Almost every shallow-water coral reef on the planet, including Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, faces a high risk of ecosystem collapse before 2075 because of global heating, according to an assessment by United Nations nature advisers.
About 24% of the planet’s reefs across more than 80 countries are already critically endangered, the assessment said, but when the expected impacts of global heating were added this rose to 96%.
OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush built the Titan submersible to implode on its dive to the Titanic wreck so he could become part of "Titanic mythology," a longtime friend claimed, saying it was a "mousetrap for billionaires."
Karl Stanley, a commercial submersible expert and longtime friend of Rush, made the claim in author Matthew Gavin Frank’s new book, "Submersed: Wonder, Obsession and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines."
"[Rush’s] ego was so big," Stanley told Frank, "he was willing to die and kill to be the pivotal character of this story. He wanted to go [die] at the wreck [of Titanic]. The more high-profile, the better. He didn’t just murder four wealthy people and get paid a cool mill to do it — they are all part of the Titanic mythology."
The Titan lost contact with its support ship on June 18, 2023, while it was descending to see the Titanic wreckage in the North Atlantic, which sparked a multinational search. Debris was found four days later, and officials announced the Titan had imploded, killing all five people onboard: Rush, Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Hamish Harding, and Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman.
Passengers paid up to $250,000 to be onboard the Titan.
Frank wrote that Rush's ambitions went well beyond his own death, saying that the name Titan, which was borrowed from the doomed ocean liner in Morgan Robertson’s 1898 novel "Futility," was done intentionally. That novel features a fictional British ocean liner named "Titan" that strikes an iceberg, drawing a parallel to the fate of the Titanic.
"According to Stanley, in order to extend, and to be a part of this larger story, Rush needed to compel more than just his own death, and he needed to knowingly fabricate a 'futile' vessel, costumed in a titanic name, as his murder weapon," Frank wrote.
"You believe that Rush knew the sub was going to implode — actually intended it to — and that he killed everyone onboard, himself included, to best become part of the ongoing Titanic mythology?" Frank asked Stanley.
Stanley also alleged that "most everyone" who worked for OceanGate knew what would happen to the Titan, and "all of them are s---ting their pants" after the implosion.
Brandi Young, a former federal and state prosecutor, told Fox News Digital that a first-degree murder charge would have been difficult to prove because Rush was risking his own life on the dive, saying a manslaughter charge would have been more likely.
"There’d be an argument to be made that perhaps second-degree murder, showing just reckless, extreme disregard, something that’s heightened over manslaughter, that potentially might be an avenue," said Young. "You have a lot of direct evidence of just the pure recklessness of someone going forward with complete disregard for the other human life."
These yachts are highly popular with the ‘super-bourgeoisie’ – and getting bigger. Can anything be done to stop them destroying our seas?
Who knew? Apparently everyone did, apart from me: you don’t wear shoes on a superyacht. Now, about to step on to my first teak deck at the Monaco Yacht Show, I’ve got to take my trainers off, and I’m having a sock panic. Have they got holes? Do they even match? Do they smell?
To be honest, I’ve come dressed all wrong for Europe’s big annual superyacht trade exhibition. The code for men seems to be crisp and tucked in, blazers and chinos, navy and white, sculpted hair and designer sunnies. (I went colourful, loose, casual). For women, it’s something like Riviera elegance. Everyone – whether they’re Italian, French, English, German, American, exhibitors, buyers, brokers, charterers – seems to know each other. The international superyacht community seems to be a close-knit one, and I’m not part of it. Yet.
In 2022, I helped push through the international agreement to protect biodiversity. Wars and economic pressures can make nature seem like a ‘nice-to-have’. But it is a critical asset, and Cop17 must deliver real action
When I was five, property developers came to cut down the woods behind my home in La Tuque, Quebec. My mother encouraged me to climb one of the trees in protest, then told the developers, straight-faced, that there was nothing she could do when they asked her to get me down. A few days later, the tree was cut down anyway.
I thought about that tree in the early hours of a freezing Montreal morning in December 2022, as the gavel came down on a global agreement between nearly 200 countries to halt and reverse the loss of nature by 2030. I thought about how important nature is for our health, our food security and our economies, but also how much passion there is around protecting it, and how it has the power to inspire people all around the world.
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