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More than 140 years after it was composed, Jacques Offenbach's opera Die Rhein Nixen or the Fairies of the Rhine has finally been given a fully - staged production. The Slovenian National Theatre Opera Company is giving ten performances of the work in the main hall of Ljubljana's Cultural and congress centre.

Last weekend Stipe Mesic won a second term as Croatia's President when he took 66 percent of the vote in a run-off election. The Mesic win has generally been welcomed in Europe. And, the re-election of Stipe Mesic has also been welcomed in neighbouring Slovenia, which has several ongoing disputes with Croatia, including a disputed border.

Czech and Slovak were both the official languages of Czechoslovakia; prior to the country's split in 1993, Czechs and Slovaks were regularly exposed to each other's languages and had no problems whatsoever understanding one another. Now, though, Czechs at least are no longer finding it so easy to understand their former federal brothers, and - for the first time - Czech public television has dubbed a Slovak serial.

Statesmen from some 40 countries gather at the former Nazi death camp of Auschwitz next week to mark the 60th anniversary of its liberation. Among them will be the German, Russian, Israeli, French and Polish presidents.

At the end of November last year, a large part of Slovakia's biggest and best known National Park was damaged by a strong wind storm. The park attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year and now Slovaks fear they might lose this important tourist trade. We went to the High Tatras to investigate the impact of the natural disaster on the economy of the region.

Hungarians have for the first time made it to the South Pole. Walking more than a hundred kilometres in strong winds Zoltan Acs and Krisztina Batori Kovalcsik - two experienced extreme athletes - were in a group of people to reach the southernmost point of the Globe. Now, telephone calls to the South Pole are a bit of a problem so Radio Budapest talked to the press coordinator of the mission, Edit Muranyi of Shannon Communications:

Slovenia has been voted 'Favourite European Country' at The Guardian, The Observer and the Guardian Unlimited Travel Awards for 2004. The vote is based on the quality of the holidays experienced by readers and demonstrates just how popular Slovenia has become in the UK. The award comes at a very important time for Slovenia's tourist industry as it marks a centenary of organized tourism in the country.

The Czech Republic has long had one of the worst road safety records in Europe, and horrific pile-ups have become a daily feature on the evening news. But finally, it seems, there's been some improvement - last year saw a substantial fall in the number of deaths. So what's behind it, and will it last?

Hungarian diplomacy has struck a few good chords in the United States recently. You see Hungary's ambassador to the US - Andras Simonyi - represented his country in an unusual way - by performing in a rock concert. Radio Budapest called the rockin' diplomat and asked him if he played for diplomatic relations or for rock and roll....

An international arbitration court in Washington has ruled that Slovakia must pay 617 million euros to the Czech bank - CSOB. The case dates back to the early nineties and is linked to the debts of state owned companies from this period. The decision is bad news for Slovak public finances - the public deficit could go up by 1.9% at a time when Bratislava is fighting to keep it as low as possible so it can adopt the Euro in about 4 years time.