Katowice

For the first time in thirty years investments are being made into a new coal mine in Poland. The Jastrzebska Spolka Weglowa (JSW) has commenced work to open a new coal shaft.

The national government's Silesia-based coal-mining operation ? the biggest in Europe ? is struggling to hire an additional 1,700 workers this year because higher wages overseas have lured away so many Poles.

When Ingmar Villqist presented his film version of "Helucik" in the Katakomben theater in Essen (made in cooperation with Adam Sikora, a Polish cinematographer), other European theater operators became interested in his plays. Ingmar Villqist is the artistic pseudonym of Jaroslaw Swierszcz, the Chorzow-born playwright, art historian and professor of the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw.

Police in Rybnik have arrested seven Irishmen suspected of swindling. The crimes took place throughout the Silesian province.

Focus Park Gliwice is the latest shopping mall slated for construction by the UK-based development and investment company Parkridge Retail, according to Gazeta Wyborcza. Gliwice, neighboring Katowice, 90 kilometers west of Krakow, has been a major industrial city since the 19th Century and boasts the only remaining wooden radio tower in the world.

The history of the Donnersmarck and Tauren family is very colorful. It contains everything that would be necessary for a good book or movie: an affair, an aristocratic family, love and an illegitimate baby.

Zywieckie Lake, 70 kilometers southwest of Krakow, has been a popular holiday destination for Poles since its creation with the damming of Sola River in the 1950s.

October 10 has been celebrated as Tree Day for several years and not only in Poland but throughout the world.

Tradition says that shepherds must leave the grazing lands in the high mountains before St. Michael's Day.

Katowice has become the first place in Europe to have a mockup of a city that police can train in.