Hungary honors reburial of anti-Soviet 1956 revolutionaries, milestone on road to democracy

September 30th, 2009 Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich dies at 78MOSCOW — Former Soviet cosmonaut Pavel Popovich, the sixth man to go into orbit, has died at age 78. Boris Yesin of the Russian astronaut training center says Popovich died Wednesday of a stroke in Gurzuf, a resort city on Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula.

September 16th, 2009 Hungary to accept 1 Guantanamo detaineeBUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungary's prime minister says his country will accept one prisoner from the Guantanamo Bay U.S. military detention center that President Barack Obama has pledged to close.

September 15th, 2009 Hungary questions Nazi-era war crimes suspectBUDAPEST, Hungary — Prosecutors in Hungary have questioned suspected Nazi war criminal Sandor Kepiro about the murder of civilians in Serbia during World War II. Gabriella Skoda of the Budapest Chief Prosecutor's Office says 95-year-old Kepiro was questioned Tuesday about allegedly relaying orders as a Hungarian officer to soldiers who killed four civilians in Novi Sad, Serbia, in 1942.

August 28th, 2009 Half-brother of Raoul Wallenberg dies in GenevaGENEVA — Guy von Dardel, a particle physicist who sought for years to find his half-brother Raoul Wallenberg in Soviet imprisonment, died Friday at his home in Geneva. He was 90. Von Dardel never accepted Soviet authorities' claims that Wallenberg, a Swedish diplomat who is credited with saving tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews from the Nazis during World War II, died in a Soviet prison in 1947, two years after the Soviets arrested him in Budapest on spying charges.

August 27th, 2009 Russian anthem author Sergei Mikhalkov dies at 96MOSCOW — Sergei Mikhalkov, who wrote the lyrics for both the Soviet and Russian national anthems and fathered two famous film directors, has died at age 96. Denis Baglai, a spokesman for Mikhalkov's director son Nikita, said he died Thursday, but did not have further details.

August 19th, 2009 Hungary remembers picnic that cracked Iron CurtainSOPRONPUSZTA, Hungary — It was a picnic that changed the course of history. Twenty years ago Wednesday, members of Hungary's budding opposition organized a picnic at the border with Austria to press for greater political freedom and promote friendship with their Western neighbors.

August 10th, 2009 Lenin statue collapses, kills man in BelarusMINSK, Belarus —A massive statue of Soviet founder Vladimir Lenin collapsed on a man who was hanging from it Monday, killing him on the spot, authorities said. The 21-year-old man was drunk when he climbed onto the five-meter (16-foot)-high plaster monument and hung from its arm, the Emergency Situations ministry said.

August 5th, 2009 BUDAPEST - Archaeologists of Debrecen's Deri Museum in East Hungary have discovered 4,000-year-old remains of a settlement during earth works connected to a local sewage treatment project. A team of 35-40 archaeologists are working in an area of two hectares, and have now identified the traces of three phases of the settlement: one in the early Bronze Age between 2700-2500 BC, the Sarmatian period around the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD as well as the youngest phase in the 8th and 9th centuries, leader of the excavations Krisztian Szilagyi told MTI.

August 4th, 2009 WWII US airman's remains repatriated from HungaryBUDAPEST, Hungary — The remains of a U.S. airman killed in Hungary near the end of World War II are on their way back to the United States, officials said Tuesday.

July 20th, 2009 Polish philosopher Leszek Kolakowski dead at 81WARSAW, Poland — Leszek Kolakowski, a Polish philosopher and historian whose decision to disavow Marxism pushed him into exile and made him an inspiration for his nation's struggle against communism — has died. He was 81. A death announcement placed by his family in the Gazeta Wyborcza newspaper on Saturday said he died Friday in Oxford, England, where he had lived for decades, "after a sudden, short disease." It gave no further details.

July 6th, 2009 Russian writer and Soviet dissident Aksyonov diesMOSCOW — Vasily Aksyonov, a prolific Russian writer and one of the last dissidents to be exiled from the Soviet Union, died Monday. He was 76. Aksyonov died at a Moscow hospital where he was being treated after suffering a stroke last year, his widow Maya told Ekho Mosvky radio.

July 4th, 2009 A leader of Hungary's 1956 revolution diesBUDAPEST, Hungary — Bela Kiraly, one of the military leaders of Hungary's short-lived anti-Soviet revolution in 1956, has died, the government said. He was 97. A brief defense ministry statement provided no other details, including the cause of death or where and when it occurred.

June 5th, 2009 Facts about former Buchenwald concentration campWEIMAR, Germany — Some details about the Buchenwald concentration camp that President Barack Obama visited Friday. The president's great-uncle, Charlie Payne, helped liberate the nearby Ohrdurf subcamp in 1945.

May 9th, 2009 Hungarian boxer Andras Nagy dies in AustraliaBUDAPEST, Hungary — Hungarian light-heavyweight boxer Andras Nagy has died after suffering a brain injury while training in Melbourne, Australia. He was 23. "He was a very talented boxer.

March 26th, 2009 BERLIN/WARSAW/BUDAPEST/PRAGUE - When the world marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of Communism this year, attention will focus on the Berlin Wall, a potent symbol of that system. But while the focus is there - events include a plan to topple giant domino stones to dramatise the fall of various Communist regimes - some people who lived under Communist rule say the seeds for change were sown elsewhere.