THE NEW 'CHINA'

Micron confirms up to $825 million investment in India chip facility

Reuters
Thu, June 22, 2023 

 The company logo is seen on the Micron Technology Inc. offices in Shanghai

OAKLAND, California (Reuters) - U.S. memory chip firm Micron Technology, Inc said on Thursday it would invest up to $825 million in a new chip assembly and test facility in Gujarat, India, its first factory in the country.

Micron said that with support from the Indian central government and from the state of Gujarat, the total investment in the facility will be $2.75 billion. Of that total, 50% will come from the Indian central government and 20% from the state of Gujarat.

Reuters reported earlier this week that India's Cabinet approved the project ahead of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's state visit to the U.S., which kicked off on Wednesday.

Micron said construction of the new facility in Gujarat is expected to begin in 2023 and the first phase of the project will be operational in late 2024. A second phase of the project is expected to start toward the second half of the decade, it said. The two phases together will create up to 5,000 new direct Micron jobs.

(Reporting By Jane Lanhee Lee in Oakland, California; Editing by Leslie Adler)

Applied Materials to invest $400 million in India for new engineering center

Reuters
Thu, June 22, 2023

Illustration shows Applied Materials logo

(Reuters) -U.S. semiconductor toolmaker Applied Materials will invest $400 million over four years in a new engineering center in India, the company said on Thursday.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi had met with the company's CEO Gary Dickerson in Washington on Wednesday and invited Applied to strengthen the chip industry in the country.

Applied's investment is among a flurry of announcements this week including General Electric's deal to jointly produce jet engines for the military with state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and data storage chipmaker Micron's $825 million investment to build a new factory in India.

Modi also met Tesla CEO Elon Musk after which the automaker's top boss said the company will try to be in India "as soon as humanly possible."

The new center is expected to be located near the company's existing facility in Bengaluru and is likely to support more than $2 billion of planned investments and create 500 new advanced engineering jobs, the company said.

Applied currently operates across six sites in India and works closely with Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore and the Indian Institute of Technology in Mumbai, two of the country's prestigious institutions.

(Reporting by Akash Sriram in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva, Sriraj Kalluvila and Shailesh Kuber)

GEMOLOGY
Why Modi Gifted a 7.5-Carat Lab-Grown Diamond to Jill Biden


Anna Gordon
Thu, June 22, 2023 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi gifts to the U.S. First Lady Dr. Jill Biden a lab-grown 7.5-carat green diamond in the presence of the U.S. President Joe Biden at the White House on June 22, 2023. Credit - ANI/Reuters

During his visit to the U.S. this week, India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi presented President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden multiple gifts on Wednesday. But the most interesting among them was a papier mache box containing a 7.5 carat synthetic green diamond.

The lab-grown diamond (LGD) is at the heart of India’s bid to become a global leader in producing the synthetic alternative, which has a much smaller carbon footprint than mined diamonds, and is seen as “conflict free.”

According to India Today, the production of the diamond gifted to the Bidens produced just 0.028 grams of Co2 per carat, which is over 100,000 times less emissions per carat than the production of the average mined diamond.

What are LGDs, a.k.a. lab-grown diamonds?

Lab-grown diamonds are jewels with the same chemical properties as mined diamonds, containing pure carbon that is crystallized into an isotropic form. In nature, diamonds are created when carbon deposits deep underground—usually 95 to 125 miles below the surface—are subjected to extreme pressure and heat. Scientists believe that it can take over 1 billion years to form a diamond in natural circumstances. However, in laboratory settings, the production process is much faster.

According to Queensmith, a U.K.-based jeweller, there are two ways to create LGDs. The first way, referred to as the chemical vapor deposition (CVD) method, involves the use of a small, already formed diamond. The slice of diamond is placed in a chamber where it is exposed to carbon rich gas and extremely high temperatures. Over the course of several weeks, the carbon gas ionizes and sticks to the original diamond slice. This leads the diamond to grow in size and creates new diamond material.

The second method, known as high pressure high temperature method (HPHT), does not require a pre-existing diamond slice. In this method, pure carbon is pressed through a metal cube and exposed to high electrical heat at the same time. This mimics the settings that carbon deposits in natural environments experience to become diamonds. Because carbon is an abundant resource, this method does not require the intense and dangerous labor that diamond mining requires, which many believe makes lab grown diamonds more ethical and sustainable.

Why is India expanding its LGD program?

From 2018 to 2021, India more than quadrupled the dollar value of its polished synthetic diamond exports, going from $274 million to $1.29 billion in sales.

This year, India’s finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced that the government would subsidize research and development costs in the LGD industry by providing a grant to one of the Indian Institutes of Technology for five years.

“Lab-grown diamonds is a technology and innovation sector with high employment potential,” Sitharaman said in her speech. “These are environmentally-friendly diamonds which have optically and chemically the same properties as natural diamonds.”

Currently, India produces 15% of all LGDs in the world, according to India’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry. China is believed to be the leading producer of them around the world, accounting for 50% of the global market share. According to Allied Market Research, the industry was worth $22.3 billion in 2021, and is expected to more than double over the next decade to $55.6 billion.
Why are LGDs important?

