Deep-sea tourism should pause, says scientist who survived a Titanic submersible scare in 2000
Dr. Michael Guillen, a scientist, journalist and author who was the first TV correspondent to report from the Titanic, said he thinks ocean tourism needs to be paused following the deaths of the five people aboard the Titan submersible.
Guillen survived a close call in 2000, when he says the submersible he was in got caught in an underwater current, causing a collision with the propeller of the Titanic wreck.
He said there are two main reasons for taking a pause, based on his experience.
"Number one, the sea is dangerous. This is not a playground. The ocean is restless and I think of it when I was looking at the North Atlantic waters. They're dark, they're cold; they just want to swallow you up if you make the tiniest little mistake," he said in an interview on CNN.
"Second of all, what I took away from my trip down there was that this isn't just a shipwreck. I went down there thinking I'm just going to report on a shipwreck, but what hit me — especially in that moment of prayer, and it came home to me — that people lost their lives. Men, women and children. More than 1,000 of them. This is their final resting place. This is sacred ground," he said.
Paris climate finance summit fails to deliver debt forgiveness plan
Countries in debt distress thrown financial lifeline but critics say measures fall short of what is needed
Poorer countries struggling with a growing debt crisis were thrown a lifeline at a global finance summit in Paris but the plans still fell short of the debt forgiveness programme that some had hoped for.
Progress was made on reforms that would help address the climate emergency, as nearly 40 world leaders and the heads of global institutions met in Paris for the summit, which ended on Friday.
Emmanuel Macron, the French president, called for global taxes on shipping, aviation and potentially on wealth in order to fund climate action. “Help us find all the countries which today have no tax on financial transactions and which today have no tax on plane tickets. Help us to mobilise at the International Maritime Organization [meeting to discuss a shipping tax] in July so that there is international taxation,” he told French broadcast journalists.
German parliament reforms skilled work immigration law
The German parliament has passed legislation to open up new opportunities for job seekers from countries outside the EU and for many refugees who are already in the country. Conservative lawmakers are up in arms.
The Bundestag on Friday (June 23) finally passed a new immigration law reform designed to encourage more people from outside the European Union to come to Germany for work.
"This draft law secures prosperity in Germany," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser of the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) said as she presented the government's plan in the chamber in the morning, though she added that it would only work if the bureaucratic hurdles were dismantled during its implementation.
"It's unacceptable that you have to fill in 17 different applications to bring a new care worker into the country," she said.
Israel admits failings over attacks on Palestinians
The Israeli army acknowledged Friday it "failed" to prevent an attack by Jewish settlers on a Palestinian village in the occupied West Bank, during which one villager was killed.
Revenge attacks on Turmus Ayya and other villages followed the killing of four Israelis by Palestinian gunmen on Tuesday, which militant group Hamas said was in response to an Israeli army raid on Jenin refugee camp which killed six Palestinians the previous day.
Army spokesman Daniel Hagari said troops had tried to prevent Israelis from attacking Turmus Ayya but they were stretched too thin.
"We didn't have, in the first wave, enough forces in the area they chose," he told journalists on Friday.
"We failed this time," Hagari added.
Record number of people with dementia went missing in 2022
By HIDEMASA YOSHIZAWA/ Staff Writer
June 23, 2023 at 18:41 JST
A record 18,709 people with dementia became lost in Japan in 2022, up 1,073 from the previous year, but most of them were soon found, according to the National Police Agency.
The latest figure was the 10th consecutive year of increase since 2012, when the agency started counting the cases.
Over that decade, the number of such cases has jumped by 95 percent due mainly to the rapidly aging population, according to the NPA.
By the end of 2022, 17,923 missing people were found alive.
In fact, 77.5 percent were discovered on the same day police received the missing-persons reports, and 99.6 percent turned up within a week.
Ukraine commander says main offensive reserve yet to be sent into battle
Exclusive: Head of ground forces says ‘everything is still ahead’ in counteroffensive against Russia
The commander of Ukraine’s ground forces has confirmed for the first time that the main force of his offensive reserve is yet to be committed into battle with Russia, saying: “Everything is still ahead.”
In an exclusive interview from a military base in east Ukraine, Col Gen Oleksandr Syrskyi spoke of the stresses and difficulties of the fight, with Moscow launching its own offensive efforts in recent days.
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