ICE - special | All stories

We are all familiar with guide dogs, animals which provide irreplaceable assistance to many blind people. But what particular qualities are guide dog trainers looking for? And what percentage of dogs that begin training actually make the grade? Radio Slovakia International’s Maria Bulkova has been finding out.

The Czech Foreign Ministry played host to a conference on missile defence on Monday, with NATO Secretary General Jaap de Hoop Scheffer among the guest speakers. The conference was organised to look at what lies ahead for plans to build a U.S. radar tracking facility on Czech soil, after NATO gave the project a cautious endorsement at its recent summit in Bucharest. Radio Prague’s Rob Cameron reports.

This year marks the seventh anniversary of Memefest, a "festival of radical communication," based in Slovenia which is encouraging students, professionals, artists and activists alike to contribute to the collective counter-culture. Radio Slovenia International’s Ivana Pristavec reports.

Irena Sendler is one of the unsung heroes of World War Two. Now 98, she saved two and a half thousand Jewish children from the Holocaust in Nazi occupied Poland. Today, 65 years later, she is still active and her message has lost nothing of its relevance. Michal Kubicki from Polish Radio’s External Service reports on the Irena Sendler awards for Holocaust education.

May is the month of love in Slovakia. On the first of the month beautiful birch trees decorated with colourful ribbons appear in front of houses in villages all over the country. These trees are called Máje. Young men would put the trees outside the house of their intended. The decorated birch tree was a definite marriage proposal not usually refused given the fact that the whole village could see the tree. And in the villages of Slovakia, if the tree did not do the trick then a love potion just might. In this merry month of May Anca Dragu went

A million migrants from Central and Eastern Europe arrived in Britain after European Union enlargement in 2004. They were doctors and dentists, plumbers and painters, waiters and willing field workers. They filled a gap in the British labour market and they helped enrich their own economies by sending money back home. This wave of workers was not predicted, in fact Britain expected only 30 thousand migrants. As we now know the real number was much higher but a new report suggests the immigration tide is turning. The British based Institute for

And our next story is no joke. It's about the Polish sense of humour. Has anyone even heard of a Polish sense of humour? Do you know any Polish jokes? How about this: a Russian, a German and a Pole meet on the twentieth floor of a high-rise building and decide to have a competition… You'll have to keep listening.

In Slovenia nothing goes down as well as a good feed of sautéed potatoes and onion. Yes the humble potato has been a staple of the Slovene diet for a couple of centuries. So much so that a few years ago five enthusiasts formed the "Society for the Recognition of Sautéed Potato and Onions as an Independent Dish". As Heather Pirejevic reports, what started as a bit of a joke has since become something of a smorgasboard.

As the price of food rockets ever higher questions are being asked about whether planting crops for biofuels could be partly to blame. Now the Czech president, Vaclav Klaus, who is known for his anti-environmentalist stance, has openly criticised the rapidly-developing biofuels industry. And his concerns are echoed elsewhere.

Thousands of Vietnamese, repressed in their home country, often try their luck abroad. For those who settle in Poland it can be a tough transition. They have to work hard simply to survive, and to grasp a difficult language. Estimates vary but most say around forty to fifty thousand Vietnamese currently live in Poland, many of them illegally, and many of them with children. So what is their life like and how do Poles feel about the Vietnames in their midst?