ICE - special | All stories

This week a Slovene priest accused of 16 counts of sexual assault on minors died, closing what was one of the most notorious cases against a member of the Catholic Church in Slovenia. According to a report in the daily Delo, Karel Jost died at the age of 64, reportedly of a stroke.

Hungary is trying to clean up its state finance and as part of that process is reforming the health care system. The aim is to make people aware the state can no longer afford the services it once provided. In short the wasteful system inherited from the communist years can not be sustained.

Chances are you enjoyed a few glasses of wine during the winter break - but if you are a vintner in Slovakia you probably did not drink a toast to the European Commission. The EU's executive body wants to reform the wine industry and Slovak growers says that's not a cause for celebration.

The International Auschwitz Council has unanimously agreed to major renovations at the former Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz - Birkenau in southern Poland. The site of the death camp has served as the oldest exhibition of the Holocaust. It is a living testament to the horror of the Second World War.

On New Year's Eve, Slovenia joined the eurozone - the first former communist state, and first of the new EU members, to do so.

According to a recent EU-barometer survey, support for European Union membership in Hungary has fallen by 10 percentage points - down to 39 per cent. But the picture may not be all that bleak.

Like the rest of Central Europe, we're having an unusually warm winter here in the Czech Republic. Some towns and cities have even posted record temperatures often reaching well above the ten degree Celsius mark. With snow scarce on the ground, travel agents say many Czechs who traditionally go to the mountains to ski are now buying holiday packages elsewhere. Naturally, many ski resorts are struggling to adapt to the situation. Dita Asiedu reports:

This coming week will see ceremonies in Budapest and other capitals of Central Europe marking the 50th anniversary of Hungary's 1956 uprising against the Soviet Union. An uprising, which was quickly and brutally crushed but which was one of the defining moments of the Cold War and, of course, recent Hungarian history.

Slovakia is to withdraw its soldiers from Iraq - the 99 troops will come home in February next year. But Bratislava says it wants to keep good contacts with Baghdad and one reason is that it sells significant quantities of arms and ammunition to Iraq. As Anca Dragu reports from Bratislava, Slovakia's new government has big plans to revitalise its arms industry:

As millions of Catholics around the world commemorated the first anniversary of Pope John Paul II's death earlier this month, in his native Poland the atmosphere was very reminiscent of what the country witnessed a year ago, before and after the Pope's death. But is there anything beyond these manifestations of religious fervour?