Surprise W boson measurement could rewrite particle physics

Tereza Pultarova - Yesterday 
Space


A tiny subatomic particle called the W boson may be heavier than scientists have previously thought and it could shake up physics' grand theory of everything.

Scientists at the U.S. Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory spent 10 years analyzing mass measurements of the W boson, a lesser-known "sister particle" of the Higgs Boson that plays a role in radioactive decay. They found the particle is somewhat heavier than physics theories expected. And that, the scientists said in a statement, is quite a big deal, as it is at odds with the so-called Standard Model, a fundamental physics theory describing how the world on the microscale fits together.

"It's now up to the theoretical physics community and other experiments to follow up on this and shed light on this mystery," David Toback, a physicist at Texas A&M University, who is a member of the project, said in a statement. "If the difference between the experimental and expected value is due to some kind of new particle or subatomic interaction, which is one of the possibilities, there's a good chance it's something that could be discovered in future experiments."

Related: 10 mind-boggling things you should know about quantum physics

Some critics caution that it would take further experiments to verify those results as questioning the particle physics "bible" is a daring prospect.

The scientists behind the newest measurements are, however, quite confident in their results.

"The number of improvements and extra checking that went into our result is enormous," Ashutosh V. Kotwal of Duke University, who led the work, said in the statement. "We took into account our improved understanding of our particle detector as well as advances in the theoretical and experimental understanding of the W boson's interactions with other particles."

The scientists based their calculations on measurements from Fermilab's Tevatron collider conducted between 1985 and 2011. They then spent the following decade analyzing the data. Overall 4.2 million observations of W boson candidate particles were included in the analysis, which is about four times the number used in the earlier estimates the team published in 2012.

The new estimate is accurate to 0.01%, the scientists said in the statement.

The results were published in a paper in the journal Science on Thursday (April 7).

Follow Tereza Pultarova on Twitter @TerezaPultarova. 

Oddly heavy particle may have just broken the reigning model of particle physics

Paul Sutter - Yesterday
Live Science


An ultraprecise measurement of the mass of a subatomic particle called the W boson may diverge from the Standard Model, a long-reigning framework that governs the strange world of quantum physics.

After 10 years of collaboration using an atom smasher at Fermilab in Illinois, scientists announced this new measurement, which is so precise that they likened it to finding the weight of an 800-pound (363 kilograms) gorilla to a precision of 1.5 ounces (42.5 grams). Their result puts the W boson, a carrier of the weak nuclear force, at a mass seven standard deviations higher than the Standard Model predicts. That's a very high level of certainty, representing only an incredibly small probability that this result occurred by pure chance.

"While this is an intriguing result, the measurement needs to be confirmed by another experiment before it can be interpreted fully," Joe Lykken, Fermilab's deputy director of research, said in a statement.

The new result also disagrees with older experimental measurements of the W boson's mass. It remains to be seen if this measurement is an experimental fluke or the first opening of a crack in the Standard Model. If the result does stand up to scrutiny and can be replicated, it could mean that we need to revise or extend the Standard Model with possibly new particles and forces.

Related: Physicists get closer than ever to measuring the elusive neutrino

The strength of the weak nuclear force

The weak nuclear force is perhaps the strangest of the four fundamental forces of nature. It's propagated by three force carriers, known as bosons. There is the single Z boson, which has a neutral electric charge, and the W+ and W- bosons, which have positive and negative electric charges, respectively.

Because those three bosons have mass, they travel more slowly than the speed of light and eventually decay into other particles, giving the weak nuclear force a relatively limited range. Despite those limitations, the weak force is responsible for radioactive decay, and it is the only force (besides gravity) to interact directly with neutrinos, the mysterious, ghost-like particles that flood the universe.

Pinning down the masses of the weak force carriers is a crucial test of the Standard Model, the theory of physics that combines quantum mechanics, special relativity and symmetries of nature to explain and predict the behavior of the electromagnetic, strong nuclear and weak nuclear forces. (Yes, gravity is the "elephant in the room" that the model cannot explain.) The Standard Model is the most accurate theory ever developed in physics, and one of its crowning achievements was the successful prediction of the existence of the Higgs boson, a particle whose quantum mechanical field gives rise to mass in many other particles, including the W boson.

According to the Standard Model, at high energies the electromagnetic and weak nuclear forces combine into a single, unified force called the electroweak interaction. But at low energies (or the typical energies of everyday life), the Higgs boson butts in, driving a wedge between the two forces. Through that same process, the Higgs also gives mass to the weak force carriers.

If you know the mass of the Higgs boson, then you can calculate the mass of the W boson, and vice versa. For the Standard Model to be a coherent theory of subatomic physics, it must be consistent with itself. If you measure the Higgs boson and use that measurement to predict the W boson's mass, it should agree with an independent, direct measurement of the W boson's mass.

