Poland will launch a lottery with prizes of as much as 1 million zlotys ($273,000) to encourage people to get vaccinated against COVID-19, the minister in charge of the immunisation programme said on Tuesday.

We investigate claims that the church and state in Poland have become too close.

Three Polish women have been found not guilty of offending religious feelings over posters depicting the Virgin Mary with a rainbow halo. The activists displayed the images in 2019 in response to an Easter display describing "gender" and "LGBT" as sins. The icon used in the artwork, "Our Lady of Czestochowa", is revered by many Polish Catholics.

Poland’s government is seeking to introduce retirement benefits for dogs and horses that have served in the police force. Currently, service animals receive no support from the state after finishing work. In practice, this means that retired police dogs are usually adopted by their handlers, who look after them at their own expense, reports Polsat News.

Germany, Poland and Sweden have each expelled a Russian diplomat in a coordinated act of retaliation over the expulsion of three EU officials by Moscow while the bloc’s foreign policy chief was visiting last week.

The protesters who marched through the Polish capital's icy streets on Friday night had a clear message for the government over its imposition this week of a near-total ban on abortions: We will stand up for women's rights. It was the third day of protests since the ruling came into effect -- and marked 100 days of protests since Poland's constitutional tribunal court first handed down its controversial ruling, sparking weeks of mass demonstrations.

The law would see social networks fined if they ban a Polish user who has not broken local laws.

A church bell that dates back to 1555 will be returned to its home in Poland, 77 years after it was plundered by the Nazis in World War Two. Parishioners at Slawiecice in southern Poland began searching for the church's old bell two years ago. They were in luck because, as the Münster diocese in Germany explained, the Nazis melted down some 80,000 bells to make weapons or ammunition.

Frédéric Chopin’s archivists and biographers have for centuries turned a deliberate blind eye to the composer’s homoerotic letters in order to make the Polish national icon conform to conservative norms, it has been alleged. Chopin’s Men, a two-hour radio programme that aired on Swiss public broadcaster SRF’s arts channel, argues that the composer’s letters have been at times deliberately mistranslated, rumours of affairs with women exaggerated...

Countries reject package over attempts to link funding to respect for rule of law

Human rights groups are calling on Poland to drop charges against three women who face jail for sharing posters of the Virgin Mary with a rainbow-coloured halo. The three women, identified only as Elżbieta, Anna and Joanna, are on trial for “offending religious beliefs” and could face jail sentences of two years each if found guilty for their peaceful activism.

A strike is under way in Poland by women opposed to a court ruling that introduced a near-total ban on abortion in the mainly Catholic country. Crowds have protested in several cities for the seventh-day running against the decision that outlawed terminations on the grounds of severe health defects. An opinion poll conducted for Gazeta Wyborcza suggested that 59% of those surveyed disagreed with the change.

Poland has some of Europe's strictest laws, but the constitutional court tightens them still further.

The biggest World War Two bomb ever found in Poland exploded under water on Tuesday as navy divers tried to defuse it. More than 750 people had been evacuated from the area near the Piast Canal outside the town of Swinoujscie where the Tallboy bomb used by Britain’s Royal Air Force (RAF) was found. It weighed nearly 5,400 kg, including 2,400 kg of explosive.

Poles were left shaken and stirred by news that a suspected British agent called James Bond was on Her Majesty's secret service in the country in the 1960s, after the Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) posted about him on social media.

Poland wants to speed up phasing out coal and spend billions to build renewable and nuclear power infrastructure to address challenges related to climate change and ensure stable power supplies, the government said on Tuesday.

A team of researchers from Sweden, the U.S., Poland and the U.K. has found evidence that suggests the wealth gap in human communities goes back at least 6,600 years. In their paper published in the journal Antiquity, the group describes their study of skeletons in an ancient Polish graveyard and what they found.

Incumbent Andrzej Duda wins by a slim margin over liberal rival Rafal Trzaskowski.

Incumbent President Andrzej Duda has won the first round of Poland's presidential election, garnering 45.73%, partial results showed. The vote had been postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Poland’s government will add the computer game This War Of Mine to the official reading list for children in schools, the prime minister has announced during a visit to the developer of the game, Warsaw-based 11 bit studios. “Poland will be the first country in the world that puts its own computer game into the education ministry’s reading list,” said Mateusz Morawiecki, quoted by Polsat News. “Young people use games to imagine certain situations [in a way] no worse than reading books.”