Hungary posted a wider-than expected current account deficit of 1.729 billion euros in the third quarter of 2004 as services and income showed a widening deficit, the National Bank of Hungary (NBH) said on Friday.

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Record gains by currencies in the four biggest nations that joined the European Union in May have boosted consumers' spending power and spurred trips to Austria, Germany and beyond for clothes, ski trips and even groceries.
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The Budapest Stock Exchange closed 0.4% higher on Friday and with 57% gains over the previous year. In a shorter-than-usual session turnover totalled HUF 2.46 billion.

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Croatians are voting to pick a president to lead their country into the European Union and improve relations with the West.

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1968: The Year That Rocked the World by Mark Kurlansky (Ballantine; 441 pages; $26.95): In this highly readable work by the author of "Cod," Kurlansky undertakes what is essentially the biography of a year unlike any that had come before it, a year in which, as he puts it, "there occurred a spontaneous combustion of rebellious spirits around the world."
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Promising more, better films next year, the eight-day Chennai International Film Festival came to an end in the city yesterday with Dias De Santiago, a movie from Peru directed by Josue Mendez.

Speaking at the closing ceremony, Aruna Vasudevan, director, cinefan, New Delhi, observed that the Chennai festival, though only two years old, was in the right direction.

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Hungarian telecommunications group Matav has submitted a binding bid for Montenegro's Telekom CG, Matav said in a statement on Wednesday.

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Vodafone has agreed with Hungary's government to purchase a third-generation mobile licence and became the third provider to acquire the concession, telecom minister Kalman Kovacs said on Wednesday.

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Hungary on Wednesday said it would publish a new tender to sell air carrier Malev after an earlier attempt for a sale failed in October, the state privatisation agency (APV) said in a statement.

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The EU executive commission determined Wednesday that efforts by Greece and Hungary to control public spending had been insufficient and urged European Union finance ministers to approve disciplinary action against the pair.
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Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany on Wednesday reacted defiantly to the European Union's criticism of Hungary's high budget deficit, saying the country remained on track to adopt the euro in 2010.

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Britain really is the languages "dunce" of Europe. Research to be published in the new year will show that fewer people in Britain can speak a second language than anywhere else in the continent. Only one in three Britons can speak a second language - compared with 98 per cent in Luxembourg, which tops the table.
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The U.S. Federal Transit Administration (FTA) denied Hungarian busmaker NABI's request to extend the FTA's waivers of "Buy America" regulations as they applied to NABI's manufacturing of CompoBus, NABI said in a statement.

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SORRY to all of those reading this review hoping for some cruel restaurant bashing. This week's outing is all hallelujahs:

I could not find a single fault with the Gresham Kávéház of the Four Seasons Hotel.

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László Udvari, Chairman of national railways company MÁV Rt tendered his resignation on 15 December to Transport Minister János Kóka, who accepted it, Internet portal www.magyarorszag.hu said.

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