Warsaw metro finally completed, Poles live in pain, law school requirements for court shorthand recorders and US Navy attacks... Polish taxi driver.

Reviewed by Slawek Szefs 

ZYCIE WARSZAWY, the Warsaw city daily, returns to the weekend subway gala marking the end of 25 years of struggle to complete the capital's first underground municipal transport line. There are 23 stations along the 20 kilometer long route linking southern and northern suburbs of the city and catering to almost half a million passengers each day. A true life saver in times of congested streets with traffic moving at a snail's pace. Varsovians are very proud of the metro, as it is officially called, but this does not mean their admiration is void of criticism. Having examples of 20 already operating stations, the first passengers of the final three additions to the subway route were quick to notice, i.e. insufficient markings for people with impaired vision. All these minor problems shall be speedily remedied, assured Warsaw president Hanna Gronkiewicz-Waltz who was present at the ceremony of launching the northernmost station. Plans of the second metro route, to cut the city on an east-west axis, are already in the final stage.

We have a right to live without pain, headlines DZIENNIK. The paper informs that three fourths of adult Poles suffer daily aches of various kind. What's worse, some 40% of hospital patients share the same fate, reads a report by the Polish Society For Pain Research. In most EU countries, both figures are ten fold lower. Diminishing pain should be the same privilege to every individual as the right to deciding on one's personal or professional life. And this, regardless whether the pain is caused by cancer illness, AIDS or any other sickness, argues Michael Bond who heads the International Society For Pain Research. Still, in Poland pain is often considered a natural state accompanying many illnesses and physiological conditions. One of the reuslts of such an approach by the medical community is that over 70% of Poles use non-prescription pain killers regularly.

RZECZPOSPOLITA alarms that Polish courts may soon have to shut down because of a growing deficit of record taking personnel. The newsaper speculates how many law school graduates, for that is one of the basic requirements for getting the job, would be willing to work for a salary amounting to half the national average. All it takes is making shorthand notes of testimonies, so why do they need a university degree, wonders a judge quoted by the daily. Meanwhile, more and more agendas have to be postponed due to lack of court recorders, concludes Rzeczpospolita.

GAZETA WYBORCZA reports on a weekend incident in the coastal resort of Sopot in which sailors of a visiting US Navy ship beat up a local taxi driver. The man wound up unconscious in hospital, while Polish MPs called to the scene drove their American colleagues, accompanied by their superiors, to the USS Hewes docked in nearby Gdynia port. The naval attache at the US Embassy assured the men would be put at the disposal of civilian police for interrogation. On Sunday three of the American sailors reported at Sopot police headquarters where they were questioned and subsequently released. A case of Polish-American brotherhood in arms, but not necessarily in relations with ordinary civilians.