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I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks

by EldenJenson Posted on August 25, 2015

Mother Jones

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The National Park Service turns 99 years old on Tuesday. To celebrate, the Department of the Interior has waived admission fees for all NPS sites for the day. That’s a pretty sweet deal. You should stop reading this right now, call in sick, and enjoy the great outdoors. National parks are great.

But not everyone agrees. Yelp is filled with one- and two-star reviews of America’s most pristine and majestic natural wonders. And honestly, they’re riveting. What makes a national park a one-star destination varies from one reviewer to the next. Maybe the tacos at the visitor center aren’t up to snuff. Maybe it was cloudy. Maybe the park was too cowardly to cut down some trees for spillover parking lots. Maybe it was President Barack Obama’s fault.

Whatever the case, you can thank these people for leaving the campgrounds a little bit less crowded for the rest of us:

Joshua tree:

The desert is too hot. Esther Lee/Flickr

I looked it up, and it’s true—the bees at Joshua Tree National Park are out of control. In 2000, a group of hikers was attacked by a swarm and one man was stung more than 100 times. They tried to get inside their car to escape, but some of the bees followed them inside the car and continued stinging them. Holy crap, bees! If you were stung 100 times by bees at Joshua Tree, you should give it one star. But maybe it shouldn’t have come as too much of a surprise that the desert gets hot in the summer. This is like downgrading a restaurant because you went there on a hunger strike.

Death Valley:

Pass. John Fowler/Flickr

Pinnacles:

Some rocks. sfbaywalk/Flickr

Yosemite:

And? Aaron & Carol/Flickr

Lassen volcanic:

Where’s the lava? Roy Scribner/Flickr

Crater Lake:

You could see Fantastic Four for the same price. Glenn Scofield Williams/Flickr

And a bonus two-star review of Crater Lake that’s kidding itself about not being a one-star review:

Olympic:

A big rock with glorified weeds. Esther Lee/Flickr

Do not let the National Park Service tell you how many friends you can have.

Grand Canyon:

Few amenities. Grand Canyon National Park/Flickr

Carlsbad Caverns:

Only go to this cave if you like caves. Greg Heartsfield/Flickr

Petrified Forest:

The trees are all dead! Park Ranger/Flickr

Yellowstone:

Good luck swimming here. A Davis/Flickr

Badlands:

Bad. Jim Bowen/Flickr

Arches:

One star. Max and Dee Bernt/Flickr

Zion:

Skip the tacos. Cyril Fluck/Flickr

Shenandoah:

Pure government overreach. David McSpadden/Flickr

(N.B.: There is an entire visitor center devoted to the mistreatment of former inhabitants.)

Acadia:

Nice try, try a state park. Robbie Shade/Flickr

Hawai’i Volcanoes:

Still no lava. Ed Dunens/Flickr

Haleakala:

This is it? Joe Parks/Flickr

But enough about the sunrise, already. How were the tacos?

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I Can’t Stop Reading One-Star Yelp Reviews of National Parks

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Here’s What We Know About the Terrorist Attacks That Hit Tunisia, France, and Kuwait

by KKMBrigette Posted on June 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Dozens of people were killed on Friday in Tunisia, France, and Kuwait in what authorities in all three countries are calling terrorist attacks. Here’s what we know so far.

Tunisia

The deadliest attack happened at a resort in Sousse, a Tunisian beach town popular with European tourists. Tunisian officials said 27 people were killed on the beach near the Imperial Marhaba hotel, some of them foreigners.

“One attacker opened fire with a Kalashnikov on tourists and Tunisians on the beach of the hotel,” a local worker told Reuters. “It was just one attacker. He was a young guy dressed in shorts like he was a tourist himself.”

John Yeoman, a tourist apparently staying at the Imperial Marhaba, tweeted descriptions of the attack and a photo of the barricade he constructed in his hotel room.

The shooting comes three months after another major terrorist attack at the Bardo Museum in Tunis, and it could devastate Tunisia’s vital tourist economy. “This could well be a dagger through the heart of Tunisian tourism, which would have very dark implications,” Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Mother Jones.

