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March 8 marked International Women's Day around the world. In Hungary, it is common for women to receive flowers from husbands, partners and male colleagues. But in much of Central Europe, Women's Day used to be a kind of "official" celebration under the old socialist regime and so today many people find it hard to celebrate spontaneously.

Ethnic minorities in Poland have for years had little access to media in their own languages or dialects. While the Hungarian minority in neighboring Slovakia had a round-the-clock service in their native language, the Belarusian minority in eastern Poland could only listen to short broadcasts in Belarusian a couple of times a week. But now things seem to be changing. In Silesia, southern Poland, more and more media are launching programmes in Silesian - a dialect of the most distinct ethnic minority in Poland.

In Slovenia, women are bearing by far the greater burden when it comes to raising children. That's probably no surprise to anyone but a new survey has highlighted just how out of balance are the roles of women and men when it comes to child-care and how parents are often torn between the demands of work and family.

With the Visegrad countries - Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, importing most of their crude oil and natural gas requirements from Russia, is Central Europe too dependent on Russian energy?

The knowledge and experience gained during the peaceful transition from communism to democracy in Central and Eastern European countries is to be brought together in Budapest. The International Democracy Center, as it will be called, could start its work as early as this year.

An African-American basketball player called Maurice Whitfield recently received a Czech passport; he has become a Czech citizen in order to play for the country's international team, after already leading his club Nymburk to success in the national basketball league. Radio Prague's Ian Willoughby caught up with Maurice Whitfield this week, and asked him how he was finding life in the Czech Republic.

The problems of the bankrupt Russian oil giant Yukos are creating headaches for some of Central Europe's energy companies. Yukos had stakes in a number of oil companies in this region including Slovakia's Transpetrol. Now it seems that two Russian companies are interested in buying the Yukos stake. But given the turmoil around Yukos - will Slovaks welcome another Russian investor?

About ten days ago a hunger strike in the Slovenian capital Ljubljana drew attention to the problems of people who have become known as "the erased." They are the 18,000 people from the former Yugoslavia - mostly Serbs, Croats and Bosnians - who were simply erased from the record books. They were living in Slovenia when it declared independence from Yugoslavia.

This year's Academy Awards ceremony in Los Angeles was followed with bated breath in Poland. The hopes of Polish film fans were set on the movie Finding Neverland, and they were not disappointed.

Slovenia will soon begin constructing what it calls a "European Aeronautical Museum" in the eastern city of Maribor. Radio Slovenia International spoke to the man behind the project - the president of the Slovenian National Party and aviation enthusiast, Zmago Jelincic.