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HVG.HU \ ENGLISH VERSION

The former Hungarian-Soviet Oil Company (Maszolaj) is being taken away from us. Once again, and now the Austrians are the villains - the Austrian government owns 31.5 per cent of OMV, which has been buying up Mol shares. It's no longer about war reparations, of course. This time they're paying - but we're not pleased. Actually - who, exactly, is not pleased? Shareholders seem to be happy, at any rate. They're more than willing to sell.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. július 18., szerda, 22:32

Bridges of sighs

They're not about to collapse under our feet, but some of the Budapest's bridges over the Danube are in a pretty miserable state. There are still more to come: new crossings are to open both this year and the next.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. július 12., csütörtök, 11:04

The mayor on the weekends violence

Budapest rejects the aggressive Arpad Flag-toting extermists who call ever more openly for hate against the widest possible range of groups. "In this situation, if I must, I too will be Jewish, Roma or gay," said Gabor Demszky in a statement on Monday. His Free Democrat party is calling for a five-party statement, while Fidesz and the Christian Democrats condemn the government. Meanwhile, the Hungarian Democratic Forum (MDF) are rejecting "Arpad Flag hooliganism".

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. július 12., csütörtök, 11:02

Together at the top

"We were never a political family, but we watched the television news every evening at 7.30 , and then we discussed what we'd seen. That's how I grew up," says the 28-year-old new government spokeswoman.

szerző HVG idő 2007. július 12., csütörtök, 10:57

Parties does not need to advertise

Viktor Orban is using advertising to fight the silly season. After guerrilla marketing - a strange Hungarian approach, no less - we are now witnessing the anti-political advertising campaign, whereby our politician campaigns under the banner of an anti-campaigning jihad. His idea, that he wanted to see enshrined as a white paper, was not proposed to be accepted, but in order to provoke a rejection.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. július 12., csütörtök, 10:55

On the playgrounds of God and the Devil

Regardless of attempts by protestant German and Catholic Polish bishops to reconcile, regardless of Brandt's kneeling in Warsaw, of Germany's support for Poland's membership of NATO and the EU, there is still no reconciliation, and no Europeanisation. Today, we are further from reconciliation than 20 years ago. And there is no Polish-Russian, German-Czech, Romanian-Hungarian or Slovak-Hungarian reconciliation either, let alone Serb-Croat or Serb-Albanian reconciliation. Endless rounds of new wounds.

szerző HVG idő 2007. július 01., vasárnap, 11:35

On screen

It was ignored by the Party and the country's leaders, but the TV news started exactly 50 years ago in Hungary, at the dawn of the Kadar era.

szerző HVG idő 2007. július 01., vasárnap, 11:23

Bolshevik-dogs and the democratic bacon

If we are to believe the old adage that "Bolshevik dogs don't turn into democratic bacon," then we're depriving democracy of so much bacon that it would die of hunger. But people who profess to believe it aren't serious, because they would not be happy without their ex-Bolshevik dogs. Opposing the honour awarded to Gyula Horn because of his past is a very weak argument. You can't deny everybody an honour for serving a democratic republic just because they also excelled in their service to a dictatorship.

szerző HVG idő 2007. június 29., péntek, 16:01

After hitting rock bottom

CA president John Swainson took to the podium in a Las Vegas conference hall to the sound of upbeat rock music. He had reason to be happy. After hitting rock bottom in 2004, he has managed to return one of the world's largest software companies to market dominance.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. június 29., péntek, 13:04

Record highs

The Budapest Stock Exchange set several new records at the beginning of the week. The BUX rose to new highs as Mol shares were sold by the Rahmikulov family to the Austrian oil company OMV.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. június 29., péntek, 13:02

The Cattani Group

Iren Karman herself suggested that the violent physical attack she suffered was linked to the film she made about the Cattani Group. hvg.hu's sources have their doubts. Karman's main source for her film about the criminal gang set up in 1991 was the ex-policeman Ferenc Labancz, so the journalist herself is unlikely to have been party to information damaging to the mafia circle.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. június 29., péntek, 13:00

The Cave Hospital at Buda

The cave hospital, the most interesting and most horrifying healthcare institution in Hungary's history, opened its doors for Museum Night.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. június 26., kedd, 11:12

Tibor Karancsi:Iren didn't take the danger seriously

Tibor Karancsi, the former chief inspector of Szeghalom, took part in the making of a documentary by Iren Karman, the journalist who investigated the oil bleaching affairs of the 1990s and who has recently been severely beaten. He says he frequently warned her of the dangers.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. június 26., kedd, 10:32

Foundations in the firing line

Hvg.hu has learned that Janos Zuschlag, executive chairman of the Socialist Party in Bacs-Kiskun county, is being prosecuted for fraud. Prosecutors say "Janos Z." is suspected along with seven co-defendants of using various foundations and associations to make fraudulent grant applications, resulting in Ft50m disappearing into their pockets. Zuschlag's former private secretary is also under suspicion.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. június 26., kedd, 10:22

Reloaded

Scapegoats and traitors, 64 counties, Arpad flags. We are the losers of history. Tears and anger. The Trianon commemorations at the weekend would have proceeded as normal if the Fidesz MP Zsolt Nemeth hadn't stolen the show from the specialist Trianon revisionists.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. június 12., kedd, 09:55

Albert Takács

"I was always a good student," says the 52-year-old freshly appointed minister, a constitutional lawyer by training.

idő 2007. június 12., kedd, 09:51

Book of the ex-cultural minister

Love him or hate him, like or dislike what he did as Minister for Culture, but there was no denying it that he was a scholar with outstanding powers of analysis. When he joined the Gyurcsany government, I can hardly have been the only one who dared to hope that he might serve as an intellectual Trojan Horse among all the politicians and party bureaucrats. But he, too, turned into a politician, seeming to lose his powers of self-criticism as he settled into his gilded ministerial chair.

idő 2007. június 12., kedd, 09:36

Politics and the security services

Security experts believe the National Security Office (NBH) could end up sharing the police forces' fate.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. május 30., szerda, 18:24

Old elites in young democracies

The title of the historian Hans-Joachim Veen's speech to the 20th Century Institute said it all. As the professor of comparative government at the University of Trier said, in many places a new generation of the old elites came to power, while elsewhere the secret services provided the successors.

szerző hvg.hu idő 2007. május 28., hétfő, 11:16

The price of lying

The lies and unspoken truths we were treated to during the election campaign have done more damage than even I imagined when last March I asked the parties to tell the truth, because otherwise they would be unable to govern. The price that has been paid is not just the general disgust with the political elites, and it is not just about the loss of confidence in the reform process. It is about a loss of the belief that there is a point to democratic politics. Anything must be better than a market economy and representative democracy!

szerző HVG idő 2007. május 28., hétfő, 11:12