Diamonds are used for many purposes, not just jewelry. In fact, 80% of the world’s diamonds are used for industrial purposes. Because diamond is an incredibly sturdy material, it is frequently used in electronics that are designed to last for a long time, like high-end speakers or satellites. Diamonds are also important for dentistry tools, since they are one of the few substances that can easily drill into teeth. The substance is also used in countless other industrial applications that require extremely strong materials.

LGDs are on average cheaper than mined diamonds by 30-40%. They are less likely to rely on dangerous and exploitative labor practices and do not harm the natural habitat in the way mining frequently does.

Modi’s White House visit highlights deep diaspora divides



Sakshi Venkatraman
Wed, June 21, 2023 


Many South Asian Americans have mixed feelings as they prepare themselves for Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s state visit to the White House this week.

As some get ready to gather in Washington, D.C., both to welcome and protest him, data from a 2021 study underscores just how torn the diaspora is when it comes to the controversial leader — and it shows that his popularity among Indian Americans falls short of how he is received in India.

This week marks Modi’s first official state visit to the U.S., which had not invited an Indian prime minister since 2009. Modi was once banned from the U.S. for the role he allegedly played in the deadly Gujarat riots, in which 1,000 people, most of them Muslims, were killed.

For many community leaders, a historic moment is severely marred by that and other aspects of Modi’s human rights record, including censoring journalists and stripping autonomy from the region of Kashmir.

“For this kind of a ruler to be invited to a state dinner by an American president and to be given an opportunity to speak to a joint session of Congress, where he’s going to talk about the ideals of democracy, is just mind-boggling,” said Ajit Sahi, the advocacy director for the Indian American Muslim Council.

The study, conducted by the Carnegie Endowment, found that Modi’s approval rating is much lower among Indian Americans (50%) than among Indians living in India (77%). Dozens of lawmakers in both houses of Congress signed a letter urging President Joe Biden to address human rights concerns with Modi during his visit.

“This is an important relationship that we need to continue and build on as it relates to human rights,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said at a briefing last month.

Sahi said that though Hindu nationalist sentiment in diaspora communities cannot be ignored, he thinks college-educated young people who grew up in the U.S. are distancing themselves from Modi’s politics.

“The American values of liberalism, progressivism, equality for all, justice for all, equality before the law, I think these are the things that more or less get deeply rooted in the psyche, especially if you were born and raised here,” he said.

But the diaspora in the U.S. is still split down the middle in terms of support for Modi. According to the study, 49% of Indian Americans rate his performance favorably, either strongly approving or approving of him; 31% disapprove of his performance; and 20% expressed no opinion on him at all.

“It’s a polarized space,” said Sunita Viswanath, a co-founder of the civil rights group Hindus for Human Rights. “There’s very little scope for bridge-building. ... On the one hand, you have this mainstream Hindu response, which is that India’s national leader is coming to town and is being greeted by the American president with a state dinner, and that puts India on the map.”

On the other hand, those in minority religions and castes oppressed in India say the visit feels as though the U.S. is validating the structural bias their families face, Viswanath said. Many in diaspora spaces say that bias has followed them.

“Inclusive secular democracy means the right for all the different religions to exist and practice freely,” she said. “We are Hindus, we are proud Hindus, but our Hinduism and our devotion to secular democracy, whether it’s in America, where most of us live, or in India, where most of us are from, that is what is motivating us.”

As South Asians in both camps plan to assemble in Washington throughout Modi’s three-day visit, some national organizations are urging Biden to address his recent actions.

The Committee to Protect Journalists issued a statement last week denouncing Modi’s media crackdown and the arrests of journalists since he came to power in 2014.

“Journalists critical of the government and the BJP party have been jailed, harassed, and surveilled in retaliation for their work,” CPJ President Jodie Ginsberg said in the statement. “India is the world’s largest democracy, and it needs to live up to that by ensuring a free and independent media — and we expect the United States to make this a core element of discussions.”

The Hindu American Foundation declined to comment on Modi’s visit. Overseas Friends of the BJP, an international arm of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party, did not respond to requests for comment.

The Council on American Islamic Relations released a video and a petition opposing Modi’s visit to address a joint session of Congress on Thursday because of his anti-Muslim, anti-Dalit and anti-Sikh policies.

“The evidence of Modi’s expanding effort to place a boot firmly on the collective heads of India’s religious minorities is extensive,” the petition said.

Though it’s hard to predict how many Indian Americans will gather outside the White House, Modi’s 2019 trip to the U.S. drew over 50,000 to Houston for a rally called “Howdy Modi.” President Donald Trump co-hosted the event, calling it a “profoundly historic event.”

Viswanath remembers the experience four years ago, protesting outside the stadium as fellow Indian Americans poured inside.

“I was holding my sign, and people were streaming into the stadium dressed in their finest,” she said. “They looked like me. They looked like my family. It was one of those moments where I’m grateful I’m on this side of history. … Our deep hope, our ardent hope, is that as we build this space, Hindus will join us.”

This article was originally published on NBCNews.com

SEE

HINDUTVA IS FASCISM

Ancient finger painting? 57,000-year-old marks in cave are from Neanderthals, study says

Moira Ritter
Thu, June 22, 2023 

Our closest extinct human relative, Neanderthals, roamed Europe and Asia until about 40,000 years ago.

