CNN: Inside Europe's stunning abandoned churches

 Across Europe, hundreds of churches that were once filled with worship and song are now at the mercy of the elements. With religion's role declining sharply around the continent in recent decades, the most promising outcome for many of these centuries-old structures is being reincarnated as residential or commercial properties.

Hoping to capture their faded splendor before it's too late, French photographer Francis Meslet has spent almost a decade documenting abandoned churches, chapels and priories in varying states of disrepair. His stunning images show dilapidated pipe organs, overgrown cloisters, long-empty pews and sunlight pouring into naves strewn with dust and rubble. [...]

Featuring images shot across France, Belgium, Germany, Italy and Portugal, his new book, "Abandoned Churches: Unclaimed Places of Worship," offers an eerie tribute to a building type he describes as "very special in the history of architecture and the history of men." Meslet, who once wanted to be architect, has a sharp eye for structural symmetry, with his collection spanning styles from gothic to neoclassical.

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Electrek: EGEB: Portugal kills coal two years ahead of schedule

Portugal has ended its coal-burning two years ahead of schedule. It’s the third EU country to close its coal plants early in 2020, after Austria and Sweden. Belgium was the first EU country to end coal, in 2016.

Portuguese energy utility EDP announced the closure of its Sines coal power plant, which emitted 13.5% of all carbon dioxide in Portugal. Sines (pictured) is south of Lisbon, on the coast. EDP will close one more plant and convert another unit in Spain. The utility is now evaluating the development of a green hydrogen production project in Sines, according to its website. [...]

The German city of Wuppertal partnered with Cologne in 2018 to order 40 hydrogen-powered buses made by Belgian manufacturer Van Hool NV. Cologne is running 30 of them, and the remaining 10 will soon be on the road in Wuppertal. It’s thought to be the largest order for hydrogen buses in Europe.

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euronews: Europeans 'radically' reassessing view on world order due to COVID-19, research finds

Drawing on data from nine EU member states — which together comprise two-thirds of the bloc's population — research from the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that 63 per cent of Europeans are in favour of more EU cooperation to tackle the pandemic and other issues of global significance.

The authors found that although some commentators predicted that the pandemic would lead to a surge in Euroscepticism and nationalism as borders were shut, the opposite is true. Large majorities of people in all surveyed countries said that they are now more firmly convinced of the need for further EU cooperation than they were before the crisis. [...]

Across all nine countries surveyed — Bulgaria, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Spain, and Sweden — only 29 per cent of respondents have greater confidence in their government. In contrast, 33 per cent have lost confidence in the power of government. [...]

But the "Strategic Sovereigntists" made up the biggest group with 42 per cent of respondents. They believe that the EU's relevance will be dependent on its capacity to act as a cohesive bloc.

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PolyMatter: The Hong Kong Passport Question

Social Europe: Keeping the promise of eurozone convergence

Fundamentally, they are political. Technical proposals for rendering the eurozone robust have been tabled time and again: a eurozone investment budget, a European deposit-insurance scheme, a proper eurozone unemployment-(re)insurance system, the issuance of joint- and several-liability eurobonds. And, time and time again, these have been discussed, diluted and typically disposed of in a drawer.

The truth is there is insufficient trust to move forward. Resilience requires risk-sharing; risk-sharing requires trust. Trust, however, has been eroded by disappointment—disappointment that a decade of austerity has failed to reduce debt, disappointment that two decades of the euro have failed to bring convergence. [...]

This promise has not been fulfilled. On the contrary, the eurozone has been drifting apart—since long before the current crisis. While in 1999, GDP per capita in northern Europe was around €2,000 above the eurozone average, by 2019 it was €4,500 higher. Conversely, Italy and other southern-European countries have lost ground, from about €4,000 below the eurozone average in 1999 to €7,500 below 20 years later. Instead of shrinking, the gap has doubled. [...]

A more promising approach is to even out the regional distribution of value added. Andalusia, the Uckermark and metropolitan areas such as Naples or Thessaloniki should be brought to similar levels of productivity as Munich, Milan or the Amsterdam metropolitan area.

