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The Czech daily Lidove Noviny recently published details of a little-known footnote in Cold War history; browsing through the archives of Czechoslovakia's communist-era secret police or StB, the paper discovered that among the foreign journalists regularly followed on his trips to Prague was one Frederick Forsyth. Today known as the best-selling author of such classics as the Day of the Jackal and the Odessa File, back in the early 1960s Frederick Forsyth was a young journalist based in Berlin. Rob Cameron called the novelist at his home in Hertfordshire,

On Wednesday Serbia's parliament overwhelmingly rejected a United Nations proposal on the future status of Kosovo. Under the plan drafted by UN special envoy Martti Ahtisaari, Kosovo will get some delf-rule but not full independence. Further talks between Serbs and Kosovars would be held later this month but the Ahtisaari plan has already stirred the political scene in Slovakia with state officials unable to issue a common stance. As a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council, Slovakia is one of the countries that will vote on the Kosovo

Poland's President Lech Kaczynski wants the martial law leader Wojciech Jaruzelski to be degraded from general to private. A bill, now being drafted in the President's Office focuses on the authors of the 1981 martial law which crushed Solidarity, the first free trade union in the then communist bloc, and claimed the lives of dozens if not hundreds of Poles.

A work by the famous art nouveau painter Alfons Mucha hangs serenely in the Grand restaurant of the hotel Thermia Palace in Piestany about one hour from the Slovak capital Bratislava. 'Be greeted, the Blessed Spring of Health' -as it's called - was stolen seven years ago and damaged by the thieves. Its restoration has taken a lot of hard work.

Slovenia is taking its first steps towards seriously limiting where people can smoke. With general public approval, new legislation restricting tobacco is almost certain to pass.

The deep forests of the Sumava Mountains in South Bohemia used to abound in spruce trees whose wood was of such high quality that it was used for the production of musical instruments in workshops around Europe. But environmental change and forest management means these legendary tone spruce trees are becoming increasingly rare.

The Polish Parliament has examined amendments submitted by the country's President to the vetting law of 1996, which is meant to weed out former communist police spies from public posts. In the focus is the institution of vetting courts, which will serve to clear the names of people who object to the findings of the National Remembrance Institute, the institution that looks into the former communist security police files to establish a person's status.

Energy, its cost and its security of supply is a big topic in Europe at the moment and not surprisingly, the idea of building more nuclear power stations is being debated. Hungary has not built any nuclear reactors recently, but its electricity production from atomic energy increased by about 10 per cent at the end of January. What happened was that one of the four units at Hungary's only nuclear power station in Paks, south of Budapest, came back on line after remnants from a small leak in 2003 were cleaned up.

Slovenia's Liberal Democracy party is the largest opposition party and was in power for most of Slovenia's independence since 1991. But last year it experienced changes and challenges when President Janez Drnovsek resigned. Since then other senior figures have followed Drnovsek leading many to ask - what's the future of the opposition Liberal Democracy?

The list of Hungarians who've made an impact on the film industry is long - from hollywood actress Zsa Zsa Gabor to Károly Makk, the acclaimed director. And at the National Film Festival which has just begun in Budapest it's pretty clear that Hungarians continue to punch above their weight when it comes to Hollywood and their own domestic film industry.