Russia has accused Wagner Group military contractor Yevgeny Prigozhin of calling for an armed mutiny.

Moscow calls ties 'constructive' in latest spat with Paris as its former colonies turn to Russian military contractors.

The defendant claims Martina Bednarova is a victim of Russian propaganda. The court says losing her job has been punishment enough.

Australia has withdrawn the lease on the site for a new embassy near the parliament for fear of spying.

The United Nations put Russian forces on its annual blacklist of countries that violate children’s rights in conflict for killing boys and girls and attacking schools and hospitals in Ukraine, according to a new report seen Thursday by The Associated Press.

Suspected diplomat was first seen at the site last Sunday and is said to be living in a portable cabin.

Valieva tested positive for the banned substance trimetazidine at the Russian national championships in December 2021.

Could a cyber-attack on a Russian technology company provide a rare insight into a Western hack?

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An expedition to see the remains of the Titanic turned into a tragedy. How did it go so wrong?

First, here are four new stories from The Atlantic:

Why not Whitmer? The ghost of a once era-defining show How the vape shops won Go ahead, try to explain milk.

Lost Contact

The Titan, a submersible vessel carrying passengers to see the ruins of the Titanic, lost contact with its support ship during a dive on Sunday. The ensuing search-and-rescue mission in the Atlantic Ocean covered some 10,000 square miles. This afternoon, OceanGate Expeditions, the tourism and research company running the voyage, announced that it believed that all of the passengers “have sadly been lost.” The U.S. Coast Guard said soon after that debris from the vessel had been found on the ocean floor, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.

The search-and-rescue effort had become a race against the clock, as the vessel was believed to have had about four days’ worth of oxygen on board. Five people were on the expedition: Stockton Rush, OceanGate’s chief executive; Hamish Harding, a British businessman and explorer; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, who had traveled to the Titanic site more than 35 times; Shahzada Dawood, a British-Pakistani businessman; and Suleman Dawood, Shahzada’s 19-year-old son. Suleman was a business student in Glasgow.

Over the past week, alarming reports about the vessel have emerged. As my colleague Marina Koren wrote in a story today about the tragic ending to Sunday’s expedition:

Most concerning of all, it is not clear whether the Titan was inspected for safety by outside experts. In 2018, dozens of industry experts warned OceanGate that if the company didn’t put the Titan through an independent safety assessment, its Titanic expeditions could face potentially “catastrophic” problems. Even OceanGate’s own director of marine operations was at the time worried about “the potential dangers to passengers of the Titan as the submersible reached extreme depths,” The New York Times reported this week. At least one previous dive had problems too: According to Pogue, a Titan expedition last year got lost on the seafloor for about five hours.

Although officials don’t know what caused the disaster or what regulations might have prevented it, OceanGate’s leaders have argued in the past that innovation can be at odds with safety regulations. In a 2019 blog post, the company wrote, “Bringing an outside entity up to speed on every innovation before it is put into real-world testing is anathema to rapid innovation.” (OceanGate did not respond to a request for comment about safety concerns regarding the Titan.)

As Marina noted today, the space-tourism industry often draws attention to the safety measures of its craft—at least in public. (What the companies do in private is another story, she reminds us.) But by comparison, “OceanGate’s public approach to safety seems almost cavalier, less like modern-day space tourism and more reminiscent of the rushed and occasionally ramshackle efforts of the space race,” she writes. In the 2018 open letter from industry experts, more than three dozen people, including oceanographers and industry experts, warned that the company’s “experimental” approach “would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry.”

What those consequences might be remains to be seen. At the news conference earlier today, John Mauger, a rear admiral of the U.S. Coast Guard, acknowledged that many questions linger about how, when, and why this happened. “That’s going to be, I’m sure, the focus of future review,” he said. “Right now, we’re focused on documenting the scene.”

Related:

The Titanic sub and the draw of extreme tourism How could this have happened?

Today’s News

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting with President Joe Biden for a state visit to discuss new partnerships between the two countries. The Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who has been detained by Russian officials on espionage charges that he denies, lost his appeal against pretrial detention. Tropical Storm Bret is nearing the eastern Caribbean, moving at just below the speeds of a Category 1 hurricane.

Dispatches

Up for Debate: Conor Friedersdorf reflects on Joe Rogan, RFK Jr., and the public debates worth having.

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Culture Break

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P.S.

Don’t miss Marina’s piece from earlier this week, also linked above in the “Related” section. Marina, who covers science and space exploration, reflected on the parallels—and differences—between space and deep-sea tourism. “The voyage, as grim as it seems now, is one of many treacherous tourism options for the wealthy,” she wrote.

– Lora

Katherine Hu contributed to this newsletter.