The House of Terror at Ten – Director Mária Schmidt in conversation with Nick Thorpe NT: Let’s start at the very beginning. You opened ten years ago, amidst great controversy: about the establishment of your museum, about its name, about the rather dramatic outward appearance, and about the combination in one

Restoring Oxbows in Austria and Germany Up to the middle of the 19th century, the Danube was a free-flowing wild river in most parts. Maps, pictures and travel reports from that time show a varied river landscape with narrow gorges and wide basins. The Danube consisted, apart from the largest

On 7 February, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán spoke before the European Parliament in Strasbourg – at his own request – to explain his government’s policies and face MEPs’ questions. This followed a previous appearance in January 2011, during which he came under sustained attack. This time, he and his

The Roma Strategy NT: What have been the results of your first months in office?ZB: The first result – and this is a very important one for Hungary, not just for me personally – has been the creation of the European Framework for Roma Integration. In our presidency of the EU last

In the 1980s and 1990s, Jaromír Šíbl was one of very few Slovaks to openly oppose the massive Gabčíkovo–Nagymaros hydroelectric project on the River Danube. The contract to build it was signed in 1977 by the Communist governments of Czechoslovakia and Hungary, and work began immediately on both sides of the

What Is Happening in Hungary Today? NT: The Fidesz government stands accused of a wide variety of crimes…Is there any sense in which you would admit that government steps are reducing Hungarian democracy? GS: The list is so long that it is in itself suspect. It means – with only a slight

Tamás Roska (b. 1940) is co-inventor of the CNN Universal Machine, a host of cellular universal computers on a single chip (with L. O. Chua, 1992), and the analogic CNN Bionic Eye, a cellular universal computer inspired by the operation of the retina (with F. S. Werblin and L. O.