Fideltronik is Poland's largest EMS provider The company employs 2,500 people across five sites – offering the company a total floor area of 40,000 square metres Evertiq reported about the company's decision to invest in a new production facility in Krakow Fideltronik has decided to close its manufacturing operations in Gdańsk the operations manager writes that his final task has been the most difficult task he's been handed While it has been a "truly unique experience" he still hopes he will never have to use that experience again Tomasz Jasiński thanked his team for the years together especially the people who stayed with him until the very end and "turned off the light" together with him Soudal Quick-Step U19 celebrated its second consecutive victory of the weekend After Thibaut Van Damme took the opening stage of Tour du Bocage et de l’Ernée 53 Friday afternoon now his teammate Maksymilian Matyasik made a visit to the podium following his splendid performance in the 13.9km individual time trial held in Ambrières-les-Vallées stopping the clock in 17:29 after averaging more than 47km/h enough to take the victory just two seconds ahead of his Belgian teammate the 17-year-old Pole from Sucha Beskidzka moved up to second on the general classification Thibaut Van Damme remains the overall leader of the French race going into this afternoon’s final stage a hilly one that could reshuffle the standings to know how many times a particular page is read We only use this information to improve the content of our website These cookies are only placed after you have given your consent The investment is said to create 25 new jobs at Fideltronik in Sucha Beskidzka a press release from Krakow Technology Park reads The new unit will operate under the name Fideltronik Smart Factory and will focus on new technologies “The new investment in Sucha Beskidzka is an opportunity for us to build an innovative technological base where the majority of production processes will be automated and robotic with an emphasis on aspects that are still done by hand in many factories,” says Miłosław Dziula vice president and financial director at Fideltronik The EMS provider estimates that the project will be completed by 31 December 2024 and will result an additonal of 5,000 square metres of production space – bringing the total area of the production complex up to 12,000 square metres Nov 9, 2022 | Energy & Climate, Society The southern town of Nowa Ruda has Poland’s most polluted air in Poland according to the latest version of an annual ranking published by Polish Smog Alarm Nowa Ruda is among the small and medium-sized towns in the south of the country that dominate the ranking Among other poor performers are Nowy Targ (population: 33,000) and Sucha Beskidzka (10,000) There are, however, no big cities on the list. This is because in Poland – which has some of Europe’s worst air – the primary cause of the pollution is the burning of coal for home heating The places with the highest number of days in 2021 during which smog levels exceeded maximum safe levels (source: Polish Smog Alarm) Smog Alarm’s ranking takes account of three categories: annual average concentration of benzo(a)pyrene and small particulates known as PM10s – both of which have adverse health effects – and the number of days in the year during which levels of smog exceeded official safety limits Nowa Ruda had the worst results in all three categories based on the data for 2021 from the Chief Inspectorate of Environmental Protection “In all of the municipalities in the ranking the air was unbreathable for two to three months of the year,” wrote the NGO “As for the annual average concentrations of the carcinogenic benzo[a]pyrene they remained at 700-1500% of the permissible standard in all municipalities.” Poland has been rated as the EU's least green country in a new ranking The EU-funded study takes into account the state of the environment, its effects on quality of life, and efforts to address climate issues https://t.co/hKyeucSzBl — Notes from Poland 🇵🇱 (@notesfrompoland) November 5, 2022 the standards for permissible concentrations in Poland are higher than those recommended by the World Health Organisation the daily limit values in Poland are 20µg/m3 and 50µg/m3 respectively while the WHO sets its limits at 15µg/m3 and 45µg/m3 Aggregated data from the annual smog ranking since 2018, the first year it was available, shows that the average pollution levels in all three categories had been falling in the places included in the list, bottoming out in 2020 when Poland went into lockdown for long periods of time One of the places that has succeeded in climbing out of the ranking is Kraków it was among the places with the most polluted air Around one third of homes in Poland use coal for heating. According to a 2022 report by the National Centre for Emissions Management (KOBiZE) households were responsible for 78% of PM2.5 emissions and 68% of dioxin and furan emissions Pioneering anti-smog measures improve air in one of Poland’s most polluted cities though this autumn has been unusually warm the coming winter could see even worse pollution than usual if people burn cheaper