US President Donald Trump said the attack which killed Kasem Sulejmani, head of the Iranian elite force Al-Quds, was to prevent a war. During a Florida press conference, Trump said Sulejmani was planning violent attacks on US diplomats and military personnel. The US president assured that the Iranian general was behind the December attack on the American embassy in Iraq.

Hundreds of thousands of people participated today in the funeral ceremony of the Iranian major general in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Kasem Sulejmani, who was killed in a US air strike on Friday. The funeral was held in the capital of Iraq and quickly turned into an anti-American demonstration. Sulejmani was the commander of an elite army unit, the Quds Force, and was responsible for the majority of Iranian military operations in the Middle East.

The Polish president, Andrzej Duda, will most likely not attend the World Holocaust Forum in Israel, which will begin on January 23rd at the Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem. According to Gazeta Wyborcza daily newspaper, it is unacceptable for Poland that one of the main speakers at the forum is to be the President of Russia, who has recently made offensive statements about Poland, in which he ascribed shared responsibility to Poland for the outbreak of World War II and accused for anti-Semitism. The Forum Coordinator at the Yad Vashem Institute is Israel Katz, the current Israeli Foreign Minister, infamous for his aggressive anti-Polish statements.

French police shot a man dead near Paris after he went on a rampage with a knife in a park. The assailant killed one person and wounded two more.

The first flights from the Polish Central Transportion Port (CPK) are planned for the end of 2027, the Government Commissioner for CPK, Marcin Horala, said to Rzeczpospolita on Friday, adding that the government will do everything to meet this date.

The new year should be a good opportunity to stop smoking. Taking care of your health is the best we can do for ourselves. The use of e-cigarettes is treated by young people as less risky, but studies do not confirm this.

The Orlen Group logotype is already present at all 586 fuel stations in Germany, as well as at 405 out of 415 stations in the Czech Republic and 8 out of 10 stations in Slovakia operating under the Benzina brand. A test station is being built near Berlin exclusively under the Orlen brand - PKN Orlen announced.

The unloading of the remaining amount of zinc concentrate from a 180-meter-long bulk carrier from Hong Kong, berthed at the port of Szczecin, began on Friday after firefighters announced that gas concentration standards had not been exceeded.

4 million 400 thousand pilgrims visited Jasna Góra in 2019. It is 100 thousand more than a year ago, the press office of the monastery reported. According to statistics, the number of pilgrims who come to Częstochowa on foot is increasing.

The capital of Indonesia, Djakarta, was flooded. In the aftermath of heavy rains, at least 21 people were killed. A large part of the metropolis, with over 10 million inhabitants, found itself under water. Over 30,000 people were evacuated from the affected area.

Australia is being devastated by a catastrophic wave of bushfires. 17 people have already been killed and over 1300 homes have been destroyed in a fire that has been sweeping through the south-east of the country for 17 weeks now. Due to the dramatic situation caused by the fires, the authorities of New South Wales declared a state of emergency.

On January 1st, Poland took command of the so-called NATO Response Force. The bulk of these forces will be the 21st Podhale Riflemen Brigade from the city of Rzeszów, supported by units from the 12th Mechanized Division of Szczecin and the 3rd AirLift Wing from Powidz, the Military Police, as well as logistics experts and specialists in the field of defense against mass destruction threats. Soldiers from 12 other alliance countries are also a part of the NATO Response Force.

The echoes of Vladimir Putin's slanderous statements, in which the President of Russia accused Poland of collaborating with Hitler to unleash the Second World War, are not stopping. In a propaganda attack on our country, Putin described Józef Lipski, the Polish ambassador in Berlin in the 1930s, as an "anti-Semitic villain." It seems, however, that at least for now Putin has failed in his calculations, as Western governments and Jewish communities have taken a position on this matter, in solidarity with Poland.

On New Year’s Day, the Catholic Church celebrates the feast of Mary, the Mother of God. This day also marks the 53rd annual World Day of Peace. In his address preceding the Angelus, Pope Francis said that Baby Jesus is God's blessing for every man and woman, for a great family, and for the whole world. Jesus did not banish evil from the world, but defeated it at its root, the Pope said. The Pope also added that contemplating the crib, we see, through the eyes of faith, a renewed world, liberated from the reign of evil and subjected to the royal power of Christ, the Child lying in his crib. Finally, the Pope gave the traditional blessing „urbi et orbi” to Rome and to the world.

Russia's president Vladimir Putin has accused the Polish ambassador to Germany Józef Lipski (who served from 1933-1939) of anti-Semitism. The Niezalezna.pl portal has published an interview with his biographer, prof. Marcin Wołos, who considers this accusation baseless.