him

this is bbc news, the headlines prince harry faces criticism over remarks about killing taliban fighters in afghanistan in his controversial autobiography. a record number of ambulances were delayed dropping off patients at a&e in england over christmas — as the prime minister admits the nhs is under enormous pressure ukrainian officials accuse russians of opening fire in several areas — in spite of a temporary ceasefire

ordered by president putin. rail companies have made a pay offer to the train drivers union, aslef, to try to end the ongoing strike action. you are watching bbc news..., now, the travel show. no turning back now. ijust need to get there. him even if it isjust the debris field, i will be very happy paying my respects in the debris field.

radio: talk about comms... copy. so it was just weird, almost like he... radio: diver's comms, titan was surprised when they made a turn as they departed the platform, i let them know he snagged a buoy... yeah, roger that, comms. this is diver one. just a heads up, it looked like he was heavy and possibly dropped a thruster because he started spinning really weird when he came off. he bounced a bunch of times when he was trying to leave the platform... radio: copy. which direction did he spin? starboard. so it would have been his starboard thruster?

yeah. checked it and said it was good. we will find out, we'll see! good? hungry! laughs. need some breakfast. i'm all ready for when they come. must be a busyjob for you? very busy, it is indeed. it is steady. him him one mealjust rolls into the other, into the other. and especially on dive days, it gets very busy. but i wouldn't have it any other way. him really? you like it better doing this than on land? 0h, absolutely, 100%.

every day is the excitement, is there a dive today, are they going to make it, what did they see, who is going down, when are they coming back? so some days, like i said, are more challenging than others but for the most part, every day is great. him every day is great. for sure. bottom out around 800 metres... so this is like the very first measurement an oceanographer would make from the site, you record the saltiness of the water throughout the whole depth profile and you record the temperature change. the ocean is getting warmer, it is acidifying, we are seeing much faster glacial melting, the ice sheets are melting, there's huge injections of fresh water that are going on.

having this kind of information from remote parts of the world like this is really important to understand those changes. and we're going to be able to link this data to all of the species we document through the video and through the edna, so we can link these species observations to the environmental conditions they are found in. edna stands for environmental dna, and it is dna that is left in the environment by all the organisms living there. you can imagine a fish swimming through the environment is shedding skin cells and bodily fluids as it moves around so all about leaves a bit of dna behind in the environment. this expedition we are collecting samples with niskin bottles, which are hollow tubes with caps on them that can be closed at particular depths to detect a sample, and those bottles are attached onto the titan submersible. we do have communication with the sub while they are down there but i don't believe there is a sample there until i see the bottle at the surface that

is closed with the samples. the first time i dove the sub, i said, "this is amazing," it is such a different experience, it is a totally different emotion. when you are in the sub, if you didn't bring it with you, nobody is bringing it to you. the sounds are different, what you see is different, and i thought, more people have to go in subs. it looks like silk! oh my god, it is getting bigger! on the way down we saw a layer of animals we called mesopelagic animals. a lot of those animals are bioluminescent, you get flashes of light here and there all through the water column. we were going very fast down, so it was very difficult to see with the naked eye, but once in a while a critter went by. 0h! wow, that was beautiful. we are at 1,200 metres.

as we went down through the water column it became darker and darker until past 1,000 metres there are no photons that get past that layer and it is pitch black. so it is very, veryjarring . because for about 2.5 hours we see nothing but darkness, and then all of a sudden - you see the floor come up to you, the ground come. up to you. all of a sudden you see i the earth come up to you, and it does feel like it is- coming up to you because you are descending so quickly. and so even before seeing any part of man—made material. of the ship, seeing the natural bottom of the ocean come upl at you was sort of spectacular, i mean, it was very exciting. just to see dirt and mud. wow, it was amazing, when you suddenly saw the sand come up and we were just in the debris field there and then. seeing the pieces of| debris was sobering. all five of us in -

the submersible kind of unofficially had - this moment of silence when we hit the bottom. the first pieces i see - looking out of the porthole are pieces of coal. and it didn't even connect. that they were coal at first. i thought they were just rocks. and then someone in the subj said "oh, look, there's coal". and that is the moment that - connected me to the humanness of the titanic, that - people had shovelled this, people had brought itl onto the boat and that during the sinking it just all spilled out. i and then we began to see other things, we saw a plate, a big dinner platejust sitting there on its own, then we saw a wash hand basin with a tap still attached. we were only about 300 metres apparently from the wreck at that stage. i don't know what is going on, ifeel like...

like what, like it's thrusters? yeah, i don't know what is going on. we have a grid map that - corresponds with the grid map that topside has. 946... it is like battleship, - they tell us which square we are in. we had kind of a good idea which square we were in. but we had topside confirm that with us and give us a heading. i is something wrong with my thrusters? i am thrusting and nothing is happening. range...and bearing...two... are we closer to the bank? we will find out. i don't recognise that mud out there, do you?