coal – or even illegal materials such as household waste – for heating “The air quality may get even worse this year as the sale of brown coal in the region has started and the penalisation of burning it has been abolished,” said Krzysztof Smolnicki of the branch of Smog Alarm that operates in Lower Silesia Poland to delay coal phaseout and open more mines amid energy crisis Main photo credit: Michał Franczak / Unsplash  Alicja Ptak is senior editor at Notes from Poland and a multimedia journalist , , The proportion of Poles saying the US has a positive influence on the world has also fallen to its lowest recorded level , , Poland has recorded the strongest rise in consumer sentiment across the EU this year , , , The stunt has also been criticised by Ukraine’s ambassador to Poland as well as politicians from Poland’s main ruling party Apr 30, 2025 | , , , That response will include “large Polish and NATO exercises in Poland” Apr 29, 2025 | , , , Those employed in Poland work on average the third-longest hours in the European Union Apr 28, 2025 | , , , , Westinghouse and Bechtel were first chosen in 2022 as partners on the 192 billion zloty ($51 billion) project please consider helping us to continue and expand it [email protected] Copyright © 2025 Notes From Poland | Design jurko studio | Code by 2sides.pl Senior Research Fellow at the Global Europe Centre ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Weronika Strzyżyńska is currently studying journalism at Goldsmiths as a Scott Trust Bursary recipient She  has written on issues immigration and Brexit for New Statesman and Prospect Agnieszka Wądołowska is 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Professor of European Studies at Oxford University ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Professor at the Institute of History of the Jagiellonian University ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Executive Director of Taube Family Foundation ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR Associate Professor at the Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Science ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR ARTICLES BY THIS AUTHOR one really only needs to list the titles of his many triumphs in genres as disparate as light comedy and film noir The Austrian-American filmmaker was so prolific and so brilliant that even his minor works like Ace in the Hole I really can't articulate just how wonderful Wilder's films are but I can share a few things you might not have known about him: When talking about director and screenwriter Billy Wilder Wilder was born in Sucha Beskidzka in what is now Poland in 1906 and attended what he later called "the worst high school in Vienna." He eventually ended up at the University of Vienna to fulfill his parents' dreams of becoming a lawyer Wilder didn't love the ivory tower and quickly dropped out of college to become a journalist in Berlin It was tough to make ends meet as a writer so Wilder supplemented his income by working as a gigolo According to the director this was no Midnight Cowboy stuff and Wilder went into the line of work mostly hoping it would make good research for a series of articles In the excellent book-length interview Conversations With Wilder by director Cameron Crowe Wilder claims that he never got frisky with any clients "because they would come with their husbands"¦and the ladies were corpulent ladies One of the most memorable scenes in The Lost Weekend also ended up being one of the most important scenes in Wilder's life Ray Milland's alcoholic writer character heads to a fancy nightclub for drinks only to realize he doesn't have enough cash to cover his tab but he gets caught and is given the heave-ho from the bar It's perhaps the most embarrassing and crucial scene in the movie the arm of a hatcheck girl enters the frame to hand him his hat and I fell in love with the arm." Audrey Young the Paramount extra on the other end of the arm and a singer in Tommy Dorsey's band and the two stayed together until the director's death in 2002 (Another interesting note about The Lost Weekend: Since it was the first sweeping portrayal of alcoholism on film the country's booze peddlers were none too eager to have it hit the screen The liquor industry banded together and offered Paramount $5 million to suppress the film "If they'd offered me the five million including the screenplays for Some Like It Hot and The Apartment and Fred MacMurray pop up in multiple Wilder films This happy arrangement never came together with mystery icon Raymond Chandler Paramount hired Chandler to work with Wilder on adapting James M Cain's novel Double Indemnity into a screenplay and the two apparently spent much of the time at each other's throats Wilder admittedly valued Chandler's ear for dialogue but the aging writer apparently had no interest in working within the structure of a screenplay "[T]here was a lot of Hitler in Chandler," and the two fought over everything from whether or not Wilder could have a martini at lunch— Chandler was a recovering alcoholic—to the rules of etiquette—Chandler once quit in a huff when Wilder asked him to close the blinds without