England supporters face paying inflation-busting £95 for an adult shirt as the tournament begins in the US
Fans of World Cup teams kitted out by Nike face the highest costs if they want to buy a replica shirt before the tournament kicks off this week amid a “striking” overall increase in prices.
Alongside the official match versions, which are retailing for as much as €160, manufacturers typically make “stadium”, or replica, versions aimed at supporters.
Germany’s economic decline is no longer merely an economic story. It has become a political one. Chancellor Friedrich Merz has become the focal point of this broader crisis of governance and legitimacy. For decades, Germany was regarded as the economic engine of Europe and, alongside France, a principal political architect of the European Union. Today, […]
It's the world's largest humanitarian crisis, yet aid groups say it has received far too little attention. As Sudan's civil war enters its fourth year, nearly two out of every five people face emergency-level hunger and humanitarian officials warn the crisis has been compounded by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Nick Schifrin reports. A warning, some images in this story are disturbing.
by Dr. Peter McCullough, America Outloud: Dr. Peter McCullough joined Retired Brig. General Blaine Holt on “Dangerous Intellectuals” to dissect the hantavirus outbreak aboard the MV Hondias cruise ship, which departed Argentina on April 1, 2026. McCullough argues the virus spreads exclusively through rodent droppings—not human-to-human transmission—and that the WHO catastrophically mishandled the crisis by […]
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on June 09, 2026.It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
The climate emergency is sharply increasing the risk of crop failure in regions that produce an outsized share of the world’s staple food grains, according to a report published Tuesday that warns of “serious threats to Europe, the NATO alliance, and global stability” if cooperative resilience initiatives and other mitigation strategies aren’t pursued.
The report, “Global Breadbaskets: Food System Resilience as a Strategic Imperative,” was published by the Center for Climate and Security—part of the Council on Strategic Risks, a Washington, DC-based security policy think tank—and the Woodwell Climate Research Center, an independent nonprofit located in Falmouth, Massachusetts.
“Geopolitical fragmentation, conflict, extreme weather, and global aid cuts already strain food security. Meanwhile, climate change is increasing the likelihood of crop failures in the American, European, and Asian breadbaskets, which produce most of the staple crops underpinning global food security,” the report states.
🆕 Across India, France, and Germany, in the next decade and a half, the odds of key crops failing are set to increase by between two- and six-fold. This isn't just a food story. It's also a #NATO security story.
The publication follows an April report from a pair of United Nations agencies on how extreme heat is impacting food production and food security around the planet. The new report includes a storymap that explores climate change-driven threats to wheat, rice, and maize (corn) crops in France, Germany, and India—three of the world’s “global breadbaskets.”
The analysis’ authors note that compared with 2010 threat levels, by 2040, “the risk of a given year’s crop failing is projected to grow roughly twofold for Indian wheat and German maize, roughly threefold for French wheat, roughly fourfold for French maize, and roughly sixfold for Indian rice, with sharp increases in critical producing regions.”
Climate-driven extreme heat “not only threatens crops, but also the laborers and infrastructure that translate them into food security,” the report continues. “Extreme heat is projected to reduce the suitability of 15-40% of India’s rain-fed rice-growing regions by 2050, and to reduce physical work capacity during the average growing season to as little as 40% of 2000-era levels by 2100.”
“By 2040, southwestern France will average up to 16 additional days per year above 35°C (95°F), exceeding thresholds that reduce yields, impact grain quality, and cause heat stroke,” the paper warns. “Extreme heat also threatens to damage or disable road and rail networks critical to food transportation, agricultural machinery, civil defense, and military mobilization.”
The publication also states that global breadbasket failures in Europe “could open rifts for Russian meddling, fuel instability in key partners, and elevate food production as a geopolitical lever.”
The Council on Strategic Risks operates within the transatlantic security policy community, whose work often overlaps with NATO’s interests.
“We have plenty of examples of how crop failures can contribute to political instability, from the French Revolution to the Arab Spring,” Center for Climate and Security deputy director and report lead author Tom Ellison said Tuesday in a statement. “In today’s environment, global breadbasket failures could strain NATO priorities, prompt unrest in key countries, and upend trade relationships.”
Woodwell Climate Research Center scientist and report co-author Alexandra Naegele warned that “climate change doesn’t just threaten crop yields and grain quality—it destabilizes entire food systems, from labor and livestock to food storage and transport.”
“Quantifying these climate-driven risks is an essential step toward building resilient food systems and safeguarding global food security,” she added.
The report recommends steps countries—specifically members of the European Union and NATO—can take to mitigate risks to food security, including strengthening cooperative resilience, anticipating instability and hybrid warfare, supporting strategic and vulnerable partners, coordinating trade responses, and investing in agricultural research and development.
“Amid climate change, geopolitical uncertainty, food shocks from the war in Iran, and Russian hybrid warfare, investing in a resilient food system isn’t in competition with security—it’s a key part of it,” Ellison stressed.
Monica Caparas, a scientist at the Woodwell Climate Research Center and report co-author, said, “Understanding and preparing for breadbasket failures is both a national security priority and a humanitarian imperative—one that can help protect lives, reduce instability, and strengthen food resilience before a regional shock becomes a wider crisis.”
The disappearance and subsequent death of 11-year-old Lyhanna, whose body was found on June 4 in an agricultural silo in the Gers region of southwestern France, has triggered an unprecedented institutional crisis in France. Politicians are shifting blame onto judges, who are doing what they can with the resources available to them.
France’s judicial institution is facing both genuine operational failures and unacceptable political exploitation. By offloading their own responsibilities onto judges and prosecutors, neither Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin nor Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez is likely to emerge from this ordeal with enhanced credibility.
A troubling case file
The facts currently known in the Lyhanna case are undeniably damaging to the judicial system. The primary suspect, a 41-year-old man and the father of one of Lyhanna’s classmates, had an extensive judicial and administrative record before being formally charged with kidnapping and unlawful confinement of a minor under the age of 15.
Several complaints and reports had already been brought to the attention of the relevant authorities. One of the most sensitive aspects of the case involves a complaint filed on August 22, 2025, by the mother of a child alleging repeated sexual assaults. On September 11, a medical report reportedly identified findings described as consistent with the child’s statements. Yet the suspect was never interviewed before Lyhanna disappeared on May 29.
This timeline raises a fundamental question: why did a complaint alleging the rape of a minor, supported by medical evidence, fail to result in an interview of the suspect before the tragedy occurred? This question goes beyond the understandable public emotion surrounding the case and requires examination of how criminal investigations are actually processed.
The justice inspectorate faces major questions
Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin has ordered a systematic review of 70,000 complaints involving children by July 14. A general administrative inspection is currently underway to determine whether delays, errors, or procedural failures occurred in the handling of cases involving the suspect.
This directive from the Ministry of Justice responds to both political and moral urgency. Its purpose is to ensure that no comparable case is sitting unattended in an investigative unit or prosecutor’s office, particularly those involving rape or sexual abuse allegations. At the same time, it reflects a clear lack of confidence in the ordinary functioning of France’s criminal justice system.
The major challenge following this review will be actually processing those complaints: interviewing suspects, verifying testimony, prioritizing investigative actions, and making the necessary judicial decisions. Without additional operational resources, the scope of the problem may be revealed without being solved.
Judges and prosecutors thrown to the wolves
Frédéric Chevallier, Chief Prosecutor of Chartres and president of the National Conference of Public Prosecutors, has spoken out in defense of prosecutors while acknowledging that the case demands answers. His comments reflect the intense pressure currently weighing on the judicial institution.
