BBC News
By Nick Thorpe
image copyrightEPA
image captionPeter Gulacsi plays in goal for Bundesliga club RB Leipzig and for his national team
A row between two big names in Hungarian football, both based in Germany, has exposed a deep fault line in their home country s society over gay rights, migration and multiculturalism.
Bundesliga club Hertha Berlin fired their goalkeeping coach Zsolt Petry last week for making anti-gay and xenophobic comments in response to praise by Hungary s popular national goalkeeper of rainbow families .
Peter Gulacsi, now at high-flying rival RB Leipzig and formerly of Liverpool, posted the message on Facebook in February. The more time I spend abroad or among people from different cultures, he wrote, the more I realise the world is more colourful due to the fact that we are not all the same, and that love, acceptance, and tolerance are the most important things.
Hungary footballers row exposes gay rights split bbc.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bbc.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
BBC News
Published
image captionPoland is seeing its highest infection levels since the start of the pandemic
Eastern Europe largely escaped the worst of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, but the picture has changed dramatically with several countries experiencing record infections and deaths.
There is now a scramble to vaccinate the population fast but, as BBC correspondents across the region explain, the rate of infection is proving a major obstacle.
Health system tested to its limit
By Adam Easton, BBC Warsaw correspondent
Poland is struggling to cope with its highest number of new infections since the pandemic began - 60 times higher than at the start of the pandemic in spring last year - because of the rampant UK (Kent) variant of the virus.
What Europeans have learned from a year of Covid msn.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from msn.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.