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NEW YORK On July 20, 2016, Pavel Sheremet, a prominent Belarusian-born journalist, was heading to work at the studios of Radio Vesti in Kyiv when the Subaru he was driving blew up at a busy intersection. Nearby windows shook, and birds scattered into the air. Sheremet, 44, died almost instantly, and the Ukraine Prosecutors Office quickly confirmed that a bomb had caused the explosion. But one year later, Sheremets murder remains unsolved.

Had this been a random car bombing, my organization, the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ), would not have spent the last year investigating it or pushing the Ukrainian government for a full inquiry. But Sheremet was a tireless advocate for transparency and democracy, working as a journalist first in his native Belarus, then in Russia, and most recently, in Ukraine. Until his murder is solved, the truth that he sought in life will elude his countrymen in his death.

Murder is the ultimate form of media censorship. When journalists are slain, self-censorship seeps into the work of others. And when a country especially a country like Ukraine, which aspires to European Union membership fails to bring the killers to justice, its stated commitment to democracy and the rule of law rings hollow.

That is where things stand with Sheremets case. Over the last year, Ukrainian officials have made many pledges, but have made no arrests, identified no suspects, and presented no convincing motive for the killing. As CPJ found during a recent weeklong advocacy mission to Kyiv, the lingering impunity has hurt the medias ability to cover sensitive issues, including corruption, abuse of power, and the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine.

Indeed, press freedom in Ukraine has come under increasing attack in the year Sheremet was murdered. Investigative journalism is branded unpatriotic, and reporters who challenge official policies, as Sheremet did every day, are threatened, harassed, or placed under surveillance.

Ukrainian officials insist they are still working Sheremets case. President Petro Poroshenko, who met with a CPJ fact-finding delegation on July 11, said he remains committed to bringing the killer(s) to justice. Poroshenko even proposed adding an international partner to his governments investigation, which could invigorate the probe. But while this is a welcome move, it comes very late, and after months of missteps that have shaken the publics trust.

Factually incorrect statements from top officials, including Ukraines interior minister, Arsen Avakov, have undermined the credibility of the investigation. Avakov has alleged Russian involvement in Sheremets murder and suggested that the case is unlikely to be solved. But in meetings with investigating agencies, the CPJ was told that Avakov has limited access to investigation files, and that his statements are unsupported by evidence. Our delegation was also told that the authorities are examining several motives, but have not ruled out or pinpointed any single one. Why, then, does Avakov continue to make contradictory statements and indulge in poorly sourced conjecture?

Equally worrying are reports that the investigation has been plagued by shoddy police work, including a failure to question key witnesses, check surveillance camera footage, or adequately explain the presence of a former internal security officer at the scene the night before the murder. The editor-in-chief of Ukraines leading independent news website, Ukrainska Pravda, told CPJ that in the months before his death, Sheremet and his partner, Olena Prytula, the sites co-founder, had been under surveillance. Moreover, the staff had received threats clearly meant to stop them from reporting on specific, sensitive stories. Yet Ukrainian authorities have not adequately responded to CPJs questions about their investigation of these allegations.

Taken together, these omissions and unexplained events raise serious questions about the integrity and legitimacy of the Ukrainian-led investigation. If Poroshenko is serious about solving Sheremets murder, changes are needed. Ukrainian officials must establish a clear hierarchy and assign someone to be responsible for resolving the case. Moreover, Poroshenko should publicly commit more resources to the investigation, and forcefully condemn any attack on journalists. And, most challenging of all, a new investigative ethos is needed to reduce the risk of departmental bias, especially if evidence points toward official or government entities, as some suggest it might.

Despite the presidents renewed engagement, we are not yet convinced that the Ukrainian government will pursue this case with the vigor it demands. That is why external pressure is also needed. The European Union is in a unique position to apply it. The EU, in declaring Ukraine a priority partner for deeper political and economic ties, has the leverage to hold the Ukrainian government to account. In 2014, the bloc pledged 12.8 billion ($15 billion) to Ukraine to bolster several key sectors, including law and civil society. Progress in both fields would be set back significantly by a failure to reach a conclusion in the Sheremet case.

Sheremet spent more than two decades reporting in three post-Soviet countries, and was relentless in uncovering corruption wherever he reported. For his tenacity, CPJ awarded him our International Press Freedom Award in 1998. But he was also threatened, imprisoned, attacked, and stripped of his citizenship in Belarus. Indeed, while Sheremet had many friends, who adored his charismatic personality, wit, and contagious optimism, he also had his share of enemies, who detested his uncompromising journalism.