A flood of data

Using the Collider Detector at Fermilab (CDF), which is inside the giant Tevatron particle accelerator, a collaboration of more than 400 scientists examined years of data from over 4 million independent collisions of protons with antiprotons to study the mass of the W boson. During those super-energetic collisions, the W boson decays into either a muon or an electron (along with a neutrino). The energies of those emitted particles are directly connected to the underlying mass of the W boson.

"The number of improvements and extra checking that went into our result is enormous," said Ashutosh V. Kotwal, a particle physicist at Duke University who led the analysis. "We took into account our improved understanding of our particle detector as well as advances in the theoretical and experimental understanding of the W boson's interactions with other particles. When we finally unveiled the result, we found that it differed from the Standard Model prediction."

The CDF collaboration measured the value of the W boson to be 80,433 ± 9 MeV/c2, which is about 80 times heavier than the proton and about 0.1% heavier than expected. The uncertainty in the measurement comes from both statistical uncertainty (just like the uncertainty you get from taking a poll in an election) and systematic uncertainty (which is produced when your experimental apparatus doesn't always behave in the way you designed it to act). Achieving that level of precision — of an astounding 0.01% — is itself an enormous task, like knowing your own weight down to less than a quarter of an ounce.

"Many collider experiments have produced measurements of the W boson mass over the last 40 years," CDF co-spokesperson Giorgio Chiarelli, a research director at the Italian National Institute for Nuclear Physics, said in the statement. "These are challenging, complicated measurements, and they have achieved ever more precision. It took us many years to go through all the details and the needed checks."

Big result, small difference

The result differed from the Standard Model prediction of the W boson's mass, which is 80,357 ± 6 MeV/c2. The uncertainties in that calculation (the "±") come from uncertainties in the measurement of the Higgs boson and other particles, which must be inserted into the calculation, and from the calculation itself, which relies on several approximation techniques.

The differences between the results aren't very large in an absolute sense. Because of the high precision, however, they are separated by seven standard deviations, indicating the presence of a major discrepancy.

The new result also disagrees with previous measurements from other collider experiments, which have been largely consistent with the Standard Model prediction. It's not clear yet if this result is caused by some unknown bias within the experiment or if it's the first sign of new physics.

If the CDF result holds up and other experiments can verify it, it could be a sign that there's more to the W boson mass than its interaction with the Higgs. Perhaps a previously unknown particle or field, or maybe even dark matter, is interacting with the W boson in a way the Standard Model currently doesn't predict.

Nonetheless, the result is an important step in testing the accuracy of the Standard Model, said CDF co-spokesperson David Toback, a professor of physics and astronomy at Texas A&M University. "It's now up to the theoretical physics community and other experiments to follow up on this and shed light on this mystery," he said.

The researchers described their results April 7 in the journal Science.

Originally published on Live Science.

In 'project of the century', Swiss seek to bury radioactive waste

AFP - Yesterday 
© Fabrice COFFRINI


Storing radioactive waste above ground is a risky business, but the Swiss think they have found the solution: burying spent nuclear fuel deep underground in clay.

The Mont Terri international laboratory was built to study the effects of burying radioactive waste in clay which sits 300 metres (985 feet) below the surface near Saint-Ursanne in the northwestern Jura region.

The underground laboratory stretches across 1.2 kilometres (0.7 miles) of tunnels. Niches along the way, each around five metres high, are filled with various storage simulations, containing small quantities of radioactive material monitored by thousands of sensors.


The access tunnel to the Mont-Terri Laboratory

More than 170 experiments have been carried out to simulate the different phases of the process -- positioning the waste, sealing off the tunnels, surveillance -- and to reproduce every imaginable physical and chemical effect.


A radioactive waste storage model in the underground laboratory

According to experts, it takes 200,000 years for the radioactivity in the most toxic waste to return to natural levels.

Geologist Christophe Nussbaum, who heads the laboratory, said researchers wanted to determine what the possible effects could be "on storage that needs to last for nearly one million years."

That "is the duration that we need to ensure safe confinement," he said, adding that so far, "the results are positive."

- Potential sites identified -

Three prospective sites in the northeast, near the German border, have been identified to receive such radioactive waste.

Switzerland's nuclear plant operators are expected to choose their preferred option in September.

The Swiss government is not due to make the final decision until 2029, but that is unlikely to be the last word as the issue would probably go to a referendum under Switzerland's famous direct democracy system.

Despite the drawn-out process, environmental campaigners Greenpeace say Switzerland is moving too fast.

"There are a myriad of technical questions that have not been resolved," Florian Kasser, in charge of nuclear issues for the environmental activist group, told AFP.

For starters, he said, it remains to be seen if the systems in place can "guarantee there will be no radioactive leakage in 100, 1,000 or 100,000 years."

