this is bbc news. the headlines: the vatican has announced the death of pope benedict xvi at the age of 95, almost a decade after he stood down because of ill health. his body will lie in state from monday in st peter's basilica. pope benedict led the catholic church for less than eight years until, in 2013, he became the first pope in 600 years to resign. he spent the last nine years living in the vatican. the world health organisation meets chinese officials to discuss how to slow the coronavirus surge — after beijing dropped its zero covid policy. the who says chinese officials must share more real—time information on covid in the country.

palestinian authories welcome a vote by the un general assembly to ask the international court ofjustice to give a legal opinion on the israeli occupation of palestinian territories — the resolution was backed by 87 countries. now on bbc news, the travel show. yeah, all checked, triple checked. metal clanking. radio: science team, i are you a-go or no-go? science says go. radio: rangers, go for launch. go or no—go for launch? bridge is go for launch. there will be a time when people will go to space at much less

cost and very regularly. i think the same things going to happen going underwater. it's going to get less expensive and much more accessible. radio: go for launch. this is the point of no return. if there was any point to freak out, now would be the point to freak out. this is an experimental sub. people are informed that it's very dangerous down there. am i spinning? yes. oh, my god. and scott is like, "oh, no, we have a problem." i was thinking, "we're not going to make it! "we can't go anywhere but go in circles!" ijust need to get there. radio: can you hear? do we have communications?

so this is an actual menu from the titanic itself on the day it actually sank, and i very strangely came across it in a very small auction in ireland. radio: go ahead. yes, sir. secure the anchor. phone rings. hello? so, i've heard the comparison. like, at titanic depth, it would like having an aircraft carrier sitting on the sub. it gives you an idea of how much pressure there really is. that's my mexican flag. this is the white star line pin, a titanic expedition pin. - radio: go ahead. yes, sir. radio: roger that, go ahead. the ship was made in norway, so most

of the medications are norwegian, but there are also non—us medications, so it's like going to an ikea in france — everything is in metric and it's in french and it's completely confusing, because it's ikea to start with. i have a titanic patch from the expedition. this is just the titanic, the jacket patch. laughs. yes. people are so enthralled with titanic that it became a must—do dive. i read an article that said there are three words in the english language that are known throughout the planet and that's �*coca—cola', �*god', and �*titanic�*. it'sjust such an interesting period of time that i got really interested in the both the ship's history and the dreams of the ship, but also the people's history and their dreams, as well.

the titanic has always been - in my family, in terms of history. my father's from northern ireland, he was born in derry, _ he spent a lot of time in belfast and growing up as a child, - he always spoke about - the titanic because obviously, it was built in belfast. we've always had what we call in irish "a gra" — _ which is a love for the whole history and the story - of the titanic, so i'm - really pleased to be here. i've been keeping myself very fit and watching my diet. _ i had covid a few years ago. in the meantime, i had a little| operation and everything else, and still got myself ready and prepared for this - because it means a lot to me. when i was a kid, nobody had found it, nobody knew where it was, so i decided that i was going to go find it, so i needed to study science and oceanography. my first week of college, they found it. somebody beat me to it. it was september 1st, 1985.

there was a picture of a boiler in black and white on television, and the dream...just crumbled. i switched my career to banking and i started searching for a way to go. i wasn't sure how i was going to get to titanic but i knew i had to go. i'm not a millionaire. i've been saving money for a long, long time. i made a lot of sacrifices in my life to be able to go to titanic. i don't have a car. i didn't get married yet. i don't have children. and all of those decisions have been because i wanted to go to titanic. when i met stockton, i told him, "here's my money." he said, "wait a minute! "we haven't even built the sub!" applause.

just quick orientation for the sub. this is a forward dome, which opens and closes. we have the pressure hole in the centre — that's 5—inch thick carbon fibre. vertical and horizontal thrusters you can see there. i like to tell people, "this is not your grandfather's "submarine." it's got one button, and that's it. yeah, so we run the sub with this game controller. it's made by logitech but it's basically a sony playstation—style controller. if you want to go forward, you press forward. if you want to go back, you press back. if you want to turn to the left, it's like that. you want to turn to the right, you turn to the right. test at 12 volts. go ahead. i started off with a partly finished home—build sub that i'd built myself. then i formed the business and acquired a sub that we modified

heavily and sort of figured out what we wanted. then we made the first level prototype of this which was cyclops i, that was very similar but was a steel hull that already existed, but it had some of the similar electronics. and then, this was the ultimate version that we always wanted. so, just another additional back—up. i it's a miracle it can do what itl does when you look at it there, because when you look at it, it is very small. _ it looks like it's put together with pieces of string. - but it's not, obviously. but it's exciting. in general, the biology theme is one of documenting biodiversity — that hasn't been done well on this wreck. there's sort of a race to try to understand the deep sea, which is largest environment in the oceans and the most poorly explored. here, we're trying to give that

experience, check off your box to see the titanic but, at the same time, contribute to something that has a wider application. so, this is pretty typical of what we saw on the dive. you can see this black igneous rock, but look at the number of sponges, and that's what really hit us right away. i was asked by oceangate to be the chief scientist of their expeditions. that involves organising a science team and establishing long—term monitoring stations on the wreck. the earth is changing, the climate's changing. the deep sea drives the earth's climate. most of the oxygen that's produced comes from marine plankton, so changes in the ocean have a huge impact over the whole globe. the team always says, you know, there's no guarantee you're gonna see the bow, there's no guarantee you're gonna get down there because there are so many variables, you know. some are man—made, some are nature, sometimes it's both put together.

