Affordable housing

Police on Friday night stood guard outside a site in Votanikos, near central Athens, that has been slated for the creation of the capital's first mosque after arresting 15 nationalists who had been occupying the premises.

The drastic rise in the number of anarchist squats in abandoned homes in the Exarchia district of Athens is fueling concern among local residents who say police appear unwilling or unable to intervene.

The Housing Development Administration of Turkey (TOKİ) has exceeded its target of social housing for this year, its chairman has said.

"Our initial target for social housing to be built this year was 60,000, and we will have provided 64,000 homes by the end of this year," TOKİ Chairman Ergün Turan told state-run Anadolu Agency on Oct. 26 in the northwestern province of Bursa. 

Farmers continue their protest actions setting new road blocks and squatting tax offices and banks. They insist on their demands asking the Greek government to withdraw first the reforms on social security and tax system and then begin the talks.

The Finance Ministry is planning to abolish all exemptions that currently apply as far as the Single Property Tax (ENFIA) for next year is concerned. The notices that 6.1 million property owners are to receive by October 15 will be a rude awakening for many with the first instalment due by October 30.

Changes include:

A Turkish mom-and-pop grocery store in Berlin?s Kreuzberg district facing eviction has apparently become a symbol in the locals? war on gentrification.

The Russian presidential decree "extending a ban on coverage of military casualty figures to peacetime as well as in wartime" has been condemned by the CPJ.

"Such coverage, deemed to be disclosure of state secrets, is punishable by prison terms up to 20 years, according to local press reports," the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) said in a statement.

In China, a company called Winsun managed to build 10 3D printed houses in one day. The cost for every home was jus 5.000 dollars.

The five-storey building on the outskirts in East China, seems like any other house that hardly anyone could suspect that last January became news in major media in the world.

Squatters on unregistered plots of land have paid 7 billion Turkish Liras ($2.9 billion) to the Turkish Treasury to register their ownership in the past year, the Turkish Finance Ministry said Feb. 17.

The plots of land, officially referred to as "2B," were formerly classified as a forest where construction and agricultural activity were banned.     

After the lone house in Istanbul’s popular Fikirtepe neighborhood, which made headlines after standing for months and refusing to settle with the municipality, another house now stands alone amid a vast urban transformation project in the Turkish capital.