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A major reform of Hungary's health system is underway. The system is under strain becaue the state cannot cover all the costs. The sums are pretty simple - 3 million 400 thousand people contribute something to health expenditure and 10 million Hungarians are entitled to a complete health service.

A second round of local elections in Poland has finalised the shape of governments for the coming four years. The vote saw the governing conservatives lose the Warsaw mayor's office to the country's biggest opposition party while outside Warsaw the result was mixed. The conservatives scored poorly in several major cities, but had a strong showing in smaller towns and rural areas. Slawek Szefs has this review of Poland's political landscape one week after the vote.

A new annual report released by the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, the EMCDDA, includes some shocking statistics. In the Czech Republic, 22 percent of people between 15 and 34 have tried marihuana at least once.

There are two European Parliament's - the real one which sits in Strasbourg and a smaller model of it - the European Youth parliament. The youth parliament recently convened in Slovenia giving students a chance to explore the workings of Europe's parliament first-hand.

The latest highlight on Poland's music scene took place in the southern city of Krakow. It was a concert in the city's Philharmonic Hall by the famous Kronos Quartet from the United States.

In April this year, the Foundation for Holocaust Victims announced that it concluded a compensation programme for Holocaust victims; it had distributed over 4 million dollars put in by the Czech state among some 500 claimants from 27 countries. However, an important chapter still remained to be addressed regarding the mitigation of property injustices caused to Holocaust victims - the return of confiscated art objects. The deadline for claims was originally set for the end of this year. But thanks to an amendment to the law, which has been approved

The Slovak economy is booming with a a record-breaking 9.8 percent growth in the third quarter of this year. It's driven by increased production in automobile and electro-technical industries and it's seen unemployment reach a historic low at 9.2 percent in October. But Slovaks don't seem too impressed by these figures.

He was - and still is - probably the best-known Hungarian in the world. The legendary footballer Ferenc Puskás has died at the age of 79. Sándor Laczkó of Radio Budapest looks at the career of the world-renowned splayer and coach - an extraordinary person both on and off the pitch.

Erzurum - a town in Turkey, and Maribor, in the west of Slovenia, are bidding to host the Winter Universiade in 2011. That's the winter games of the University Sport Federation.

The year 2006 will go down as one of political instability in central Europe's post-Communist states. The Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, and Slovakia have all held general elections and the results have ranged from stalemate to uncertainty. In Hungary the Socialists won a second term in April but have faced the biggest protests in the country since 1956. Poland is led by the conservative Kaczynski brothers and is seen as out of step with its EU partners. Slovakia's leftist Robert Fico is in a coalition government with nationalists and former