Five years ago, Sheremet moved to Ukraine because he thought he would find a freer, safer environment in which to work. Today, as attacks on the media continue in his adopted homeland, and with his own murder unsolved, the faith he placed in Ukraine is not being repaid.

Todays media landscape is littered with landmines: open hostility by US President Donald Trump, increased censorship in countries such as Hungary, Turkey, and Zambia, growing financial pressure, and the challenge of "fake news." In Press Released, Project Syndicate, in partnership with the European Journalism Centre, provides a truly global platform to frame and stimulate debate about the myriad challenges facing the press today.

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Ukraine's Imperiled Press Freedom - Project Syndicate

The Reading & Northern Railroad is participating in the large movement of coal to Ukraine that Trump administration officials announced Monday.

According to a statement released by the railroad, Xcoal Energy & Resources made the deal to ship 700,000 tons of coal for energy production to Ukraine by the end of the year.

Half of that tonnage will be Pennsylvania anthracite shipped from mines served by Reading & Northern Railroad. Reading Anthracite Co. of Pottsville has handled the acquisition of the 350,000 tons of anthracite.

In Ukraine for the announcement, Xcoal President Ernie Thrasher said, The U.S. coal will replace Russian origin coal at existing thermal power plants.

Reading & Northern will supply all coal cars used to handle the anthracite. To build the 100-plus car trains that Norfolk Southern will pick up at Reading Anthracite and deliver to CNX Terminal, Baltimore, Reading & Northern will serve as many as six loading points.

Reading & Northern is delighted to be partnering with Xcoal and Norfolk Southern on this wonderful opportunity, Reading & Northern CEO Andrew Muller Jr. said in the release. We have long been known as The Road of Anthracite and here is our chance to show the world how good our service is and how good Pennsylvania anthracite is. Our years of investment in coal cars, and our branch line rail system, pays off with our ability to turn on a dime and handle the movement of 30-plus unit trains in five months. Credit goes to the men and women of Reading & Northern for being up to the challenge.

Reading & Northern Railroad, with its corporate headquarters in Port Clinton, is a privately held railroad company serving more than 70 customers in Schuylkill, Berks, Bradford, Carbon, Columbia, Lackawanna, Luzerne, Northumberland and Wyoming counties. It has expanded its operations over the last 20 years and has grown into one of the premier railroads in Pennsylvania.

The railroad operates freight services and steam- and diesel-powered excursion passenger services through its Lehigh Gorge Scenic Railway. It owns almost 1,200 freight cars and employs more than 200 people.

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Reading & Northern Railroad to ship coal to Ukraine - Republican & Herald

The button that could have started a nuclear holocaust is grey not red.

I learned this after climbing into a nuclear rocket command silo, 12 floors below ground, and sitting in the same green chair at the same yellow, metal console at which former Soviet officers once presided. Here, they practiced entering secret codes into their grey keyboards, pushing the launch button and turning a key all within seven seconds to fire up to 10 ballistic missiles. The officers never knew what day their practice codes might become real, nor did they know their targets.

This base in Pervomaysk, Ukraine about a four-hour drive from Kiev once had 86 intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of destroying cities in Europe and the United States. Though the nuclear warheads have been removed, the command silo with much of its equipment, giant trucks that carried the rockets to the base and an empty silo were preserved so that people could see what had been secretly going on at nuclear missile bases in the former Soviet Union. The museums collection includes the R-12/SS-4 Sandal missile similar to those involved in the Cuban missile crisis and the RS-20A/SS-18 Satan, the versions of which had several hundred times the destructive power of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

An RS-20A/SS-18 Satan missile at the former Soviet base in Pervomaysk (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

This is what the tourists come to see, says Igor Bodnarchuk, a tour guide for SoloEast Travel, a Kiev company that specialises in tours of Soviet ruins. What else do we have to offer?

Tourists go to Paris to marvel at the majesty of the Eiffel Tower, to Rome to stroll the cobbled streets of the Vatican, to Moscow to behold the magnificent domes of Red Square. And while Ukraine has its own plethora of domed cathedrals, including monasteries with underground caves, thousands of tourists are trekking to this country for a uniquely Soviet experience. Here, they stand outside an exploded nuclear reactor at Chernobyl and rifle through the remains of a nearby abandoned city Geiger counter in hand. In Chernobyls shadow, they marvel at the giant Moscow Eye, an anti-ballistic-missile detector that rises 50 stories high and looks like a giant roller coaster.

