Restaurants in Budapest have a way of quickly closing amid murky circumstances, but one such closure just being reported by the local media must take the cake. According to the wires, sometime around lunch today the health authorities arrived at Kossuth tér and removed the soup kitchen that for the last 10 days had been feeding the protestors encamped around Parliament.

The reason given was that it posed a "health risk." (Apparently they meant a health risk to the people eating the soup and other food being handed out, though it also posed a minor risk to the government as well.) While there was no doubt a fair amount of grumbling by the demonstrators, some were said to be relieved, as the free grub was attracting more homeless people than demonstrators. No word on how good the soup was, though a good guess would be "bitter."