On one hand, he rejects the idea that “judges and prosecutors should be thrown to the wolves” in response to public outrage. He stresses the need to avoid premature conclusions before inspections are completed, urging public officials to “keep a cool head.” His central argument is that no serious conclusions can be drawn before the entire chain of events has been reconstructed.
On the other hand, Chevallier has not ruled out individual responsibility, noting that “judges are not beyond accountability.” This cautious approach is intended to prevent the Lyhanna case from becoming a public trial of an individual magistrate or prosecutor’s office before investigators have completed their work.
Yet this institutional defense remains fragile. Explaining that the courts are overloaded, that investigative services are overwhelmed, and that prosecutors constantly triage competing emergencies only partially addresses families’ concerns. When a child dies and prior warnings existed, the judicial system must be able to explain why certain procedures moved so slowly and whether individual decisions contributed to an identified risk.
The impossible equation of priorities
Prosecutors point out that they are managing enormous backlogs of cases. Chevallier referenced not only the 70,000 complaints involving minors now under review, but also millions of cases of all types awaiting action within investigative services.
This argument reveals an institution that is clearly overwhelmed, at times buried beneath mountains of case files. It highlights a criminal justice system confronting systemic saturation. Yet it does not end the legitimate debate over how cases are prioritized. If everything is considered urgent, then nothing truly is. The Lyhanna case compels the judicial system to explain precisely how complaints are prioritized, especially when they involve sexual violence against children.
This issue connects to a structural problem that judges’ unions have denounced for decades: chronic underfunding. The Judicial Magistrates’ Union (USM), which has been highly visible in the media since the tragedy, argues that judges should not serve as lightning rods for the state’s failure to provide adequate judicial resources.
Political exploitation and death threats
The USM has condemned what it sees as unacceptable political exploitation of the tragedy. It points to statements by President Emmanuel Macron dismissing resource-related concerns from the outset, threats of sanctions raised by the Justice Minister before the inspectorate had reached any conclusions, and proposals by political figures to create a special disciplinary court for judges.
This political escalation has been accompanied by serious consequences. The Chief Prosecutor of Auch has been targeted with death threats circulating on social media. The Ministry of Justice has filed a criminal complaint, marking a dangerous turning point: public anger is being transformed into personal targeting and threats against judges and prosecutors themselves.
This is precisely the danger prosecutors fear. Judicial unions have significantly increased their media presence, with senior officials speaking publicly. Their coordinated effort is intended to give voice to rank-and-file judges and prosecutors facing what they view as opportunistic attacks.
Restoring public trust
The prosecutors’ calls for caution regarding the administrative investigation will only be heard if the judicial institution provides complete and transparent answers to the legitimate questions raised by families, advocacy groups, and the broader public.
The central challenge is reconciling two seemingly conflicting imperatives: protecting judicial independence from political interference while acknowledging that the public deserves explanations when a child dies and previous warnings may have been overlooked.
This case reveals that the French judicial system is facing a profound crisis of confidence. Families, citizens, and the public need to understand how the criminal justice process actually works, what priorities genuinely guide the handling of complaints involving minors, and how insufficient resources concretely affect child protection.
Without restoring public trust through transparency and meaningful operational reforms, the Lyhanna case will leave a lasting mark on the relationship between the justice system and French society. The inspectorate may establish the facts, but only clear and responsible institutional communication can help ease the current tensions.
Sharp rise in hospital visits will in turn drive up annual healthcare costs for heat-related conditions to over $1bn
People in the US are poised to endure another summer of unusually ferocious heat and there will be little respite in the years ahead, with a new study finding that the coming 15 years could see a doubling in hospitalizations due to heat-related illnesses.
The number of annual heat-related emergency department visits or hospitalizations across the US are set to rise from about 109,000 cases a year to as many as 237,000 cases by 2040, the new research has estimated.
Holiday bookings for early summer have been hit by uncertainty around the conflict in the Middle East and the rising cost of living, the travel industry has said.
Mark Tanzer, chief executive of the UK travel association Abta, said that while people still wanted to go on holiday, the industry was bracing for a difficult summer.
JPMorgan Chase leads 65 banks making decisions incompatible with restraining rising temperatures, researchers say
The world’s largest banks committed $906bn in financing to the fossil fuel industry last year, an “unfathomable” increase in investment locking in years more of coal, oil and gas production as the world continues to overheat, a new report has found.
The surge in new fossil fuel lending, up $64bn or nearly 8% on 2024, shows that the world’s largest 65 banks are making decisions incompatible with international agreements to restrain rising global temperatures, according to the coalition of environmental groups behind the new analysis.
Donald Trump promised Americans they would get tired of winning.
If this is what winning looks like, America can’t afford much more of it.
We are losing ground economically. We are losing credibility abroad. We are losing tourists, workers, stability, trust, constitutional guardrails, and whatever remained of the illusion that the government answers to “we the people.”
The tourism economy is taking a hit, with international visitors increasingly reluctant to come to the United States. Even migration—the lifeblood of America’s economic growth, innovation, labor force and national renewal—is now moving in the wrong direction. Fewer people are coming in, more Americans are leaving, and by some estimates the country has already crossed into negative net migration.
That is not the mark of a nation “winning.” It is the mark of a nation people are increasingly choosing to escape.
That is what happens when a nation treats visitors, immigrants and dissenters as threats first and human beings second: people stop coming, businesses suffer, and fear becomes official policy.
The economy, despite the administration’s relentless victory laps, is flashing warning signs: downgraded growth, strained consumers, rising costs, depleted savings, and policy chaos that leaves families, small businesses and entire industries guessing what fresh disruption tomorrow will bring.
We are being worn down by the losses.
Meanwhile, the man who promised to end wars has presided over their continuation and expansion. The man who promised to bring prices down has helped drive uncertainty up. The man who promised to drain the swamp has turned government into a spoils system for loyalists, cronies, contractors, oligarchs and power brokers. The man who promised law and order has treated the law as something to be weaponized against enemies and waived for friends.
This is not winning.
This is the slow-motion defeat of a constitutional republic by spectacle, grievance, greed and brute force.
The losses are piling up.
Americans were told they would get prosperity. What they got was an economy in which corporate profits and stock market gains mask the fact that ordinary households are stretched thin, savings are shrinking, debt is mounting, and the cost of basic necessities keeps eating away at wages.
They were told tariffs would punish foreign governments and bring jobs home. What they got were higher costs passed down to consumers, retaliation, supply disruptions, and a trade policy built less on strategy than on political theater. Even the courts have begun treating the tariff agenda as what it is: economic policy by executive improvisation, with judges striking down or narrowing tariff maneuvers while the administration keeps looking for new legal workarounds.
They were told immigration crackdowns would make America stronger. What they got was a nation frightening away the workers, students, tourists, entrepreneurs and families who have long helped power its economy.
They were told America would be respected again. What they got was a country increasingly viewed as unstable, hostile, unpredictable and unsafe—not merely by adversaries, but by allies, visitors, investors and would-be partners.
They were told the wars would end. What they got was more war talk, more military escalation, more blank checks for the war machine, and more excuses for expanding executive power in the name of national security.
Listen carefully when any ruler says something like that.
That is not constitutionalism. That is the language of kings, dictators and strongmen who believe their intentions place them above the law.
The Constitution was written precisely to prevent that kind of thinking from taking root in America.
The problem with Trump’s brand of winning is that it requires Americans to lose.
For the police state to win, the Fourth Amendment must lose.
For the surveillance state to win, privacy must lose.
For the war machine to win, peace must lose.
For the executive branch to win, the separation of powers must lose.
