Hungary

If you go THE BEST WAY TO BUDAPEST, HUNGARY From LAX , connecting service (change of plane) to Budapest is offered on KLM, Lufthansa, Air France, British, Alitalia, Turkish and Aeroflot. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $712, including taxes and fees. By taxi, the 12-mile ride from the Budapest airport to the city center costs about $23. TELEPHONES To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code) and 36 (the country code for Hungary)

The heirs of the Budapest-based Jewish banker Baron Mor Lipot Herzog have cleared a major legal hurdle in their decades-long quest to force Hungary to return dozens of artworks from Herzog's collection that were looted during World War II. In 2010, Herzog's great-grandson David de Csepel of Altadena led his family in suing Hungary and three of its museums for the return of more than 40 artworks valued at $100 million, including masterpieces by...

Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir met Hungarian Communist Party leader Karoly Grosz on Wednesday for talks likely to center on the Middle East and moves to restore diplomatic relations broken 21 years ago. It was the first visit by any Israeli premier to an East European country other than Romania, and the highest-level bilateral meeting since Hungary broke diplomatic ties after the 1967 Six-Day War.

Balthazar Korab, an architect-turned-photographer with a wide-ranging eye whose moody, polished images captured the spirit of midcentury modern architecture and celebrated its masters, including Eero Saarinen and Mies van der Rohe, died Jan. 15 in Royal Oak, Mich. He was 86. Korab, who lived in Troy, Mich., died after a long period of decline caused by Parkinson's disease and a stroke, said his son, Christian Korab. A refugee from Communist-controlled Hungary, Korab came to the United States in 1955 and found work as a designer in Saarinen's Bloomfield, Mich., office.

Several thousand people held anti-government protests in the Hungarian capital during a national holiday Sunday, and police detained 35 people. Dressed in riot gear, the police chased some of the protesters through the streets of Budapest and prevented them from reaching the parliament building, where violent protests had taken place in 2006. At one point, tear gas was used to drive back a small group of demonstrators that tried to attack police lines near St. Stephen's Basilica.

The heirs of the Budapest-based Jewish banker Mor Lipot Herzog have filed a lawsuit in U.S. courts against Hungary and its leading national museums, seeking the return of what they have identified as more than 40 works of art looted from Herzog's collection during the Holocaust. The lawsuit values the artworks, including well-known paintings by Lucas Cranach the Elder, El Greco, Francisco de Zurbaran and Gustave Courbet, at more than $100 million. "This is one of the largest — if not the largest — restitution claims ever filed in U.S. courts by a single family against another nation," says Michael S. Shuster, the New York attorney representing the family.

BUDAPEST, Hungary - American coffeehouses are prized for their quick service and fast Internet - ideal for people on the go. But a century ago, European cafes were places to linger amid Gilded Age opulence. Nowhere was this more so than in Budapest, where some of its great historic cafes have survived economic crises, war and Communism. My wife, Rachel, and my mother-in-law, Edie, had never been to Hungary, but they had been hearing about Budapest and its grand avenues, delicious pastries and vibrant Jewish community all their lives: Edie's parents were born here in the 1890s.

Alarmed by the dramatic increase in drug abuse among teen-agers, Hungary announced that it will launch an anti-narcotics campaign that will include therapy and rehabilitation. It said there are at least 30,000 drug abusers in Hungary.

There's a museum in Budapest called the House of Terror. It has a metal awning with the word "terror" carved out of it, and when the sun is high, the people below step on terror, pass through terror, because the shadow of the word hangs in the air before it hits the ground. Twenty years after the fall of the Berlin Wall signaled the end of Soviet dominance in Hungary, Russia's ghosts linger in a fledgling political system, and its oil and gas muscle spooks the Hungarian government.

A bomb exploded in a crowded Budapest subway, but no one was injured, Hungarian news reports said Saturday.

