Budapest, December 26 (MTI) – Foggy weather is forecast for
Thursday. Sporadic snow and moderate winds. Lowest night-time temperatures will be between -8 and -3 degrees
Celsius and day-time highs are expected to be between -5 and -1
degrees, the National Weather Service forecast. Continue »

Budapest, December 26 (MTI) – Hungary’s fire services received
nearly 500 emergency calls on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day,
the spokesman of the national disaster management authority told MTI
on Wednesday. Tibor Dobson said that one third of the total of 493 cases had
been fires and the rest were accidents. He added that two people had
died in traffic accidents, while four people died in fires. Continue »

Budapest, December 26 (MTI) – 2008 should be a year of
tolerance to follow a year when aggressive rhetorics and violent
acts were detrimental to the cohesion of society and posed a serious
challenge to courts, the Supreme Court Chief Justice told MTI on
Wednesday. Assessing 2007 Zoltan Lomnici said that a growing number of
cases and hot-tempered, often aggressive clients made the courts’
work more difficult than in previous years. The chief judge called it last year’s biggest achievement that
the courts were able to retain their independence and impartiality. Continue »

Budapest, December 26 (MTI) – The government decided to turn
over another 100 properties free of charge to local governments at
its last session in 2007, government spokesman David Daroczi told
MTI on Wednesday. The spokesman said that the properties were valued at a total of
9.7 billion forints (38.8m euros) and would assist 38 municipalities
to meet local and regional development objectives. The local governments requested the properties to be used as
municipal offices, schools or sports grounds, while some of them
will be the sites of public road or area development, Daroczi added. Continue »

Budapest, December 26 (MTI) – Hungarian customs officers
detained a German national of Albanian ethnicity, who had attempted
to smuggle heroin worth approximately 100 million forints (400,000
euros) into the country, spokesman Jeno Sipos told MTI on Wednesday. The 33-year-old smuggler had arrived at the Roszke border
station in a tourist bus from Serbia. He had hidden the drug –
weighing 6.5 kilos – in 12 bags around his waist. The spokesman added that the customs authority had seized a
total of 150 kilos of various illegal drugs in 2007. Continue »