France

An apparent lone attacker drove a car through the gates of a factory in Saint-Quentin-Fallavier, a city near Lyon in southwestern France, killing one man and leaving his severed head on the front gate of the complex. Gartenstein-Ross said the decapitation suggested the attack may have been inspired by ISIS, whose execution videos have frequently shown the decapitation of Western hostages.

French authorities arrested the suspected attacker, whom French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said was possibly named Yassin Sahli (his name has been spelled differently in various media reports) and was previously known to French law enforcement. “This person was under investigation for radicalization but this investigation was not renewed in 2008,” the Guardian reported. “He had no police record.”

KUWAIT

ISIS, the Sunni jihadist group that controls parts of Iraq and Syria, claimed responsibility for a bomb that exploded at a Shiite mosque in Kuwait City. Media reports have given conflicting numbers of victims, but the Kuwait Watch Organization, a human rights group, told the Associated Press that 16 people were killed. The bombing is the largest terrorist attack in Kuwaiti history; while Kuwait is a majority Shiite country ruled by a Sunni royal family, such large-scale sectarian violence is rare.

Just three days ago, an ISIS spokesman called for the group’s followers to ramp up attacks during the holy month of Ramadan. “Muslims everywhere, we congratulate you over the arrival of the holy month,” said Abu Muhammad al-Adnani in an audio statement released on Tuesday. “Be keen to conquer in this holy month and to become exposed to martyrdom.”

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Here’s What We Know About the Terrorist Attacks That Hit Tunisia, France, and Kuwait

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Shell inches closer to spilling oil all over the Arctic

by MonteDawbin254 Posted on April 1, 2015

Shell inches closer to spilling oil all over the Arctic

By on 1 Apr 2015commentsShare

Shell has passed another hurdle in its push to resume Arctic drilling operations this summer. On Tuesday, Interior Secretary Sally Jewell reaffirmed her department’s 2008 decision to lease part of the Chukchi Sea, off the coast of Alaska, to the company, and accepted a revised environmental impact statement for the lease.

“The Arctic is an important component of the Administration’s national energy strategy, and we remain committed to taking a thoughtful and balanced approach to oil and gas leasing and exploration offshore Alaska,” Jewell said in a statement.

“Thoughtful” might not be the most applicable word to describe Shell’s activities in the Chukchi Sea. The company suspended its Arctic drilling operations in 2012 after a series of screwups and delays that culminated with a drilling rig running aground on New Years Eve. But, undaunted, the company is hoping to resume operations this summer. Shell’s 2015 plans involve working with the same contractor, Noble Drilling, that was hit with eight felony counts for the results of those disastrous few months in 2012.

After the 2012 setbacks, the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals put the Chukchi Sea lease on hold in response to a suit filed by Alaskan Natives and environmental groups. The coalition argued that the Department of Interior had underestimated the amount of oil that Shell could get out of the lease, and, thus, the amount of damage that drilling in the sea could cause.

In response, the DOI released a revised environmental impact statement this February. It found that, over the course of Shell’s 77-year lease, there’s a 75 percent chance the company will be responsible for an oil spill of more than 1,000 barrels. The report also forecast 750 smaller spills.

The latest news on DOI’s decision has environmental groups enraged, obviously. “No one in her right mind would trust Shell to deliver a pizza safely across town, so trusting the company to drill in the Arctic is nothing short of negligence,” Greenpeace USA Executive Director Annie Leonard said in a statement. Earthjustice attorney Eric Grafe, who has coordinated green groups’ legal appeals in their suits against Shell’s Arctic operations, suggested to the Associated Press that the DOI was rushing through the process to help Shell get back to work.

Green groups also noted the irony of the DOI’s announcement coming on the same day the Obama administration affirmed its commitment to a global climate deal under which the U.S. would reduce its emissions by as much as 28 percent from 2005 levels by 2025. Shell’s leadership also recently affirmed its commitment to engaging seriously in discussions about climate change. Yet the company’s plan to operate in the Chukchi Sea for the next three quarters of a century, and the DOI’s plan to allow it, fly in the face of much-discussed research published in the journal Nature earlier this year which found that all the oil in the Arctic would have to stay put if the world is to avert disastrous climate change. Though the DOI’s environmental impact statement does look at the significant chances of a major oil spill resulting from Shell’s operations, it does not analyse the effect on the environment that burning all of that oil would cause.