"We are putting the cart before the horse, because with numerous questions still unresolved, we are already looking for sites" to host the storage facilities, he said.

Kasser said Switzerland also needed to consider how it will signal where there sites are to ensure they are not forgotten, and that people many centuries from now remain aware of the dangers.

Swiss nuclear power plants have been pumping out radioactive waste for more than half a century.

Until now, it has been handled by the National Cooperative for the Disposal of Radioactive Waste, or NAGRA, founded in 1972 by the plant operators in conjunction with the state.

For now, the waste is being stored in an "intermediary depot" in Wurenlingen, some 15 kilometres from the German border.

- Horizon 2060 -

Switzerland hopes to join an elite club of countries closing in on deep geological storage.

So far, only Finland has built a site, in granite, and Sweden gave the green light in January to build its own site for burying spent nuclear fuel in granite.

Next up is France, whose Cigeo project, led by the National Agency for Radioactive Waste Management (ANDRA), plans to store radioactive waste underground in clay.

"We are awaiting the declaration of public utility but in the meantime we will submit a request for a construction permit," said ANDRA spokeswoman Emilie Grandidier during a visit to Mont Terri.

Following the 2011 nuclear accident at the Fukushima power station in Japan, Switzerland decided to phase out nuclear power gradually: its reactors can continue for as long as they remain safe.

A projected 83,000 cubic metres of radioactive waste, including some high activity waste, will have to be buried.

This volume corresponds to a 60-year operating life of the Beznau, Gosgen and Leibstadt nuclear power plants, and the 47 years that Muhleberg was in operation before closing in 2019.

Filling in the underground nuclear waste tombs should begin by 2060.

"It's the project of the century: we have carried out the scientific research for 50 years, and we now have 50 years for the authorisation and the realisation of the project," said Nagra spokesman Felix Glauser.

The monitoring period will span several decades before the site is sealed some time in the 22nd century.

apo/nl-rjm/pvh/ach

US taxpayers unknowingly paid millions to get Starlink terminals to Ukraine

Kris Holt - Yesterday 
Engadget

Soon after Russia invaded Ukraine in February, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk pledged to send Starlink internet terminals to the country. His company donated thousands of units and is covering the cost of the service for a few months. However, the US government reportedly paid millions for some of the terminals and to get them all to Ukraine, in spite of statements to the contrary from the company's president.

The United States Agency for International Development bought around 1,500 terminals at a cost of $1,500 each, according to documents obtained by The Washington Post. It also covered transportation costs for all the terminals to the tune of $800,000, resulting in the agency shelling out over $3 million. In all, the agency and SpaceX sent more than 5,000 terminals to Ukraine, with a third-party contractor handling transportation and delivery.


ODESA, UKRAINE - MARCH 15, 2022 - SpaceX Starlink internet terminal installed in Odesa, southern Ukraine (Photo credit should read Nina Lyashonok/ Ukrinform/Future Publishing via Getty Images)

It's unclear whether USAID paid over the odds for the terminals. SpaceX recently increased the price of a Starlink terminal from $499 to $549 for deposit holders and to $599 for fresh orders. As of April 22nd, the monthly price of the satellite-powered internet service is increasing from $99 to $110. The company announced a higher tier service earlier this year that costs $2,500 for a terminal and $500 per month for service.

SpaceX president Gwynne Shotwell said last month that France and possibly Poland helped get the terminals to Ukraine. “I don’t think the US has given us any money to give terminals to the Ukraine,” Shotwell said. SpaceX is said to have donated $10 million worth of terminals and Starlink service to the country, which is laudable enough, though the company wasn't exactly clear about where funding for other parts of the operation came from.

On top of that, Musk had to issue a warning over the use of Starlink, given that Russia may be able to triangulate the location of a terminal uplink. Musk urged people to use Starlink only when needed and stay away from other people while doing so.

This isn't the first time that Musk has offered help during a crisis where his input hasn't gone without a hitch. In 2018, he took a mini-submarine to Thailand to assist with the rescue of 12 boys and their coach who were trapped in a cave. Not only were those people safely retrieved by the time he got there, the mini-sub was deemed impractical for the mission anyway.

Alberta sees unemployment dip as jobless rate hits new low across the country

Alberta saw a slight decline in its unemployment rate last month as Canada’s rate hit a record low.


© David BloomA pedestrian makes their way past a help wanted sign at a Jiffy Lube location, 9927 82 Ave. in Edmonton on March 15, 2022.

Lisa Johnson - Yesterday
EDMONTON JOURNAL

Across the country, the unemployment rate fell to 5.3 per cent, a low not seen since Statistics Canada started tracking comparable data in 1976 as about 73,000 jobs were gained, the agency reported Friday.

In Alberta, the jobless rate went to 6.5 per cent from 6.8 per cent in February, while the province counted 15,700 new full-time jobs but 8,400 fewer part-time gigs.

