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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.

It is six years this week since the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland joined NATO - a milestone in the history of both the alliance and Central Europe. Last year NATO was enlarged even further, to include Slovakia, Slovenia, Bulgaria, Romania and the three Baltic states. We look at Central Europe's relationship with the Alliance.

Slovak cinemas have a new title on the big-screen. Not a Hollywood blockbuster but a Hungarian film shot as a Central European co-production. Hungarian, Slovak and Polish filmmakers got together to film the story of Imre Nagy, the leader of the 1956 Hungarian anti-Soviet revolution. It's been a surprise success since it was released in Budapest last October - being seen by over 100,000 people when the expectation was for only about 10,000. On March 10th it opened in the Slovak capital Bratislava with humble expectations.

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.

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.

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?