In a statement, Earthjustice’s Grafe expressed hope that the DOI would reverse course. “Interior still has time to make a better decision when evaluating Shell’s drilling plan, and we sincerely hope it says no to Shell’s louder, bigger, and dirtier tactics, loaded with potential environmental harm,” he said.

Before drilling can go ahead, Shell will still have to get drilling permits and win approval for its exploration plan from the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, an agency within the DOI.

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Shell inches closer to spilling oil all over the Arctic

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Watch out, Arctic: Shell is coming for you again

by NestorBaile Posted on February 13, 2015

Watch out, Arctic: Shell is coming for you again

By on 13 Feb 2015 11:33 amcommentsShare

Even as Shell is talking a good talk about climate change, it is pushing ahead with plans to drill in the Alaskan Arctic as early as this summer. The company suspended operations there in 2012 after a series of minor disasters. Its contractor was hit with eight felony counts and fined $12 million late last year.

But now Shell is moving forward again, with what looks like a newly reaffirmed go-ahead from the Department of the Interior (DOI). One clear sign of its intent: The company has leased a port on the Seattle waterfront where it can base its Arctic operations.

On Thursday, the DOI released a revised environmental impact statement for drilling in the Chukchi Sea — which Shell won the rights to do in 2008. The report found that there’s a 75 percent likelihood that the operations will result in one or more large spills — that means more than 1,000 barrels — during the 77-year lease. The report also forecast 260 smaller spills.

This revised DOI report follows a court ruling that found that, back in 2008, the department lowballed the amount of oil Shell would be able to extract from the lease. Lowballing the amount of oil that could come out of the ground also meant lowballing the amount of damage the efforts to extract it could cause.

But despite the new environmental impact statement, and the strong likelihood of a spill, the department will likely allow drilling operations to move forward following a public comment period. The environmental groups that brought the suit don’t see this as a victory.

“There is no such thing as safe or responsible drilling in the Arctic Ocean,” said Marissa Knodel, a climate campaigner with Friends of the Earth. “Shell’s record of recklessness and the federal government’s own environmental analysis show that approval of Lease Sale 193 would be unsafe, dangerous and irresponsible.”

Greenpeace’s John Deans said the decision “will drastically undermine [Obama’s] recent proposals to protect parts of the Arctic, including the Alaska Wildlife Refuge, from oil drilling.”

Shell’s plans come, ironically, as the company is saying it will now engage seriously on climate, and is pushing other oil companies to do the same. Its recent decision to work with activist shareholders who are demanding that climate change factor into management decisions appears to be a first step in that direction.

“I’m well aware that the industry’s credibility is an issue,” said Shell CEO Ben van Beurden in a speech on Thursday. “Stereotypes that fail to see the benefits our industry brings to the world are short-sighted. But we must also take a critical look at ourselves.”

At the moment, however, it doesn’t look like the company’s plans to salvage its climate-related “credibility” extend to cancelling its designs on the Chukchi Sea — one of its more dangerous operations, and one that inspires quite a bit of ire in its critics.

Besides the danger that drilling poses to Arctic environments, there’s the contribution it would make to climate change. A recent study found that if the world hopes to avoid 2 degrees Celsius or more of global warming, 80 percent of the world’s untouched fossil fuel reserves would have to stay in the ground — including all of the oil left in the thawing Arctic.

But people who believe that will happen, van Beurden says, aren’t clued in to reality. “For a sustainable energy future, we need a more balanced debate,” he said. “‘Fossil fuels out, renewables in’ — too often, that’s what it boils down to. Yet in my view, that’s simply naive.”

If policymakers agree with that line of thinking, we’ll be in for some catastrophic warming.

