Thursday Update: Jonestown-style Mass Suicide at Parliament!

• To demonstarte that Hungarian chicken is safe to eat in spite of the spread of bird flu in Europe, government ministers held a grilled chicken buffet at Parliament yesterday afternoon. Main opposition party Fidesz said that while it is true there is no need to panic and stop eating chicken, the government shouldn't understate the problem. No word if they served Cool-aid with the chicken. [fn]

• Thirty Hungarian-built buses started running in Los Angeles on October 29th, and another 170 will start operating by June 2006. NABI Rt's 60-BRT type buses cost $633,000 (Ft 126.6 million) each, so the total value of the order is $18.9 million (Ft 3.798 billion). [mfor.hu]

• Three men who tried to knock a tractor-trailer to pieces on Route 4 in Szolnok Country on Friday were caught yesterday. The men got angry after traffic was forced to halt at a construction site. They got out of their car and started hitting the kamion at the front of the line, causing Ft 100,000 in damages. [stop.hu]

• The bodies of two men and a woman were found in a house in Albertisra (Pest County) yesterday. Based on the goodbye note found in the house, it appears that 67-year-old Ferenc T. killed his 61-year-old wife, Ferencné T., and 41-year-old son, Ferenc T., before committing suicide. [radio.hu]

• Budapest transport company BKV's "metro tender" to buy new trains was suspended by the Public Procurement Decisive Committee (KDB), which decided that the complaints of the Spanish CAF, which fell out in the first round, should be taken seriously. The decision has not yet been explained. "It's not sensational, there's no problem, but unfortunately, these days what can be attacked will be attacked, so we'll see what happens," was how BKV CEO Botond Aba explained the news. The end of the tender procedure was going to be in March 2006; it is now expected that it will take at least one more month until it is closed. [index.hu]

• Roma rapper Győzike's wife, Bea Balla Gáspárné, has written a cookbook / lifestyle book, from which readers can learn why her husband is too fat to go donkey-riding. [velvet.hu]