For the oligarchs to win, working families must lose.
For the propaganda machine to win, truth must lose.
For a strongman to win, the Constitution must lose.
Trump’s “winning” is simply the latest branding campaign for an old con: convince the people they are winning while stripping them of the power to govern themselves.
Call it what you will—national security, border security, economic nationalism, law and order, anti-corruption, emergency authority, America First—but when the end result is more government power and less individual freedom, we should know by now who is really winning.
The winners are the same as always: the defense contractors, data brokers, private prison operators, surveillance companies, lobbyists, political insiders, Wall Street speculators, government contractors, partisan enforcers, donors with access, loyalists seeking payouts, and bureaucratic power centers that thrive on fear, crisis and control.
The losers are “we the people.”
This is the hard truth Americans must face: a government that promises to make you “win” by taking power away from someone else will eventually take power away from you, too.
Rights are not partisan. Due process is not partisan. Free speech is not partisan. Privacy is not partisan. Limits on executive power are not partisan. The Constitution is not supposed to be a campaign prop, a legal technicality or a speed bump on the road to political victory.
The Constitution is the contract that binds the government down.
Without it, all we have are rulers and subjects.
That is why the real measure of any administration is not how loudly it boasts, how many enemies it punishes, how many executive orders it signs, how many troops it deploys, how many agencies it purges, or how many headlines it dominates.
The real measure is whether the people are freer, safer in their rights, more secure in their property, more protected from government abuse, and more capable of holding power accountable.
By that measure, we are not winning.
We are losing in all the ways that matter.
A president can call it winning. A party can call it winning. The media can package it as winning. The crowds can chant along.
Russian occupation forces have deliberately manufactured a food shortage in occupied Rubizhne, cutting civilian food deliveries to the Luhansk Oblast city even as military supply convoys continue to flow, the head of the Luhansk Regional Military Administration reported on 8 June.
Shelves in the city's stores are emptying rapidly, Kharchenko said. Russian propaganda blames disrupted transport links, citing an alleged drone threat. Yet the occupiers have had no difficulty maintaining their own logistics routes to resupply military units stationed across the region, he noted.
"They need to make the next victim for Russian television out of local residents. They chose Rubizhne."—Luhansk governor OleksiiKharchenko
A city turned into a propaganda prop
The official accused Russia of weaponizing hunger for television cameras. He said the occupiers intend to film bare shelves and hungry residents, then broadcast the footage to Russian audiences as evidence of suffering they themselves engineered.
Before Russia's full-scale invasion, Rubizhne was home to more than 55,000 people. Russian forces seized the city in May 2022 after weeks of devastating urban combat during which they fired up to 1,500 shells per day, the BBC's Quentin Sommerville reported from the front lines. The city's current population remains unknown, but residents who stayed have endured four years of occupation without reliable utilities, communications, or public services.
In nearby Sievierodonetsk, conditions have deteriorated so far that residents now mow the grass in their own neighborhoods and clean communal areas themselves, Kharchenko added—an admission that Russia's occupation authorities provide no basic municipal services even in the cities they claim to have "liberated."
A pattern of deliberate starvation across occupied Ukraine
The manufactured food shortage in occupied Rubizhne fits a documented pattern of Russia using hunger as a weapon against Ukrainian civilians trapped behind the front lines.
In Oleshky, a frontline city in occupied Kherson Oblast, roughly 2,000 civilians have been cut off from food, medicine, and clean water for months. "If the situation doesn't improve, people will just die there from hunger. Because there's no way out, no food supplies coming in," an Oleshky resident who escaped occupation told the Kyiv Independent. Russian forces mined the access roads, destroyed the Kakhovka dam's water infrastructure, and deployed FPV drones that residents describe as conducting "human safari" attacks—hunting anyone who steps outside. People there hunt pigeons and wild ducks with fishing line, plant vegetables in shell craters, and bury their dead in wheelbarrows because no coffins or transport exist.
Ukraine's Foreign Ministry in May appealed to the United Nations and the International Committee of the Red Cross over what it called a "severe humanitarian crisis" in Russian-occupied Kherson Oblast. Russia rejected calls for a humanitarian corridor.
In Nova Kakhovka, upstream from Oleshky, most coastal areas have been abandoned. The few residents who remain live in distant high-rise microdistricts with no functioning hospital and minimal Russian administrative presence, governed remotely from Henichesk, roughly 130 kilometers away.
The Rubizhne food shortage also coincides with Russia's broader restriction of civilian movement through occupied territories. On 6 June, occupation authorities shut down bus and private car traffic on main arteries, capping two weeks of land-corridor breakdowns that have further isolated occupied communities.
Starvation as premeditated policy
International human rights investigators have gathered evidence that Russia planned to use hunger as a weapon before the 2022 invasion. A report by Global Rights Compliance found that a Russian defense contractor purchased grain-transport trucks and bulk cargo ships in December 2021—two months before the invasion began. The evidence was submitted to the International Criminal Court for what could become the first prosecution of a head of state for the war crime of starvation as a method of warfare.
Global Rights Compliance has drawn a direct parallel to the Holodomor—the Soviet-engineered famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in 1932–1933. Russia's current starvation tactics are being perpetrated, the organization noted, by "the same attacking state."
Under the Geneva Conventions, using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare is a war crime. The Rome Statute of the ICC codified the offense in 1998. Yet in occupied Rubizhne, occupied Oleshky, and across the territories Russia claims to have annexed, the pattern continues: military convoys pass, civilian supply lines close, and shelves empty.
In the flatlands of Italy’s Po Valley, the decommissioned Caorso nuclear power plant can be seen for miles, the reactor looming into the sky. When Alessandro Maffini, now an assistant professor at the Polytechnic University of Milan, was growing up in the 1990s, the plant's distant silhouette captured his imagination. “The physical presence of that thing was so significant to me as a child. It was a very visible, tangible, concrete presence,” Maffini remembers. “It was like a white Duomo, there on the horizon, always in the background.” For many others, though, it was a specter of disaster, a ghost nuclear plant — shuttered, alongside all of Italy’s nuclear power stations, in the wake of the Chernobyl accident.
“If that plant explodes, we’re all dead,” Maffini’s mother used to intone, looking out at the defunct Caorso station, once the largest in Italy. As Maffini rode his bike six miles across the countryside to get a closer look at the plant from a nearby overpass, his mother’s doom-laden words rang in his ears. Her warning scared him. It also made him want to learn more. When he left home to go to university, Maffini decided to work in nuclear physics. “Radioactivity is a strange thing,” he says. “You can’t see it, you can't hear it, you can't smell it. It leaves a lot of room for imagination, for speculation, for fear.”
Four decades on from Chernobyl, and Italy has some of the highest energy bills in Europe. The country is scrambling to disentangle itself from its dependence on Russian gas in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and build out its energy sovereignty. War in Iran, and a growing European consensus that turning away from nuclear power was, in the words of European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen, a “strategic mistake,” has given more impetus to the Italian government’s argument that the country needs to move past its qualms.
Last year, the Italian cabinet approved a new draft law reintroducing the prospect of returning to nuclear power. “The government has approved another important measure to ensure clean, safe, low-cost energy that can guarantee energy security and strategic independence,” the Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni announced.
Italy is already surrounded on all sides by nuclear power plants: Slovenia’s Krsko plant is 90 miles away from the border, and there are four French nuclear power plants within 110 miles. Italy is the world’s second-largest importer of electricity, with nuclear power, largely imported from France, making up 5% of its energy basket. Italy also plays host to more U.S. nuclear warheads than any other European country. An estimated 35 thermonuclear gravity bombs are stored at two NATO airbases in northern Italy, according to the Nuclear Threat Initiative.