WASHINGTON -- A three-judge federal appellate court heard brief oral arguments Wednesday in what art experts say could be the last great Holocaust-era art restitution case, one with a California connection, but issued no ruling. The unusual case was brought by heirs and relatives of a legendary Hungarian art collector in a dispute over possession of more than 40 artworks valued at $100 million -- including some paintings now hanging in Hungarian museums -- that were stolen by the Nazis during World War II. The lead plaintiff is David de Csepel of Altadena, Calif., great-grandson of Jewish banker Baron Mór Lipót Herzog.

LONDON -- It didn't take long, a little more than an hour of churning water for U.S. medal chances to take a serious hit. The men's water polo team tumbled from second to a likely fourth-place finish in its group after a lifeless 11-6 loss Monday against Hungary in an Olympic preliminary. If Montenegro beats Great Britain as widely expected, the U.S. (3-2) will play Croatia (5-0) in the quarterfinals Wednesday. Not exactly a breezy way to start single-elimination play. After a silver medal effort at the 2008 Olympics, there was talk of the U.S. possibly breaking through here for its first gold medal in the sport.

LONDON - Going into Saturday's group-play match against Serbia, Tony Azevedo, captain of the U.S. water polo team, must have felt a bit like a law student getting an advance peek at the bar exam. Although the game wasn't exactly meaningless, the Americans have already qualified for the cross-over stage, where they're likely to meet Serbia again. That made the Americans' 11-6 loss to the tournament favorites a valuable chance to study. "From every loss, you learn a great deal," Azevedo said.

LONDON - Maggie Steffens was scoring so many goals in her Olympic water polo debut even she couldn't keep count. "In the game you're thinking, 'What's the next play? What's my next move?' You're not necessarily thinking what happened last," said Steffens, Team USA's youngest player at 19 and a soon-to-be freshman at Stanford. "At one point I was like, 'Oh, I'm getting open a lot,' but at the same time you've got to just play in the moment and put the ball in the net. " She put it in seven times, tying the women's single-game Olympic record, as the U.S. began preliminary-round play on Monday with a physical 14-13 victory over Hungary at the Water Polo Arena.

With a last round of roster cuts looming ahead of this summer's London Olympics, U.S. Water Polo Coach Terry Schroeder will get one final look at his team in action when it plays a series of exhibitions in Southern California against Croatia and Hungary, the defending Olympic champion, beginning Saturday at Newport Harbor High School. Schroeder needs to trim three players from a 16-man roster that includes 11 former Olympians, among them three-time Olympians Tony Azevedo, the team captain, and Ryan Bailey.

A friend of mine got a lifetime achievement award recently, and it got me to thinking about the Holocaust again, something that's never been completely out of my mind for the last 22 years. Randolph L. Braham and I are an odd couple to be friends because our families were on different sides of the Holocaust. His emails to me over the last 20 years have always been signed Randy, but I call him Professor Braham out of respect. Braham is distinguished professor emeritus of political science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, director of the Rosenthal Center for Holocaust Studies there, and the author of more than 60 books on the Holocaust.

Reviving rich prewar Jewish traditions, senior rabbis from Israel and Russia on Tuesday helped inaugurate the first Orthodox rabbi to be ordained in Hungary since the Holocaust. The congregation of about 300 Orthodox Jews sang and clapped as Shlomo Koves, 23, was inducted at the tiny Chabad Lubavitch synagogue. Chief Rabbi Berel Lazar of Russia and former Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliahu of Israel joined Budapest Rabbi Boruch Oberlander in placing a prayer shawl around Koves' shoulders.

The government will begin selective, compulsory AIDS screening for certain people next week to prevent the spread of the killer disease, the official MTI news agency reported Friday.

If you go THE BEST WAY TO BUDAPEST, HUNGARY From LAX , connecting service (change of plane) to Budapest is offered on KLM, Lufthansa, Air France, British, Alitalia, Turkish and Aeroflot. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $712, including taxes and fees. By taxi, the 12-mile ride from the Budapest airport to the city center costs about $23. TELEPHONES To call the numbers below from the U.S., dial 011 (the international dialing code) and 36 (the country code for Hungary)