Poland's ruling party lawmakers gave preliminary approval on Friday to two bills allowing parliament and the president to replace top judges, plans the opposition and the European Commission denounced as a threat to the rule of law.

A bill sponsored by Poland's ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party will undermine the fairness of elections, opposition deputies said in parliament on Thursday.

French President Emmanuel Macron said on Thursday that Poland's plans to overhaul the judiciary remained a cause for concern though there were a decreasing number of subjects where the two countries did not see eye-to-eye.

Success-starved Poland will be banking on the goals of top striker Robert Lewandowski to make up for lost time when they make their first World Cup appearance in 12 years.

Plans to overhaul Poland's judiciary would end the country's status as a democratic state based on the rule of law and should be scrapped, more than two dozen rights groups and non-governmental organisations said in a petition on Wednesday.

“Creating divisions in the European Union will weaken it,” President Andrzej Duda said in Athens. In his view, involving national parliaments in the debate on the future of the EU is a solution worth considering.

The European Union's top court said on Monday Poland would be fined 100,000 euros a day if it did not stop large-scale logging in the Bialowieza forest, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

“A single tweet with complete diagnosis,” the president of the Nowoczesna caucus Katarzyna Lubnauer told TVN24's Fakty po Faktach, commenting on a tweet by the President of the European Council Donald Tusk. “He came to the conclusion that this is the moment to speak courageously about what's happening,” she added.

European Council President Donald Tusk said on Sunday he was alarmed by the similarity of policies pursued by Poland's right-wing government to what he described as "Kremlin's plan".

Ukraine has summoned the Polish ambassador in Kiev after Poland denied entry to a Ukrainian official in an escalation of a diplomatic spat over the two neighbours' troubled past.

The U.S. State Department approved a possible $10.5 billion sale of Raytheon Co's Patriot missile defense system to Poland, the Pentagon said on Friday.

South Africa's Justice Minister Michael Masutha on Friday denied parole to the killer of anti-apartheid leader Chris Hani, saying he had not expressed remorse for the murder.

Stanisław Piotrowicz, a man that has become one of the faces of Law and Justice’s judicial revolution played a more important role in the communist judiciary than he admits, as claimed by those who worked with him back then. They talk about his career in the Polish United Workers’ Party (PZPR) and at the prosecutor’s office. This career, contrary to what Piotrowicz himself declares, did not end at the time of martial law, about the introduction of which, by the way, he had no objections back then. Material of the “Czarno na białym” show.

A deeply moving exhibition of archives documenting the life and annihilation of Jews by Nazi Germany in the Warsaw Ghetto during World War Two goes on public display in Poland on Thursday.

The European Commission on Wednesday voiced fresh concerns over Poland's plans to reform its courts and EU lawmakers accused Warsaw of promoting intolerance, reflecting deep fears for the rule of law in the country.

“The PiS party is cheating, they are changing the rules of the game for their own benefit”, said Władysław Kosiniak-Kamysz, the leader of the PSL party, in the Jeden na jeden TV programme, referring to the proposal for changes to electoral arrangements proposed by the ruling party.

Polish President Andrzej Duda said on Monday there was no place in Poland for xenophobia, anti-Semitism and "sick nationalism", denouncing hate speech at a nationalist march in Warsaw in comments later echoed by ruling party leader Jaroslaw Kaczynski.

Twelve women were forcibly removed from the route of Saturday’s nationalist march after they assembled to voice their opposition. “They stood there instead of law enforcement services. Defenceless women faced down the brown wave. This was not a minor incident, it was a heroic act,” said Rafał Kasprzak, leader of Obywatele RP, an NGO. He also said that Warsaw’s authorities should have disbanded the march as law was being broken.

Demanding reparations from Germany for its actions in Poland during World War Two is a matter of honour for Warsaw, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Polish ruling Law and Justice (PiS) party, said on Saturday.

“We want God” screamed the banners carried by ca. 60,000 people who marched through the streets of the Polish capital on Saturday, 11 November, in the Independence March.