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    Veszprém zoo adopts rhino

    A zoo in the town of Veszprém (north of Lake Balaton) has adopted a two-and-a-half tonne white Rhino called Pablo. The safari park in Hannover, Germany where the humungous herbivore lived no longer had enough room for him, explained a spokesman last week. Veszprém zoo has built a special one-hectare enclosure for Pablo, and plans to find him some friends to share his new home with in the near future. Spokesman Lajos Endredi said the zoo will be participating in a programme to save the critically endangered species. Hungary’s other famous rhino, the calf that become the first white rhino to be born after artificial insemination, is doing well, Budapest Zoo said last week. Layla, who was born on 23 January this year, is already approaching 300 kilograms. 

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    Oops, I’ve shot you! – bungling cop

    A policeman unintentionally shot a colleague last Thursday at the Teve utca headquarters of the Budapest police, the daily Népszabadság reported last week. The exact circumstances surrounding the shooting are unclear, but it appears that detectives were kitting up for shooting practice when a gun was accidentally fired. The bullet passed through a plasterboard wall and a colleague on the other side – who was also getting ready to brush up his marksmanship – was wounded in the arm. The hapless victim was operated on at the Uzsoki hospital, and his condition is said to be not serious. An inquiry into the incident has been launched.

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    Crack any Rubik’s cube in 26 moves

    Mathematicians break world record More than 30 years after Hungarian building engineer and architect Ern? Rubik patented his six-sided puzzle in 1975, mathematicians, with the help of a new theory and a high performance computer, have broken a world record, proving that the Rubik’s cube can be restored to its original state from any position in just 26 moves.

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    Politician suspected in fraud probe

    An MSZP councillor in
    the southern county
    of Bács-Kiskun was named
    as a suspect in a case of misappropriation of funds amounting to some HUF 50
    million (EUR 200,000) by weekly news magazine HVG last week. The State
    Prosecutor’s Office has been investigating seven foundations and organisations
    that applied for and received government funding, of which over HUF 50 million
    (EUR 203,205) seems to have disappeared.

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    Not enough corruption fighting

    EU
    threatens to get really cross next year with Bulgaria
    and Romania

    The
    European Commission last week reprimanded the EU’s newest members Bulgaria and Romania for doing too little to
    combat corruption and organised crime, but chose not to impose any sanctions on
    the two states.

    “These
    reports are a reality check. They show how the Bulgarian and Romanian
    governments are tackling judicial reform, corruption and organised crime,” the
    President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, said last week.
    Barroso added that there now needs to be more emphasis on implementing laws
    rather than just passing them.

    “High-level
    corruption is still one point of weakness. Both governments are aware of this,”
    Franco Frattini, the Italian Commissioner for Justice and Home said at a press
    conference shortly after the Commission adopted the six-monthly progress
    reports on both countries.

    Despite the Commission’s reluctance to impose any
    kind of punishment beyond the reprimands in the progress reports published last
    week, it stated that it might if there were still problems next year.

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    Little support for honour

    The ability
    of Hungary’s
    Communist past still to divide the nation has been highlighted again over the
    past fortnight. On 21 June, the news broke that Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsány
    wants to bestow the nation’s highest state honour on one of his predecessors,
    Gyula Horn. The award of the Order of Merit of the Hungarian Republic
    was to mark the 75th birthday (on 5 July) of the man who will be remembered for
    his role in rupturing the Iron Curtain in 1989, when he was Foreign Minister in
    the last Communist government.

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    Gyula Horn: Soviet lackey or crusader for reform?

    On the Horn
    of a dilemma

    Former
    Prime Minister, Gyula Horn is again dividing opinion in Hungary. Some
    will never forget that in December 1956 he joined the pufajkás (padded jacket
    brigade) that helped round up suspects and restore Soviet-backed order after
    the Red Army’s bloody suppression of the 1956 Uprising. For others, it is his
    historic achievements as Foreign Minister in the twilight of Communism for
    which he deserves to be remembered. On 27 June 1989, he and his Austrian
    counterpart Alois Mock symbolically cut through the Iron Curtain near the
    border town of Sopron,
    arguably setting in motion a chain of events that led to the fall of the Berlin
    Wall.

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    A bill for ill healthcare

    Although
    the compromise healthcare proposal of the coalition has appeared in the press
    as a victory for the Alliance of Free Democrats (SZDSZ), in almost every
    respect it reflects the will of the Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). The
    opposition party Fidesz, relying on the resistance of the public to the
    proposal, has attacked it as the introduction of privatisation of healthcare
    and the multi-insurer model. In fact the debate on the healthcare model has
    only really now got underway, and the stakes could be upped by Fidesz’s
    referendum campaign.

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    Hungary’s ‘oil mafia’

    In the early nineties, with the rapid transition to a market economy, party members used their connections and inside knowledge to assure themselves of a large slice of the pie when state assets were privatised. Others eschewed any pretence of legality and indulged in large-scale, mafia-style crime.