Now, as data centers spring up in Italy’s industrial north, the country’s energy needs are expected to increase exponentially and the government is turning, albeit cautiously, to a long-held Italian taboo. Since the spring of 1986, when the most serious accident in nuclear history unfolded in Unit 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in northern Ukraine, the Italian population has lived in fear of nuclear energy. It voted to shutter its once-burgeoning nuclear industry in 1987, and in 2011, after the Fukushima nuclear accident, when 94% of voters rejected government plans to revive the industry.
It is a fear that has transformed Italy’s energy fortunes, making it reliant on imports and vulnerable to volatility and price shocks.
The Latina nuclear power plant during its construction in the late '50s and early '60s. Photos courtesy of SOGIN.
“The international crises of recent years have clearly demonstrated the risk of excessive dependence on imported fossil fuels or vulnerable supply chains,” said Fiorella Corrado, communications chief at Italy’s environment and energy ministry. “The government approaches this issue with great respect for the country's history and the democratic choices expressed by citizens. The 1987 and 2011 referendums profoundly impacted the national energy strategy at very different historical moments. Precisely for this reason, the point is not to ignore those choices, but to acknowledge that today's technological, climatic, industrial, and geopolitical context has radically changed.”
For Meloni’s government, the argument is not so much whether Italy needs to revive its nuclear industry, it’s whether the country is ready to shake its demons, to shake the cultural memory of what happened at Chernobyl forty years ago, a thousand miles away from Rome.
In the early hours of April 28, 1986, in the control room of the Latina nuclear power plant south of Rome, a young technician called Ruggero Dell’Aquila was working the night shift. “Everything was perfectly quiet,” he recalled. As morning broke, teletype messages from Northern Europe began to rattle in. A clerk came down from the control room with reports from the Forsmark Nuclear Power Plant in Sweden. Their monitoring stations were registering radiation spikes far above background levels, and no one knew why.
Inside the control room of the Latina power plant, 1963. Photo courtesy of Pionieri Del Nucleare.jpg
That evening, nuclear physicist Sergio Malossi, a director at the Latina plant responsible for monitoring radioactive risk, drove home. His mind was turning over what the clerks had been reporting. “He came in extremely agitated,” remembers his daughter, Roberta Malossi, who was 16 at the time. “We knew he was worried about something going wrong at the facility, but we didn’t understand.” Malossi says that her father’s first paranoid thought was that there had been a malfunction in his own plant, that radiation was leaching into the air, and that it was somehow his fault.
At 9 p.m. Moscow time — aperitivo hour in Latina — the Soviet Union announced there had been an accident at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. In the ensuing days, Italian news was full of dire warnings.
On April 30, 1986, Soviet television aired this image of the Chernobyl plant, claiming there was “no destruction, no major fires, and no mass casualties.” AFP via Getty Images.
“Television was showing these clouds that would soon reach Italy. Everyone was terrified. The only information we got was from state TV, and the news was shocking,” said Monica Tommasi, President of Friends of the Earth Italy, who was a child at the time. Radiation, the news said, would rain down on the population. “The fear from the sky,” ran one La Repubblica headline. “The cloud above us, the doubt within us,” ran another.
On the night of April 30, 1986, Italy’s nuclear monitoring stations began recording increases in radioactivity. The cloud moved over the Valley of the Po, and while the government called for calm, the country began to descend into panic. In the minds of the Italian people, the worst had happened, explained Luca Romano, a writer and activist campaigning for the return of nuclear power in Italy. “Nuclear annihilation, death by radiation, the radioactive cloud and the nuclear holocaust, had arrived,” he said. Nuclear armageddon was a fear that had gripped the West for decades. This was not a nuclear war, but in the Italian collective consciousness, that didn’t make a difference.
The reality was, says Barbara Curli, Professor of Contemporary History at the University of Turin, that “Italy was only marginally affected by the cloud.”
The cloud in northern Italy meant radioactivity levels peaked briefly, but ten days later they had fallen dramatically back down. Because this spike was short-lived, the total radiation exposure remained low. A United Nations committee report recorded that northern Italy received an additional radiation dose of about 380 microsieverts in the year following Chernobyl — less than a fifth of the normal background radiation humans absorb in a year; equivalent to taking about six transatlantic flights. It was much smaller than the doses received by neighboring countries like Bulgaria, Austria and Greece, and in the south of Italy the dose was lower still.
Nuclear Physicist Sergio Malossi, Long-time Director of the Department of Medical Physics at the Latina Nuclear plant. Photo courtesy of Pionieri del Nucleare di Latina.
Down by the Latina power plant, though, the community was shaken by events in Chernobyl, and rumors and misinformation began to spread about the fallout. The friends and family of the technician, Ruggero Dell’Aquila, started asking him if a Chernobyl-style disaster could happen at Latina, too. “Everyone was afraid, asking — ‘can it explode, can it explode?’” he recalled.
The reality was, a Chernobyl-style explosion was not possible at Latina, because its reactor lacked the unstable characteristics of the Soviet design. But this was not such an easy concept to explain.
“The problem was that a slew of journalists took over, telling lies,” Malossi said, recalling paranoid rumours about radioactivity causing mutations in nature. People started telling stories, Malossi said, about “frogs with three heads, animals and fish with four tails. Strange things. When in fact absolutely nothing like that was happening.”
The government advised people to avoid fresh vegetables and dairy products, particularly for children. Farmers destroyed crops and poured away milk. Sergio Malossi ignored the warnings, having measured radiation levels in the air himself. “My father and others from the plant brought the vegetables home and we ate them,” his daughter recalled.
It was these warnings — delivered amid a lack of clear information — that shifted public attitudes toward nuclear energy, said Renzo Colombo, 65, who was just beginning a career in nuclear engineering when the explosion happened. Now a member of Nucleare e Ragione, a nonprofit that promotes a rational approach to nuclear energy in Italy, he recalls how quickly fear took hold. “A real phobia was born, a panic about radioactivity,” he said. “And this panic marked the next 25 years.”
The months after the accident were a shadowy, uncertain period for Italians working in the nuclear industry. “I have to be honest, I felt a little guilty,” said Colombo. “As a nuclear engineer, I thought ‘what have we done?’ My colleagues and I always thought we were designing something useful for humanity. And at that moment we felt betrayed by our own profession.”
Workers at Latina nuclear plant during its construction in 1961. Photo courtesy Pionieri del Nucleare di Latina.
Outside Italy’s nuclear plants, crowds began to gather. A coalition of environmental groups and political parties started pushing for people to vote against nuclear power in an upcoming referendum.
This movement was not new. “Many years before Chernobyl, an environmentalist culture was born — and it didn’t just concern nuclear power, but risky industry in general,” explained Curli, the Turin historian. The anti-nuclear environmental movement, which spread across Europe in the 1970s, was particularly potent in Italy — a country rocked by violent political turmoil, organized crime, and corruption scandals. Public fears, explained Curli, were sharpened by the Seveso disaster, an accident at an industrial plant in the north of Italy in 1976 that exposed tens of thousands of people to a toxic cloud of chemicals. Nuclear power, she said, “was not perceived by public opinion as a credible policy because there's this underlying distrust in institutions.”
Workers in protective suits clean up the land and homes contaminated by the industrial accident at Seveso chemical manufacturing plant in 1976. Alberto Roveri/Archivio Alberto Roveri/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images.
