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A Canadian aircraft detected underwater noises in the search area for the missing Titan submersible, the US Coast Guard said early on Wednesday, amid US media reports that regular banging sounds had been picked up.
The discovery yesterday led search teams to relocate their underwater robotic search operations “in an attempt to explore the origin of the noises”, the coastguard said in a series of tweets. The searches by remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) came up empty-handed but would continue, the coastguard said.
Search crews have heard banging sounds at 30-minute intervals, according to US media. The coastguard did not state the nature or extent of the sounds, or how they were picked up.
Authorities are scrambling to find the Titan, which went missing on Sunday during a dive to the wreck of the Titanic. Officials estimated the five people onboard had about 24 hours of breathable air left.
What do we know about the search operation? The US Coast Guard, US Navy and Canadian Coast Guard are coordinating the search with input from OceanGate, the submersible’s operator. Deep Energy, a pipe-laying vessel with underwater capabilities, and Polar Prince, the vessel the Titan launched from, are on the scene. Other craft, including a Canadian vessel with a mobile decompression chamber and the French research ship Atalante, which has an underwater robot that can descend to 4,000 metres, are en route.
Biden calls Chinese president Xi a ‘dictator’ a day after Blinken visit aimed at easing tensions
The US president, Joe Biden, has called the Chinese president, Xi Jinping, a dictator and said Xi was very embarrassed when a Chinese balloon was blown off course over the US earlier this year.
Biden made the remarks one day after the secretary of state, Antony Blinken, met Xi on a trip to China that was aimed at easing tensions between the two countries.
“The reason why Xi Jinping got very upset in terms of when I shot that balloon down with two box cars full of spy equipment in it was he didn’t know it was there,” Biden said at a fundraiser in California yesterday.
“That’s a great embarrassment for dictators. When they didn’t know what happened. That wasn’t supposed to be going where it was. It was blown off course,” Biden added.
A suspected Chinese spy balloon flew over US airspace in February. That incident and exchanges of visits by US and Taiwanese officials have recently magnified US-China tensions.
What has been agreed between the two countries? Blinken and Xi agreed in their Monday meeting to stabilize the intense rivalry between Washington and Beijing so it did not veer into conflict but failed to produce any breakthrough during a rare visit to China by the secretary of state. They did agree to continue diplomatic engagement with more visits by US officials in the coming weeks and months. Biden said later on Tuesday that the US climate envoy, John Kerry, may go to China soon.
Drones intercepted en route to Moscow, Russia says
Two drones have been intercepted on their approach to military warehouses in the Moscow region, Andrei Vorobyov, the governor of the area, has said.
“Debris was found, no damage or casualties,” Vorobyov said, adding that the drones fell near the village of Kalininets. Russia’s channels on the Telegram messaging app, including one with links to the security services, said at least one more drone was intercepted near the village of Lukino.
The country’s Tass news agency has reported, citing unnamed law enforcement sources, that another drone was shot down near Lukino village in Moscow region, according to Reuters. Reuters could not independently verify the reports. It was not immediately known who launched the drones.
In May, drones struck wealthy districts of Moscow, in what Russia said was a Ukrainian attack and one politician called the most dangerous attack on the capital since the second world war.
What has Ukraine said about the drone attacks? Ukraine almost never publicly claims responsibility for attacks inside Russia or on Russian-controlled territory in Ukraine.
What else is happening? The UK has backed $3bn of World Bank loan guarantees to shore up Ukraine’s economic stability, the government announced today. The government is calling the support “the first bilateral package of multi-year fiscal assistance to be set out by a G7 country”.
In other news …
A federal judge struck down Arkansas’ first-in-the-nation ban on gender-affirming care for children as unconstitutional yesterday, the first ruling to overturn such a prohibition as a growing number of Republican-led states adopt similar restrictions.
The political future of one of the big names of the global populist right is on the line this week as Brazilian judges prepare to decide whether Jair Bolsonaro should be banned from running for office. Brazil’s superior electoral court will gather today to consider the first of 16 cases being brought against him.
At least 41 women have been killed – some of them burned to death – after an outbreak of violence between gangs at a prison in Honduras. Authorities found dozens of bodies yesterday at the prison in Tamara, said Yuri Mora, spokesperson for the national police investigation agency.
Hunter Biden, the scandal-plagued son of Joe Biden, is expected to plead guilty to two counts of wilful failure to pay federal income tax, the US justice department has said in a court filing. “I know Hunter believes it is important to take responsibility for these mistakes he made during a period of turmoil and addiction in his life,” his lawyer said.
Stat of the day: gas stoves emit benzene levels 10 to 25 times higher than that from electric coil stoves, US study finds
Using a gas stove can raise indoor concentrations of benzene, a cancer-linked chemical, to above what is found in secondhand smoking or even beyond levels found next to oil and gas facilities, a study has found. The research, which measured benzene levels in 87 homes in California and Colorado, found that gas and propane stoves frequently emitted benzene at rates well above healthy benchmarks set by the World Health Organization and the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Leaving a single gas hob on for 45 minutes raised benzene levels to above that found in secondhand tobacco smoking, or at the boundary of oil and gas plants, with emissions 10 to 25 times higher than those from electric coil stoves.
Don’t miss this: how I found joy in life without children of my own
Some people know they do not want to have children, writes Lucy Handley, but I always did. During my 30s, I was ashamed not to have met someone I wanted to have a family with and felt embarrassed when colleagues asked if I had kids. For a long time, I carried this feeling of shame around with me like a ball and chain. When the UK, where I live, went into lockdown in March 2020, that hope was fading. I sought help from David Edmonds, a life coach who encouraged me to ask myself different questions from those I was stuck on. The first one he suggested was deceivingly simple: “How might I have a great life beyond having kids?” At first I resisted, because asking this meant accepting that it might not happen. But eventually, I started to engage: who would I be if I didn’t become a mother, and how could I feel fulfilled? The future finally held some possibilities, and slowly I decided to start opening up to them.
Climate check: groundbreaking youth-led climate trial comes to an end in Montana
A groundbreaking climate trial came to an early close yesterday as lawyers on each side presented a very different picture of who could be held responsible for the climate crisis. Attorneys representing the lawsuit’s young challengers said Montana officials and agencies must be held accountable for exacerbating the crisis, and thereby violating the plaintiffs’ state constitutional rights. But the defense argued that the climate crisis was a global problem, and that if Montana was contributing to it, plaintiffs should work to change that through the legislature. The trial for Held v Montana began in the state’s first judicial district court in the capital city of Helena last week, marking the first constitutional climate trial in US history. A ruling will now follow from Judge Kathy Seeley, who has been hearing the case, expected in the next few weeks.
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