Famed Dog, Politician, Killed in Separate Hunting Incidents

According to state news wire MTI, 63-year-old Socialist MP Árpád Urbán (right) was hunting in his northern constituency of Balassagyarmat on Saturday when his 73-year-old brother mistook him for a wild boar and shot him in the heart. The dead MP, who was an expert on education and sports, joined Hungary's dominant leftist party in 1989, during its last year as Hungary's sole legal political party, and was apparently popular with his constituents and fellow party members. Meanwhile, in an unrelated incident, a hunter shot and killed "Red," one of Hungary's most celebrated hunting dogs, after seeing the animal chase a cow and mistaking him for a stray.

Right-wing daily Magyar Nemzet reports that Red, who was worth an estimated Ft 1 million (€4,000), was chasing a wounded Danish calf in Homokszentgyörgy (Somogy County) on Tuesday afternoon when the tragedy happened. The hunter felled the prized dog with one shot, even though Red was wearing an orange safety collar. Red's owner, who was lead to the dead animal by a satellite tracking device built into the collar, reported the hunter to the police, who are investigating the circumstances of the case with the help of unidentified "experts."

In an even odder twist, the headshot of Urbán on Parliament's official website (above right) features an unexplained series of blood-red splotches around his neck. (The page is here, but will probably be taken down, so we've pasted a full-sized copy of the spooky pic here.) Spookier still, according to a report on Index.hu, some of Urbán's relatives believe there is a "curse" on the family, because this was the second incident within the last decade in which a relative accidentally killed one of their kin. In the previous incident, a sibling of Urbán's was run over by their nephew. Police are currently investigating the shooting.