In 1977, almost a decade before Chernobyl, a 10,000-strong crowd of protesters showed up at Montalto di Castro, to protest against a large new nuclear plant that was planned. A Time magazine correspondent described the activists as “an improbable mix of elegant members of the Italian nobility, radical students in American Indian garb, middle-class citizens and Christian Democratic and Communist politicians.”
Demonstrators taking part in an anti-nuclear demonstration. Turin, 1980s. Alberto RoveriMondadori via Getty Images.Anti-nuclear protest, Milan, 1980s. Universal Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images.Anti-nuclear protest, Rome, 1980s. Universal Archive / Universal Images Group via Getty Images.
In the wake of Chernobyl, Renzo Colombo was working at that very same plant, helping to build the thermohydraulic cycle. By then, the station was nearly complete. “It was a beautiful plant,” Colombo said. “I loved working there.”
In November 1987, 18 months after the Chernobyl accident, the Italian government held a referendum on nuclear energy. Nearly 80% of Italians voted in favor of measures that would end the country’s use of atomic energy.
One morning, following the referendum, the Montalto di Castro plant’s director called the workers to a meeting. Colombo remembers him saying: “‘Ragazzi, gather round, I need to talk to you. I’ve just been to the ministry, and Italy has decided that we are closing all nuclear activity and will focus on coal and gas instead.’” The room went silent. “I was young,” said Colombo. “But there were people there who were older and had devoted years of their life to the nuclear field. There was just this urge to cry.”
The effect of the referendum was all-encompassing: construction was halted, and over the next three years Italy’s nuclear plants were shut down for good; its nuclear engineers scattered — many going to work abroad, or, like Colombo, re-training to work in other industries.
It was hailed as a victory for Italian environmentalism, says Curli. But the result was that there was a push to “gasify” Italy. That is, she says, “to choose the gas route — less expensive, and less demanding than nuclear power. But this made Italy almost completely dependent on Russian gas, Libyan gas, Algerian gas.” The Montalto di Castro site was converted into a fossil-fuel powered plant, running on gas and fuel oil.
Decades on from that post-Chernobyl referendum — and a second referendum in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear accident in 2011 — Italy remains in the process of dismantling its nuclear power stations, even as it now contemplates a return to nuclear power.
In the vast, cavernous belly of the Latina nuclear power plant, three workers in hazmat suits hammer away at pieces of the shielding cylinders that once protected the rest of the plant from radiation emitted from the reactor. From the viewing gallery, they look tiny in the enormous space, and the vastness of their task feels Sisyphean.
Watching them work is Enrico Bastianini, director of operations at the Latina plant. As I walk with Bastianini through the plant, we come to the old control room. When it first opened in 1963, the Latina plant was the largest nuclear power station in Europe — a feat of Italian and British engineering (the reactor was of UK design) and a symbol of Italy’s post-war industrial growth.
“We were emerging from the destruction of the war, and this was progress. And it was what allowed us to escape the economic hardships of war, and have low-cost energy,” Bastianini says.
Now, over 60 years on from when the plant opened, more than half of its existence has been spent being taken apart. Critics of nuclear power often focus on precisely this point: the long and complex process of dismantling nuclear plants, and the problem of managing radioactive waste, some of which takes millennia to decay.
There are two phases to the process of taking apart the plant. “The first phase allows us to dismantle everything that’s nuclear except the reactor. That’s because the reactor contains a huge amount of graphite,” Bastianini explains. “When we have a national repository, it can be removed. But for now, it’s safest if it stays in the first phase.”
Bastianini leads me into a deposit room where radioactive material is being stored in steel containers, inside an earthquake-resistant facility. These containers are only for temporary storage.
There were attempts in the early 2000s to establish a national nuclear waste repository at a salt mine in Basilicata in southern Italy, but huge protests forced the government to abandon its plans. Today, SOGIN, the state-owned Italian company in charge of decommissioning nuclear sites, is still actively searching for a suitable location for a permanent repository and faces considerable opposition.
Rumours and anxiety swirl around the Latina plant itself — just as they did in the 1980s, when Malossi heard stories of radioactive fish with four tails. Last April, an article by the Italian magazine L’Espresso published claims that the Latina plant could leach radioactive material into the soil. The plant vigorously denies these claims — a spokesperson for SOGIN said the company periodically checks the quality of vegetables, milk and fodder as well as air, soil and groundwater for radiation and that “as always, the results of the analyses confirm radiologically negligible environmental impacts.”
The old control room of the Latina nuclear plant. Photos courtesy of SOGIN
In the gloaming of a summer evening in Umbria, Monica Tommasi drives me through the twilight-darkened hills surrounding the medieval city of Orvieto. This land is rich in archeological and ecological heritage — filled with ancient tunnels, Etruscan caves, untapped archeological sites, wild places where wolves and boar roam. Tommasi is the President of Amici Della Terra — "Friends of the Earth" in Italian — an organization that was once the Italian chapter of the international Friends of the Earth network before breaking away in 2014. "We left, because we argued a lot," she said of the split, describing how the network "wanted to put turbines and panels everywhere, and we couldn't be in favour of that approach."
The International Friends of the Earth association was born from the anti-nuclear movement in America, where the group successfully lobbied to shut down two reactors, and has since 1969 made anti-nuclear campaigning a core part of its identity.
But Tommasi remembers precisely when she first began to reconsider nuclear power. “I started thinking about it in 2011, when I began to see that the government was investing heavily in solar and wind power, which would invade and industrialize the natural landscape,” she recalled. Many of these green transition projects have been fraught with problems in Italy — wind farm companies accused of corruption and profiteering, of erecting wind farms in areas where there’s little wind, and laying waste to nature.
For the first time, Tommasi began to think about ways to decarbonize “that don’t destroy the environment where people live and the landscape around them.”. She became intrigued by the nuclear option. “We needed to start reasoning and changing our minds,” she said.
Tommasi now advocates for a national conversation about nuclear power. “This choice must be accompanied by a public debate,” she told me, “but it isn’t happening because everyone is still afraid.”
“The future of Italy's energy sector must lie in nuclear,” she said, adding that if Italy was to continue pursuing solar and wind energy alone, “it means destroying all the natural areas that are still left.”
I asked the government to respond to allegations about how criminality, speculation and land-grabs in the renewable energy sector might be affecting Italians’ opinions on nuclear power.
“We do not believe it is appropriate to frame the energy debate by ideologically pitting nuclear power against renewables, nor should we use any administrative or criminal issues in certain sectors to discredit a technology as a whole,” said Fiorella Corrado, communications chief at Italy’s environment and energy ministry. “Nuclear power is not an alternative to renewables, but their best ally,” she said.
Wind turbines and solar panels near Cagliari, Sardinia, 2024. The island relies largely on coal but must phase it out by 2028 as Italy transitions to cleaner energy. Giovanni Grezzi / AFP via Getty Images.
On a warm autumn day in Rome, several thousand people gathered for an annual “climate pride” march. They brandished homemade cardboard wind turbines that spun in the breeze. Vincenzo Migliucci, 83, was among them. He worked for more than three decades for ENEL, Italy’s energy corporation, and he’s been anti-nuclear for much of his life. After the Chernobyl accident, he protested outside the nuclear plant under construction in Montalto di Castro almost every day, picketing the workers as they went through the gates.
“The wrath of God happened,” he said, referring to Chernobyl. “And when a true estimate is made, we’ll one day see how many disasters Chernobyl caused.”
Migliucci is against nuclear power plants of all types — arguing for solar panels instead — and is particularly concerned about what happens to the plants after they become obsolete and must, like the Latina plant, be slowly dismantled over decades. “The decommissioning costs a fortune; the nuclear waste repositories cost a fortune,” he said.