Since their discovery in the 1800s, experts have understood Neanderthals as having limited capacity for thinking beyond staying alive. But a recent discovery is calling this idea into question.

Scientists found the oldest known Neanderthal cave engravings — dating back at least 57, 000 years — inside a cave in France, according to a study published June 21 in PLOS One.

“For a long time it was thought that Neanderthals were incapable of thinking other than to ensure their subsistence,” archaeologist and study co-author Jean-Claude Marquet, of the University of Tours, France, told Smithsonian Magazine. “I think this discovery should lead prehistorians who have doubts about Neanderthal skills to reconsider.”
La Roche-Cotard

The engravings were discovered in La Roche-Cotard, an ancient cave that was first found in 1846, according to the study. Before then, the cave had been blocked by sediment for at least 51,000 years most likely preventing any access to the inside by modern people.

Since it was rediscovered, archaeologists have uncovered animal remains, tools and the organized finger tracings.

The site is located in France’s Touraine region, about 150 miles southwest of Paris.
‘Intentional and meticulous’ Neanderthal marks

Starting in 2016, experts began to more closely analyze the finger marks, and they now believe the engravings were “neither accidental nor utilitarian, but rather...intentional and meticulous.” The graphics were made only on certain surfaces throughout the cave, often following the shape of the walls and getting progressively more complex, the study explained.

Experts said it is impossible to determine the meaning behind the markings. M. Calligaro

Experts were able to determine the age of tools that were used at the site before it was sealed, which they said helped them determine the age of engravings.

The markings on the wall is “one of the most remarkable aspects” discovered at La Roche-Cotard, the study authors said. While some graphic evidence exists from Neanderthals, this evidence is mostly in the form of “mobile” objects, like pebbles, slabs or bones.

Scientists said the finger markings followed the shape of the cave’s walls. O. Spaey and G. Alain

The finger marks were found among animal marks on the walls, experts said. J. Esquerre and H. Lombard

The discoveries of the markings at La Roche-Cotard demonstrate the organized “repetition of thoughtful gestures” that was carried out with intent, according to experts.
Lingering questions

Although experts determined the age and origin of the markings, they are unable to discern the meaning behind the engravings.

Current research indicates that figurative and symbolic art did not exist yet during the time the markings were made, the authors said. However, the find is still significant.

Experts determined that the finger markings moved in various directions along the walls. O. Spaey and G. Alain

“Although the finger tracings at La Roche-Cotard are clearly intentional, it is not possible for us to establish if they represent symbolic thinking,” the authors wrote in the study. “Nevertheless, our understanding of the relationship between Neanderthals and the symbolic and even aesthetic realms has undergone a significant transformation over the past two decades and the traces preserved in the cave of La Roche-Cotard make a new and very important contribution to our knowledge of Neanderthal behaviour.”

SECOND WARNING

Newcrest Seeks to Address Gold Mine Air Pollution After Warning

Sybilla Gross
Thu, June 22, 2023 



(Bloomberg) -- Australian gold miner Newcrest Mining Ltd. is installing filters in the vent shafts at one of its largest mines, after this week being told by authorities to immediately address the “unacceptable” levels of dust being emitted from the site.

The warning is the second the Melbourne-based company, which is being taken over by Newmont Corp., has received this year from the New South Wales state government’s Environment Protection Authority. In May, the authority launched an investigation into Newcrest’s efforts to manage air pollution near its Cadia mine following complaints from nearby residents.

Recent testing showed that Newcrest, Australia’s top gold producer, had fallen “well short” of its legal obligations to meet clean air standards at Cadia, the EPA said Wednesday.

“If Newcrest cannot show its subsidiary is taking immediate action to comply, the EPA will take appropriate action which could include suspension of the license, seeking court orders or issuing further directions,” EPA Chief Executive Officer Tony Chappel said in a statement. “We require the mine to take all necessary steps to ensure dust emissions are significantly reduced and this may include a reduction in production.”

There has been no impact to production due to the issue, a Newcrest spokesperson said, adding that the company has implemented interim measures to comply with EPA regulations and continues to focus on dust mitigation equipment, including the installation of filters.

Newcrest was fined A$15,000 ($10,000) last August for failing to effectively mitigate dust pollution at Cadia, which is forecast to produce at least 560,000 ounces in fiscal 2023. The bullish prospects for the mine helped draw acquisition interest from US gold giant Newmont, which sealed its near-$20 billion purchase in May.

Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek

CRIMINAL CAPITALI$M

PwC Australia in talks to spin off units damaged by scandal - source

Lewis Jackson and Scott Murdoch
Fri, June 23, 2023 

 Logo of Price Waterhouse Coopers at office in Berlin


By Lewis Jackson and Scott Murdoch

SYDNEY (Reuters) -PricewaterhouseCoopers Australia is looking to sell its government, education and healthcare practice to private equity firm Allegro Funds, according to a person familiar with the matter, as the firm battles the fall out from a major scandal.

