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Prague has just witnessed one of the major events in the Czech cultural calendar - the eagerly anticipated premiere of "Nagano" - an opera based on the Czech ice-hockey team's gold-medal triumph at the 1998 Nagano Olympics. Radio Prague's Rob Cameron put on his tuxedo to attend the premiere, and has the following report.

Last Sunday morning the Slovak nation woke up to breaking news. Vladimir Meciar won the first round of presidential poll with slightly over a third of the votes. The second was his former deputy Ivan Gasparovic. Eduard Kukan the favourite of opinion polls and political analysts was third - missing a place in the second round by only 0.19 percent. The former Prime Minister Vladimir Meciar was obviously pleased by his performance.

Count Pal Teleki, was prime minister of Hungary twice - but has never had a statue - until now. And even now it is controversial, because of Teleki's role in the Second World War. His supporters point to the tens of thousands of Polish refugees whose lives he helped save during the war. His detractors say he's the prime minister who submitted anti-Jewish acts to the Hungarian parliament in pre-war Hungary. Teleki committed suicide in 1941 and now a statue has been erected in a rural town. Gyorgi Jakobi has more.

According to the latest public opinion poll, as many as eighty seven percent of Poles fear their country could suffer a terrorist attack due to the presence of Polish troops in Iraq. As Michal Kubicki reports from Warsaw this does not go hand in hand with the level of public awareness and the security measures which are being taken.

But what are the consequences of this shock first round result? What will it mean for Slovakia's image abroad? Will it have implications for Mikulas Dzurinda's already shaky ruling coalition? Radio Prague's Rob Cameron has been speaking to analyst Ivo Samson, from the Bratislava think-tank the Slovak Foreign Policy Association. He began by asking him to explain why Mr Meciar had done so well, and why Mr Kukan had done so badly.

The International Day of the Roma, was marked this week - there were events across Central Europe to celebrate Roma culture and history. In the Czech Republic a series of specially commissioned children's stories depicting Roma through the ages is being shown on television. Coilin O'Connor has the story.

The left is in disarray in Poland, out of power in Slovakia - just hanging on to power in the Czech Republic and although in power in Hungary - now trailing the opposition in the opinion polls. So are left wing politics suffering an identity crisis in the former communist countries? I put the question to Eastern Europe analyst Gerhard Mangott from the Austrian Institute for International Relations.

These were the words of US president George W. Bush at the welcoming ceremony in Washington on the 29th of March, when Slovenia officially became a member of NATO alongside six Central European countries. Ten years after Slovenia first expressed the desire to join the North Atlantic Alliance, it has fulfilled one of its top foreign policy priorities. Officials will now attend meetings of the Alliance and take part in the decision-making mechanisms.

We've heard about the politicians, but what about voters in the region. In the Czech Republic there is widespread cynicism about politics; after a period of dubious privatisations and dodgy deals in the 1990s, Czechs are now feeling the pinch as painful financial reforms begin to take effect.

Downtown Bratislava on Thursday morning, April Fool's Day. The election campaign for the President of Slovakia ended officially at 7 am. This was a smooth campaign with few surprises. The 11 candidates displayed their messages on billboards along the main roads and in the center of cities or booked airtime on the main TV and radio stations. Each of them according to their budget. And at the end of almost two months of campaigning, opinion polls put the current foreign minister, Eduard Kukan, supported by the Slovak Democratic and Chrisitian Union