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He began telling me some of the stories that surround Italy’s shuttered nuclear plants. “Near the Garigliano power plant,” he told me, “a child was born with only one eye.” His own eyes widened as he pressed a finger into the middle of my forehead. “Sheep and cattle,” he said, “were born with six legs, or entirely red in colour. It’s not a myth, it’s real.”
Younger generations of Italians don’t have the same collective impressions around nuclear power, nor around Chernobyl or its aftermath, explained Luca Romano, a young pro-nuclear influencer with a quarter of a million followers on Instagram. Romano makes videos with his partner, Luiza Munteanu, about the advantages of nuclear power. The main problem he runs up against, he says, is that “we have a very low scientific literacy, the level of debate is abysmal.” And culturally, he adds, “Italy has always been a country that looks backwards rather than forwards.”
In May, the director general of the International Atomic Energy Agency visited Italy’s Lombardy region, and signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the governor to cooperate on applying nuclear science for development across the region. The choice of Lombardy was significant. It is home to Milan, and is at the heart of Italy’s digital infrastructure. Speckled with no fewer than 60 data centers, with more cropping up, Lombardy has opened itself up to Silicon Valley. Microsoft is investing billions in the area to boost its AI and cloud computing infrastructure. Amazon Web Services has committed to spending over $1 billion to expand its data center operations around Milan.
How northern Italy’s growing AI infrastructure will be powered, though, is still a problem to be solved — one that cuts to the heart of Italy’s energy dependence. Since Giorgia Meloni became prime minister in October 2022 — which coincided with the launch of ChatGPT a month later — the Italian government has been broaching the topic of nuclear power as essential to Italy's energy future. “World population and economic growth will significantly increase energy demand,” Meloni said at a sustainability summit in Abu Dhabi. “Not least due to the growing requirements arising from the development of generative artificial intelligence.”
Artificial intelligence is a “highly relevant topic,” said Corrado, the communications chief at Italy’s environment and energy ministry. “As more things run on electricity, the economy goes digital, and data centers and AI expand, demand for steady, low-emissions power will rise. Nuclear energy can help as a reliable, controllable source that works alongside renewables.”
In August, it emerged that the government had set aside €7.5 million purely for pro-nuclear communication and information campaigns directed at regions where new plants may be built. One focus of the Meloni administration is on the prospect of building small modular reactors, sometimes called “mini nukes.” They are compact fission plants, a fraction of the size of the traditional, cathedral-like nuclear power stations. They have a smaller core, and proponents argue their safety features mean there’s minimal chance of an epic, Chernobyl-scale nuclear disaster, something the government is keen to get across to voters.
Currently, only China and Russia have these small reactors up and running, but mini nuclear plants have attracted significant attention in Silicon Valley. OpenAI’s Sam Altman was chairman of Oklo, a nuclear startup focused on SMRs, while U.S. nuclear startup Kairos has signed an agreement with Google to develop these reactors to power its data centers. This month, the European Commission unveiled a strategy for rolling out small modular reactors and bringing them “online” by the 2030s.
Soon, Italy may take the first steps towards the reconstruction of a nuclear industry that has been abandoned for decades. “I believe it won't be easy to relaunch nuclear energy,” said Barbara Curli, the Turin historian. “Knowing a little about the history of nuclear power in Italy and its political dimension, I'd be quite skeptical about the possibility of relaunching nuclear power here in Italy — but let’s see.”
A little under 1,500 miles away, in the Chernobyl exclusion zone, among wild boar, birds, and deer, radiation levels in some areas have dipped below around 0.3 microsieverts per hour, lower than background radiation levels in many European cities. Not least the eternal city of Rome.
Why Did We Write This Story?
As the U.S.-Israel war against Iran enters its second month, strikes on nuclear facilities have raised the stakes of an already catastrophic conflict. The WHO is now openly preparing for a nuclear incident it hopes will never come. Whether or not this escalates further, the fear already has a life of its own.
That is something we follow closely at Coda: how fear settles into collective memory and shapes policy long after the original crisis has passed, or even when the disaster people dreaded never fully arrived.
Isobel Cockerell takes us to Italy, one of the only industrialized nations to have dismantled its entire nuclear energy program after Chernobyl, despite being barely touched by the fallout.
This story is about nuclear power, but it is also about how fear can shape the world more than the event that caused it.
Ramala, 8 jun (Prensa Latina) La escasez de medicamentos es solo la punta del iceberg de la crisis sanitaria que enfrenta hoy Palestina como resultado de la agresión y el asedio israelí.
San Petersburgo, Rusia 6 jun (Prensa Latina) La cooperación entre países debe seguir la idea de que "se necesitan dos para bailar un tango" y Estados Unidos, de momento no lo quiere, expresó hoy el portavoz del Kremlin, Dmitri Peskov.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on June 04, 2026.It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
Voters in Monterey Park, California on Tuesday overwhelmingly approved a permanent ban on data centers within city limits, becoming the first city in the US to prohibit the power-hungry facilities via a ballot initiative.
In total, the anti-data center resolution passed with 86% voter support, with only 14% of voters opposed. The resolution’s text said that a ban was necessary to “protect air quality, drinking water resources, and public health” and “prevent impacts to electricity and water rates.”
Steven Kung, a leader of the local initiative, told ABC 7 Eyewitness News that the result was “a landslide victory.”
Kung listed multiple reasons why residents in the city resoundingly rejected building data centers in their community.
“The noise pollution, the air pollution, the rise in the electricity rates,” he said, “the deal just didn’t make sense and it doesn’t make sense for most, if not all, cities data centers go to.”
In an interview with Politico, Monterey Park Mayor Elizabeth Yang predicted that her city would be far from the last to pass data center bans, noting data center projects have spurred protests across the country.
“A lot of the other cities that are facing data center proposals are going to follow suit,” said Yang. “There’s [a] bad reputation across the board, across the country, from other data centers that have been built in neighborhoods.”
Monterey Park city councilmember Jose Sanchez expressed a similar sentiment, telling The Guardian that he hoped his city would become a inspiration to others.
“We hope that other communities will use the model set by residents here in Monterey Park,” said Sanchez, “as inspiration to stop data centers from encroaching in their backyard.”
Data centers have become political lightning rods in recent months, as residents across the country object to their massive resource consumption, which is leading to a major spike in utility bills, as well as the noise pollution they generate.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) earlier this year introduced a bill that would impose a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction “until strong national safeguards are in place to protect workers, consumers, and communities, defend privacy and civil rights, and ensure these technologies do not harm our environment.”
A poll released on Wednesday by Public First showed US residents more opposed to data center construction than any nation in the world, with just 26% of Americans registering support for building more data centers.
This opposition isn’t merely abstract, as it has caused major headaches for Big Tech firms that have been scrambling to increase their AI models’ compute power.
As The Financial Times reported on Thursday, “dozens of projects collectively worth at least $156 billion have been blocked or stalled since 2025” thanks to local opposition to their development.
This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on June 02, 2026.It is shared here under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
In what a number of scientists suggested was the Trump administration’s latest effort to stop tracking the changing climate in hopes of convincing the public that the climate emergency isn’t happening, the National Science Foundation announced Monday that it was dismantling a crucial deep-ocean monitoring system that for years has helped researchers understand the impacts of the crisis on the world’s oceans.
The NSF said it plans to send ships this month to remove more than 900 instruments, part of a project called the Ocean Observatories Initiative. The project collects data on temperatures, currents, and the ocean’s absorption of carbon dioxide off the coasts of Oregon, Alaska, Washington, and North Carolina, as well as in the Irminger Sea between Iceland and Greenland.
