A 37 year-old man who died recently of pneumonia was carrying the H1N1 virus, doctors announced Saturday in what was the country's first swine flu fatality.

The man died after a week in the hospital, reported the Polish Press Agency PAP.

So far in Poland this year there have been 234 cases of swine flu.

The fatality in Gdansk came as a top Polish civil rights official threatened legal action Friday against Health Minister Ewa Kopacz, saying her delay in purchasing swine flu vaccines could endanger lives and health.

Polish industrial orders dropped by 9.7 per cent in June compared to the previous month and were down 28.2 per cent compared to last year, the Central Statistical Office said Thursday.

Retail sales were up 0.9 per cent compared to the same period last year, the office said in a published report as Poland continues faring better in the financial crisis than much of Europe.

Poles are more optimistic than other Europeans in the face of recession, worrying not so much about losing their jobs as simply paying higher bills, a survey in Monday's Rzeczpospolita daily said.

Some 15 per cent of Poles worry about the state of the economy, compared to a 37 per cent average globally, the survey found.

Fewer Poles have confidence in the Pope as trust has fallen over the past decade in the Roman Catholic church, the daily Rzeczpospolita reported Thursday.

Some 80 per cent of Poles trust the current Pope Benedict compared to 91 per cent who trusted John Paul II - himself a Pole - a decade ago, reported the daily based on a survey of some 1,000 adults.

At least six people died overnight amid floods in northeastern Czech Republic, police said Thursday.

Four people were confirmed to have drowned, and two others died, although the cause of death had not yet been ascertained, police spokeswoman Miroslava Michalkova Salkova told the German Press Agency dpa.

Satellite TV viewers in Europe are about to see another side to one of the world's most extraordinary literary figures, an intense, finger-wagging critic whose judgement about new German books has been akin to law for the past 36 years.

Marcel Reich-Ranicki, 88, is a bossy, abrasive television personality who is revered as one of Germany's great intellectuals.

But his other story, of his years as a Jewish schoolboy in Nazi Germany and as a member of the resistance keeping one jump ahead of the Holocaust in Poland, is a tale of stark physical peril.

The Gliwice mine in southern Poland no longer produces the coal that made the region known as an industrial powerhouse during communism. But it's hardly a relic of the past.

The mine's smoky bricks have been polished to a lively orange, and its interior renovated to house a business and education centre with a state-of-the-art lecture hall.

The city's mayor, Zygmunt Frankiewicz, says Gliwice is a symbol of the changes in the coal-rich Silesia region, and a sign pointing to the province's dynamic future.

Some 100 people protested outside the Israeli embassy in Warsaw on Monday, calling for an end to "killing civilians" after three days of airstrikes in the Gaza Strip.