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Watch out, Arctic: Shell is coming for you again

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ANWR Proposal Shows That Obama’s Power to Set the Agenda Is Alive and Well

by Myrna Posted on January 26, 2015

Mother Jones

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Here’s the latest salvo in President Obama’s flurry of executive activity following the 2014 election:

President Obama proposed designating 1.4 million acres of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as protected wilderness, drawing cheers from environmentalists but setting off a bitter new battle Sunday with the Republican-controlled Congress over oil and gas drilling in pristine areas of northern Alaska.

The plan would permanently bar drilling and other forms of development in the 19.8-million-acre refuge’s coastal plain, a narrow strip between the Brooks Range mountains and the Arctic Ocean where caribou give birth. The area, estimated to hold 10.3 billion barrels of oil, is home to more than 200 species, including polar bears, wolverines, musk oxen and thousands of migratory birds.

Now, technically this is meaningless. ANWR has been a battleground for years, as much symbolic as anything else. The amount of oil it could produce isn’t really huge, but then again, the environmental damage that a pipeline would produce probably isn’t that huge either.1 In any case, the Interior Department already bans drilling in ANWR, and there’s no way that a Republican Congress is going to pass a bill to make a drilling ban permanent. So what’s the point of Obama’s proposal?

It’s simple: once again he’s using the agenda-setting power of the presidency. Basically, he’s making ANWR something that everyone now has to take a stand on. Talking heads will fulminate on one side or the other, and Republicans will respond by introducing legislation to open up ANWR to drilling. This isn’t something they were planning to spend time on, but now they probably will. Their base will demand it, as will the Republican caucus in the House and Senate. Nothing will come of it, of course, but it will eat up time that might otherwise have been spent on something else.

And that’s why Obama is doing this. It also lays down a marker and lets everyone know that Democrats are the party of natural beauty while Republicans are the party of Big Oil. It can’t hurt to make that clear. Still, that’s not the main goal here. The main goal is to toss some sand in the gears of Republican plans for the 115th Congress. Obama is proving once again that even with the opposition in control of Congress, he still has the power to decide what people are going to talk about.

1Please address all hate mail regarding this assertion to my editors. Thanks.

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ANWR Proposal Shows That Obama’s Power to Set the Agenda Is Alive and Well

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How Environmental Groups Are Reacting to Tuesday’s "Miserable Fucking Failure"

by Kris4442xp Posted on November 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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This story originally appeared in The Huffington Post and is republished here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

To say Tuesday was a bad day for environmental groups would be an understatement.

In his opening remarks at a National Press Club event recapping the election results Wednesday afternoon, League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski joked that environmental groups had thought twice about even holding the event. “It wasn’t the best night for us,” he said.

Michael Brune, executive director of the Sierra Club, was even more blunt in an interview Wednesday morning. First, he recounted some of the ways 2014 was a success: It elevated the issue of climate change generally and made candidates in a number of key races change the way they talked about the issue. But when it came to electing a slate of pro-environment candidates, which environmental groups spent an unprecedented amount of money on this year, “on that,” Brune said, “there’s been a miserable fucking failure.”

Environmental groups are mourning the loss of several key allies in the Senate, such as North Carolina Democrat Kay Hagan and Colorado Democrat Mark Udall. And they’re looking at a Senate that is going to be a lot more hostile to their agenda: With Republicans in control, the upper chamber will likely seek to undo many of the actions that the Obama administration has taken to address climate change and other environmental threats.

Republican leaders have made it very clear that a top priority is to pass legislation that would force approval of the Keystone XL pipeline. Environmental groups have urged President Barack Obama to reject the pipeline, and are holding onto the hope that he’d veto any such measure that comes to his desk.

There are other concerns, like the fact that Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), a guy who wrote a book saying climate change was a giant hoax, is poised to take control of the Environment and Public Works Committee, the Senate’s most powerful environmental panel.