A spokesperson for NSF told The New York Times that the dismantling of the initiative will help the NSF in “prioritizing support for evolving scientific priorities and emerging technologies as well as a deliberate approach to smart life cycle management within its portfolio of research infrastructure.”
The reasoning given for the shuttering of the project, said Tara Blume, a journalist at Oklahoma City NBC affiliate KFOR, was “a master class in obfuscation and doublespeak.”
Genevieve Guenther of the group End Climate Silence shared her own interpretation of why the $368 million ocean observation system is being discontinued, despite the fact that it had been set to collect data for 25 years.
“We need to track ocean currents to assess how close we are to climate tipping points that will essentially destroy the world as we know it,” said Guenther. “The GOP doesn’t want us to be able to do that. That’s why they’re dismantling ocean monitoring.”
"By dismantling such a system, we push the United States back yet again into a rear seat in global scientific leadership." https://t.co/TSKsORuTX9
Scientists have used data gathered by moorings, robotic vehicles, and other instruments that transmit the information to research laboratories, to study changes in the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Current (AMOC), a current system that moves warm water northward and cools the Arctic and Northern Atlantic regions while absorbing carbon dioxide deep into the ocean and keeping it out of the atmosphere.
Data gathered at the observation station in the Irminger Sea has been key to understanding AMOC, which scientists fear is gradually weakening due to planetary heating and could ultimately collapse, likely causing major global weather changes.
“This is absolutely crazy,” said David Doniger, a senior strategist and attorney at the Natural Resources Defense Council’s climate and energy department. “Wouldn’t you want to know if the ocean currents are changing? Wouldn’t you want to know ocean temperatures? These things affect everything from fishing to hurricanes.”
Following the announcement that the stations will be dismantled in the coming weeks, said Blume, “science gasps for breath.”
President Donald Trump has attempted several times to shut down or drastically reduce the budget of the Ocean Observatories Initiative, which costs $48 million annually to run. Congress has restored the program’s funding.
The dismantling of the program comes months after the Environmental Protection Agencyrepealed the “endangerment finding,” which for years had underpinned the department’s environmental regulations; after the administration closed down the National Center for Atmospheric Research, which had gathered data on hurricanes and extreme weather to help improve forecasts; and after the National Aeronautics and Space Administration released a statement on record-breaking temperatures in 2024 and 2025—without any mention of the climate crisis or climate change.
“Blinding the public to climate change won’t make it go away. It will only accelerate its profound consequences,” said clinical researcher Iris Gorfinkel.
According to the Trump administration, said historian Nick Kapur, “apparently climate change doesn’t exist if you prevent scientists from measuring it.”
by Francesca D’annunzio | Texas Observer via Truthdig Over the past several years, the Texas Department of Public Safety (DPS) has quietly built out an expansive surveillance apparatus — one that’s increasingly powered by artificial intelligence. Many of these technology acquisitions have been made under the auspices of Gov. Greg Abbott’s Operation Lone Star, an $11 billion program that has supercharged the state’s decades-long border militarization. The powerful and well-funded state police agency has not just expanded its existing surveillance capabilities, which include a fleet of spy planes, unmanned drones and a network of wildlife game cameras that are deployed across […]
A view of Athens and the wider Attica basin. The IMF warns that empty homes, short-term rentals, and rising property prices are deepening Greece’s housing crisis. Credit: Wikimedia Commons / A. Savin / CC BY SA 3
Greece is facing a housing affordability crisis shaped not only by a shortage of available homes but also by deep distortions in the real estate market, according to the IMF’s 2026 “Greece: Selected Issues” report. The IMF’s analysis highlights one of the most significant consequences of Greece’s tourism-driven growth model—the growing tension between the use of properties for tourism and the need for affordable long-term housing for residents.
Asking prices for homes in Greece have risen by about 85 percent since 2017, far outpacing the 47 percent increase in disposable income per person over the same period. The pressure intensified after the pandemic, with home prices rising by 61 percent since the fourth quarter of 2020. Rents, which initially moved more slowly, are now accelerating, with rent inflation reaching 10 percent in 2025.
The IMF describes Greece’s housing crisis as both social and economic. Higher housing costs weaken household consumption, reduce labor mobility, make it harder for young people to leave the family home, and may undermine the country’s ability to attract and retain workers.
IMF says Greece’s housing crisis is about availability, not just supply
One of the IMF’s most notable findings is that Greece has one of the highest housing stocks per capita in Europe. On paper, the country does not appear to lack homes.
The problem is that much of this stock is not available for use as a main residence. Around 35 percent of Greece’s housing stock is not geared toward primary residence usage, and roughly 12 to 13 percent of all homes are vacant. That means Greece’s housing crisis largely reflects an issue of allocation and effective use rather than an actual shortage of homes. Many of these are old, energy inefficient, legally complicated, tied up in co-ownership arrangements, or too costly to renovate.
As a result, the market may appear well supplied at the national level, while, in practice, there are not enough suitable homes in regions where demand is strongest, including Athens, Thessaloniki, major tourist destinations, and areas with concentrated economic activity.
IMF says short-term rentals add pressure
The IMF particularly focused on short-term rentals, which it identifies as a major part of Greece’s new tourism model. Utilizing data from INSETE, the Institute of the Greek Tourism Confederation, the report shows that short-term rental listings increased by 240 percent between 2017 and 2024. They rose from fewer than 100,000 to more than 230,000.
This represents about 3.5 percent of Greece’s total housing stock, 10 percent of non-occupied properties, and 29 percent of vacant homes. The impact, however, is highly concentrated. Short-term rentals are clustered mainly on tourist islands, in central Athens, and in Piraeus, exactly where housing pressure is already intense.
The IMF found that a higher concentration of short-term rentals is associated with rising home sale prices, particularly in areas with lower rates of homeownership. While the impact on rents appears more limited, it is still evident, as short-term rentals reduce the number of properties available to long-term tenants in high-demand markets.
At the same time, the IMF calls for careful evaluation of restrictions. Short-term rentals support tourism, local income, and economic activity, so any policy response must weigh both housing and economic effects.
IMF warns short-term rental curbs are not a cure-all for housing shortages in Greece
The IMF also cautions against assuming that restrictions on short-term rentals would automatically return large numbers of homes to the long-term housing market. Short-term and long-term rental properties are not always interchangeable, and the Fund notes that roughly two-thirds of vacant homes are secondary residences or vacation properties that owners occupy for part of the year.
As a result, stricter limits on short-term rentals may not lead to a significant immediate increase in housing available to long-term tenants. The IMF also warns that geographically targeted restrictions could simply shift demand and price pressures to neighboring areas rather than address broader affordability challenges. For that reason, the it calls for better data collection and careful cost-benefit analysis before such measures are implemented.
IMF links foreign demand to Greece’s housing crisis
International demand has also played a role in driving up property prices in Greece. Following the steep decline in real estate values during the country’s financial crisis, Greek property became increasingly attractive to foreign buyers, including members of the Greek diaspora. Depressed valuations, expectations of future capital gains, tax incentives, and the Golden Visa program all contributed to the influx of investment.
The IMF notes that Greece has since tightened Golden Visa requirements by raising minimum investment thresholds. However, it also points out that successive regulatory changes may have fueled bursts of purchasing activity, as investors rushed to secure eligibility under the previous terms before stricter requirements took effect.
The resulting price pressures have been unevenly distributed across the country. According to market data cited in the report, property values are significantly higher in the Greater Athens area (Attica) as well as in Thessaloniki and major tourist destinations compared to the rest of Greece.