The scandal, which first broke in January, centres around a former PwC tax partner who had been advising the federal government on laws to prevent corporate tax avoidance and shared confidential information with colleagues who then used it to pitch to multinational companies for work.

While the scandal began in PwC's tax practice it has tainted the more lucrative government consulting business as a growing number of departments and organisations, including the Reserve Bank of Australia, pause or review work with the "big four" professional services firm.

A term sheet for a potential deal has been drawn up, the Australian Financial Review said when it first reported the story on Friday.

The sale could include roughly 100 partners and 1,000 staff, or 10% of the firm, the AFR added. PwC Australia made A$3 billion ($2.01 billion) in revenue last financial year.

A spokesperson said PwC does not comment on market speculation when asked for a response. Allegro Funds did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The person familiar with the sale plan could not be named as the information had not yet been made public.

Allegro Funds describes itself as a restructuring specialist with over A$4 billion ($2.68 billion) under management.

Acting PwC Australia chief executive Kristin Stubbins said last month the firm would "ringfence" its government consulting business and appoint a separate board to consider "strategic options for the business".

In a sign the scandal is beginning to impact PwC's private sector work, four major pension funds managing roughly A$750 billion froze work with the firm this month.

($1 = 1.4914 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Lewis Jackson; Editing by Lincoln Feast & Simon Cameron-Moore)

Thai Finance Chief Seeks Speedy Probe Into Stark Irregularities

Anuchit Nguyen
Thu, June 22, 2023 




(Bloomberg) -- Thai regulators must speed up investigations of suspected accounting irregularities at Stark Corp. Pcl that’s triggered the nation’s biggest bond default in three years to restore investor confidence, according to Finance Minister Arkhom Termpittayapaisith.

The Securities & Exchange Commission and Stock Exchange of Thailand have been asked to quickly conclude their probe, Arkhom told reporters in Bangkok. Law enforcement agencies must bring charges against all individuals found to be in breach of laws, he said after meeting with officials from the SEC and the stock exchange about Stark on Thursday.

Investors have been hit by a slump in Stark Corp.’s shares that’s seen its market capitalization plummet to about $11 million from this year’s peak of $1.2 billion. The electric cables maker has defaulted on its bonds and a special audit revealed accounting irregularities in the past two years that’s left it with liabilities exceeding assets.

The Stark turmoil has also weighed on the broader market with investor sentiment already weakening over the delay in a pro-democracy coalition’s ability to muster enough support to form a government after last month’s general election. The benchmark SET index is down 9.6% this year, the biggest decliner in Asia, and closed at its lowest level since March 2021 on Thursday.

A quick resolution to the Stark is important “to rebuild investors’ confidence,” Arkhom said late Thursday. The SEC and the exchange were also ordered to improve their supervision of listed companies to quickly detect any irregularities, he said.

The Department of Special Investigation has agreed to investigate allegations of fraud by some of its former executives, Bangkok Post reported, citing Director-General Suriya Singhakamol. There is evidence suggesting Stark’s executives violated Securities and Exchange Act, the newspaper reported.

JPMorgan Chase is fined by SEC after mistakenly deleting 47 million emails



Thu, June 22, 2023 
By Jonathan Stempel

NEW YORK (Reuters) -JPMorgan Chase has been fined $4 million by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission after about 47 million emails belonging to its retail banking group were mistakenly and permanently deleted.

The emails dated from Jan. 1 to April 23, 2018, and were deleted in June 2019 from about 8,700 mailboxes, including those belonging to as many as 7,500 employees who regularly worked with customers.

Many of the emails were business records that the largest U.S. bank was required under SEC rules to keep for three years.

The deletions occurred after JPMorgan's corporate compliance technology department, which had been trying unsuccessfully to delete some communications from the 1970s and 1980s, sought help from an outside vendor managing the bank's email storage.

According to a cease-and-desist order, the vendor failed to properly apply the three-year retention setting to "Chase" emails from early 2018.

"As a result, the troubleshooting exercise permanently deleted all of the emails in that domain from that period which were not subject to legal holds," the order said.

JPMorgan, which is based in New York, did not admit or deny wrongdoing in agreeing to the civil settlement. It has adopted its own email coding procedures to avoid a recurrence.

"JPMorgan takes its record-keeping obligations seriously," the bank said in a statement.

According to the SEC, JPMorgan has been unable in at least 12 civil securities-related regulatory probes to comply with subpoenas and document requests for communications that had been permanently deleted.

(Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Jonathan Oatis)

OceanGate CEO was sued by couple claiming fraud months before Titanic submarine went missing

Bevan Hurley
Wed, June 21, 2023 

The CEO of OceanGate Expeditions, one of five crew members onboard the company’s missing submersible Titan, was sued for fraud by a Florida couple who claimed their planned deep-sea voyage to the Titanic was repeatedly cancelled and attempts to secure a refund were ignored.

Marc and Sharon Hagle filed a lawsuit in Orange County in February that accused CEO Stockton Rush of defrauding them of $210,258 which they paid to secure two berths on a 2018 trip to the famed North Atlantic shipwreck.

The Hagles allege that they signed a contract and paid deposits in November 2016 to become one of the first of OceanGate’s paying customers soon after the Titanic expeditions were first publicised.