Jobs, Economy and Innovation Minister Doug Schweitzer said at an unrelated news conference Friday the numbers show the provincial economy is turning a corner, and the unemployment rate is the lowest it’s been since December 2018.

“You’re truly starting to see the economic momentum of Alberta hit its stride,” said Schweitzer, adding Alberta’s employment rate of 64.7 per cent is the highest among provinces, just one point above that of Saskatchewan.

The data reflect labour market conditions from March 13 to 19 after Alberta lifted venue capacity limits and COVID-19 restrictions on large gatherings.

In Edmonton, the unemployment rate rose slightly to 7.1 per cent from 6.9 per cent in February. In Calgary, that number dropped to 7.7 per cent from 8.0 per cent the month before — still one of the highest unemployment rates among major cities in Canada.

Schweitzer acknowledged labour shortages are hitting sectors across Alberta. To help address it, the government has earmarked $600 million over three years for its Alberta at Work program, aiming to expand student enrolment in areas with identified skills shortages — including technology, agriculture, financial services and aviation — by creating 7,000 spaces.

The latest numbers show the Canadian labour market has rarely been tighter, which threatens to add to inflationary pressures by causing wages to spiral higher. Average hourly wages rose 3.4 per cent from March 2021, compared with a year-over-year increase of 3.1 per cent in February.

Statistics Canada reported that wages are increasing at a slower pace than in the second half of 2019, when the jobless rate was hovering around 5.5 per cent and wages were increasing at an annual rate of around four per cent.

In Alberta, wage growth was the lowest, at 1.4 per cent, with gains in some industries including natural resources and retail trade partially offset by declines in others, like educational services.

Speaking at a news conference Friday in Calgary, NDP Leader Rachel Notley said she hopes the province is seeing a rebound but noted Alberta still lags behind much of the country with a worse-than-average unemployment rate.

Unemployment rates in neighbouring Saskatchewan and British Columbia hovered around five per cent in March, while in Newfoundland and Labrador, the rate was 12.9 per cent.

Notley said neither the federal nor provincial governments have focused enough on job retraining efforts and supports for workers as the economy experiences a restructuring with new technology and industries, including oil and gas, aiming to meet climate change goals.

“It’s really critically important to help us attract diversified investment, and it’s important to help deal with an equitable wage increase that will not happen in its absence ,” said Notley.

— With files from Kevin Carmichael

UCP BEATING A DEAD HORSE

Opinion: Misleading to suggest Canadian charities rely on foreign funding

Bob Wyatt

 - Yesterday 
Edmonton Journal

Steve Allan, who conducted the public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns, produced a series of recommendations to address related economic, social and governance challenges. Those recommendations include investing in and supporting the collaborative development of a methodology to establish world-class best practices, standards and processes for the measurement, accumulation and reporting of GHG emissions data.

Re. “Time to put words into action,” Steve Allan, March 26

In his op-ed essay published on March 26, Steve Allan once again raised concerns about foreign funding of Canadian charities and, once again, we fear he has left people with misleading information about the issue.

Mr. Allan cites 2018 figures in saying that Canadian charities received $2.4 billion from outside Canada. That amounted to about 0.9 per cent of the total revenue of charities in that year, according to the publicly available data from the Canada Revenue Agency.

Since Mr. Allan’s inquiry focused on environmental charities, some readers may have been left with the impression that all of this foreign funding went to such charities. Nothing could be further from the truth.

Mr. Allan does not mention, for example, that 30 per cent of all foreign funding received by Canadian charities in 2018 went to one charity — the University of Toronto. Nor does he mention that the listing of charities receiving the top 80 per cent of funding from outside Canada is primarily made up of universities, health organizations, and international-development agencies. Only two charities that could remotely be considered environmental appear in that list — Ducks Unlimited and the Nature Conservancy of Canada.

It might also have been useful to note that Alberta-based environmental charities received only $211,000 from foreign sources in 2018.

Canadian charities have received funding from outside the country since long before Canada had a formal system of registering charities. It is not new, and it is not news.

Mr. Allan’s piece also reiterated his suggestion that charities need to be more transparent about their funding. It is not clear how much more transparent he thinks they can be. The annual reporting form of every charity is published online by the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA), and financial statements can be obtained from the charity or CRA. Those returns detail how charities spend their funding in significantly more detail than do corporate financial statements, even of publicly traded companies.

The former commissioner of the public inquiry into anti-Alberta energy campaigns did not mention that his report recommended that all Canadian charities, and all non-profits in Alberta, be required to disclose the identity of every person who donates $5,000 or more — a move that has not been adopted by any other jurisdiction in the world, and rightly so, since it would represent a gross violation of donor privacy.

Nor does Mr. Allan’s op-ed mention that his report found no wrongdoing by any charity.

