French Education Minister Jean-Michel Blanquer and Junior Health and Solidarity Minister Christelle Dubos on Tuesday announced €6 million in initial funding for the free breakfast programme, which will be put in place at public schools that have been identified as "priority education network" (réseau d'éducation prioritaire or REP) establishments as well as in some poor urban neighbourhoods and rural areas.
[...]
A pilot programme was launched earlier this month in eight areas where schools are already working to serve students a healthy, free meal in the morning: Amiens, the overseas territory of La Réunion, Lille, Montpellier, Nantes, Reims, Toulouse andVersailles. The programme will be expanded nationwide in the fall, and is expected to provide breakfast to as many as 100,000 schoolchildren once fully operational.

Hunger leads to 'difficulty learning'

Why does the Hungarian electorate put up with this? The answer is threefold. In economic terms the country is enjoying a relatively good decade, and many families are feeling the benefits despite the record-shattering income gap, and mind-boggling stories like the one of Orbán's childhood friend, the village gas fitter Lőrincz Mészáros, who since 2010 has risen from complete nobody to the 2057th richest person on the planet. Wages are up, unemployment is down, and about half a million mostly young and educated people have moved to other EU countries. Brussels is spending over 4 billion euros a year on Hungary, adding 3 to 4 percent to the county's Gross National Income.
[...]
But there is one more way Europe could help: By sending election observers. The guy is a cheater.

WhatsApp, which is owned by Facebook, just shut down the massive channel used by Spain's independent leftist political party Podemos.

And it did this just days before the general election

This is actual, extreme election meddling by a foreign corporationhttps://t.co/PxzZ722Mk8

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) 24. April 2019

EU officials told EURACTIV.com that "the EU position has not changed". The bloc decided not to become a member when the massive plan was presented more than five years ago. Member states are free to join individually, as nearly half of them have already done.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras's presence at the Belt and Road Initiative Forum in Beijing Friday and Saturday, in addition to Greece's joining the initiative of 16 countries of Eastern and Southeastern countries with strong relations with China, shows how far Greece has come since 2009. That was when China's state-owned Cosco [!] took over part of Piraeus's [!] container port. That initiative by a New Democracy [!] government was opposed bitterly by other parties and vested interests. However, despite the obstacles that they set up, PASOK and SYRIZA contributed toward a closer relationship with China.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi told reporters on Friday that apart from the 37 state and government heads, the Apr. 25-27 event will also be attended by representatives of up to 150 countries and international organizations, including UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and International Monetary Fund head Christine Lagarde.

Among the presidents or prime ministers likely to attend are from Italy, Portugal, Greece, Russia, Chile, Austria, Switzerland, Singapore, Philippines, Kenya, Pakistan, Egypt, Czech Republic, Hungary, Serbia, Mongolia, Vietnam and Thailand.

Many western countries won't send their top leaders to attend the meeting. These include the US, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Australia or Spain.

archived
LEAK: Europe puts pressure on Beijing ahead of EU-China summit
< yawn >

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

If a referendum on EU membership were held across the bloc today, a majority in favour of remaining would be impossible to reach in the UK, Czech Republic and Italy, according to the latest Eurobarometer released by the European Parliament on Thursday (25 April).
[...]
The survey asked 27,973 Europeans between 19 February and 4 March and noted an overall increase of undecided voters in 13 countries, including the UK.

Lindner versteht das offenbar als unverschämten Angriff: Front werde gemacht gegen den Spargel, sagte er beim Parteitag der FDP am Samstag. Die Deutschen lebten in dem Bewusstsein, ,,Spargelnation der Welt" zu sein, sagt Lindner. Dabei habe China uns mal wieder längst überholt, denn da würde 60 Mal mehr Spargel angebaut als in Deutschland. ,,Symbolisch" sei das, so Lindner:  ,,Wenn wir nicht den Spargel anbauen, dann werden es andere tun, wie in jeder anderen Technologie auch." Dicker Applaus von seinen Zuhörerinnen und Zuhörern.

Die neuen FDP-Wahlplakate sind auch schon da. pic.twitter.com/FCmPhwLWMD

— Der Gazetteur (@dergazetteur) April 28, 2019

President Milos Zeman will appoint Marie Benesova on Tuesday after the resignation of her predecessor, bringing opposition accusations of pressure on courts as Andrej Babis faces a potential fraud trial over European Union subsidies more than a decade ago.

Despite the investigation, Babis's ANO party maintains a firm poll lead after sweeping to power in a 2017 election when it won three times the votes of its nearest competitor with pledges to end politics as usual and bring a businessman's touch to governance.

Babis, the country's second richest person, has long fought accusations of conflicts of interest because of his vast business interests. He put his Agrofert business empire into trusts in 2017 to meet new Czech legislation.

archived 2017
Reaction to Macron's Europe Speech Says Much About EU Divisions
"'He should really concentrate on France,' Czech ANO party leader Andrej Babis said in an interview."

Diversity is the key to economic and political evolution.

A european policy regime that declares Italy and Germany to be at the same point relative to economic potential robs itself of the claim to rationality and invites a voluntarist nationalist response. Against nonsense output gaps in @socialeurope this am.https://t.co/hEOnoHjsnK pic.twitter.com/xtuhI5jM2e

— Adam Tooze (@adam_tooze) April 30, 2019

The witches also said they had recently turned their attention to politics, joining anti-corruption protests.

Minca said she connected online with nine witches and wizards from across Europe to the United States, seeking to put a curse on Romanian lawmakers seen by witches as corrupt.

Streamed online, the group had performed a mass ritual simultaneously with their overseas associates, against "those who don't do their jobs, those who have bad intentions, will lose their positions and suffer health problems," said Minca.

She said they plan to harness the global power of the Internet once more ahead of May's European parliament elections.

"We will continue this ritual on the 25th of May. We will do a powerful ritual against the Romanian government, so on the 26th when the European elections are taking place we will cast our spell for the good of the country."