Tagged: Germany

Transcript

RACHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Some people travel a long ways to find a job, even professional basketball players. Brooklyn native Everage Richardson is playing hoops in a tiny town in Germany's Harz Mountains. Reporter Connor Donevan has his story.

CONNOR DONEVAN, BYLINE: When Everage Richardson finished his college basketball career, he was looking for somewhere to play. Somewhere turned out to be Elbingerode Germany, for the Bodfeld Baskets, a town and a team he knew next to nothing about.

Germany's bishops have a clear message for the country's 25 million Catholics: The road to heaven requires more than faith and good intentions; it requires tax payments, too.

Last month, German bishops warned that if members of the Catholic Church don't pay the country's church tax, they'll be denied the sacraments — including baptisms, weddings and funerals.

In increasingly secular Europe, Germany is one of the few countries where the state collects a special levy from tax-registered believers and hands it over to three organized faiths.

As the BBC puts it, Greece felt like two different places today: On the one had you had an "amicable and symbolic" state visit by Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel and on the other hand, you had tens of thousands of protesters gathered across Athens who weren't too happy to see her.