clockwise around the Black Sea
- World Report 2024: Ukraine (hrw.org)
The human rights impacts of Russia’s war on Ukraine continued to eclipse all other rights issues in Ukraine. As of September, at least 9,614 civilians had been killed and more than 17,535 injured since Russia’s full-scale invasion began in February 2022. Millions more had to flee abroad or were internally displaced.
- Morning Star Natural Resources Conservation Area (dnr.wa.gov)
This 37,842-acre mountainous conservation area protects outstanding examples of native plant communities and other ecological features, such as subalpine meadows, wetlands, and lakes. Six plant species rare to Washington state occur within these habitats. The site is also large enough to provide important habitat for threatened and endangered wide-ranging wildlife such as Pacific fisher, grizzly bear, and gray wolf. The NRCA protects the middle and high elevations around the Spada Lake basin, which captures warm moist air as it moves inland from Puget Sound and the Pacific Ocean to create one of the wettest areas in the North Cascade Mountains. High precipitation and cool temperatures cause subalpine plant communities to occur at unusually low elevations in this region.
Ukraine-US Minerals Agreement
- Ukraine (Wikipedia)
Ukraine (/juːˈkreɪn/ yoo-KRAYN; Ukrainian: Україна, romanized: Ukraina, pronounced [ʊkrɐˈjinɐ]) is a country in Eastern Europe. It is the second-largest European country after Russia, which borders it to the east and northeast. It also borders Belarus to the north; Poland, Slovakia, and Hungary to the west; and Romania and Moldova to the southwest; with a coastline along the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov to the south and southeast. Kyiv is the nation’s capital and largest city, followed by Kharkiv, Dnipro and Odesa. Ukraine’s official language is Ukrainian; Russian is also widely spoken, especially in the east and south.