" Russian-based companies make up about half of the 61 entities added to the EU's list Monday. In addition to the 19 Chinese companies, it also added nine from Turkey, two in Kyrgyzstan, one in India, one in Kazakhstan, and one in the United Arab Emirates."

Of Israeli Jews alive today, 80% were born in Israel. A majority of Israel’s Jews are not descended from Europe but rather from Arab nations, including from the parcel of land known today as modern Israel. Known as Mizrachim in Hebrew, they hail from Iraq, Iran, Morocco, Yemen, Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Algeria, as well as from the Asian caucus region of the former Soviet Union. Those Israelis who are Ashkenazi, the Israeli term for Jews of European descent, are increasingly the minority inside Israel.

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Russia has used a similar law to silence public figures and organisations that disagree with or deviate from the Kremlin’s views. Georgian society is widely anti-Kremlin. Georgia’s bid for membership of the EU and NATO is enshrined in its constitution and—according to opinion polls—supported by a majority of the population.

I wonder how they are going to concretely translate this issue into legislation or praxis..

• Some actors of far-right parties have been proven to be hostile to their own countries and to democracy.

• On the otherhand these parties were officially democratically elected by voters.

• And finally, why the heck are these poltician and or parties still not sanctioned, after breaking their freely taken oath to protect democracy and the interests of its respective constituents.

• I hope our politician and the legislation proves adaptable enough to counter this new dangers, without loosing their core democratic mandate.

"Media ownership concentration remained high in Croatia, France, Hungary, Poland, the Netherlands and Slovakia, with many media companies owned by just a few individuals, threatening the diversity of media voices and increasing the risk of bias. In Slovakia, the populist prime minister, Robert Fico, has “cut off all communication” with four media outlets accused of “openly displaying hostile attitudes”. His government this month approved a controversial bill to overhaul the public broadcaster RTVS.

In Hungary, public service media was already “so completely under the yoke of the government” that its output was “characterised by biased and one-sided reporting that is always in line with the interests of the ruling Fidesz party”, Liberties said.

iirc: then Chinese mafia occasionally works with the CCP, this was hearsay some 20 years ago though, when I came across some several personal experiences. So I'm not sure .

Update Renew Europe MP:

"We urge you to launch an immediate and transparent investigation, in cooperation with national authorities, to uncover the scale of the influence operation within this house and allegations of potential corruption.

If sitting MEPs or candidates in the upcoming European elections have taken money from or been corrupted by the Russia Government or their proxies, they must be exposed."

Added: most corrupt Mp's name were probably already known across Europe. Usually they were also far right speakers at website "voiceofEurope" , now offline.

According to Moscowtimes : The payments targeted politicians from Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands and Poland, Denik N said, citing a Czech foreign ministry source.

TLDR; surprise surprise, analysts predict that Orban wants something out of it.

This is very good info, most US /EU comparison studies are US centric. And any comparison between these two, although interesting, is too different. This article compensates the difference by using Purchasing Power, finally.

But in this article, and this still bites me a bit, they are still comparing the US universities according to the US ranking and the Times ranking, in which they score lower. Other articles comparing education, state clearly that the standards for US/ EU education quality are different.

Also flinging in China's economy as a third party for comparison, won't help us much. The WTO ( iirc) just accepts any output figure Beijing gives them, but there is no accounting for it.

So let's keep this quality studies and info rolling, and see how it can enlighten us.

Added:

● par 2:" Frustrated with current university rankings – mostly commercial ventures that give greatest importance to research – the European Union is backing a new form of listing." link euroactiv 2013

● par 3:" How to measure China’s true economic growth? Mr Li confessed that the province’s gdp figures were “unreliable”. link economist 2023

What calls my attention is that lately high ranking commanders in chief are warning us to prepare for a war-economy; and now in this NATO meeting they're saying:

" We need public and private actors to change their mindset for (...),an era in which we need to expect the unexpected.

Although not often in the news, the police (alone and or in cooperation) stops many planned atacks on a yearly basis.

Good someone , i.e. Utrecht, started to bail out of the current ranking system. Continental Universities are hard to compare with British & American ones, afaik. The teacher- student contact is more on the foreground compared to the latter.

Ergo, if teachers need to write papers all the time to maintain ranking, they'll have actually less time to bother with teaching and maintaining contact with students progress & question. Imo, this is a very important element in (higher) education. *Edit