Explaining his motivation in an interview with Reuters in 2017, Mr Hagle said: “One of our personal goals in life is to not be sitting around in a rocking chair when we are 100 years old saying, ‘I wish I had done that.’”

In mid-2017, the Hagles became suspicious that the submersible vessel, then known as the Cyclops 2, was not going to be ready by the planned departure date, according to the lawsuit.

The court filing states that the Hagles wanted to pull out of the expedition, and requested a refund of their $20,000 deposits.

They claim that Mr Rush visited them at their Florida home in September 2017 to convince them the trip would be going ahead as planned.

A Florida couple allege OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush misled them about a planned Titanic expedition (OceanGate)

Mr Rush described “what could be expected during the adventure”, they claimed.

He allegedly said passengers would be free to move around inside the submersible and take turns at the viewing portal.

“Rush knew that if Plaintiffs requested a refund of their Deposit and withdrew from the Expedition others may follow,” the lawsuit states.

The Cyclops 2 was undertaking deep dive testing in the Bahamas at the time, and the Hagles allege they were invited to join Mr Rush on an excursion.

Marc and Sharon Hagle claimed in a lawsuit that they were promised by Mr Rush that the OceanGate Expeditions submersible vessel Titan would be ready to visit the Titanic wreck site in 2018 (PA Media)

The Hagles further stated that Mr Rush made “false representations” that the vessel would be ready to dive to the Titanic by June 2018, and convinced them to sign a second contract pay the full $105,129 per-person fee.

The promised trip to the Titanic wreck in 2018 was later cancelled as OceanGate had not had sufficient time to certify the Titan to travel to the 4,000m depth, the Hagles said.

A subsequent trip in 2019 was also cancelled after a support vessel pulled out. Then in late 2019, the rescheduled 2020 expedition was abruptly cancelled, the Hagles claim.

The couple said their repeated efforts to get a refund were denied, and they were later told that if they refused to go on the 2021 expedition they would lose their money.

The case has not had any activity since it was filed in February.

An OceanGate Expeditions spokesperson told The Independent they had no comment about the lawsuit.

When reached for comment by the Daily Beast, Mr Hagle said: “My thoughts go out to the owners of OceanGate, the people that are on the submersible, both the crew and the guests. And we’re hoping for a miracle and that everybody comes home safely.

“I think the pleadings speak for themselves.”

Mr Rush, British billionaire explorer Hamish Harding, French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood and his son, Suleman Dawood, are missing aboard the Titan, which lost contact with a support vessel on Sunday morning.

An extensive search and rescue effort has so far failed to find any sign of the submersible vessel.

BECAUSE OF COURSE THEY ARE
Conservatives Are Now Blaming The Titanic Sub Tragedy On 'Wokeness'



Nathalie Baptiste
Thu, June 22, 2023 

On Sunday, the submersible Titan went missing far off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada, in the North Atlantic ocean. The tourist expedition, led by OceanGate, a company that runs submersible trips for tourism and exploration, was supposed to take five men to view the shipwreck of the Titanic, nearly 13,000 feet below sea level.

A search for the sub, which included OceanGate Expeditions CEO Stockton Rush onboard, is now over after debris from the vessel was located following an apparent “catastrophic implosion,” the U.S. Coast Guard said Thursday.

As the U.S. and Canadian governments shelled out funds in the rescue and recovery effort, the media reported on a series of safety concerns that most likely led to the sub going missing.

But conservatives had another theory. Could the sub have disappeared because OceanGate’s CEO went “woke”?

Wokeness has become a new boogeyman for the right, and no one is safe —even in a case like this, with five people believed to have lost their lives in the deep sea.

Being woke once meant being aware of social injustices, but conservatives have appropriated it to refer to anything that they disagree with or that has a hint of liberalism. It’s often used as a not-very-subtle replacement for racial slurs.

On Wednesday afternoon, Fox News’ Jesse Watters suggested on the network’s show “The Five” that the men may have perished in the sub because Rush was too woke.

“There’s been lawsuits, there’s been accusations about slashing regulations. He’s quoted as saying he didn’t hire a bunch of 50-year-old white guys with military experience because he didn’t want his vessels to be not inspirational for a younger generation,” Watters said, referring to the OceanGate CEO previously stating that he didn’t want to hire older white men.

“I don’t care who is in these vessels, I just want them to be experienced and safe. And if you’re gonna be woke, you might have to —” Watters said before cutting himself off. (A popular slogan on the right is “Go woke, go broke.”)

OceanGate had been sued by a former employee who warned about safety issues, and it seemingly ignored experts who said the vessel’s trips could be catastrophic. But right-wingers, increasingly obsessed with labeling anyone and anything as woke, decided to focus on Rush supposedly not employing enough white men.

This week, the New York Post ran a story about Rush’s comments on not wanting to hire “white guys,” hinting that perhaps the expedition would have gone differently if he had.

On Twitter, some were more explicit in their claims.

“Wokeness killed the people on that submarine,” one user tweeted. “Let that sink in. They died because the woke CEO said he wouldn’t hire 50 year-old white men who knew how to command submarines and would rather train others.”