Much of the inquiry report focused on providing advice to the energy industry on how it might be more effective in telling its story. That wasn’t part of his mandate, but it might be useful to some people. Seeking to upset the public by partial disclosure and non-disclosure of the facts about charities is not useful and, in fact, is harmful to all of the 86,000 charities that serve Canadians and those in need throughout the world.

The op-ed says that his report has faded from the public eye. Rightfully so.

Bob Wyatt is executive director of the Muttart Foundation.

Vietnam’s biggest carmaker files for $2 billion in the US as it aims to start delivering cars this year

sonnguyen

 

VinFast, a unit of Vietnam’s conglomerate Vingroup JSC has lodged its registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Bloomberg reported.

The company said it hasn’t decided on the size of the offering.

According to Bloomberg, the biggest carmaker in Vietnam has been working with advisers on the U.S. listing in the second half of this year, it said in a statement in December. The share sale could raise about $2 billion, Bloomberg citied the company’s statement on the its website.

Related: The US highly appreciates Vinfast’s electric car factory construction project

According to data compiled by Bloomberg, at $2 billion, VinFast’s IPO would be the biggest ever by a Vietnamese company after Vinhomes JSC’s $1.4 billion first-time share sale in 2018. If successful, the carmaker would also become one of the few Vietnamese companies to list in the U.S.

A listing comes as VinFast plans to open an EV factory in North Carolina, which could become operational in 2024. The plant is the first phase of a planned complex in the U.S. that would have a total investment of as much as $6 billion.

U.S. President Joe Biden tweeted a White House statement about VinFast’s North Carolina plans, which it called a $4 billion investment that would create more than 7,000 jobs.

VinFast aims to start delivering cars in the U.S., Canada, France, Germany and the Netherlands in late 2022. Prices for its VF8 and VF9 electric SUVs will range from $41,000 to $61,000. VinFast began domestic deliveries of its first electric cars in December.

Separately, VinFast is exploring a funding round to raise $500 million to $1 billion ahead of its U.S. IPO, Bloomberg News reported last month.

WE 💓SLIME MOLD

Mysterious Slime Mold Acts Like a Multicellular Collective When Feeding

A rare and mysterious slime mold may contain clues about the emergence of multicellularity.


© Marko Kaksonen    F. alba converging on bacteria.

Michelle Starr - Yesterday 

Scientists have found that the typically single-celled species Fonticula alba joins together to form an invasive whole that tears through a bacterial colony at a specific stage of its life cycle, feasting like a single organism. This collective has animal-like properties and behaves like an aggressive cancer.

This discovery could help us to understand how multicellular organisms emerged from the simple, single-celled origins of all life on Earth.

Fonticula alba is a rare and peculiar type of slime mold. It was isolated in 1960 from a sample found in dog feces in Kansas; its life cycle and behavior were subsequently studied in a laboratory where it was cultured.

Like many other slime molds (which are not actually fungi, but members of the protist kingdom, a sort of catch-all group for anything that can't be neatly categorized as animal, vegetable, or fungus), F. alba spends most of its life cycle as a single-celled organism, feeding on bacteria as part of the cycle of decay.

When it comes time to propagate, these single cells aggregate, coming together in a multicellular form to grow volcano-like fruiting bodies that release spores to grow... more F. alba.

It's also unlike other slime molds. F. alba is more closely related to fungi than other slime molds and is categorized under the same clade as fungi.

A team of researchers led by biologist Christopher Toret of the University of Geneva in Switzerland wanted to learn more about the organism's little-studied life cycle, so they set about culturing it in the lab. Although the slime mold can feed on different types of bacteria, a common fecal bacterium called Klebsiella pneumoniae was identified as the optimal co-culture for F. alba back in 1979, so that is what the researchers used.

They grew colonies of K. pneumoniae, and introduced the slime mold at different stages of the bacteria's life cycle. The researchers found something very peculiar and unexpected: towards the end of the bacteria's life, as K. pneumoniae were running out of food, F. alba aggregated into a multicellular state – not to fruit, but to feed on the bacteria.

As the slime mold came together and moved into the bacterial colony, it developed transient cell columns, forming tentacle-like filaments; these were similar to the hyphae we know from fungi which perform a number of functions, including seeking nutrient sources. These filaments performed cooperative search and invasion of the bacterial agar plate to seek out new sources of food.

The slime mold cells came together to form these filaments, with a single 'leader' cell at the tip, and 'follower' cells arranged behind. Somehow, these cells communicate, with the leader cell issuing information to the follower cells.

When the researchers disrupted the leader cell in a tendril using a laser, the follower cells fell into disarray, no longer able to seek out new food sources. The same disarray was not observed when one of the follower cells was disrupted. This suggested that the cells indeed had specific roles in this multicellular state.

This suggests, the researchers said, a previously unconsidered origin for fungal hyphae.

