Budapest, December 23 (MTI) – Excise officers seized
670,000-euros-worth of fake-branded sunglasses from a rail transport
container at the Letenye border crossing with Croatia, the National
Customs and Excise Office (VPOP) told MTI on Sunday. The 17,000 pairs, shipped from the Far-East to a Budapest-based
firm, were found in a raid, VPOP spokesman Jeno Sipos said. Legal proceedings are underway in the case, said Sipos, adding
that VPOP would continue similar raids on main traffic routes and
markets in EU-Schengen-member Hungary’s border areas with non-member
Croatia, Serbia and Ukraine. Continue »

Budapest, December 23 (MTI) – The Budapest Stock Exchange’s BUX
index was down by 2.12 percent, to close the week at 26,053.91
points on Friday. Blue chips, with the exception of pharma Richter, were down.
Richter gained 1.29 percent, while gas and oil company Mol, retail
bank OTP and Hungarian Telekom performed poorly.  Continue »

Budapest, December 23 (MTI) – Truck drivers heading for Ukraine
are to expect long waiting times at the Zahony crossing station, the
national disaster management authority told MTI on Sunday. Spokesman Tibor Dobson said that the vehicles – mostly Russian
and Ukrainian trailer-trucks – waiting to cross into Ukraine had
formed a 12-kilometre-long queue on Sunday morning.  Continue »

Budapest, December 23 (MTI) – Slippery road conditions and
several accidents have caused traffic jams along western Hungary’s
M7 motorway on Sunday. At the 57 kilometre mark an Italian truck carrying milk skidded
off the icy road and slipped into a ditch, the police told MTI,
adding that the driver had suffered injuries. The ice-cover on the
motorway has caused several other fender-benders, considerably
slowing traffic in the area, spokeswoman Anita Lukacs said. Those on the road are warned to drive carefully, as sub-zero
temperatures are likely to continue all over the country. Continue »

Budapest, December 23 (MTI) – Monday will be foggy and humid,
with sporadic snow especially in the south and south-west. The winds
will stay moderate. Lowest night-time temperatures will be between -8 and -4 degrees
Celsius, while day-time highs are expected to be between -5 and -1
degrees, the National Weather Service forecast. Continue »

Budapest, December 22 (MTI) – Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany
expects regaining optimism in Hungary by the year 2009, with people
looking forward to the future instead of being tied up in conflicts
of the past, he said in an interview to be published in the weekly
Vasarnapi Hirek on Sunday. Gyurcsany said the current situation was similar to the
mid-1990s, when the economy picked up two years after the
introduction of austerity measures and this helped to restore
people’s self-confidence. Continue »

Budapest, December 22 (MTI) – Result of a men’s water polo match
played in the Euro League in Budapest on Saturday:Honved (Hungary) – Jug Dubrovnik (Croatia)11:10 (1:2, 4:3, 4:3, 2:2) Continue »