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On Sunday, a group of neo-Nazis gathered outside the Israeli embassy in Prague to protest against Israel's Middle East policy. Knives, truncheons, and gas pistols had to be confiscated by the police and 26 of the protesters were detained and taken in for questioning. Almost all of the demonstrators were members of the National Resistance organisation.

Dramatic headlines in some Czech papers this week warned of an "illegal car race" heading for Prague which will leave the city overrun by rusty wrecks, turning it into a giant scrap yard. The reason: the rally crossing six states is called "Czech Wrecks 2006" and cars taking part in it must not be worth more than 100 pounds.

Poland continues to cause anger and some amazement in the European Union. The latest stir is over capital punishment - long banished from the EU. The far-right League of Polish Families is calling for its reinstatement and President Lech Kaczynski has made comments supporting capital punishment in certain cases. Agnieszka Bielawska has the details:

The European Commission has launched a campaign to improve health and safety in the workplace for small businesses in the recently joined EU member states along with Bulgaria and Romania. Slovakia, one of those countries, has enacted most of the new rules into legislation - but do Slovak workers know about them? Anca Dragu has been finding out:

If we say Hitler and beetles, you may think of a fascist dictator and an old Volkswagen car. But there's another kind of beetle linked to the notorious German dictator, lurking in the caves of Slovenia. Michael Manske of Radio Slovenia International has more on this curious story:

It is now official: Our solar system has only eight planets. In Thursday's vote at the General Assembly of the International Astronomical Union here in Prague, astronomers from all over the world approved a definition of what a planet is and decided to relegate Pluto into a special category called "dwarf planets". As a result of the Prague congress, textbooks around the world will now have to be rewritten.

For many of us life without a personal computer would be unthinkable. But it's only 25 years ago that the first IBM PC was launched on the world market. In the Czech Republic, an estimated 2.5 million of the country's 10 million inhabitants now own a PC - and about 400,000 personal computers are sold every year. But what was the situation like when the PC was a luxury and the Communists were in power? Dita Asiedu spoke to Petr Koubsky of the IT magazine Inside.

In Slovakia the government's Anti-monopoly Office is under fire over the sale of the country's major airports. Its critics says it has succumbed to political interference after postponing the sale of a majority stake in Bratislava Airport to an Austrian led consortium known as TwoOne- which included Vienna International airport. The Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico has since made it known the deal is off. Anca Dragu reports from Bratislava.

A group of young Slovenes has set about using their computer skills to help their fellow citizens who've moved to Brussels following Slovenia's membership of the EU in 2004. They've started Bruslov.net Michael Manske of Radio Slovenia International spoke to Dragan Barbutovski, one of the sites founders.

Debate about Guenter Grass, the German Nobel Prize laureate in literature, has been raging across Europe - after his recent admission that he was recruited into the Waffen SS just near the end of World War 2. And outside of Germany, nowhere is the debate more intense than in Poland. Guenter Grass was born in the port city of Gdansk and has been awarded honorary citizenship of Gdansk. Now politicians from Poland's governing Law and Justice party have called on the writer to give up that honour. Slawek Szefs reports.