"We suggest a hypothesis where hyphae could have had a direct aggregative origin," the researchers wrote in their paper.

"The last common ancestor of fungi and F. alba may have assembled amoeboid cells into head-to-tail arborized invasive collectives."

Cancer states also use leader-and-follower dynamics for invasion, suggesting that different kinds of cells can display similar behaviors for different reasons. This means F. alba could be a powerful model organism for understanding the emergence of multicellularity as a general concept, the team said.

The research has been published in Current Biology.

Explainer: Russia faces first sovereign external default since the 1917 revolution
Reuters - Yesterday 9:51 a.m.

LONDON — Russia faces its first sovereign external default in over a century after it made arrangements to make an international bond repayment in roubles earlier this week, even though the payment was due in U.S. dollars.


© Provided by National PostA Russian rouble banknote is seen in front of a descending stock graph in this illustration taken March 1, 2022.

Russia has not defaulted on its external debt since the aftermath of its 1917 revolution, but its bonds have now emerged as a flashpoint in its economic tussle with Western countries. A default was unimaginable until recently, with Russia rated as investment grade in the run up to its Feb. 24 invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a “special military operation.”

Sweeping international sanctions have pushed the Russian government to the edge of default and put the world’s biggest energy exporter on track for a deep, two-year recession.

But continuing inflows of energy revenues and tough capital controls — including a ban on foreigners selling Russian assets as well as mandated hard currency sales by exporters — have helped the ruble regain ground. On Friday, Russia’s central bank unexpectedly slashed its key interest rate to 17% from 20% in a sign of confidence that the worst of the financial turmoil triggered by the invasion of Ukraine is past.

CAN RUSSIA PAY?

Russia was due to make a payment of $649 million to holders of two of its sovereign bonds on Monday. But the U.S. Treasury blocked the transfer, preventing Russia from using any of its frozen foreign currency reserves for servicing its debt.

Coming up with an alternative, Russia placed the rouble equivalent of those payments for bondholders from so-called unfriendly nations in special accounts at its National Settlement Depository.

Moscow has a 30-day grace period from the payment date, which was Apr. 4.

Analysts say Russia has the means and ability to pay. The country receives billions in U.S. dollars in revenue from energy exports, and while around half its foreign exchange reserves are frozen, it has hundreds of millions that are not.

Elina Ribakova, deputy chief economist at the Institute of International Finance, said this was likely a “willingness-to-pay situation.”

The U.S. Treasury did not ban correspondence banking with Russia, subject to checks, and has granted a license to allow for payments relating to Moscow servicing sovereign debt until May 25.

All this means it looks like Russia could still make the payment, if it wanted to, according to analysts.

WHAT TYPE OF DEFAULT?

At its most basic level, a default is a breach of contract, though the term can cover a variety of scenarios.

Payment default is a failure to pay principal, interest or other amounts due after the grace period has passed, according to a paper by restructuring experts at the International Monetary Fund.

However, there are also technical defaults due to events such as administrative errors, generally viewed by market participants as minor and swiftly remedied.

Legal experts say payment in the wrong currency, in this case roubles, constitutes a non-payment.

Russia has dismissed the notion of a default.

“In theory, a default situation could be created but this would be a purely artificial situation,” Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday. “There are no grounds for a real default.”

WHO WOULD CALL A DEFAULT?

Markets often look to credit-rating agencies to declare a default has occurred. However, a default is a state of affairs, not a credit rating, and with major ratings agencies having withdrawn ratings on Russia it is unclear what manner of announcements might be made.

A default will have wider ramifications. It could, for example, trigger credit default swaps (CDS) – an insurance policy bought by investors for such a case. A determinations committee will take a view on whether a “non-payment” event has occurred. However, such a decision is generally taken after the grace period has passed.

There are around $6 billion worth of CDS contracts outstanding on Russia.

WHAT ELSE COULD HAPPEN?

Russia could unilaterally declare a moratorium – a temporary or permanent payment stop.

Made as an announcement or legislation separate from the missed payment, a moratorium can come before or after the payment default, according to the IMF.

A government might announce a moratorium as an interim measure to halt payments before launching a debt restructuring, as Mexico did in 1982.

The declaration of a moratorium is also one of the potential triggers for CDS contracts.

WHAT HAPPENS AFTER A DEFAULT?

Debt obligations at risk of, or already in, default are often snapped up by funds specializing in distressed situations, either hoping to make money when a restructuring is eventually worked out or to litigate in courts with the aim of getting compensation or seizing a debtor’s assets instead.

However, litigation and asset seizures are lengthy and costly processes. Many previous attempts have been unsuccessful, such as when creditors tried to seize Argentina’s famous navy vessel, the ARA Libertad, in 2012 over a debt default a decade earlier or Argentine dinosaur fossils exhibited in Europe.