In a Wall Street Journal op-ed published Thursday that laid out their legislative agenda, House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) and likely Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) also pledged to take other measures that they said would “remove barriers to job creation and lower energy costs for families”—i.e., block the Obama administration from implementing a variety of environmental regulations. That’s what makes environmental groups most nervous.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives has pushed for a number of measures over the last few years that the Senate will now be likely to take up: blocking the Environmental Protection Agency from regulating greenhouse gas emissions and mercury and ozone pollution; preventing the Army Corps of Engineers from updating rules on disposal of mine waste; blocking the Department of the Interior from enforcing rules about drilling on public lands; and limiting the department’s environmental review process for oil and gas lease applications.

The 60-vote filibuster in the Senate will probably keep the worst of those measures from passing as stand-alone legislation, and even if that happens, environmental groups are hopeful that Obama will veto them. A bigger concern is that these provisions could get attached as riders to must-pass spending bills. But environmental advocates are hopeful that Obama will block those as well.

“In previous fights, the president has made clear that he will not be cowed by an appropriations strategy with people trying to load up spending bills with provisions the public doesn’t support,” said David Goldston, director of government affairs at the Natural Resources Defense Council, in a call with reporters Thursday.

Goldston tried to see the bright side of this. A lot of what the House has passed has flown under the radar, at least in terms of news coverage, because it was not going to clear the Senate. Now, Goldson said, “the public will now see what the Republican agenda actually is and what’s at stake here…As the public sees what the extreme anti-environmental agenda is, there’s a backlash.”

The consequences of Tuesday’s Republican wave go beyond Capitol Hill. In fact, a potentially bigger concern for those who favor addressing greenhouse gas emissions may be the results of a number of gubernatorial elections. Once the Environmental Protection Agency finalizes its new limits on emissions from power plants, each state will have to develop its own plan to meet them. And the midterm elections were mostly bad news on that front. Climate change-denying governors were re-elected in Florida, Maine and Wisconsin, and Republican candidates pulled off surprise wins over the enviro-endorsed Democrats in both Maryland and Massachusetts.

“It was a hard night last night for our governors,” said Sierra Club political director Melissa Williams on Wednesday. “It’s something we’re going to have to figure out as all these states move toward creating their emission plans.”

Environmental groups say they’re not turning down the heat on politicians for the next two years—or the cash. Tuesday was “not a referendum on climate,” said Elizabeth Thompson, president of the Environmental Defense Action Fund, the EDF’s political arm. “It was a really, really bad day for Democrats.” As for the more than $85 million environmental groups spent, she maintained that it was still “too low.”

“It’s really expensive to play effectively in politics,” said Thompson. “I think the resources were very well spent. I think we needed more.”

In the meantime, advocates are looking for the silver linings on this election—whatever linings they can get. One that many pointed to was the advent of the “I’m not a scientist” trope that many Republican candidates are using to answer climate questions. That response, environmental groups believe, might show that the party is shifting away from complete denial of climate change.

“It looks like it is now unacceptable for many candidates to say that they are denying climate science outright,” said the Sierra Club’s Brune. “If that’s true, and if that sticks, that’s significant. It could portend a bigger shift in the party.”

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How Environmental Groups Are Reacting to Tuesday’s "Miserable Fucking Failure"

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Here’s how Obama is preparing the country for climate change

by TinaDelong Posted on July 16, 2014

looks like rain

Here’s how Obama is preparing the country for climate change

By

White House

The good news is that President Barack Obama wants the nation to do a better job of bracing itself for the wild changes afoot in the weather. The better news it that he realizes that bolstering infrastructure and reimagining how we design our cities and electrical grids are among the best ways of doing that.

“Working together, we can take some common-sense steps to make sure that America’s infrastructure is safer, stronger and more resilient for future generations,” Obama said on Wednesday. Here are some of the steps his administration is taking:

