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The Budapest Spring Festival opened on Friday night. First launched 26 years ago in the off-season to see whether world famous performers and audiences would be willing to visit the Hungarian capital in March, the Spring Festival now attracts tens of thousand of people. In 2005 it won the European Cultural Prize.

A controversy over the Polish government's refusal to authorise the merger of Polish branches of two major international banks has escalated into a full blown political conflict. At the centre of the conflict is National Bank of Poland president Leszek Balcerowicz, the architect of the country's market reforms, who has found himself under attack for opposing the government line on the bank merger. The conflict has attracted the attention of the European Union, which is concerned over what it regards as the Polish government's attempts to tamper

The Cankarjev dom cultural centre in Ljubljana hosts an international documentary film festival every year in March. This year it is the eighth in a row and the organizers are showcasing different approaches and trends of contemporary documentary production.

The Czech Republic has become the only country in Central Europe where gays and lesbians will be allowed to enter into registered partnerships. The lower house of Parliament on Wednesday narrowly overturned an earlier veto by President Vaclav Klaus. Dita Asiedu was there:

Just over two weeks before presidential elections in Belarus, the life of the opposition there is becoming ever more difficult. One of Alexander Lukashenko's rivals was beaten up by security forces and detained for several hours. Following its active involvement in the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, Poland is now attentively watching developments in another eastern neighbour.

The organ of the St. Alkmund Church in Shrewsbury, England has been purchased by a Hungarian student of the Music Academy of Budapest. The organ was taken apart and sent to Hungary by ship and road transport. It is currently resting in the garage of the student, Balázs Szabó, who plans to set it up in his native city of Miskolc in north-eastern Hungary.

The leaders of European socialist parties met in Prague on Friday for a conference hosted by the Czech Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek to discuss, among other issues, the EU's Spring Summit and a stronger European Energy policy. Before the event, Prime Minister Jiri Paroubek held separate meetings with some of the participants, including British Prime Minister Tony Blair.

Slovenia's second largest city, Maribor, scored a recent coup by getting the right to host the European Orchestral Academy from September 2007 onwards. The academy offers post-graduate studies to 86 graduates from auditions in ten European cities. The students will have studied at Europe's premier musical conservatories, and at the academy in Maribor, will make up their own symphonic orchestra.

Late Thursday evening Tony Blair came for the first-ever visit of a serving British prime minister to Slovakia. Prior to the visit there was a great deal of speculation about the purpose of his trip.

There's an old saying - Books have their fate. And so it was when Russia returned some precious volumes to Hungary. Their fate was to go back on to the same shelves of the Sarospatak Calvinist College - from where they were taken about 60 years ago. The 136 volumes are currently part of an exhibition at the National Museum in Budapest - opened last week by Russian President Vladimir Putin.