With this grim economic news out this month you might think that the mood in America is one of panic and fear. Nothing could be further from the truth. As a new administration is about to be sworn in, there is building excitement for a restructuring not just of our economy, but our values as a society. Republicans have proposed lowering the income tax rate on middle income Americans from 25% to 15%.

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On Saturday, Hungarian Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany and 60 top lawmakers, ministers, central bank chiefs and trade union leaders met in a “national summit” to swap theories concerning the impacts of the global financial crisis on Hungary. As anyone can clearly see, Hungary is facing some very significant financial issues and is being hit quite hard by the global financial crisis. Before going further with the content of the national summit, however, I would like to first turn back the clock to try and understand whether or not the Hungarian government is hiding something that is far worse. What is the risk that Hungary itself will go bankrupt?

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The Budapest Times has received a wonderful story from Mr. Bernie Webb of Gettysburg, South Dakota. Mr. Webb is a 69 year old historian who tragically lost his wife, Diana Webb, to a stroke back on the morning of Nov. 1, 2006. Diana Webb was a talented artist who received numerous awards for her art work. In 1958, Diana did a pencil drawing entitled “The Agony of Hungary”, which was her portrayal of the suffering of the Hungarian people during the 1956 revolt and it was the winner of a district art contest that year.

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There are some outrageous rumors floating around about huge sums of money being paid for just a lunch. As it turns out, many of them are absolutely true. Evidently, a single, tiny branch of Burger King in London serves up the world’s most expensive burger ($190). It is made from the finest Wagyu beef that is sprinkled with white truffles.

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Some countries hardly have any islands to worry about and others have so many they can’t even keep track of them. The Indonesian government claims that Indonesia has 17,508 islands. The National Institute of Aeronautics and Space (established by the former Indonesian president Suharto) claims the real number is more like 18,306 islands. Just last year on September 21st, an earthquake registering 8.4 actually produced 6 new islands. Since so much of Indonesia is subject considerable seismic activity, the task of counting islands is about as easy as tracking the number of raindrops that hit your roof during a downpour.

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While most people have heard of the massive trade deficit between the U.S. and China, perhaps only a few of us of have ever seen a ship this large. If you ever wondered how Wal-Mart could find enough goods to fill it enormous stores, then the answer is that this process is done using the monster vessel called the Emma Maersk.

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I first want to establish that renewable energy involves the usage of resources that can be naturally replenished such as sunlight, wind, rain, tides, and geothermal heat. Some of the leading renewable energy technologies currently available include solar panels, wind turbines, hydropower, and engines that can run on biofuels. This leads us to microgeneration, which is either an individual or a community employing renewable energy technologies for the purposes of both satisfying their energy needs and minimizing their environmental impact.

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According to reports, authorities in Belgium have seized documents, financial records and computer equipment from the local branch of the Church of Scientology and then sealed off the building.

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You are probably thinking that this question has something to do with one’s ability to party as a function their age. Nope. For those of us who are over the age of twenty, there is one thing that we are too old to do: hear the Mosquito. 

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Someone at the Googleplex is a genius. Well, probably many of them are, but the one who came up with this year's April Fools' joke is - in my humble opinion - simply brilliant. Ever dreamed of being among the first to set foot on Mars? Apply now to become one of the few, the proud, the Virgle Pioneers.

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It’s a bird! It’s a plane! No, it’s the International Space Station (ISS)! At an altitude of 350-460 kilometers above the Earth’s surface, the ISS can be seen by someone who isn’t terribly near sighted. Perhaps even more fascinating than the space station itself is the fact that it is a joint project that includes contributions from the United States (NASA), Russia (RKA), Japan (JAXA), Canada (CSA) and eleven European countries (ESA).

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After doing a search in Google News on daylight savings time (DST), I found pages filled with reasons why using daylight savings time is stupid. Here's my top 10.

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Drinking and driving is treated as a serious crime in most countries and often leads to jail time and the payment of heavy fines. Nowadays, however, there is a new menace on the roads and it has nothing to do with drinking. The proliferation of mobile phones around the world has been astonishing during the past decade and this trend is not without its consequences.

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It might surprise you, or maybe not, to learn that the first robot design was made by Leonardo da Vinci back in 1495. The sketches went missing for centuries until historians finally discovered them in a mountain of his paperwork during the 1950s.

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The Amber Room in New Hampshire proudly advertises the fact that it has New Hampshire’s longest bar and the Mickey Finn Brewery in Milwaukee holds concerts in its Amber Room. Until recently, however, the Amber Room was considered by many to be related only to beer halls. The real story, however, takes us back to the time when one of the world’s most spectacular treasures vanished.