The tweet concluded: “The CEO died too. That’s the next level of ‘go woke, go broke.’”

OceanGate joins a long list of the accused. Earlier this year, Republicans blamed wokeness when Silicon Valley Bank collapsed — because it had a Black person and two members of the LGBTQ+ community on its board.

Bud Light has been accused of going woke because of a one-off partnership with transgender TikTok influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Target has been vilified for displaying Pride merchandise. Chick-fil-A and Cracker Barrel have suffered the same fate for having staffers tasked with diversity, equity and inclusion efforts at work.

But by the GOP’s own definition, it would be a stretch to blame wokeness for the Titan tragedy.

If anything, a CEO allegedly ignoring experts and choosing to hire inexperienced workers in lieu of higher-paid ones, while also donating to GOP candidates, is the opposite of wokeness. That all seems in line with standard operating procedures for the wealthy.

But wokeness has become such a pervasive party of right-wing ideology that it’s not just progressive ideals getting slapped with the label anymore — CEOs who plan ill-advised trips to the bottom of the ocean now qualify, too.

The Navy first detected the Titan sub's implosion soon after it went missing: WSJ

A senior Navy official said the service does not usually make the information public until the search for survivors ends conclusively. 

Erin Snodgrass,Lloyd Lee
Thu, June 22, 2023 

An undated photo shows a tourist submersible belongs to OceanGate at sea.Ocean Gate / Handout/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

The Navy detected the Titan's implosion soon after it lost contact, per The Wall Street Journal.


Defense officials told the outlet the Navy began listening for the vessel right after it went missing.


A top-secret detection system used to find enemy submarines registered the sound.

At least some in the upper echelons of the US military were aware of the Titan submersible's fate days before the rest of the world, according to a Wall Street Journal report.

The US Navy first detected the sound of the Titan's likely implosion soon after the vessel lost contact with its mothership on Sunday while on an exploratory dive to the Titanic shipwreck more than two miles beneath the surface, The Journal reported Thursday.

A top secret acoustic detection system that is used by the Navy to identify enemy submarines first registered the sound of an implosion near the since-discovered debris site on Sunday, US defense officials told the outlet.

The Navy did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.

Navy officials began searching for sounds from the missing Titan almost immediately after it lost contact, according to the newspaper.

"The U.S. Navy conducted an analysis of acoustic data and detected an anomaly consistent with an implosion or explosion in the general vicinity of where the Titan submersible was operating when communications were lost," a senior U.S. Navy official told the Journal. "While not definitive, this information was immediately shared with the Incident Commander to assist with the ongoing search and rescue mission."

A senior Navy official told the Washington Post the service does not usually make the information public until the search for survivors ends conclusively. Until then, it's nothing more than a "data point."

The fact that the Navy detected the sounds — and withheld the information from the public for five days wasn't surprising given the US's decades-long history of using devices to detect underwater activity, Mark Cancian, a senior adviser with the Center for Strategic and International Studies, told the Post.

"I would be surprised if they hadn't heard it," he said."They suspected what happened but couldn't be sure. What you're looking at is just lines on a graph. And if you try to convince people you weren't doing a search because the lines on a graph indicated an implosion, that wouldn't be acceptable to many."

Coast Guard officials on Thursday said the Titan appears to have suffered a "catastrophic loss of the pressure chamber," imploding and shattering its debris 1,600 feet from the famous shipwreck.

The five passengers' death would have been instantaneous, Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney whose lab works with uncrewed submersibles, previously told Insider.

Coast Guard Rear Adm. John Mauger said at the press conference that the implosion would have "generated significant broadband sound down there that the sonar buoys would have picked up."

Officials told the Journal that the Navy couldn't definitively conclude that the sound detected on its system came from the Titan, but the signal helped narrow the scope of the search.

The search for the vessel prompted a massive international effort, including Canadian authorities, commercial vessels, and a French vessel that deployed a remotely operated vehicle (ROV).

The device, capable of diving 20,000 feet underwater, discovered the debris believed to be part of the missing Titan on Thursday morning.

Thursday, June 22, 2023: This article has been updated to include additional details that emerged following the breaking news.

Sub's implosion was the quickest way Titan submersible passengers could've died

Grace Eliza Goodwin
Thu, June 22, 2023 

OceanGate Expeditions' Titan submersible.OceanGate Expeditions via AP, File)

The Titan submersible's implosion is the quickest way the passengers could've died.


The US Coast Guard announced on Thursday that it believes the sub imploded in the water near the Titanic wreck.


All 5 passengers — including the sub maker's CEO and millionaires — are presumed died.

The US Coast Guard said on Thursday that the missing Titan submersible appears to have suffered a "catastrophic implosion" before search and rescue efforts even began.

And out of all the possible scenarios, an implosion was the quickest way the five passengers aboard could've died.

"It would happen quite quickly, and there would be little chance of surviving," Stefan Williams, a professor of marine robotics at the University of Sydney whose lab works with uncrewed submersibles, previously told Insider.

It's not clear exactly when the implosion happened, but the Coast Guard said search buoys deployed to help look for the missing sub didn't hear the sound of any collapse of the OceanGate vessel.