i was able to join their expedition last year. we took the dive and dove for about two hours and maybe 15 minutes or so. i heard we got within like two football fields of the titanic, and then suddenly stockton says, "oh, we got to turn around." and at first i thought he was joking because we were over two hours into our expedition and so close to the bottom. but then he explained one of the batteries kind of went kaput and we were having trouble using the electronic drops for the weights, so it would be hard for us to get back up to the surface. the stakes were quite high at that point. i was really intrigued with, like, ok, so we can't get to the site tonight, what are our options? we had discussed actually staying, just sleeping at the bottom of the ocean in the submersible. we have special weights on the submersible that will dissolve after 2a hours, so they would just drop off and then we would be able to get up to the surface.

that's one option. we're down here for another 16 to 2a hours. we will drift down, we will hit the bottom. we will have communications, we can talk to them. i'm fine with staying here. it's your call, stockton. it's only if...renata and jaden, mostly. yeah, well. yeah, i'm fine with staying down here. i was all about sleeping in the submersible overnight. i think me and someone else were, but then the other half of the crew were not as happy about that. are you still pumping? yeah. what do you have, pressure wise? 58. somehow stocktown managed to hydraulic pump it manually so gently that it was able to slowly release the weights. yeah, very good. wait a second. we are starting to come up. we are? yeah. 0k. we're definitely coming up. i think you did it, - stockton, you 98% did it. hey, there's some luck here! high five!

high five on my count, yes, here we go. ok, maybe a win—win. maybe. yeah, or maybe they want... this is why you want your pilot to be an engineer. l it's an open book here, if you have any questions about what's going on, about acoustic monitoring, about carbon fibre, problems we had, rumours of problems we had, actual problems we had, you know, feel free to ask me, we're happy to show everything. we want everyone going into this fully informed. this is an experimental sub, this is dangerous environment, it's 6000 psi. very few people have been down there, and so we want to make sure that you're going in with an open eye and understand what's going on. if you don't want to do it at any time, feel free to say, "hey, i want to take a pass," and we can work something out. you know, maybe bring you another year or something else. but i really want to make sure that you're aware of all this.

on a mission four, when we got to the surface — scott was piloting — we hear a really loud bang, not a soothing sound. no. but on the surface, as the inaudible will attest, almost every deep diving sub makes a noise at some point. i don't know. i don't have expectations of how i'm going to feel. i know when i think about it, i cry, so there will probably be a lot of crying when i'm down there. but i don't know, we'll see. every night before a dive, everyone gets together and draws on some of these styrofoam cups. they attach them to the submersible before they do the dive and go down. and when they go underwater, they are under lots of pressure and they compress. and when they come up we have all these little, tiny mini cups.

so i think everyone does a bunch and brings them back to their friends and family as a little souvenir. so, my alarm just went off. it's about 3:30 in the morning. we're supposed to be on the back deck by 4am to start the process of loading up and everything. so, it's not very often i wake up this early but it seems worth it for today. i was pretty grumpy waking up at 3:30, but when i think about the passengers who might�*ve also have woken up really early to catch their horse and carriage, or whatever, to take them

to the dock, it made me feel like a kinship with them and also kind of grounded me in what i was doing. the dome is open and i step up into the sub, you know, i get chatting with the fellow passengers — which is probably what the titanic passengers did, as they all kind of boarded at the same time. all right, happy day. i know i'm going to be seasick, so i sort of commandeered the front of it so that i can get to the port hole, and then the dome slowly, slowly closes in front of me, and i have this moment of, like — this is the point of no return. i am not claustrophobic by any means but in that moment, i'm like, well,

if there was any point to freak out, now would be the point to freak out. and i sort of did a — i do a gut check with myself, and i say, "nope, not freaking out." i'm actually excited. the — the — i think the nerves in the stomach was not of anxiety, it was of excitement. we are overall comfortable, here in the sub. we've got the scrubber on, oxygen is flowing. and we are standing by for vacuum. in the last 35 years, i did 37 dives to the titanic. each expedition, you can see more and more. here, for example, the deck

of the ship collapsed on each other and step by step they disappeared, and we can see through the deck. of course, the deterioration is bad, but at the same time, the wreck is like a sanctuary for the marine life. we're just in limbo now. just at the beginning of the roller—coaster. no turning back now. it is always interesting to get on the outside of the sub. you spend most of the time diving on the inside the sub, so it is a different tempo out here, different things happening. if we have a contaminated atmosphere here, we've got some smoke hoods. those are located directly below jaden, and we'll be getting those out and put them on as needed if we have a contaminated atmosphere.