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A recent Citizens Advice Bureau (CAB) report stated that as many as 7.4 million people in the U.K. have not been to a NHS dentist since the Labour government’s controversial renovation of the system in April of 2006. It is estimated that 4.7 million of these people have gone to private clinics, while the other 2.7 million people have not received any dental care since 2006. So what does this mean?

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While the battle rages on in Budapest about whether or not to build high rises on Csepel Island, metropolises around the globe are competing with each other to attract tourists with amazing developments that are literally scraping the skies. If a city can manage to build something that is unique and takes architecture to new heights, then visitors from all around the world are sure to come. Not sure where to go on your summer vacation? No worries. Here’s our list of the Top 5 Cities with the Most Impressive Real Estate Developments.

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Movie lovers, star obsessed people and fashion freaks, it is almost time to tune in to one of the most important nights in the movie industry – that’s right, I’m talking about Oscar Night!

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Sovereign Wealth Funds vs. Rothschilds

I recently came across a September 2007 article from The Economist entitled “The new Rothschilds”. This article draws a parallel between the activities of the Rothschilds to the financial muscle now wielded by sovereign wealth funds. In order to truly understand the context of this comparison, we should turn back the clock a few hundred years and investigate how the Rothschilds became such a formidable financial force.

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The world's top ten most expensive office locations saw rents, a large component of occupancy costs, increase by an average 40 per cent last year, according to Office Space Across the World 2008, a global report by real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield.

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Many of us believe that our daily habit of drinking diet soda is one that helps us to consume fewer calories and more effectively manage our weight. The countless ads of shiny, happy, thin people drinking these diet sodas are permanently tattooed in our minds (okay, a few beer commercials as well). Now imagine if the following statement were true: “Diet sodas increase the chance that you will become either overweight or obese”. What? How can anything that has no calories make you fat?

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In the Bible, Genesis 6-9 describes how God decided to cleanse the world of evil by creating a great flood. The story of Noah’s Ark must be one of the most widely known on the planet and the recent film Evan Almighty only reinforces this. Noah’s Ark was created for a doomsday scenario, and now the Svalbard Seed Vault on the remote Norwegian Island of Spitsbergen shares this same purpose.

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I can remember when I was in elemen - tary school and we all decorated shoe boxes for Valentine’s Day. Each box would have a slot where someone could put a Valentine’s card in your box anonymously. It was a big deal to go home and pick through all of the cards, while constantly snacking on the little candy hearts with customized messages like “Be Mine” and “Hugs and Kisses”. This was when Valentine’s was fun and affordable.

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The world’s first computer weighed 17 tons, filled a 9-by-17 meter room, and was as big as a dinosaur. It was called the ENIAC, or the Electronic Numerator Integrator Analyzer and Computer and it was built back in 1946. When the giant computer was solving a problem, it literally made loud cracking and buzzing noises because it used 17,000 vacuum tubes. 

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It’s that time of the year again – Oscar Time! The 80th Academy Award Telecast will take place on February 24th in L.A.’s Kodak Theater, and will be hosted once more by Jon Stewart (The Daily Show).

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When I first heard that Atonement was going to be made, I was left a little perplexed. Here there was this “hip and happening” director (Joe Wright) making his next film after his big hit Pride & Prejudice, yet with Atonement there seems to be a lot of similarities with the already made mentioned film.

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On July 21st, 1969, the eyes of the world were on Neil Armstrong as he took his first steps on the moon. At this point in time, many would have boldly predicted that space travel by 2008 would be as common as scuba diving. Although space technology has certainly improved since 1969, it still struggles with the fundamental problems associated with generating the needed lift to clear the first 200 vertical miles.  

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When Tom Cruise did his couch dance on the Oprah Show, it received enormous worldwide attention. Most people saw his public display of affection for Katie Holmes as cute and funny, and the whole incident probably only reinforced his status as the one of the world’s most popular actors.

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The Silk Road
Chinese Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty was faced with a constant threat from the Hun tribes located to the Northwest. These Hun tribes were from the Siberian branch of the Mongolian race that would later migrate westward and settle in what is now Central Eastern Europe. ...

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The following stories are hard to believe, but are nonetheless real.
I am a medical student currently doing a rotation in toxicology at the poison control center. Today, this woman called in very upset because she caught her little daughter eating ants. I quickly reassured her that the ants are not harmful and there would be no need to bring her daughter into the hospital. She calmed down and at the end of the conversation happened to mention that she gave her daughter some ant poison to eat in order to kill the ants.

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The practice of magic is almost as old as the human race itself. Sorcerers, wizards, conjurers, and magicians throughout history have claimed to possess the abilities to perform supernatural acts like turning lead into gold, levitating objects, and bringing rain to thirsty crops. ... 