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statista: The Most Culturally Chauvinistic Europeans (Oct 30, 2018)

A Pew Research Center survey set out to answer that question by surveying 56,000 adults across Europe. Respondents were asked whether they agree with the statement "our people are not perfect but our culture is superior to others". The following map shows the share of people in different countries considering their own culture to be superior to others and there are certainly some interesting results. Take Portugal where 47 percent of people agree with the above statement compared to just 20 percent in neighbouring Spain.

The most chauvinistic attitudes towards culture were recorded across Eastern Europe with Romania (66 percent), Bulgaria (69 percent) and Russia (also 69 percent) on top. The highest score of any country across Europe was actually recorded in Greece where 89 percent of people agreed with the statement.

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Europe Elects: Portugal | Parliament Election 2019

This is the YouTube service of Europe Elects. Poll aggregation and election analysis for countries in the European Union. Europe Elects introduces the main political parties ahead of the 06 of October 2019 parliament election in Portugal.

CityLab: Portugal Passes ‘Right to Housing’ Law As Prices Surge

The Basic Housing Law emphasizes the “social function” of housing, with the explicit goals of eradicating homelessness, prioritizing the use of public real estate for affordable housing, and prohibiting tenant evictions across Lisbon—a pressing issue in recent years—unless the state is able to provide similar accommodation nearby. Framers of the law describe it as a foundation and roadmap for future policies, albeit one with some explicitly defined targets, rather than a direct instrument for giving people homes.

The law stipulates that the government will need to present a first-ever national policy for housing to the parliament by March 2020, including special protective measures for young people, the disabled, the elderly, and families with young children.

It also creates a mechanism whereby not only individuals but entire neighborhoods will be able to lodge complaints about housing quality, ongoing construction, or proposed developments, in an attempt to democratize a sector that has seen soaring rent increases amid the tourism boom in Lisbon’s city center. [...]

Although there is not more recent data, according to the 2011 census there were there were 50,289 vacant homes in Lisbon’s inner city, out of a total of 322,865 housing units, according to Mendes. (Many homes in the capital were abandoned as the population shrank in the late 20th century.) Meanwhile, the ongoing demolition of illegal or informal settlements—there are an estimated 14,000 families living in “precarious conditions” in the Lisbon metropolitan area—penalizes the poor who lack sufficient protections and has stoked racial tensions in districts such as Barrio de Jamaica.

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Quartz: Tourists love 'live like a local' travel. Do locals?

The way we travel has changed. 

Forget travel agents and hotel concierges — the modern traveler uses smartphones with GPS, Airbnb and Instagram to plan an off-the-beaten-path trip. 

And sure enough, it’s not hard to find business owners and locals who have benefitted economically from the boom. But the economic benefits of “live like a local” travel only tells part of the story. In Lisbon, the tourism boom has had ripple effects everywhere from the housing market to getting into the local lunch spot.

EURACTIV: Only eight EU countries plan to phase out coal by 2030

Denmark, Spain, the Netherlands, Portugal and Finland aim to do so by 2030, the Spanish commissioner told a press conference in Brussels. [...]

An EU official told AFP the remaining 20 countries, including heavily coal-dependent Poland, had not submitted timelines for weaning themselves off the fossil fuel. [...]

“Germany, which currently accounts for around one third of the EU’s coal capacity, is discussing exiting coal between 2035 and 2038,” the policy analyst said. [...]

Under the 2015 Paris treaty, the EU pledged to reduce its carbon emissions by 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

During its review on Tuesday, the commission said the bloc is on track to meet that goal but was falling short on its target for renewable energy use and energy savings. [...]

22 countries, including Germany, now endorse the 2050 carbon neutrality target, according to the latest count.

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Jacobin Magazine: Today, We Celebrate the Carnation Revolution

The MFA’s formation owed not to left-wing ideology but rather to Portugal’s colonial war between 1961 and 1974. The country spent thirteen years fighting against the anticolonial revolutions in Guinea, Mozambique, and Angola, with more than one million troops mobilized, over eight thousand dead on the Portuguese side and one hundred thousand dead on the African side. [...]