The Titan sub dove under the waves around 8 a.m. on Sunday and lost contact with a surface ship about an hour and 45 minutes later. The Coast Guard first heard from OceanGate that the sub hadn't returned at about 6 p.m. that evening.

The Coast Guard said two debris fields were found about 1,600 feet away from the bow of the Titanic wreck on the ocean floor indicating the submersible imploded in the "water column" nearby.

It's not clear if those aboard reached the Titanic before the implosion.

Science writer David Pogue — who previously reported on OceanGate and the Titan sub for CBS — said those aboard would have died immediately.

"Remember, as we know, at those pressures, if a molecule of water gets in, it's over instantly," Pogue told CNN's Jake Tapper on Thursday. "I know it's no great comfort to the families and the spouses, but they did die instantaneously. They were not even aware that anything was wrong."

‘Titanic’ Director James Cameron Speaks Out on Titan Sub: ‘Warnings Went Unheeded’

Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that after taking part in over 30 dives, he is well-versed in the dangers of deep-sea exploration.

Helen Holmes
Thu, June 22, 2023 

Dave J Hogan/Getty Images

Titanic director James Cameron has weighed in on the tragic Titan submersible voyage that now appears to have claimed the lives of all five people onboard.

The Oscar winner, who himself has taken several underwater excursions to the sunken wreck of the Titanic, told ABC News on Thursday: “I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result. For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

Cameron noted that he’s a submersible designer himself and that after taking part in over 30 dives, he is well-versed in the dangers of deep-sea exploration.

“I’ve been down there many times, I know the wreck site very well,” he said. “And of course, as a submersible designer myself, I designed and built a sub to go to the deepest place in the ocean, so I understand the engineering problems associated with building this type of vehicle, and all the safety protocols that you have to go through.”

He added: “It’s absolutely critical for people to get the take-home message that deep submersible diving is a mature art.”

The Titan submersible, operated by OceanGate Expeditions, went missing on Sunday in the Atlantic Ocean near the site of the Titanic shipwreck. The U.S. Coast Guard said in a press conference on Thursday that the missing sub is believed to have succumbed to a “catastrophic implosion” near the wreckage site.

James Cameron Says He Knew About Sub Implosion Days Before Any of Us

AJ McDougall
Thu, June 22, 2023 

CNN

James Cameron, the director of 1997’s Titanic, said in an interview on Thursday that he had correctly guessed the fate of the Titan submersible less than 24 hours after it disappeared on Sunday—then watched the “futile” search unfold, “hoping against hope that I was wrong.”

Cameron, a prolific deep-sea explorer himself, explained to CNN’s Anderson Cooper that he’d missed the initial news of OceanGate Expeditions losing contact with its submersible, having been out to sea on a ship. By Monday morning, though, he was in contact with his colleagues in what he called “the deep submergence community.”

Learning from them that both communications and tracking had been lost simultaneously, Cameron said he’d begun to suspect an implosion, “a shockwave of events so powerful that it actually took out” tracking, a secondary system with its own fail-safes.


“I got on the horn again with some other people, tracked down some intel that was probably of a military origin, although it could have been research—because there are hydrophones all over the Atlantic—and got confirmation that there was some kind of loud noise consistent with an implosion event,” the director continued.

“That seemed to me enough confirmation. I let all of my inner circle of people know that we had lost our comrades. And I encouraged everybody to raise a glass in their honor on Monday.”

Cameron said he received the information from “credible sources” and “I took that as a factor...I couldn’t think of any other scenario in which a sub would be lost where it lost comms and navigation at the same time, and stayed out of touch and did not surface.”

A 'Terrified' Teen and a Maritime Legend: Tributes Pour in for Titanic Sub Victims

He told BBC News that the next few days “felt like a prolonged and nightmarish charade where people are running around talking about banging noises and talking about oxygen and all this other stuff.”

“I knew that sub was sitting exactly underneath its last known depth and position,” he said. “That’s exactly where they found it.”

On Thursday, the U.S. Coast Guard confirmed in a press conference that debris evidence found near the wreck of the Titanic suggested that a “catastrophic implosion” had taken place, killing all five people aboard.

Cameron said he had known “in [his] bones” that he had been right even before the announcement. “So it certainly wasn’t a surprise today.”

On CNN, Cameron added he believes the passengers on the sub “had some warning, that they heard some acoustic signature of the hull beginning to delaminate.” Cameron believes they he heard delamination–the process when water begins to force layers of fibres apart–“with their ears, not through the sensor system in the last moments of their lives, and that’s quite a horrifying prospect.”

He said it was “unconscionable” that the company in charge of the submersible mission to the Titanic, OceanGate, did not go through appropriate safety procedures. He confirmed he never had business with OceanGate and did not try to warn billionaire Stockton Rush of his safety problems, thinking “maybe they’ve solved it [safety issues].”

In an earlier interview on Thursday, he told ABC News that several of his deep submergence colleagues had written letters to OceanGate officials in the past, warning that their submersible was too experimental and its safety needed to be certified.

“I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship, and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result,” said Cameron.

“For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

A diving expert who has taken part in over 30 deep-sea expeditions, Cameron in 2012 piloted an experimental craft of his own design on a record-breaking dive to an undersea valley in the Mariana Trench.