A nearly $1 billion competition, announced last month, will provide funds to help communities recover and rebuild following disasters. Technical details of the competition were outlined on Wednesday, indicating that many of the 67 communities affected by recent disasters could receive funds to support risk assessment and planning efforts. A smaller number of those communities will be selected to receive additional money to design and implement novel ideas for minimizing future risks.
The Department of Interior will spend $10 million on a training program that will help tribes prepare for climate change.
The Department of Agriculture announced $236 million worth of funding to improve rural electric infrastructure using smart grid technology in eight states.
A 3-D mapping program will be developed to help identify and manage risks of flooding, storm surges, landslides, coastal erosion, and water supply shortfalls. The program will be funded with $13.1 million.
FEMA has established a task force to figure out ways of better protecting disaster-affected communities from future disasters.
FEMA will release guidelines that call on states to consider climate variability in planning efforts.
Houston, Colorado, NASA’s Johnson Space Flight Center, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory will work together on pilot projects geared toward preparing for climate change.
NOAA is making changes that will require greater consideration of climate change in the management of coastal areas.
At least 25 communities will receive EPA funding to help them use urban forests and rooftop gardens to better manage stormwater.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released guidelines that will help public health departments assess local health risks associated with climate change.

Kenneth Kimmell, president of the Union of Concerned Scientists, told The Washington Post that state and local officials are beginning to calculate how much it will cost to prepare for more intense and frequent storms, rising seas, and changing temperatures. “People are scared,” he said. “They’re just starting to put a price tag on how much it costs to adapt, and they’re going to need help from Washington.” At least that help is starting to come.


Source
FACT SHEET: Taking Action to Support State, Local, and Tribal Leaders as They Prepare Communities for the Impacts of Climate Change, White House
Obama takes steps to make roads, bridges more resilient to climate change impact, The Washington Post

John Upton is a science fan and green news boffin who tweets, posts articles to Facebook, and blogs about ecology. He welcomes reader questions, tips, and incoherent rants: johnupton@gmail.com.

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Here’s how Obama is preparing the country for climate change

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Mexican Government to Central American Migrants: No More Riding "the Beast"

by CorrineLey Posted on July 12, 2014

Mother Jones

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On Thursday, a freight train derailed in southern Mexico. It wasn’t just any cargo train, though: It was La Bestia—”the Beast”—the infamous train many Central American immigrants ride through Mexico on their way to the United States. When the Beast went off the tracks this week, some 1,300 people who’d been riding on top were stranded in Oaxaca.

How do 1,300 people fit on top of a cargo train, you ask? By crowding on like this:

Central Americans on the Beast, June 20. Rebecca Blackwell/AP

After years of turning a blind eye to what’s happening on La Bestia, the Mexican government claims it now will try to keep migrants off the trains. On Friday, Mexican Interior Secretary Miguel Ángel Osorio Chong said in a radio interview that the time had come to bring order to the rails. “We can’t keep letting them put their lives in danger,” he said. “It’s our responsibility once in our territory. The Beast is for cargo, not passengers.”

More MoJo coverage of the surge of unaccompanied child migrants from Central America.


70,000 Kids Will Show Up Alone at Our Border This Year. What Happens to Them?


What’s Next for the Children We Deport?


This Is Where the Government Houses the Tens of Thousands of Kids Who Get Caught Crossing the Border


Map: These Are the Places Central American Child Migrants Are Fleeing


“In Texas, We Don’t Turn Our Back on Children”

The announcement comes on the heels of President Obama’s $3.7 billion emergency appropriations request to deal with the ongoing surge of unaccompanied Central American child migrants arriving at the US-Mexico border. Many Central Americans take the trains to avoid checkpoints throughout Mexico—and the robbers and kidnappers known to prey on migrants. But riding the Beast can be even more perilous. Migrants often must bribe the gangs running the train to board, and even then, the dangers are obvious: Many migrants have died falling off the train, or lost limbs after getting caught by its slicing wheels.

Why, though, hasn’t the Mexican government cracked down sooner? Adam Isacson, a regional-security expert at the nonprofit Washington Office on Latin America, says the responsibility of guarding the trains often has fallen to the rail companies—who usually turn around and argue that since the tracks are on government land, it should be the feds’ problem. (Notably, the train line’s concession is explicitly for freight, not passengers.)

In his radio interview, Osorio Chang also signaled a tougher stance against Central American migrants, in general. “Those who don’t have a visa to move through our country,” he said, “will be returned.”