With additional reporting from Bloomberg News

'We're still under shock,' Montreal doctor Liu says of Ukraine train station attack

Katelyn Thomas, Montreal Gazette - Yesterday 

A police officer bends over bodies laid on the ground after a rocket attack killed at least 50 people on April 8, 2022 at a train station in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, that was being used for civilian evacuations.

Earlier this week, Montreal emergency physician Dr. Joanne Liu was in Kramatorsk, Ukraine, helping to load patients onto a medical train that would bring them to hospitals in the western part of the country with Médecins sans frontières.

On Friday, the world was shocked to learn that a Russian missile hit the city’s train station while thousands of people waited to leave in anticipation of a military strike next week. The attack reportedly killed at least 50 people and injured dozens of others, causing mounting pressure on the city’s hospital.

“We’re still under shock,” Liu told the Montreal Gazette on Friday. “Two days and three days ago, I was there evacuating patients. And I knew exactly where it was, I knew exactly the site, I knew the people in the railway station who were working there — so it’s been a tough day.”

The Médecins sans frontières effort to take patients from eastern Ukraine by train, which began last week and is a first for the organization, aims to reduce hospital capacity in areas targeted by the Russian invasion and to ensure safer care for the sick and injured. Medical staff on board provide basic care to patients stable enough to withstand a transfer spanning 20 to 30 hours. In about two weeks, a train dedicated to intensive-care patients will join the fleet.

Liu — a former international president of Médecins sans frontières who works at Ste-Justine Hospital and teaches at McGill University — said patients being sent west are a mix of those injured in the war and people who are ill. That includes patients with conditions affecting their mobility, making it impossible for them to take cover in the basement when an hour-long air siren goes off, which can be as often as three to four times per day.

“We’ve transferred, as well, people from elders homes because … they’re impaired cognitively and they just cannot follow instructions,” Liu said. “So we have transferred a few of those patients, and we have transferred a fair amount of injured people from the conflict.”


© Dave Sidaway

Dr. Joanne Liu, a former international president of Médecins sans frontières who works at Ste-Justine Hospital and teaches at McGill University, says it’s imperative that Ukrainians know they have the attention and support of people around the world.

One patient in particular stood out to Liu, who has been assessing and co-ordinating which ones will be sent west in collaboration with their physicians. It was a child who fled Mariupol and was hit by shrapnel. The extent of his injuries, which included open fractures to all four limbs, made Liu’s team hesitant to transfer him.

“I remember discussing with the ICU doctor, and then I was discussing with the mother and then she just said … ‘My child needs to be transferred. … He needs to keep his legs,’ ” Liu said. “And then I turned towards the child, and I looked at him with an inquiring face, and he looked at me and said: ‘I want to walk. I want to walk again.’ And then the ICU doctor looked at me, and he said: ‘You have to take that child. He’s our hope. He survived to flee Mariupol; he needs to keep his legs. He needs to survive.’ ”

After discussing with her team, an agreement was made to send the child across the country with his ICU nurse from the hospital. The last Liu heard, he was taken to a children’s hospital in Lviv and later to Germany.

“And so it’s a happy ending,” Liu said. “And the thing is, every day I’m basically humbled by the courage and the resilience of Ukrainians.”

Aside from the constant air sirens signalling an aerial threat, the resilience of Ukrainians is what has stood out most to Liu during her time in the country, which has spanned nearly three weeks. She said she can’t compare her time in Ukraine with other crisis situations she has witnessed — they’re all very different — but that the stoicism in Ukraine has struck her.

“Over the last few days, there were general calls for evacuation from the eastern provinces,” she said. “And just to see people hopping in their car, packing up and then lining up … to get food at the market, lining up to get money before going, lining up to get fuel — and then when you say line up, it’s like we’re talking about dozens and dozens and dozens of cars line up and they wait for hours to get 20 litres of gasoline to get moving. And it’s all done in an orderly way — no one’s jumping the line — and I’m just like, ‘Wow, that’s impressive.’ ”


© Maurizio Debanne

Médecins sans frontières workers help patients arriving in Lviv, Ukraine this week.

It’s imperative that Ukrainians know they have the attention and support of people around the world, Liu said.

“That’s what made them keep going,” she said. “So that’s why we need to talk about it. But as Canadians per se, and knowing what has been the public stance of our government in terms of welcoming Ukrainians, we need to make it happen. … We need to live up to our promises for Ukraine.”

Liu added she hopes Ukrainians who have applied for the Canada-Ukraine Authorization for Emergency Travel won’t face any red tape. As of Friday, 119,409 applications had been received, 31,895 of which had been approved so far .

“We need to process those files and we need to process them fast,” Liu said. “And I think that what will make this happen is if the Canadian public is demanding accountability on that and keeping the pressure to make this happen.”

