Shoutbox

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WARSAW (Reuters) - Piotr Kardys is a Pole with a problem -- a pole; in fact, a telephone pole in his kitchen.

It was erected without his permission by telephone operator TPSA and when he built a home on his property in 2001 he had to build around the offending object, which is how the pole ended up in his kitchen.

Local authorities said since no one objected when the pole went up, it was legal. Kardys, a businessman from Kolbuszowa, disputed this view and Poland's Supreme Administrative Court has now agreed with him.

But his problems aren't over. Local authorities rescinded the building permit for the pole and told TPSA to move it, but TPSA spokeswoman Izabella Szum said the company would appeal.

"We have to have a binding decision -- we could do it on our own, but you have to realize this is a big investment," she said.

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LONDON (Reuters) - When a sheet of paper covered in doodles was found on Tony Blair's desk at the Davos World Economic Forum, handwriting experts delighted in analyzing it, concluding the prime minister was stressed and under pressure. Experts who examined the tangle of boxes, circles, loops and notes on debt and trade variously described Blair as "struggling to concentrate" or "not a natural leader" and "stressed and tense."

But there was a problem.

The doodles, it later transpired, were nothing to do with Blair but were the work of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who shared a table with Blair at the summit.

"Somebody from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has said that the notes are from Bill Gates rather than from Tony Blair," a spokesman from Blair's Downing Street office said on Monday.

"We were surprised nobody bothered to ask us about this when the paper was made public last week because the writing is obviously not the prime minister's," he added.

Psychologists and graphologists drafted in by a number of British newspapers even noted how "Blair's" handwriting had changed for the worse since he first won election as British Prime Minister in 1997.

"We look forward to psychologists reassessing their conclusions of how these characteristics ascribed to the Prime Minister equally apply to Mr. Gates," the Downing Street spokesman said.

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