skies are set to clear somewhat overnight, giving us one more chance for sunshine tomorrow.

RGEN NEWS/EP