Heads up, pollinators of the world: Now would be a great time to take that European vacation you’ve always dreamed of. The European Commission -- the E.U.’s governing body -- voted on Monday to implement a continent-wide ban on the class of insecticides widely suspected of contributing to colony collapse disorder, the mysterious phenomenon that’s been decimating bee populations since 2006.

In January, the European Food Safety Authority warned that three types of neonicotinoid pesticides should be considered unacceptable for use based on their danger to bees. A growing body of scientific evidence has found that, while neonics can't be blamed directly for colony collapse disorder, they do mess with bees’ navigation, foraging, and communication abilities, throw off their reproductive patterns, and weaken their immune systems, leaving colonies more vulnerable to natural threats like mites and fungi. Neonics are the world’s most ubiquitous pesticides, used extensively on major crops like corn, soy, and canola. They're applied to seeds before planting and then show up in the pollen bees come to collect.

Three neonics -- thiamethoxam, clothianidin, and imidacloprid -- will be banned for two years from use on crops bees pollinate, likely starting in December. From the BBC:

Nestled along a residential stretch of Seagirt Boulevard in Far Rockaway, the Seagirt Boulevard Community Garden has been a green fixture in this Queens neighborhood for over two decades.

A photograph of the space from 2009 reveals row after row of neatly planted greens, herbs, and flowers -- some held up toward the sun by wooden stakes and twine. An American flag stands tall alongside the garden’s center path, lined with stone grey bricks.

Over the years, the abundance at Seagirt has included kitchen staples like kale and potatoes, along with more unusual offerings of cat mint and bayberry. One volunteer plants a peanut crop.

Yet after Superstorm Sandy rolled through New York last fall -- causing an estimated $19 billion in public and private losses in the city alone -- little remained of the garden aside from its still-standing flagpole and wooden shade structure.

A now-faded line on the garden’s outlying fence serves as a reminder of the storm surge, which rose to over four feet at Seagirt.

Editor's Note: This story relied on a report in Us Weekly, which said Affleck would be doing his eat-like-a-poor-person thing for just one day. That's wrong. In fact, it's clear from Affleck's  Twitter feed (and the campaign it points to) that Affleck intends to do this for five days and he's doing it to get other people to join him, which is a worthy goal. Grist apologizes for the error. We never should have doubted you, Ben! Call us!

I want to be clear about something. I love Ben Affleck. I love him how you only love someone to whom you have spent most of your life being largely indifferent. After he made Argo, I was like, "OK dude, yes, you deserve to exist, big time. You made a movie like they used to make in the '70s, with the kind of suspense and storytelling no one even bothers with anymore because they're just like, oh, our trailer has a good joke in it about MILFs, so hello good opening weekend and screw Americans and their yearning for well-executed traditional narrative structure."

Anyway, Affleck is now, in the way only movie stars can, doing something "cool" that is also lame (which does not befit the man who made Argo). To raise awareness of global hunger, he is going to eat like a poor person for one day. One day. I had to read it several times myself.

McDonald's Japan is not doing well. So it held a meeting at the end of 2012 to try to reverse this downturn, which has now been going on for two years. And one of the main points of this meeting was, not surprisingly, "stronger marketing." The result? An ad featuring the "Dancing McCrew," two McDonald's "employees" dancing their little hearts out because working at McDonald's is soooo fun.

A slew of bills currently in front of state legislatures around the country aims to make it a crime to document what goes on behind slaughterhouse doors. But these bills themselves may be a blessing in disguise for animal rights activists.

Take the example of Wyoming, where a proposed bill recently dropped like a pesticide-poisoned honeybee. The bill would have made any recording illegal without permission from the facility owner, with a penalty of six months in jail and a $750 fine. Pushed by a Republican rancher, Wyoming House Bill 126 seemed set to pass the state senate.

That is, until "PETA had Bob Barker come out against it and it got a lot of media attention," Green is the New Red journalist Will Potter explains. "Bob Barker saves the day."

Potter and activist Andy Stepanian have been two of the most outspoken voices against ag-gag bills. When several bills made their way to state legislatures last year, "the threat was clear and real," Potter says. A domino effect seemed impending: If farm-friendly legislators could push these bills through in Missouri and Utah, what might happen nationwide?

"Each one of these pieces of 'model legislation' is seeing just how far they could push the envelope," says Stepanian. "'We have case law on record in this state, why don't you do the same thing in your state?' In time it chips away at our democratic freedoms."

But ultimately -- oddly enough -- both Potter and Stepanian aren't worried. Sure, if they passed, these laws would be a gut shot to the animal protection movement. But in becoming a national news story, ag-gags may have backfired instead. Every time a publication covers farm protection proposals, it uses the horrible images of abuse that investigators have dug up. That has made these stories a great way for activists to spread their message. And it has made Potter and Stepanian downright optimistic.

Some federal lawmakers want you to be warned before you put food made from genetically engineered plants and animals into your mouth.

It's just common sense, right? Yeah, well, tell that to the Food and Drug Administration.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and Rep. Peter DeFazio (D-Ore.) introduced legislation with bipartisan support Wednesday that would require genetically engineered foods to be clearly labeled. Such commonsense labeling is unpopular with big agribusiness, which fears that consumers would avoid many of their products if they knew about their freaky ingredients. But the idea is overwhelmingly popular with Americans.

A Swiss company has come up with a way for you to turn yucky, bad-for-you soda into delicious water. Yes, this water bottle, which is based on a filter developed by NASA, is so powerful it gets rid of everything in the Coke that makes it Coke, and turns it into plain water. Does that sound too unbelievable to be true? Watch it in action here. (Try not to laugh when it just sounds like someone's going pee-pee.)

Officials in Texas continue to investigate the cause of the explosion last week at West Fertilizer that killed 15 people and injured 200. The explosion, which could be felt up to 50 miles away, obliterated the facility and destroyed houses. It was fueled by a massive stockpile of nitrogen fertilizer -- up to 270 tons of ammonium nitrate, a solid fertilizer that comes in the form of a powder or pellets, and over 50,000 gallons of anhydrous ammonia gas.

But while the explosion last week was spectacular and tragic, the lives lost there and the pain the community of West, Texas, is suffering offer a window into a much larger battle concerning the overuse of nitrogen fertilizers on American farmland.

Bikes. Ice cream. Two wonderful things. Put them together and you've got ... a bike that churns ice cream? Sure. Los Angeles resident Edward Belden has managed to unite his long-term loves and has created an ice cream machine powered by a bicycle. What a lucky guy. We tried to unite our long-term loves and all we got was James McAvoy in Rag & Bone shoebooties.

If you grew up in a McDonald's parking lot in New Zealand, what would you eat? What if you were an adorable little black-and-white cat named Frankie? You would eat hamburger patties and chicken McNuggets, obviously. And then you would get so accustomed to it that you'd refuse to go back to kibble.