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For the first time in 27 years, a Hungarian language conversation has taken place between a space station and the control centre on Earth. Hungarian-born software mogul and billionaire Charles Simonyi spoke to his brother, Tamás, and the first Hungarian in Space, Bertalan Farkas.

Music lovers will remember the unprecedented commercial success, just over ten years ago, of Henryk Mikolaj Gorecki's Third Symphony. Now this Polish composer is again in the news. The recording of his Third String Quartet by the American Kronos Quartet, now in music shops around the world, is a re-discovery of Gorecki after quite a long period of silence.

We now know that formal talks on the deployment of parts of a U.S. anti-missile system in Poland will begin this month. Radar bases connected to that system are planned for the Czech Republic. Polish foreign minister Anna Fotyga says the talks are technically very difficult. They're politically difficult as well.

Few major public building projects are controversy free. And so it is with the new Slovak National Theatre. After twenty years of planning and building it's finally ready for the public. It's located on the banks of the Danube River a few minutes away from the historical part of Bratislava. The new National Theatre puts a roof over the 3 main national ensembles: the ballet, the opera and the theatre. There are three and the main one holds 900 people. In the final days before the grand opening Radio Slovakia's Emilie White played her role - and

The story of Slovenian swimmer Martin Strel is a remarkable one. He's the man who braved crocodiles, piranhas, disease and the threat of a heart attack to swim the Amazon. He's also swum the length of the Danube, the Yangtze and the Mississippi rivers but it was the Amazon which really did test his strength.

Just three months after taking office Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek is struggling to keep his centre-right coalition government afloat. A fragile majority in the lower house, a rebel in his own party who is threatening to vote against the government's proposed tax reforms and worst of all a deputy prime minister accused of corruption who has been rocking the boat for weeks. On top of all this, around two hundred angry Roma demonstrators gathered outside government headquarters on Wednesday to demand the dismissal of the said deputy prime minister

This week marked the second anniversary of Pope John Paul the Second's death, as well as the completion of the first stage of his beatification process. Pole's adored their Pope while he was alive and now that he's gone, they're finding new ways to hold onto him. Visitors to Poland can now take a train and follow the tracks John Paul made in his homeland.

The Czech coalition government on Tuesday unveiled a package of ambitious tax reforms and spending cuts, aiming to reduce the country's fiscal deficit and prepare it for the adoption of the Euro. Among other measures, the plan introduces a flat 15-percent personal income tax and raises the lower VAT rate from 5 to 9 percent. The reform package will be presented to parliament in June. However, the centre-right government of Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek has no guaranteed majority in the lower house.

As of the 1st April Slovenia is without a governor of its Central Bank. The situation has arisen due to a stalemate between the president and the coalition parties on the new candidate. Slovenia's governing coalition in Parliament has already rejected two nominees for the post proposed by Slovenia's president Janez Drnovsek.

A survey by the New York based Luxury Institute says the most popular porcelain brand in the United States is Herend, from western Hungary.