Malév stopped operations after 66 years of flying this morning at 6am CET, Friday 3 February. A company announcement explained the shutdown was due to the airline being unable to finance advance payments to its service partners who had “lost trust” in the Hungarian national carrier. XpatLoop.com was invited to a special event in Budapest today where a Ryanair 'rescue plan for Budapest and Hungarian tourism' , was revealed to deal with the crisis resulting from the collapse of Malév - 31 new routes to and from Hungary have been announced with fares from EURO 9.99. Also today a bold statement was made about WizzAir plans to invest USD 100 million into expanding its operations in Budapest. more »

"Budapest should tighten its belt if it is to bail out the public transport company BKV, Fifth District mayor Antal Rogán said in a statement issued on Thursday. Rogán, a Fidesz MP, said Budapest did not provide one forint of operational support to the transport company in 2010 and 2011, while the government gave it over Ft 140 billion in subsidies. more »

"A total of 1,238,000 ethnic Hungarians live in Romania, making up 6.5% of the population, the Romanian Statistics Institute announced on Thursday. more »