IMF says Greece’s housing crisis affects tourism industry workers
The housing shortage is also increasingly intertwined with the functioning of Greece’s tourism economy. In regions where short-term rentals, elevated property prices, and limited long-term housing supply converge, finding affordable accommodation becomes a challenge not only for local residents but also for the workers on whom the tourism sector depends.
While the IMF does not specifically examine housing for seasonal workers in the tourism industry, its broader analysis points to the same underlying issue. As housing costs rise in high-demand tourist destinations, workers face greater barriers to relocating to areas where jobs are available. Over time, this can reduce labor mobility and undermine productivity, ultimately weighing on the competitiveness of an economy in which tourism remains one of the country’s most vital industries.
IMF finds Greece’s housing crisis is overburdening households
The issue of affordability is already severe for many households. The IMF estimates that in 2025, median housing costs, including mortgage payments, accounted for more than one-third of disposable income. Around two in five households are classified as overburdened, spending more than 40 percent of their disposable income on housing. A further 20 percent spend between 30 and 40 percent, placing them in a vulnerable financial position.
The strain is particularly acute for renters, low-income households, single-parent families, and individuals living alone. Renters in Attica and Central Macedonia, which includes Thessaloniki, face an especially elevated risk of excessive housing costs.
IMF urges Greece to bring empty homes back on the market
The IMF’s primary recommendation is to activate Greece’s large stock of unused housing. This would require a mix of incentives and disincentives, including renovation subsidies, energy-efficiency upgrades, tax incentives for long-term rentals, and policies that raise the cost of leaving homes vacant in high-demand areas.
The Fund broadly supports measures aimed at converting vacant properties or short-term rental units into long-term housing. At the same time, it argues that Greece must reduce the risks faced by landlords who rent to long-term tenants. Proposed measures include improved market transparency, a tenant registry, faster dispute-resolution mechanisms, and rent guarantee schemes for vulnerable households.
People have been asking me all week, “What the hell is going on?” And that’s because I’m a professional editor and an award-winning journalist who’s been covering toxic disasters like this for years. Also, I’m from Orange County, and my family lives in Garden Grove, about 10 minutes from the GKN Aerospace facility, so I’ve been watching all of this very closely.
If you haven’t been obsessively investigating these kinds of stories like I have, the recent rapid-fire bombardment of headlines can make it seem like all these toxic disasters are coming out of nowhere. An explosion here, a toxic spill there, a fire there. “Why is this happening? And what the hell do we do?”
So, right off the bat, the most important thing to understand is that this is not all just happening now. It’s been happening, and most of the time you just haven’t been hearing about it.
I promise you, this is just the tip of the iceberg…
All the craziness this week actually gives me extreme deja vu that goes back to the first toxic disaster I covered while it was unfolding: The 2023 Norfolk Southern train derailment and chemical disaster in the small town of East Palestine, Ohio.
From the train derailment itself to the disastrous and unnecessary decision three days later to empty five rail cars’ worth of toxic vinyl chloride and set it on fire—releasing a massive black death plume into the air and exposing communities for miles to deadly toxins—that story was so horrific and unbelievable that it drew the attention of the public and the media, and then the public and the media started noticing that more train derailments were happening all over the place.
And it felt then exactly then like it does now. People were rightly asking, “What the hell is happening? Is the sky falling? Is this all part of some big conspiracy or what?”
But because I had been interviewing so many railroad workers, I knew the reality that the US averages over 1,000 train derailments a year. Which is a big problem, but it’s not a problem the media had covered much before East Palestine, so when they finally did start covering derailments, it felt like it was all happening suddenly and it was all coming out of nowhere.
But, again, because I’ve spoken to railroad workers across the industry, I also knew that this is part of a larger problem that is the result of decades of deregulation, corporate consolidation, and ruthless, profit-seeking, cost-cutting railroad executives and their Wall Street shareholders destroying the rail industry and our supply chain so they could rake in record profits. Cutting jobs, year after year. Piling more work onto fewer workers and working them to the bone. Making the trains longer, heavier, and more unwieldy. Automating human jobs and removing layers of security designed to keep workers safe and the communities those trains are blazing through safe as well.
This all comes down to these companies obsessively trying to lower their operating ratios, year after year, and sacrificing long-term safety for short-term profits.
Don’t forget that, throughout 2022, railroad workers were preparing to go on strike for the first time in decades, and they were warning me and anyone who would listen that, if these greedy rail giants and Wall Street bloodsuckers weren’t reined in, it was only a matter of time before a deadly catastrophe happened on the rails. Then, President Joe Biden and both parties in Congress conspired to break the potential rail strike in early December of 2022, workers had contracts shoved down their throats, and nothing on the rails fundamentally changed. Then, two months later, the derailment in East Palestine happened.
There are two really important lessons here that we need to learn to understand what’s happening now, in 2026, with these toxic disasters around the country.
First, like with the train derailments, there is a similar dynamic going on here where a high-profile disaster has people and the media just paying more attention to these things now.
As a journalist who covers these kinds of disasters year round, all over the country, in red states and blue states, in cities and rural areas, I can tell you that: These disasters aren’t just starting now and they’re not freak accidents coming out of nowhere. And if you think you’re safe and far away from the danger, I have some bad news for you…
You may be living in or near a “sacrifice zone” and not even know it. You could be breathing in toxic exhaust from nearby factories and trash incinerators, your pipes may have lead that’s poisoning you, your local water supplies may be contaminated by runoff from industrial plants, nuclear facilities, fracking operations, coal mines, landfills, massive industrial farms and concentrated animal feeding operations. A truck or train or ship, operated by exhausted and exploited workers and hauling hazardous chemicals, could crash by your home. A military base or government-owned plant could be polluting your body and blood with PFAS/PFOS or radiation. Or a giant damn data center could be moving to your town.
Again, this shit is everywhere.
And if you’re only seeing this in Democrat or Republican terms, if you’re only looking at the headlines and not the history behind these toxic disasters, then you are not gonna see the full picture here. This is not a red state or a blue state problem, this is a working-class problem. Corporations and the government are turning more of America into one giant “sacrifice zone,” and more of us are being set up for sacrifice than we realize.
Just like with the corporate behemoths and Wall Street vultures who destroyed the railroad system with the help of their bought-off politicians in both parties, the crisis we’re in now developed over time. And while every toxic disaster is different, I often feel like I’m investigating a serial killer because I hear the same stories coming from different disaster zones around the country.
And if I had to name that killer, its name would be: Profit. Specifically, it’s our political and economic system that prioritizes private profits over the public good and working people’s lives.
That has been the driving force behind decades of policy measures to deregulate industries, corrupt the very government agencies that are supposed to regulate them, defang the penalties for polluting our community, and disempower the workers and local residents affected by them so they can’t do anything about it. And, of course, that is the driving force behind all these greedy executives and Wall Street shareholders across industries obsessively cutting costs while simultaneously speeding up production, ignoring safety protocols and removing safety measures, and almost always choosing short-term profits over long-term investments in safer facilities, stronger worker protections, and less outdated equipment until and unless a catastrophe happens.
Basically, all this dangerous, life-threatening, environmentally hazardous stuff has ended up all around us, and it’s all gotten less safe, over many years of corporations and politicians “fucking around” for their own gain at our expense. Now, America is in the “find out” stage, and working people are the ones getting stuck with the toxic bill.
"If you’re only seeing this in Democrat or Republican terms, if you’re only looking at the headlines and not the history behind these toxic disasters, then you are not gonna see the full picture here.
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