Russia carried out extrajudicial civilian killings in Ukraine, Amnesty International says

Aaron D'Andrea - Thursday

Global News
© Felipe Dana/AP


The Russian military has carried out extrajudicial killings of civilians in Ukraine, Amnesty International said, citing witness accounts of its own.

The advocacy group published new testimony Thursday from civilians living close to the capital of Kyiv in towns and villages that Russian forces had occupied after invading on Feb. 24. Ukrainian forces re-entered the outskirts of the capital over the weekend following the Russian withdrawal.

Read more:

What happened in Bucha, Ukraine? Here’s what you need to know

The civilians interviewed by Amnesty International’s crisis response investigators described deliberate killings, unlawful violence and widespread intimidation by Russian troops across Kyiv’s suburbs.

A 46-year-old woman from the village of Bohdanivka, which is just east of Kyiv, said Russian troops entered her home on March 9 and forced her family into their boiler room, Amnesty International claims.

“They forced us in and slammed the door. After just a minute they opened the door, they asked my husband if he had cigarettes. He said no, he hadn’t smoked for a couple of weeks. They shot him in his right arm. The other said, ‘Finish him,’ and they shot him in the head,” the woman said. Her identity was not published.

“He didn’t die right away. From 9.30 p.m. to 4 a.m. he was still breathing, though he wasn’t conscious. I begged him … ’If you can hear me, please move your finger.’ He didn’t move his finger, but I put his hand on my knee and squeezed it. Blood was flowing out of him. When he took his last breath, I turned to my daughter and said, ‘It seems daddy has died.’”

On March 3 in Vorzel, a village just west of Bucha where hundreds of murdered civilians were reportedly found over the weekend, 18-year-old Kateryna Tkachova told Amnesty she was at home with her parents when they left to go outside into the streets where Russian tanks were.

Tkachova heard gunshots shortly after they left, she said.

“Once the tanks had passed by, I jumped over the fence to the neighbour’s house. I wanted to check if they’re alive,” she told Amnesty International.

“I looked over the fence and saw my mother lying on her back on one side of the road, and my father was face down on the other side of the street. I saw large holes in his coat. The next day I went to them. My father had six large holes in his back, my mother had a smaller hole in her chest.”

Amnesty International’s account is the latest in a string of reports accusing Russia of committing war crimes in its now six-week-long campaign in Ukraine.

Over the weekend, Ukrainian forces and officials discovered what appeared to be the bodies of murdered civilians in the streets of Bucha, a town roughly 30 kilometres west of Kyiv.

Officials said more than 300 people were killed by Russian forces in Bucha alone, and around 50 of them were executed. The German government has satellite images indicating Russia was involved in the killing of civilians in Bucha, a security source said on Thursday.

Read more:

UN votes Russia out of human rights council citing Bucha killings

In nearby Irpin, Russian troops “left behind them many bodies, many destroyed buildings, and they mined many places,” Mayor Oleksandr Merkushev previously told The Associated Press.

Russia has denied all accusations of war crimes.

World leaders have expressed outrage over the discoveries, and the reports sparked the West to introduce fresh sanctions on Russia on Wednesday.

The United States targeted Russian President Vladimir Putin’s adult daughters with new penalties, and banned Americans from investing in Russia. Canada on Tuesday imposed sanctions on nine Russians and nine Belarusians for “having facilitated and enabled violations of Ukraine’s sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence.”

Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly has said that Canada will not let reported atrocities go unpunished.

“That’s exactly why Canada is petitioning the International Criminal Court and we’re also providing expertise to make sure the investigation is ongoing and ongoing fast,” she said on Wednesday.

“Why? Because we need to collect the evidence and those who committed these war crimes and crimes against humanity must be held to account.”

Video: U.S. expects Russia to ‘commit atrocities’: Psaki on Bucha, Ukraine massacre

Agnès Callamard, secretary-general of Amnesty International, said a thorough investigation must take place.

“Testimonies show that unarmed civilians in Ukraine are being killed in their homes and streets in acts of unspeakable cruelty and shocking brutality,” she said in Thursday’s report.

“The intentional killing of civilians is a human rights violation and a war crime. These deaths must be thoroughly investigated, and those responsible must be prosecuted, including up the chain of command.”

Russia sent tens of thousands of troops into Ukraine in February in what it has called a special operation to diminish its southern neighbour’s military capabilities and rid people whom it has called dangerous nationalists.

Ukrainian forces have mounted stiff resistance and the West has imposed serious sanctions on Russia in an effort to force it to withdraw its forces.

Thousands have died since the beginning of the full-scale war, which shows no sign of an immediate end after Russia said Ukraine put forth a peace deal with “unacceptable” elements. Ukraine's top negotiator dismissed that claim on Thursday, telling Reuters it was "pure propaganda."

However, the two sides continue to work out a deal to bring an end to the war.

— with files from Reuters and The Associated Press.