Ukraine Health Minister Vasyl Knyazevich has given his country's parliament an account of a massive wave of swine flu that has sickened 255,000. He says 66 adults, 3 children and 2 pregnant women are dead. WHO says 1,100 kids are hospitalized.

New York city is to host a five-month festival of theatre, film, music and dance from seven Central and Eastern European countries celebrating the part played by the arts in the demise of Communist dictatorship.

Defense ministers from NATO, meeting in Bratislava, capital of Slovakia, have indicated their support for the strategy Gen. Stanley McChrystal wishes to employ against the Taliban in Afghanistan.

Tony Blinken, national security adviser to Vice President Biden, said that leaders in Warsaw, Bucharest and Prague should think less of what the U.S. can do for them and more about what they can do with the United States.

What will it take to bring about real action on climate change? Could losing your favorite beer be the calalyst for change?

The American-Hungarian Federation (AHF) has held discussions with members of the Obama administration, including the issue of the rights of Slovakia’s large Hungarian minority.

The Slovak government has barred the Hungarian President from visiting the country. The Slovak side called the visit a ”provocation,” while President Sólyom said it was ”unheard of” to bar the president of an allied country.

An apparently insignificant but epoch-making event took place 20 years ago on the Austro-Hungarian border. The Pan European Picnic, held on both sides of the Iron Curtain was organised by Walburga Habsburg Douglas who explains what it meant.

E.U. countries remember the Pan European Picnic, one of the key events that led up to the Collapse of Communism, today. Twenty years ago a picnic on the Austro-Hungarian border led to an exodus of East Germans.

A coal mine explosion that may have been caused by gas has trapped 19 miners and injured 9 others at the Handlova mine in Slovakia.