if you smell anything in the sub, weird, let me know immediately. no two launches or recoveries are the same. there is always something different. and that's the problem — there's so much that can go wrong. it feels just like a ride at disneyland. this is part of the experience. you know, blake is a super—solid diver. i don't worry about him one bit. and communication — he'll get you all communicating. should i worry about you? i haven't had another bad recovery. i worry about him when he is not in the water.'s breathing surface air. i'm sure — not only i but the other people with me — will have mixed emotions when we go down. you're bound to have mixed emotions. i'd say quite strongly so.

it is in irish folklore, for want of a better word, you know, it was built in ireland, it was the biggest ship in the world, it was incredible and it was its maiden voyage. i mean, it perished on its maiden voyage, effectively. you know, so it's — it's, yeah, very poignant. you've got to think of those people. there were a lot of people — irish, english, from all over the world — and, you know, it's sad, there's no doubt that it's tinged with sadness. all stations are reporting the dive is a go. please, stand by. soft music plays.

the sub is in the water. machine beeps.

i'm so... ijust need to get there. even if it's just the debris field, i'll be very happy with just paying my respects in the debris field. for about 2.5 hours, we see nothing but darkness and then all of a sudden, you see the earth come up to you and it does feel like it is coming up to you, because you're descending so quickly. seeing the natural bottom of the ocean come up at you was sort of spectacular. we saw plates. a plate just came out —

a big dinner plate, just sitting there on its own. then we saw a wash hand basin with the taps still attached. and we were only about 300 metres, apparently, from the wreck. is something going on with my thrusters? i'm thrusting and nothing's happening. i don't know what's going on. one is thrusting forward, one of the thrusters is thrusting backwards right now. so, the only thing i can do right now is a 360. we're literally 300 metres from titanic and although we are in the debris field, we can't go anywhere but go in circles. oh, my god...

hello. with flooding still an issue in some parts of the country and more rain expected at times through today, if you are on the move be prepared — there could be some further disruption around. allow a bit of extra time for yourjourneys and keep up to date on latest travel news. your bbc local radio station is there for you on bbc sounds. some of the wettest conditions through this afternoon though will be across england and wales, particularly south west england and south west wales, that pushing from west to east. a little bit drier for northern england, brighter for northern ireland and parts of southern eastern scotland, but a chilly day here, also in northern scotland where there'll be some further snow flurries, barely above freezing, whereas we could had an incredibly mild 15 degrees across south east england. rain here, though, to start the evening clears away to showers. another batch of heavy rain then works its way northwards. and by the time we hit midnight, the winds really picking up. quite a blustery end to the year across southern and western parts with gales in places. but there will be some starry skies, just one or two showers around. different story — newcastle, carlisle, belfast, some heavy rain

here and glasgow and edinburgh by midnight you could be seeing some rain and sleet push its way in. a pretty cold feel across much of scotland, with some ice already developing in northern areas — just one or two wintry showers. now, the temperature plummeting here, that area of rain pushing northwards into the cold air, more significant snowfall across the hills, even to low levels in central and northern scotland later. temperatures could get down to minus seven, plus ten, though, tonight in the southeast corner where we continue to see some clear skies and a few showers dotted around. so into the brand new year we go, it's going to be one of those days if you're off for a walk, a bit of sunshine across england and wales. more than today, but some showers, especially in the north and west. more showers tomorrow in northern ireland and plenty of cloud for scotland with some outbreaks of rain, but also some sleet and snow in the north. another chilly day here, another pretty mild one further south. and then into monday after a colder start, frosty start, probably a better day to get out and about. there will be some dense and lingering fog across, say, the solway firth parts of south west and western scotland.

a few showers into the far west of scotland but most of you will brighten up through the day to sunny spells and temperatures closer to the early january norm. but as we go through the first week of 2023, more areas of low pressure will spin across the north, bringing bouts of rain at times, some gusty winds as well but equally, there will be those drier and brighter moments, too. that's how it's looking. happy hogmanay.

this is bbc news. welcome, if you're watching here in the uk or around the globe. i'm luxmy gopal, our top stories. the former pope, benedict xvi, has died at the age of 95, almost a decade after he stood down because of ill health. pope benedict led the catholic church for nearly eight years until, in 2013, he became the first pope in 600 years to resign he was a kind, considerate, highly intelligent and sensitive man. and it was always a pleasure to be in his company even if issues that were difficult had to be talked about. this is the scene live in vatican city, where the former pope lived since 2013. his funeral will be held on thursday 5th ofjanuary and will be presided over by pope francis.