Attention to the Unseen

Science reports: When the lights went out at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant on 9 March, the Russian soldiers holding Ukrainian workers at gunpoint became the least of Anatolii Nosovskyi’s worries. More urgent was the possibility of a radiation accident at the decommissioned plant. If the plant’s emergency generators ran out of fuel, the ventilators that keep explosive hydrogen gas from building up inside a spent nuclear fuel repository would quit working, says Nosovskyi, director of the Institute for Safety Problems…

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The Observer reports: On the tarmac of Dubai airport, half way along its main runway, a small terminal has been doing brisk business this month. Daily flights have disgorged dozens of Russians – many among the wealthiest figures in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle. A short VIP welcome and limousine ride later, and the oligarchs are into a world that cares little about Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine or the attempts to punish Putin, and has instead willingly embraced his enablers. Perhaps…

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Reuters reports: Moscow signalled on Friday it was scaling back its ambitions in Ukraine to focus on territory claimed by Russian-backed separatists as Ukrainian forces went on the offensive to recapture towns on the outskirts of the capital Kyiv. In the first big sign that Western sanctions on Moscow were impacting investment from China, sources said state-run Sinopec Group, Asia’s biggest oil refiner, halted talks on a petrochemical investment and a venture to market Russian gas. In the month since…

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The Associated Press reports: Russian Col. Gen. Mikhail Mizintsev said the roughly 400,000 people evacuated to Russia since the start of the military action were from the Donetsk and Luhansk regions in eastern Ukraine, where pro-Moscow separatists have been fighting for control for nearly eight years. Russian authorities said they are providing accommodations and dispensing payments to the evacuees. But Donetsk Region Gov. Pavlo Kyrylenko said that “people are being forcibly moved into the territory of the aggressor state.” Denisova…

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The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. is ramping up shipments of liquefied natural gas to Europe this year as the continent mounts a worldwide hunt for new supplies to phase out its reliance on Russian energy after the invasion of Ukraine. The globe-spanning effort to wean Europe off Russian energy supplies was at the center of President Biden’s summit with European Union leaders this week in Brussels. The U.S. aims to ship 50 billion cubic meters of LNG to…

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The Guardian reports: The woman in labour stared out from the stretcher, as medics rushed her over a wasteland left by a Russian attack on a maternity hospital. In a different hospital and feeling her baby slipping away, she begged doctors: “Kill me now.” Hours later, both she and her child were dead. The horror of the attack on a maternity hospital in the besieged Ukrainian port city of Mariupol stunned the world. But it was not the first time…

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