Budapest - The Hungarian National Bank announced on Monday a cut in its base rate from 11 per cent to 10.5 per cent.

This is the second time in less than a month that the bank's monetary council has cut its benchmark rate by 50 basis points, the last being on November 24.

The central bank raised its base rate a whopping 3 percentage points to 11.5 percent on October 22 amid fears that speculators could cause a collapse of the national currency, the forint.

Budapest - The leader of Hungary's opposition centre-right Fidesz party, Viktor Orban, said Monday the government should reduce taxes and interest rates to kickstart the economy.

Orban criticized the minority Socialist government for sticking to an austerity drive that started back in 2006 when Hungary had the highest budget deficit in the EU, at
9.2 per cent of gross domestic product.

He said the 20 million-euro credit line offered jointly by the IMF, EU and World Bank at the end of October to shore up an economy on the brink of collapse could now be used to fund growth-stimulating tax and interest rate cuts.

Budapest - Hungarian President Laszlo Solyom met his Slovak counterpart Ivan Gasparovic on Saturday in the latest bid to defuse language and minority rights tensions between their countries.

The meeting of the two men in the Slovak town of Nove Zamky was the latest in a series of diplomatic moves aimed at easing long- standing tensions between the two countries.

Solyom and Gasparovic agreed on the use of dual Hungarian and Slovak place names in textbooks designed for use in ethnic Hungarian schools, a measure approved by the Slovak parliament on Wednesday.

Budapest - Kazakhstan is ready to export oil and gas to any country that wants to buy, t

Budapest - Thousands of public sector workers took to the streets in the Hungarian capital on Saturday to protest against a pay freeze and the abolition of end-of-year bonuses.

Many streets in central Budapest were closed to traffic on Saturday morning as public sector workers vented their anger over the proposed cutbacks, which are part of the government's cost-cutting budget bill.

Members of some 30 unions representing workers from different branches of the public sector braved icy rain to meet at several points around the city before gathering in front of the parliament building.

Budapest- Slovakian Interior Minister Robert Kalinak has denied that police acted unlawfully when dealing with ethnic Hungarian football fans earlier this month.

Hungarian Justice Minister Tibor Draskovics confirmed Wednesday evening that he had received a letter from Kalinak about the matter the previous day.

He added that he had accepted an invitation to meet Kalinak in Bratislava. The two ministers were also due to talk briefly in Brussels in Thursday.