He “knowingly” did not seek certification for his vessel, he told The New York Times on Thursday, because it was a scientific—and solo—mission.

“I would never design a vehicle to take passengers and not have it certified,” he said.

The Daily Beast.

James Cameron says Titan submersible passengers likely had warning just before implosion

Emily St. Martin
Thu, June 22, 2023 

"Titanic" director James Cameron, left, says that the Titan submersible deaths are "impossible to process" and that passengers were likely warned just before the implosion. (Pat Martin / For The Times; Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)

“Titanic” director James Cameron said during an ABC News interview that one of his longtime friends was among the passengers on the tourist submersible Titan and that sensors likely warned of the disaster just before it occurred. All five aboard were killed in a “catastrophic implosion, officials said.

After OceanGate Expeditions released a statement Thursday saying that all five passengers’ lives had “sadly been lost” and the company confirmed that the debris found was indeed from the missing submersible, Cameron weighed in on the tragedy.

“This OceanGate sub had sensors on the inside of a hull to give them a warning when it was starting to crack,” he told ABC News. “And I think if that's your idea of safety, then you're doing it wrong. They probably had warning that their hull was starting to delaminate, starting to crack. ... [W]e understand from inside the community that they had dropped their ascent weights and they were coming up, trying to manage an emergency.”

The director of the 1997 blockbuster "Titanic" is a longtime member of the diving community, has experience designing submarines able to withstand the depths that the Titan could not and has ventured down to the wreck of the Titanic 33 times himself.

Cameron described implosion as a “violent event,” and he said engineers typically focus first and foremost on the submersible design maintaining structural integrity against pressure that increases with depth.

Read more: 5 aboard Titanic tourist sub are dead after 'catastrophic implosion'

“People in the community were very concerned about this sub,” Cameron told the network. “A number of the top players in the deep submergence engineering community even wrote letters to the company, saying that what they were doing was too experimental to carry passengers and that it needed to be certified. I’m struck by the similarity of the Titanic disaster itself, where the captain was repeatedly warned about ice ahead of his ship and yet he steamed at full speed into an ice field on a moonless night and many people died as a result.

"For us, it’s a very similar tragedy where warnings went unheeded. To take place at the same exact site with all the diving that’s going on all around the world, I think it’s just astonishing. It’s really quite surreal.”

The Times obtained the 2018 letter privately written to Stockton Rush, the chief executive of OceanGate, who was among those who died in the implosion. The manned underwater vehicles committee at the Marine Technology Society wrote to Rush, stressing the need for a third-party safety review of OceanGate’s submersibles.

“Our apprehension is that the current experimental approach adopted by OceanGate could result in negative outcomes (from minor to catastrophic) that would have serious consequences for everyone in the industry,” the letter stated.

William Kohnen, chairman of the committee, told The Times that OceanGate “raised a number of eyebrows.”

Also in 2018, David Lochridge, a former OceanGate employee, sued the company for terminating him after he raised safety red flags, “particularly OceanGate’s refusal to conduct critical, non-destructive testing of the experimental design of the hull.” Lochridge specified that its hull monitoring system would detect failure "often [only] milliseconds before an implosion."

He said he disagreed with Rush’s decision to “subject passengers to potential extreme danger in an experimental submersible.”

Read more: 'Catastrophic' safety concerns raised about sub long before ill-fated Titanic voyage

Cameron also told ABC News that he was mourning the death of French Titanic explorer Paul-Henri “P.H.” Nargeolet, a longtime friend who was aboard the Titan submersible.

“It’s really quite surreal, it’s just astonishing,” he said. “P.H., the French legendary submersible dive pilot, was a friend of mine. It’s a very small community, I’ve known P.H. for 25 years.

"For him to have died tragically in this way is almost impossible for me to process.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.

El Nino’s Fierce Heat Carries New Risk of Resurgent Deadly Viruses

Low De Wei
Thu, June 22, 2023



(Bloomberg) -- The return of El Niño after nearly four years is raising the specter of extreme weather, economic pain, and agricultural disruption across the globe. Now add another unpleasant effect to the mix: a resurgence of tropical diseases

The World Health Organization sounded the alarm in a press conference earlier this week, when Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warned that the weather phenomenon “could increase transmission of dengue and other so-called arboviruses such as Zika and chikungunya.”

Mosquitoes that transmit such viruses flourish in the warmer weather that El Niño is set to bring to many parts of the world.

Regions from South America to Asia are already grappling with surges in tropical diseases. Peru has declared a state of emergency over its worst recorded dengue outbreak on record, with about 150,000 suspected cases reported so far this year. The WHO warned that infections are putting a “heavy burden” on the country’s health system.

Meanwhile, Thailand has seen its highest number of dengue cases in three years, with 19,503 reported by local health authorities from the start of 2023 through the first week of June. Cases are also on the rise in Malaysia and Cambodia, according to the WHO, while Singapore authorities warned earlier in the year about the potential for a surge in cases between June and October.

Elsewhere, other tropical diseases are taking a toll. Paraguay has reported at least 40 deaths from an ongoing outbreak of chikungunya that began last year, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

--With assistance from Jason Gale.