For more of Mother Jones‘ reporting on unaccompanied child migrants, see all of our latest coverage here.

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Mexican Government to Central American Migrants: No More Riding "the Beast"

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The Escalating Crisis in Ukraine, Explained

by GregMcneil Posted on May 7, 2014

Mother Jones

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After months of steady conflict and protest in a dozen cities in eastern Ukraine, the crisis in the country has escalated in the past week with deadly clashes in Slovaynsk, and in the port city of Odessa—the first serious instance of violence outside eastern Ukraine. The clashes have left more than 70 dead, according to figures publicized by the Ukrainian Interior Ministry. With the nation’s May 25 presidential and mayoral elections looming, Ukrainian officials are desperate to maintain order, sending an elite special forces unit to help safeguard Odessa, appointing a new military commander, and even urging the creation of a “volunteer army.” (The Kremlin, for its part, has called Kiev’s plan to go forward with the elections “absurd.“) Below is a rundown of the recent developments. We’ll update this post as news unfolds.

What just happened in Odessa? In the deadliest day of the Ukraine crisis since the ouster of president Viktor Yanukovych, at least 46 people died in the Black Sea port city on Friday, following clashes between pro-Russian separatists and pro-Ukraine activists. The conflict began as armed street-fighting and escalated when the House of Trade Unions, which had become a makeshift headquarters for pro-Russian forces, was set ablaze, in part by Molotov cocktails. Dozens died of smoke inhalation or as they jumped from the building to escape the flames. Most of those killed are believed to have been pro-Russian separatists. Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry blamed the violence on provocateurs “paid generously by the Russian special services,” while Russia pointed the finger at Right Sector, a Ukrainian nationalist group. Here’s video of the incident:

Over the weekend, a group of pro-Russian protesters attacked an Odessa police station demanding the release of other demonstrators, and leading to the release of 67 activists. Odessa has a diverse population of Ukrainians, Georgians, and Tatars, but a large percentage of the region is Russian-speaking. Fearing additional Russian encroachment, Ukraine sent an elite special forces unit to Odessa on Monday.

Violence is escalating in eastern Ukraine, too: According to Ukraine’s Interior Minister Arsen Avakov, four Ukrainian officers were killed and 30 wounded in Slaviansk on Friday after Ukrainian troops launched an offensive against separatist forces occupying government buildings. The small city has become a hub for the movement opposing the new interim government in Kiev. On Monday, 30 pro-Russian separatists were also killed in the city after ambushing Ukrainian forces, according to Avakov.

During Friday’s fighting, three Ukrainian helicopters were shot down near Slaviansk. The Ukrainian Security Service reported that one of the helicopters was shot down with a surface-to-air missile, complex equipment that suggests the separatists have ties to the Russian military; Moscow denies any involvement. Russian President Vladimir Putin has warned that negotiations between Ukraine and Russia will remain stalled until Ukraine pulls its troops out of Slaviansk.

The video below, highlighted by The Interpreter, purports to show Ukrainian Air Force planes flying over Slaviansk on Monday. They seem to be using flares to deflect infrared-guided surface-to-air missiles—the same kind of missiles that were used to down several Ukrainian helicopters last week.

Responding to the violence, Ukraine’s largest bank, Privatbank, has temporarily closed all of its branches in Donetsk and Luhansk. It said in a statement that in 10 days, 38 of its ATMs, 24 branches, and 11 cash collection vans had “suffered arson, assault and wanton destruction” at the hands of “armed people who break into bank branches and seize security vans.” The bank has been targeted by separatists in part because its co-owner, billionaire and current Dnipropetrovsk region governor Igor Kolomoisky, offered the Ukrainian military a $10,000 bounty for every pro-Russian “saboteur” they catch.

The closures are likely to cause economic havoc for many: Privatbank said that it processes the pensions of more than 400,000 retirees, along with other benefits for an additional 220,000 people across both regions.

Kidnappings and death threats: On Saturday, seven military observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) were released after having been held hostage by pro-Russian separatists, who had seized their bus and accused them of spying in late April.

