German minority in Poland to get own radio station?
The German minority in the Opole [Oppeln] region, southern Poland, is planning to set up a regional radio station which would go on air in 2012. -
The move comes off the back of an announcement by Parliament’s sole German minority MP, Ryszard Galla, who said that documents for the radio’s concession to broadcast are to be filed by the end of November. - Read article ...

German Minority Youth Association HQ vandalised
Graffiti has been daubed on the offices of the Youth Association of the German Minority in Poland and a swastika painted on a car belonging to a member of the organization in Opole  [Oppeln], southwestern Poland [Upper Silesia / Oberschlesien]. - The vandalism was reported to local police on Friday afternoon. - Given that the use of Nazi symbols is illegal in Poland, Maciej Milewski, a spokesman for the city's police, said that the painting of the swastika, “will be treated as the propagation of fascism”. - Around 104,000 ethnic Germans live in the Opole  region, some 71 percent of Poland's entire German minority.
www.youtube.com/user/OstpreussenTV#p/a/f/1/Z00bcqJLTzU

EU ministers approve Klaus’ human rights opt-out bill
EU foreign ministers have given their approval for a Czech bill on an opt-out from the human rights charter in the Lisbon Treaty. -
The EU’s foreign ministers have given provisional approval for the ratification of an opt-out from the EU Charter of Human Rights called for by Czech President Václav Klaus. If formally accepted, as is expected, the opt-out will be put to the Czech legislature at the same time as the bill on ratification of Croatia’s EU membership. - Read article ...

Russian lawmakers slam plan to rename Kaliningrad
Russian State Duma deputies on Tuesday criticized a proposal for a referendum on returning to the city of Kaliningrad its historical name, Konigsberg. -
The city is the administrative center of the Kaliningrad Region, Russia's westernmost exclave on the Baltic Sea, sandwiched between Poland and Lithuania. -
Originally named Konigsberg in German, the town was part of Prussia and then of Germany until 1945, but was largely destroyed during World War II. It was occupied by the Soviet Army in 1945 and was renamed Kaliningrad in 1946 in honor of Mikhail Kalinin, a high-ranking Soviet official. -
Kaliningrad Governor Nikolai Tsukanov was quoted on Monday as saying a referendum could be held on the issue.  - Read article ...

The Economist Newspaper Limited - 08,05,2011 / 22.05.2008

Telling the Soviet story - A new film about Nazi-Soviet links
BEING burnt in effigy on the streets of Moscow by nationalist hoodlums must count as a kind of Oscar if you are a Latvian filmmaker whose aim is to expose modern Russia's blindness to the criminal history of the Soviet Union. The ire of Young Russia's protest outside the Latvian embassy this week was directed at Edvins Snore, whose film “Soviet Story” is the most powerful antidote yet to the sanitisation of the past.   
The film is gripping, audacious and uncompromising. Though it starts by telling the story of the murder of 7m Ukrainians in 1933, it is no mere catalogue of atrocities. The main aim of the film is to show the close connections—philosophical, political and organisational—between the Nazi and Soviet systems. - Read 3 article ...