Every day, a handful of travel companies ferry mostly foreigners to Chernobyls 19-mile exclusion zone. In 2016, SoloEast Travel hauled 7,500 people there, up from only one trip in 2000.

It used to be sort of extreme travel, says Sergei Ivanchuk of SoloEast Travel. You were very brave to go to Chernobyl in 2000. Now, not so much.

Ivanchuk insists that people who go to Chernobyl are not morbid. They are intelligent people who want to learn something new, and are often interested in nuclear power, he says.

Gennadiy Fil, once a Soviet army officer stationed at the base, is now a tour guide (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

Likewise, people who venture to the missile base at Pervomaysk are interested in the Cold War. Its a place to remember like the Holocaust about a dangerous time in history and what it means to have nuclear weapons, he says.

Earlier this year, Russia deployed a new cruise missile, apparently violating its 1987 arms-control treaty with the United States. In light of that event, the Soviet ruins in Ukraine seem all the more relevant.

The day I visit the former 46th Rocket Division in Pervomaysk, silver engines gleam in the sunlight and missiles stick out of the snow. Nearby is a surface-to-air missile similar to the one that brought down Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine in July 2014.

The museum tour guides are all former Soviet officers who once worked at the missile base. Ours, Gennadiy Fil, once manned the nuclear controls. When American tourists dally, snapping photos of the rockets above ground, he barks: Ledz go!

Then he darts through a heavy door of a squat building, down a series of winding stairs and through an underground tunnel, navigating by memory through the narrow, 500-foot-long passageway to the control centre in a silo. The narrow cylinder is suspended from the ground theoretically, to withstand the shock of a counterattack.

From this seat at the former Pervomayskmissile base, an officer could launch up to 10 nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

In six-hour shifts, Fil and another officer would descend in a tiny elevator (maximum capacity: three people) to the bottom of the silo. Stationed at metal consoles in an 11-by-11 control room, they would read secret codes from Moscow that flashed on a computer screen, then quickly tap them into a dingy yellow monitor. Then, they pressed a small, grey button and turned a key on the opposite side of the terminal to launch up to 10 nuclear rockets at once.

You dont launch just one missile, because the other side is going to shoot back and destroy you, explains Elena Smerichevskaya, our Ukrainian interpreter. An intercontinental ballistic rocket fired at New York, she explains, would take about 25 minutes to hit its target.

Fil, 55, says he never knew when he would be ordered to input real codes. It was his job, he says and shrugs. He says he had no moral objections to pushing the button. Launching nuclear missiles was a political decision, something that people on top of the ground decided, not him.

He admits that he was scared about the possibility of nuclear war. Youd have to be crazy in the head not to be scared, he says.

But just in case Fil or a fellow officer (two officers were required to launch a rocket) refused to push their buttons, reserve officers could be called up from a compartment beneath the control centre.

For officers like Fil, there were both mental and physical challenges. The compartments were hermetically sealed, and Fil says there was immense pressure on their ears. There were also concerns about the psychological impact of being isolated in the chambers. While the Soviets kept enough food and water on hand for 45 days, some men started to become batty after only two or three days inside the silo bunker, Smerichevskaya says.

Because the government took out windows from many of the buildings in Pripyat, the interiors were exposed to the elements (Cheryl L Reed/Washington Post)

While Fil is glad the world didnt implode under his watch, he says he is sad to have lost his job behind the missile controls.

In 1994, three years after Ukraine became independent, it joined the Non-Proliferation Treaty and agreed to dismantle its 1,900 Soviet missiles. At the time, Ukraine boasted the worlds third-largest stockpile of nuclear warheads after Russia and the United States. Ukraine shipped its nuclear warheads to Russia and dismantled its silos, often blowing them up or filling them with cement. The control silo at Pervomaysk was the only one spared so it could become a museum. The 46th Rocket Division, part of the Soviet 43rd Rocket Army, was disbanded in 2001.

As a child growing up in the Cold War who was taught to hide under her school desk in case of a nuclear attack, its surreal to meet a man who at the same time had his fingers on the triggers of the Soviet Unions nuclear warheads.

Fil shakes his head at how things have changed. I never thought Id be standing here talking to an American, he says, his eyes wide with amazement. I never thought Id be having my picture taken. That was absolutely forbidden. And now ... its okay.