Meanwhile, kidnappings, disappearances, and death threats have been escalating. Pro-Russian activists have been posting photos and personal information of EuroMaidan activists and members of Right Sector that the groups allege had a hand in stoking Friday’s violence in Odessa. The posts often include captions calling for activists to “find and destroy” those pictured, reports Kyiv Post. Human Rights Watch also published a report today chronicling abductions of activists, journalists, and local officials in eastern Ukraine. Most of those who’ve been released were beaten while captive, and some were seriously injured, HRW reports. Still others, including two members of the local election commission in Konstantinovka, remain captive and their whereabouts are unknown.

At Buzzfeed, Mike Giglio, who himself was briefly held hostage near Slaviansk, also reports on the increasing kidnappings of pro-Ukraine activists, as well as an “exodus” of locals such as Olena Tkachenko, who ran a hotline for pro-Ukraine activists in Donetsk. After getting threatening text messages, including one that said “We will kill you all,” she packed up a few belongings and told her 9-year-old daughter that they were going on vacation.

In addition to kidnappings and those leaving on their own, reports of disappearances continue to roll in:

Nearby countries are getting nervous: On Monday, Moldova’s president, prime minister, and parliament speaker issued a statement saying they were placing troops on the border with Ukraine on alert because of the growing violence. And Reuters reports that Lithuania’s Ministry of National Defense announced that it had received a note from Russia suspending a 2001 military agreement between the two countries. Lithuania has been generally supportive of Ukraine and the Maidan movement. The agreement between the two nations had required Russia and Lithuania to share some military intel, and allowed mutual military inspections—of Russia’s Baltic fleet in the nearby region of Kaliningrad, and of the Lithuanian military.

“Lithuania kept all conditions of this agreement and has not given a pretext for such Russian action,” a defense ministry spokesperson told Reuters.

Hundreds of US troops have also been deployed to Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia for joint training.

Is the US doing anything to respond? On Friday, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel called on NATO to reconsider its relationship with Russia, calling the ongoing violence in Ukraine a “clarifying moment” for NATO’s post-Soviet relationship with Russia. Meanwhile, President Obama promised further sanctions on Russia if it disrupts the presidential elections that are set to take place in Ukraine on May 25. Senate Republicans have also introduced a bill that would go even further than Obama’s proposals, increasing sanctions on Russia’s banking and energy sectors and providing Ukraine with military assistance, including weapons.

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The Escalating Crisis in Ukraine, Explained

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From Bundy To The Keystone XL

by Myrna Posted on April 30, 2014

Where’s The Property Rights Outrage Here? Construction of the Keystone XL pipeline. AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy has become something of a folk hero among the anti-government, pro-property rights crowd, thanks to his recent standoff with the federal Bureau of Land Management. Some landowners in the path of the proposed Keystone XL pipeline want to know where the support for them has been, since their private property will actually be taken away without their approval. Bundy and his supporters don’t recognize federal ownership of the land where his cattle have been grazing illegally for more than two decades. He refuses to pay grazing fees, arguing that he has “ancestral rights” to the land — an argument that a federal court has rejected, and which may not be historically accurate. The issue came to a head earlier this month after BLM officials seized hundreds of Bundy’s cattle, and armed right-wing and anti-government groups flocked to the desert for a standoff. BLM returned the cattle shortly thereafter, citing concerns about the safety of its employees and the public. Federal control of land has also flared lately in Texas, where state Attorney General Greg Abbott recently accused BLM of “hijacking private property rights” inupdating management plans for land bordering Oklahoma. But many of the pundits and talking heads who rallied behind Bundy (at leastbefore his racist outburst) are also advocating the Keystone XL pipeline – despite the ranchers and farmers up in arms about pipeline owner TransCanada Corp. trying to force its way onto their land. Read the rest at The Huffington Post. Visit link: From Bundy To The Keystone XL Related ArticlesIs Oil Money Turning the NRA Against Hunters?No, New York Times, Keystone XL Is Not A “Rounding Error”Germany’s Key to Clean Energy Is…This Coal Mine?

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From Bundy To The Keystone XL

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