saying "please." the notoriously cantankerous Chandler didn't seem to enjoy the process any more than Wilder did "I went to Hollywood in 1943 to work with Billy Wilder on Double Indemnity This was an agonizing experience and probably shortened my life but I learned from it as much about screen writing as I am capable of learning which is not very much." From hearing these stories you wouldn't think that the teaming would have resulted in arguably film noir's greatest masterpiece It's amazing what Barbara Stanwyck in an anklet can do frequently hilarious collaboration between Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau is most notable for their work in The Odd Couple it was actually Wilder who brought the two together for the first time in 1966's The Fortune Cookie The film tells the story of a CBS sports cameraman (Lemmon) who gets mildly injured while covering a football game only to have his sleazy personal-injury lawyer brother-in-law (Matthau) railroad him into faking paralysis for a big cash settlement particularly Matthau's performance as "Whiplash Willie" Gingrich which won him an Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role As long as we're giving Wilder credit for changing peoples' careers it's worth recounting the story of a waiter who asked an elderly Wilder for advice on acting Wilder told the young man he was too ugly to be an actor so if he wanted to break into the business he'd have to write a part for himself and that's how Billy Bob Thornton penned himself a starring role in Sling Blade When Thomas Keneally published Schindler's Ark in 1983 Wilder tried to get the film rights to the book so he could make it his final film the film would certainly have been quite different and Wilder wanted to make the Schindler film as a tribute to them Wilder hit a pretty big roadblock even as early as 1983: Steven Spielberg already owned the rights Wilder tried to talk Spielberg into letting him direct the film When Schindler's List eventually came out ten years later Wilder admitted that while he would have made the picture very differently Spielberg did a terrific job and crafted "a very important picture." '5 Things You Didn't Know About...' appears every Friday. Read the previous installments here © 2025 Minute Media - All Rights Reserved Mental Floss may receive a commission for purchases made through these links.",{"type":"8n","value":"ia"},"AR_1",{"type":"8n","value":"ic"},"This article contains affiliate links to products selected by our editors as well as products provided to Mental Floss for review purposes d) {\n h = h[d] = h[d] || {\n q: [],\n onReady: function(c){ h.q.push(c) },\n };\n d = o.createElement(u);\n d.async = 1;\n d.src = n;\n n = o.getElementsByTagName(u)[0];\n n.parentNode.insertBefore(d \"https://www.datadoghq-browser-agent.com/us1/v5/datadog-rum.js\" Initialize Datadog RUM and then measure TTFB/FCP\n window.DD_RUM.onReady(function() {\n // 3a Initialize RUM\n window.DD_RUM.init({\n applicationId: 'f3f16add-4ebf-4aad-9bb4-adb13da4d17e',\n clientToken: 'pub53fad8ec1eea29e2f92980d95072da2f',\n site: \"datadoghq.com\",\n service: \"voltax-sites-www.mentalfloss.com\",\n env: \"prod\",\n sessionSampleRate: 100,\n sessionReplaySampleRate: 0,\n trackUserInteractions: true,\n trackResources: true,\n trackLongTasks: true,\n defaultPrivacyLevel: \"mask-user-input\",\n });\n\n // 3b Measure TTFB & FCP once the page fully loads\n window.addEventListener('load' {\n ttfb: ttfb,\n fcp: fcp,\n });\n\n // Optional: log them to console for debugging\n console.log('[Datadog RUM] TTFB:' '5 Things You Didn't Know About...' appears every Friday. Read the previous installments here Piotr Natanek was suspended as a priest in 2011. However, since then he has continued to attract a following, described by the Polish Press Agency (PAP) as a "sect" During a "sermon" delivered at Easter 2022 Onet approached the Kraków Archdiocese for a comment - the Archdiocese responsible for Natanek's suspension in 2011 They have responded distancing the Church from the former priest: "We have done everything we could have as the Kraków Curia in the matter of this "ex" priest," replied spokesperson Father Łukasz Michalczewski Although Poland is a Catholic country, surveys have shown that an overwhelming majority of Poles support the use of In Vitro Fertilisation - around 86% of the country The Sucha Beskidzka court's verdict does not seem set to cause controversy Freedom of speech in Poland is curtailed by what Freedom House describes as "harsh insult laws": "People [in Poland] are generally free to engage in private discussions without fear of harassment or detention by the authorities including against offending religious feelings and insulting the president which have been increasingly used to pursue criminal cases in recent years." Since Natanek has set up an "alternative religion" an appeal might be expected either on the basis of free expression or freedom of religious practice Under the laws of several countries Natanek's language would count as hate speech but rather not incitement to violence which is sometimes the limit of permissible speech The conviction is not final and may be appealed