The museum claims that its silos are very similar to those still in operation in Russia. The Satanis still part of Russias weaponry, although an improved version is set to be operational in 2018. Before Russia invaded Crimea and backed the separatistswar on Ukraines eastern front, Russian soldiers frequently took their families to Pervomaysk to show them what they did at work, museum tour guides say. The missile sites in Russia remain secret.

The city of Pripyat was once a secret Soviet city, closed to anyone but workers of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor and their families. Now the city, an hour-and-a-half drive from Kiev, is a nuclear ghost town. Forty-nine thousand people were forced to evacuate the day after Chernobyls Reactor No4 exploded on 26 April 1986.

The floor of a school in Pripyat is littered with gas masks meant for schoolchildren, but, according to tour guides, were never used (Cheryl LReed/Washington Post)

Nearly all the first responders and soldiers died from radiation poisoning while trying to contain the graphite fire and the radioactive particles spewing from the destroyed reactor, explainsBodnarchuk, our tour guide. Officially, only 31 firemen and soldiers were killed. But some believe that the disaster claimed at least 10,000 lives as wind carried radioactive material into Belarus and northern Europe.

Even though critics have said that the designs of Chernobyl are outmoded and inherently unsafe, Russia reportedly is still using 11 similar nuclear reactors.

Today, visitors can stand across the street from the damaged reactor at Chernobyl, which recently was covered by a huge, $2.3bn (1.7bn) shield. But the highlight of the tour is, by far, the crumbling city of Pripyat. Though tour operators are warned to stay out of Pripyats buildings, tourists routinely stomp through the city, including the hospital where dying first responders were taken.

Tourists stick their Geiger counters against tatters of clothing in the hospital lobby and watch their machines shoot up to shockingly high levels 85 microsieverts per hour. The normal range is 0.09 to 0.30 microsieverts per hour, according to the tour company. Most guides carry their own Geiger counters; many tourists come with their own.

Tour operators claim that a visit to Chernobyl is no more dangerous now than a flight from Ukraine to North America. This calculation includes spending 10 minutes in front of the burned-out reactor and no more than two hours in Pripyat.

SoloEast Travel has a video that shows how it came up with such mathematics. Those calculations, however, dont factor in hovering over a firefighters highly radioactive clothing that has been dug up from deep in the hospital. Nor do they specifically include driving through the red forest near the Chernobyl reactor where the radiation burned up all the trees, which were then bulldozed and buried. Our Geiger counters went crazy as we drove through the new-growth forest, registering 26 microsieverts per hour.

Our guide tried to calm fears about our exposure to radiation by assuring us that any high levels on our body would be detected by the machines we had to pass through on the way out of Chernobyls exclusion zone. Those machines old Soviet steel contraptions that look like retro airport metal detectors hardly inspire confidence.

To amplify tourists shock, guides have embellished some of the Pripyat remains.Amid hundreds of crumbling gas masks spread over the floor of a school, a baby doll has been placed on a chair wearing a gas mask. A hospital nursery has been outfitted with plastic dolls, placed in cribs with blankets, to make the scene appear even more macabre. Outside a village school building, old toys are scattered about. One-eyed teddy bears and dolls with missing limbs sit on bed springs at a village orphanage. Tables are set with plates and pots.

The most eerie scenes include an abandoned amusement park with its empty, lonely looking Ferris wheel and bumper cars filled with leaves; a swimming pool with cracked tiles, its deep end filled with trash and an old shopping cart; school hallways cluttered with books; school desks laid out with science experiments; posters of Lenin and other Soviet leaders adorning classroom walls; and a broken baby carriage abandoned in a decaying community centre.

Visitors are exhausted by the time their tour bus leaves Pripyat and turns down a one-lane road through a thick forest. Hiding there is the Moscow Eye, also known as the Russian Woodpecker, an enormous metal structure silhouetted against the sky like a vertical Stonehenge.

Using over-the-horizon radar, the Moscow Eye was the receiver for a powerful radio broadcast sent from elsewhere in Ukraine. Some say that the signals short, repetitive tapping noise soundedlike a bird thus the woodpecker moniker. Others sayit soundedmore like a machine gun. From 1976, until it went off the air in 1989, the unexplained radio signal interfered with many broadcasts. Listeners speculated that it was a method of Soviet mind control. Only in the past three years have tourists discovered its sublime metal architecture rising from the forest floor near Chernobyl, an anachronistic remnant from a not-so-distant era.

Washington Post

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The booming Soviet tourist industry in radioactive Ukraine - The Independent

Energy Secretary Rick Perry said US coal will be a secure and reliable energy source for Ukraine, which he said has been reliant on and beholden to Russia to keep the heat on. That changes now.