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Every year the majority of the world counts down the hours, minutes, and seconds until the start of the New Year and then the corks of champagne bottles can be heard popping off from around the globe. Yet another year has passed and the hangovers from the big party can officially begin. The interesting thing is that while so many people celebrate the coming of the New Year, there are many different reasons and traditions associated with this holiday.

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When a man wanted to date a woman 100 years ago, the proper protocol had to be followed. Two single people first needed to be introduced formally to each other by another party. If this brief encounter went well, then the woman’s mother may request a formal call from the man. This call meant that the man would come to visit the woman with the mother present at all times. The man and the woman were required to sit and make small talk about a limited number of subjects, which probably included the weather, sweet potato casseroles, or the size of the neighbor’s horse. It was long, boring process with lots of cold showers.

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This story has been circling the globe for years and has been posted on numerous blogs. If you have not read this story, then it is certainly worthy of your time. 

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The classic literary work “Robinson Crusoe” tells the story of a man who is marooned on a warm, exotic, beautiful tropical island for twenty years. During his stay he meets some island cannibals and even convinces one, who he names Friday, to be his man servant. Still, Robinson was always desperate to escape his private island as he dreamed of a more populated and polluted environment. I think that many of us living in cold weather climates without servants would agree that Robinson Crusoe was probably smoking too much of his homegrown jungle herb. Why would anyone want to leave such a paradise?...

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 It has been recently reported that a team of researchers have discovered a way that enables human skin cells to behave like embryonic stem cells, which makes them a potential source for regenerative medicine and tissue replacement after injury or disease. Why is this news significant? Well, it depends on where the embryonic stem cell research is taking place. In the U.S., there has been substantial controversy surrounding the use of embryonic stem cells that can only be gathered by destroying a 4-5 day old embryo. ...

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Everything that we are doing right now is quickly moving into the past. In other words, we are all time travelers because we are continuously moving through time. The idea of time travel itself has been around for centuries, although most people think of it as something that belongs entirely to science fiction movies. The facts are, however, that Albert Einstein was able to cleverly outline the theoretical possibility of time travel. This does not mean that traveling through time has been proven, but it also means that it has not been disproved either.

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Yes, it is. Durex is the world’s largest condom maker, and it has found an effective way to both test its products and create a considerable marketing buzz. The Durex Condom Testing Challenge in France held earlier this year brought in an incredible 14,000 applicants on its first day. The goal was to find a panel of about 5,000 official testers who would post their sexual experiences online and to describe, of course, how Durex products helped them to have better sex.

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In September of 2003, the price of crude oil was trading at $25 per barrel. Before this time, one has to rewind all the way back to the Gulf War in 1990 to find any significant price disruption. Saddam’s bold move pushed oil prices to $40.42, and then these prices retreated quicker than the Iraqi army. One only has to fast forward to August 11th, 2005, however, however, to find oil prices trading above $60 per barrel. Hit the fast forward button a few years more and we are knocking on the door of $100 per barrel oil. Are these soaring oil prices just temporary, or should we all get used to permanently paying more at the pump?

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“As good as gold” is often used interchangeably with “well behaved and obedient.” The real root of the expression, however, comes from a love that dates all of the way back the Paleolithic Man living in 40,000 B.C. While the pharaohs in ancient Egypt (3,000 B.C.) covered themselves in gold jewelry, it was not until 700 B.C. that this rare metal became a working currency in the Kingdom of Lydia, located in western Turkey. Throughout history, the world’s appetite for gold has been consistently voracious. This leads us to the question: “What makes gold so special?”

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Al Gore has recently won the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts to call the world’s attention to the issue of global warming. Many praised Gore’s achievement, while some called his efforts pathetic and unfounded. There are also the bold few who want to pin the blame of global warming on another source that has nothing to do with the number of cars on the road. As it turns out, cow farts could be the reason why mankind is on the edge of its collapse.

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What if everyone’s time had the same value? This would mean that one hour of work from a nuclear physicist would be equal to one hour of work from a window cleaner. Mow someone’s grass and get a root canal in exchange. Fix someone’s car and get a chauffeur for an evening in return. Teach someone Spanish and receive a pedicure. Sounds ridiculous? Not to those who are spreading the concept of Time Banking around the world.

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The Danube is up and the floods are back in Budapest. The lower embankment of the river on the Buda side is now closed to traffic. While these headlines might send tourists packing their bags and heading for higher ground, it is really just business as usual for those who have lived in Budapest for awhile. In fact, this flood will not rate very highly on the Budapest’s list of greatest floods....

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