Revolution means conflict: and the MFA overthrew the dictatorship with troops and tanks in the streets. But its members were mostly from the petty bourgeoisie, and little politicized, their aims being limited to ending the war. That was their achievement on April 25, 1974, as middle-ranking officers mounted a coup d’état. This however also launched a wider revolutionary process, as the working and popular masses entered the stage. This also altered the balance of forces between the social classes. [...]

But while parallel forms of power emerged during the revolution, they did not develop and coordinate themselves nationally, as a viable alternative to the power of the central state. Indeed, if the state entered an enormous crisis, it did not collapse. This lack of alternative was one of the reasons why on November 25, 1975 the right wing was so easily able to restore “order” at the expense of these forms of dual power. [...]

The banks were nationalized and expropriated with no compensation whatsoever. And the right to free time was absolutely pivotal. Take the case of the demonstration by bakers working long hours, whose slogan was “we want to sleep with our wives.” As a slogan, it is very interesting, because nowadays we take it for granted that at eleven at night there are people selling socks in supermarkets or working on Volkswagen assembly lines. People won not just price freezes so that they could have decent meals, but the right to leisure and culture. They also won the right to housing, indeed by occupying vacant houses that were destined for speculation. Even judges sometimes backed them, as in the city of Setúbal. I’ll remind you that today in Portugal there are seven hundred thousand vacant houses, owned by real-estate funds, which do not pay taxes.

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Vox: Denver may become the first US city to decriminalize psychedelic mushrooms

The initiative would not legalize magic mushrooms; they’d remain illegal under state and federal law. And it wouldn’t decriminalize or deprioritize the distribution and sales of psilocybin mushrooms — all of that could still be pursued by police. [...]

Advocates for the measure argue that decriminalization would shift law enforcement resources away from pursuing nonviolent offenses. They claim that psilocybin is safe, nonaddictive or close to nonaddictive, and that a growing body of evidence suggests the drug has therapeutic benefits for illnesses ranging from depression to end-of-life anxiety to addiction. [...]

Still, decriminalization alone may have its benefits. A 2009 report from the libertarian Cato Institute, written by Glenn Greenwald, concluded that decriminalization freed people from the “fear of arrest” when they sought help for their addiction and “freed up resources that could be channeled into treatment and other harm reduction programs.”

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Politico: Portugal’s opposition woes

Unlike almost everywhere else in Europe, Portugal’s mainstream conservatives face no credible threat from populists on the right. Instead, they are split into three rival parties defined by personal rather than ideological differences. [...]

Rio’s Social Democratic Party (PSD) remains the largest on the right, but polls show it heading for its worst-ever European Parliament result. Its support languishes below 25 percent, 15 points behind Costa’s Socialist Party (PS). [...]

Rio eventually won a confidence motion by 75 to 50 votes in the party’s National Council just before 4 a.m. but only after a 10-hour debate marked by mudslinging that's unlikely to win over disgruntled voters. [...]

The right still suffers from association with austerity policies introduced under PSD Prime Minister Pedro Passos Coelho in response to the eurozone debt crisis. Since gaining power in November 2015, Costa has overseen steady economic growth that’s cut unemployment by half.

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Politico: Countries reject plan to scrap clock change in 2019

Ministers are poised to call for the EU to postpone the plan to scrap daylight saving time to 2021, according to a draft text prepared by the Austrian presidency and obtained by POLITICO.

The shift follows pressure from countries including Portugal, Greece and the Netherlands to maintain the clock change or provide more information to justify scrapping the twice-yearly shift. [...]

Countries that support keeping the current system do so “mainly due to the lack of plausible available evidence regarding the possible benefits that the abolition of time changes could bring about,” it added.[...]

An EU consultation saw a majority of the 4.6 million respondents back the move to scrap the clock change, an EU standard since 1996. Countries including Finland and Estonia remain strongly in favor of the Commission’s plan.

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Politico: EU countries stop clock on Commission’s time change plan

His ministry is pushing for countries to be given until 2021 to decide whether they will opt for permanent summer or winter time. Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker wanted that decision wrapped up by the end of March. [...]

Hofer wants the Commission to appoint a coordinator — a sort of EU-wide time lord — to oversee the reform, and Brussels to include a safeguard clause that would trigger new legislation should problems arise from scrapping the unified time change.

