No image available
/ 23 October 2006
Police and hundreds of protesters clashed on Monday in Budapest as Hungary commemorated the 50th anniversary of the country’s 1956 uprising against Soviet rule. A photographer said there had been arrests and state news agency MTI said some protesters had been beaten as police sought to move them further from Parliament.
No image available
/ 22 September 2006
Hungarians rallied outside Parliament on Friday and prepared for a fifth overnight vigil to demand Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany resign, after a leaked tape showed him admitting he had lied to win April elections. Budapest has seen protests since Monday, with both peaceful rallies outside Parliament and rioting in which more than 200 people have been injured.
No image available
/ 19 September 2006
Hungary’s opposition parties called on Tuesday on Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany to quit after thousands of people took to the streets in a night of anti-government riots in which 150 people were injured. The riots, the worst in Hungary since the end of communism, were triggered by the leak of a tape on Sunday in which Gyurcsany said he and his Socialist party had lied for four years about Hungary’s parlous budget.
Three people died, two were missing and about 300 were injured in Budapest late on Sunday when a violent storm struck a fireworks display over the river Danube, attended by more than a million people. "According to the current information, there are three dead and two missing," government spokesperson Emese Danks said on Monday.
Briton Jenson Button seized the first victory of his Formula One career in a Hungarian Grand Prix thriller on Sunday. While the 26-year-old Honda driver ended his long wait, triumphant at last in his 113th start, Renault’s world champion Alonso trudged away without a point after leading for much of the afternoon.
Michael Schumacher was left seething at the Hungarian Grand Prix on Saturday after being hit with a time penalty that wrecked his chances of claiming pole position. The stewards’ decision meant he was given an identical penalty to that meted out to championship-leading Spaniard Fernando Alonso of Renault.
Defending world champion Fernando Alonso was accused of dangerous driving and hit with a two-second penalty after Felipe Massa clocked the times in Friday’s final opening practice session for Sunday’s Hungarian Grand Prix. The penalty he picked up for the qualifying session will probably knock Alonso halfway back down the grid.
Michael Schumacher aims to continue his assault on Fernando Alonso at the Hungarian Formula One Grand Prix on Sunday, in which he could move within one point of his rival if all goes well. Schumacher is coming off three straight victories in his Ferrari, with Alonso and his Renault team seemingly not able to match their form and speed of the earlier part of the season.
A crack in a dyke on a swollen river in south-eastern Hungary has forced 4 500 people to evacuate their homes, Tibor Dobson, spokesperson for the national disaster prevention agency, said on Friday. The evacuations were taking place in the towns of Csepa, Szeleveny and Tiszasas in Jasz-Nagykun-Szolnok county, along the river Koros.
No image available
/ 16 February 2006
Hungary’s main opposition party, Fidesz, said on Thursday that it had made a "serious mistake" in hacking into the server of the governing Socialist party ahead of the April general elections. "Whichever one of our enthusiastic staff did this committed a serious mistake, but the world will not come to an end," said Fidesz campaign chief Antal Rogan.
No image available
/ 6 February 2006
prominent Hungarian actor, Peter Halasz, was on Monday preparing to attend his own funeral after being diagnosed with incurable liver cancer. ”This is not at all morbid, but a nice and honourable farewell,” said Erik Novak, the event organiser and producer of Halasz’s last film, adding that the ”funeral” would be filmed for use in a biopic of Halasz.
No image available
/ 20 January 2006
Emergency crews have recovered the bodies of all 42 victims killed when a Slovak military plane crashed into a mountainside in north-eastern Hungary as it flew troops home from peacekeeping duty in Kosovo, officials said on Friday. Only one person of the 43 on board survived, and was able to call his wife on his cellphone from the crash site
No image available
/ 11 January 2006
Budapest firefighters had to remove a window and a large section of wall, and use a forklift to extract a grossly overweight woman from her home, MTI news agency reported. Firefighters spent five hours dismantling the home of the middle-aged woman, who weighs in at between 200kg and 300kg.
A district mayor in Budapest has proposed a dress code for city-hall employees under which only women with "pretty legs" can wear short skirts, the Hungarian press reported on Saturday. Gyorgy Mitnyan, the conservative mayor of the city’s 12th district, is also seeking to ban skirts that are shorter than 2cm to 3cm above the knee.
Crude oil prices posted gains on Thursday, a day after plunging nearly , amid renewed concerns about gasoline shortages and supply disruption in Ecuador and Nigeria. ”We do not believe that the oil market has yet fully convinced itself that more than is sustainable in terms of growth,” said one analyst.
Crude futures edged back on Tuesday after prices had rallied to a new record high at ,27 a barrel. The market was still on watch for potential terrorist threats in Saudi Arabia and spirits remained dampened over refinery outages in the United States. Traders were also awaiting the weekly inventory snapshot from the US.
Back-to-back refinery fires in Texas and Louisiana sent crude futures back above a barrel on Friday as the unplanned outages fanned fears that production may not be able to meet demand in coming months. An explosion and fire was reported at British Petroleum’s Texas City plant on Thursday night.
Oil prices climbed on Tuesday on persistent fears that the heating oil supply would run short this winter when demand is expected to peak. Ongoing concerns about United States stock levels keep overall sentiment in the market bullish, said Julian Lee, an energy analyst with the London-based Centre for Global Energy Studies.