The Atlantic: Is Hungary's Referendum Result a Victory or a Defeat for the Prime Minister?

The EU plan to redistribute 160,000 asylum-seekers across the bloc would have resulted in 1,294 people being resettled in Hungary. But Orban strongly opposed the plan, challenged it in court, and called for a referendum. With nearly all the ballots counted in Sunday’s vote, 98 percent of voters supported Orban’s call to reject the EU plan. But turnout was 43 percent—well short of the 50 percent needed for the results to become legally binding. Orban was undeterred, however. He said he would amend Hungary’s constitution to make the decision binding. He said that though a “valid [referendum] is always better than an invalid [referendum],” the result would give him enough support to tell the EU Hungary “should not be forced to accept … people we don’t want to live with.” [...]

Ferenc Gyurcsany, the leader of the opposition Democratic Coalition, said the low turnout showed “the people do not support the government. And this is good.”

The turnout should ease the pressure on Germany and other EU countries that—in the face of their own domestic opposition to the asylum-seekers—had pushed for an EU-wide distribution plan in order to ease the overcrowding in migrant-holding centers in Greece and Italy.

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Qizmodo: New Clean Energy Report: America May Not Be Screwed After All

Since 2008, the DOE has been tracking America’s clean energy output through a series of annual assessments. And our 2015 report card paints a rosy picture for what was the hottest year in our planet’s history. Wind and solar power, whose costs have fallen 41 to 64 percent since 2008, accounted for two thirds of all new electricity production last year. Other clean energy technologies, like grid-scale batteries and hydrogen fuel cells, are finally becoming advanced enough for practical use.

Land-based wind power is having a golden moment, with 74,000 megawatts (MW) of new turbines installed last year—enough to light up over 17 million households and save America 132 million tonnes of carbon pollution. All told, wind power production has tripled nationwide since 2008, now accounting for over 5 percent of our total electricity generation. [...]

Much of this progress can be attributed to the falling costs of the aforementioned technologies, as illustrated by the chart above. But more basic research is needed to continue driving costs down and help clean energy expand further. In particular, the DOE report highlights the need for aggressive expansion of grid-scale batteries that can store extra electricity produced on windy or sunny days for another time. Other emerging technologies, like smart building controls and fuel cells, are also expected to slim down our carbon footprint once they’re ready for prime-time.

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Quartz: Europe’s lurch to the right is bad news for women’s autonomy over their bodies

Women in Poland are walking off their jobs today, but their strike isn’t just about labor relations. The mass action is about autonomy over their bodies—namely, whether women or the government should decide if and when terminating a pregnancy is appropriate.

The issue has been fodder for a number of far-rights groups that have made gains across Europe. In France, the National Front, led by Marine le Pen, has made opposition to abortion part of their platform in the run-up to elections in May. In Germany, the far-right Alternative Fur Deutschland party, which made election gains in chancellor Angela Merkel’s home state last month, includes banning abortion in its manifesto. [...]

Abortion is legal–with various hurdles and restrictions–in most of Europe. A big exception is Ireland, where abortion is illegal in almost all cases. Irish women who need abortions travel to the UK, if they can afford it.

In the US, a vocal and violent anti-abortion movement ensures that the issue remains one of the most contentious in American politics. Donald Trump, the Republican candidate for the presidency, has a more moderate stance on abortion, although his running mate Mike Pence is considered a hardline anti-abortionist.

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Mental Floss: A Seattle Neighborhood Has a Statue of Vladimir Lenin, and It's Up For Sale

Considering Lenin’s legacy of oppression and mass executions, the 16-foot, seven-ton bronze statue doesn’t sit well with all residents. It was originally brought to Seattle by Lewis Carpenter, a Washington resident who saved it from the scrapyards of Poprad, Slovakia. Arguing that it was a work of art that deserved to be preserved, he purchased it and brought it back to the U.S.

Carpenter died in 1994, not long after shipping the statue to Issaquah, Washington, where he planned to install it in front of a restaurant he was set to open. A year later, it made its way to Seattle, where it was displayed as a piece of public art, just one block south of the Rocket, another Cold War relic-turned-artwork. Carpenter’s family still owns the statue of Lenin, but would love to get it off their hands. There’s an entire Facebook page devoted to tearing it down, and it’s regularly vandalized by people who paint the statue’s hands blood red.

In 1995, the statue was put up for sale for $150,000, with the proceeds scheduled to benefit a local arts organization, but no buyer came forward. By 2015, the price had been raised to $250,000—or best offer, as the The Seattle Times reported. Whether it will actually ever be sold is another question.

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The New York Times: The Problem With the Islamic Apocalypse

This prophecy comes from hadiths, or sayings, attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, a literature that is regarded as less definitive than the Quran, but is still influential in shaping Islamic doctrine. According to certain hadiths, the apocalypse will come in stages. In the first, the world will be filled with injustice, and Muslims will be oppressed. Then two saviors will arise: “the awaited one,” or Mahdi, a divinely guided caliph who will unite and empower Muslims, followed by a bygone prophet who will come back to earth to support the Mahdi and defeat evil. This prophet will not be Muhammad, as one could have expected, but Jesus, praised in the Quran as the Messiah and the “Word of God.”

Many Christians also await the Second Coming of Jesus, so this might sound to them like good news. But Islamic literature seems to suggest that Jesus will return to abolish Christianity and confirm the truth of Islam. A much-quoted hadith, to which the Dabiq headline was alluding, says, “The Son of Mary will soon descend among you as a just ruler; he will break the cross and kill the swine.” The usual interpretation of this prophecy is that when Jesus comes back, he will put an end to his own worship, symbolized by the cross, and re-establish the dietary laws that Christianity abandoned but Jews and Muslims still observe.

Not every Muslim believes such apocalyptic prophecies, most of which don’t exist in the Quran. Most of those who believe in them would also not have any sympathy for the ferocious, brutal Islamic State. Yet Islamic apocalypticism is still a powerful force. According to a 2012 poll by the Pew Research Center, half of Muslims or more in nine Muslim-majority countries believe that the coming of the Mahdi is “imminent,” and could happen in their lifetime. The Islamic State just goes further by claiming that it is bringing the prophecies to life.

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