WASHINGTON A Pennsylvania-based coal company has won a contract to supply coal to Ukraines state-owned power company in preparation for that countrys winter heating needs. Officials said the deal would bolster a key US ally often threatened by Russia.

The deal, potentially worth about $79 million, calls for Xcoal Energy and Resources to ship 700,000 tons of thermal coal to the Ukraine to heat homes and businesses. The first shipment is expected to leave the Port of Baltimore next month at a cost of $113 per metric ton.

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Energy Secretary Rick Perry said US coal will be a secure and reliable energy source for Ukraine, which he said has been reliant on and beholden to Russia to keep the heat on. That changes now.

The United States can offer Ukraine an alternative, and today we are pleased to announce that we will, Perry said, calling such deals crucial to the path forward to achieve energy dominance for the United States.

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Your afternoon shot of politics, sent straight from the desk of Joshua Miller.

President Trump has vowed to revive the struggling coal industry and has cited increases in US coal exports as evidence the strategy is working. The Energy Department said in July that coal exports have risen sharply in 2017 amid increased demand in Asia and Europe, but are still below capacity.

The deal comes amid increased tensions in US-Russia relations. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the United States will have to cut its diplomatic staff in Russia in response to new sanctions against Russia. Congress approved those because of Russian interference in the 2016 US election and its military aggression in Ukraine and Syria.

Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said the coal deal will allow Ukraine to diversify its energy sources ahead of the coming winter, noting that Russia has restricted some natural gas deliveries to Ukraine and other neighbors in a bid to choke off opposition to its ambitions.

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Perry was recently fooled by a pair of Russian pranksters impersonating the prime minister of Ukraine. Topics on the mid-July call included coal exports. Perry met with Ukraines president, Petro Poroshenko, in June.

WASHINGTON An Army medic who ran into danger to save wounded soldiers during a Vietnam War battle despite his own serious wounds on Monday became the first Medal of Honor recipient under President Trump, 48 years after the selfless acts of bravery for which James McCloughan is now nationally recognized.

McCloughan mouthed thank you as Trump placed the distinctive blue ribbon holding the medal around the neck of the former Army private first class. As the president and commander in chief shook McCloughans hand, Trump said very proud of you and then pulled the former soldier into an embrace.

I know I speak for every person here when I say we are in awe of your bravery and your actions, Trump said after describing McCloughans actions for an audience including numerous senior White House and administration officials.

Retired Marine General John Kelly, sworn in hours earlier to be the new White House chief of staff, attended.

McCloughan said in a brief statement on the White House driveway after the ceremony that it was humbling to receive the medal. Now 71 and retired, he pledged to do his best to represent the men he fought alongside as the caretaker of this symbol of courage and action beyond the call of duty.

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Pa. coal company wins $79 million deal to supply Ukraine - The Boston Globe

The departments of State and Defensehave drafted aproposalto send Ukraine weapons tohelp in its fight against Russia-backed separatists, The Wall Street Journal reported Monday.

The proposal reportedly recommends sending antitank missiles and other armaments, which American military and diplomatic officials say would be used for defensive purposes as Kiev fights back against rebels in its eastern region widely believed to be supported by Moscow.

A senior administration official told the Journal thatPresident Trump has not been briefed on the plan, nor is his position on arming Ukraine known.

It could likely take months for the Trump administration to make its final decision on the plan, U.S. and Ukrainian officials tell the Journal.

The U.S. has been providingnon-lethal training and other aid to Kiev since Russiaannexed Crimea in 2014, but weapons would be a significant escalation.

The report comes at a time of increasing tensions between Moscow and Washington after Congress this month passed a new Russia sanctions bill, which led Russia to announce it will expel more than750 U.S. diplomats from the country by Sept. 1.

The Journal reports, citing officials, that Defense Secretary James Mattis supports the plan.

Pentagon spokeswoman Lt. Col. Michelle Baldanza confirmed to the newspaper that providing lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine" is still an option on the table.

A State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

European leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel opposed the Obama administration when they similarly considered supplying Kiev with arms.

But U.S. officials tell the Journal that the conflict has since escalated, pointing to increased cease-fire violations that have stood in the way of peace efforts.

Russian officials, who deny supporting separatists involved in the conflict, have said that supplying Ukraine with weapons would stall peace efforts.

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Report: Pentagon, State Dept. draft plan to send weapons to Ukraine - The Hill