In Graz, three countries — Portugal, Greece and the United Kingdom — said they wanted to continue the annual shift to daylight saving, while Cyprus, the Netherlands, Ireland, France and Denmark said they had not yet reached a position.[...]

More than 80 percent of 4.6 million respondents to an EU survey backed removing the system under which clocks spring forward by an hour in March and fall back in October, with around 3 million responses coming from Germany.

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Politico: Countries resist Juncker’s clock change plan

Another said member countries feel the Commission should have kept a coordinating role rather than simply offering them the choice of sticking with winter or summer time. Under the Commission’s plan, countries need to notify Brussels by March 31, 2019 what they want to do, ahead of what could be the final bloc-wide clock change.

That means capitals need to move quickly in deciding their position. Transport Commissioner Violeta Bulc said in September that Portugal, Cyprus and Poland are leaning toward summer time, while Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands prefer winter time, although no position has yet been fixed.[...]

The Commission argues its case for a speedy lawmaking progress is due to the overwhelming response to a public consultation on the issue. Some 84 percent of 4.6 million respondents to the survey came out in favor of scrapping the system, which has been an EU standard since 1996.

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Quartz: All the places plastic bags are banned around the world

In America, only two states have conclusively banned single-use plastic bags: Hawaii and California.

Though Hawaii’s ban came first, it wasn’t technically a state-wide ban: all five Hawaiian islands (Big Island, Honolulu, Kauai, Maui, and Pala) individually banned plastic bags at various points—the last of which took effect in 2015. The bans, which aim to fully phase in by 2020, range in definition and severity, but generally still allow for the use of 100% recyclable plastic bags.

California passed a unilateral, state-wide ban in September of 2014, and it went into effect in November of 2016. The law bans single-use plastic bags at all large retailers, and imposed a 10-cent charge for paper bags. Before the law was passed, more than 100 California local laws banning bags were already in place. [...]

At least 32 countries around the world have plastic bag bans in place—and nearly half are in Africa, where plastic bags frequently clog drains, leading to increased mosquito swarms (and, as a result, bouts of malaria). [...]

In Ireland, a 22c plastic bag tax has reduced usage by as much as 90%. Portugal has seen a drop in excess of 85%. And since imposing a tax in 2003, Denmark has seen the lowest plastic usage in Europe, averaging just 4 bags per person per year.

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Jakub Marian: Nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments per capita by region in Europe

The map below shows the number of nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments (which includes hotels, holiday cottages, camping grounds, etc.) in a region divided by the number of people living in that region. In other words, it is a kind of tourists-to-residents ratio, including tourists from other parts of the same region. The map is based on data provided by Eurostat. There are no data for the UK, for some reason.

The map does not really do justice to some of the regions above the “10+” cut-off point. There are five regions with more than 50 nights spent at tourist accommodation establishments per capita (which means, essentially, that more than 50/365 ≈ 14% of their population are tourists, barring “intra-regional” tourism):

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The Washington Post: Toronto medical official calls for decriminalizing drugs as opioid overdoses skyrocket in Canada

In a report released Monday, Eileen de Villa, Toronto’s chief medical officer, urged the city’s board of health to pressure the federal government to eliminate legal penalties for the possession of drugs and to scale up “prevention, harm reduction and treatment services.”

The report also recommended assembling a task force “to explore options for the legal regulation of all drugs in Canada,” which she hopes would destroy an illegal drug market contaminated with fentanyl — a synthetic opioid 100 times more potent than morphine — and other drugs like it.

“When we criminalize people who take drugs, we inadvertently contribute to the overdose emergency,” de Villa said. “It pushes people into unsafe drug use practices and creates barriers for people to seek help.” [...]

In response, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government has embraced a number of “harm reduction” measures, including supervised injection sites, prescription heroin programs for those with severe addictions and even vending machines that dispense prescription opioids. [...]

Canada’s New Democratic Party this year became the first major political party to endorse decriminalization. And at a Liberal Party convention in April, backbenchers and members of the party’s grass roots voted to make decriminalization a top policy priority during the 2019 federal election campaign. (Those votes are nonbinding.)

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Kurzgesagt – In a Nutshell: 3 Arguments Why Marijuana Should Stay Illegal Reviewed