here is the map! no, i haven't been here before. am i spinning? yes. iam? now you are going north. oh, my god. and scott is like, "oh no, we have a problem". - when we are thrusting forward, one of the thrusters is thrusting back right now. the only thing i can do right now is a 360. i was thinking, "we're not going to make it!" we are literally 300 metres from titanic and although we are in the debris field, we can't go anywhere but go in circles. when i am initiating thrust, i am turning. that is why i spun on the platform. yeah. oh, god, no, don't tell me we have to go to surface,

at 300 metres away from the titanic. i had covid a few years ago. the first covid, the nasty one, as they say. and i found, i had lost 80kg in the last two years, i had been keeping myself very fit and watching my diet. one of the things i do is i box every day. so usually i spend about two or three hours in the gym but one of them is boxing for an hour, and i was running out of breath a lot. i went to see a heart specialist in london. they did a myriad of tests and they found the covid had given me sarcoidosis in one of the ventricles in my heart. so they decided i needed a pacemaker and a defibrillator immediately, literally within 48 hours. i went in on a saturday, he allowed me back in the gym three days later, and gave me

the ok literally that week to come here and do the dive. people used to say to me, "oh, you are doing your bucket list", well it feels like i am now. no, it makes it more exciting, and the fact that i am able to do it is fantastic. if i had ignored my symptoms, i might not be here. on the sticks now, the actual| sticks, what is left and right? the right stick, that's forward, back, turn left, turn right. and when he goes forward, he is getting a turn. what's the left stick? down and up. yeah. what would cause that? they swapped out one of the thrusters. they put it on the wrong way? i mean, it is unidirectional. yeah, it should be, but something happened. yeah, what he can do, so on the controller you have the up, down, left,

right arrows, and you can set them so that one was going and every time you hit the button, it would go forward. um... inaudible. i hope he knows how to do this. hi, jerome. stockton on wendy's phone. just call me back if you got a chance, we've got a question. we're on the dive right now, just looking for a way to remap the ps3 controller. thanks. it's not going to be easy. if we bring up a picture of that controller, we can tell him to press x, press y, press a, press b. yeah, except i don't remember which one is up and down. it might be that he could go forward with left and right. he'd only be able to turn one way, maybe. yeah, it would be interesting.

so close! so if that is the case, when he goes left, it should go forward. when he goes to take a turn to the left, he is going to go forward starboard, which would be reverse starboard. it might work, yeah. yeah, left and right might be forward and back. huh, i don't know. alter track by 90 degrees. try turning right. then we go forward, do we? go forward, 77. so forward... forward. right is forward. i'm gonna have

to write this down. right is forward. great, live with it. perfect. 0k. ok, just say rotate the controller. it's a lot easier if you just rotate the controller and then you've got it, because if right is forward, then left is back. 0k. rotate controller. and we were so happy that we figured it out that we could just move forward, that we started clapping in the submersible, going, "yes, we can go!" piece of metal on the right. can you bring up more light, scott, or is this it? - one of the early pieces we ran across were some tiles. not sure what part of the wreck they were from, but you could see the really pretty colours in the painted tiles. the pieces that were intact were pretty phenomenal

because we see colour at the bottom of this ocean. this is definitely the most challenging piloting i've ever done! so, bearwith me, guys, i'm trying my best! good job, scott. laughs. i'm trying my best! yeah, you're doing great! it's immensely exciting. you never know what's going to swim by. i don't see any wreckage. i lost my dvl, my altitude. i see the wreck on sonar though. 0k. how close are we to the titanic? very close. two metres, no?

the bow should be visible. if you guys see anything, you've got to let me know, ok? yeah, nothing yet. we're ten metres away from the bow. i don't see it yet. it might be on your right. it's gonna be on the right. 0k. you've gotta rotate around to it. yes, yes, yes, rotate, rotate! bow, bow, bow, bow, bow! we are at the bow. please send that message. oh, my god, you did it!

confirm they are at the bow of the titanic. doing everything in reverse to make us get here, - it looks fantastic. can't believe it. in real life, it's ginormous! it's really incredible. i'm lost for words, - actually, to be honest. it's that good, yes. i'm just crying. we've made it! finally, made it. how does it feel to get a lifelong dream?

hard to explain. hard to put in words. she is big. i mean, to imagine how big she must have been, there must be 20 feet of wreck inside the sand. and even like that, what you're seeing is 20 feet high. amazing to realise that you are at titanic. it's no longer a myth for me. it's reality, it's right there, in front of you. you are so close to it that you can actually touch it. when you go to the bottom

and you start slowly going up and you can see every portal — some of them are open, which is one of the things that people are amazed, that the people left portals open when all this was going on, and you're going up and up and up, and it seems endless because the ship is huge. this was a floating palace. you can imagine the people walking up and down, taking in the sun, whatever, etc. we went down the side and captured the whole anchor. there is the name of the titanic on the anchor, we were able to see that. so this, sort of, nostalgic view, in a way, and also a tragic view. imagine seeing nothing and then, lights turn. on and you see an entire . skyscraper in front of you — that's what it was like. there is no words to - encapsulate the feeling of it. seeing the scale of the titanic is what anchored me - into the realness of that - night, of the numbers of lives that were lost.

0k! bottom time expired, return. then we finally started leaving the site. it was a sad moment for me at the time to leave it. it was so short, that the time went by so quick. i'm gonna tell them "no hablo ingles". there he is. it's an incredible experience. you are in this capsule, just like a spacecraft, with your other four travellers, and you go through it and when you come to the surface and they open the dome, it isjust like somebody snapped

theirfingers and all of a sudden, you are back on planet earth. how was it? it was fantastic! how are you doing, jaden? hey! good. oh, my gosh. what a trip. it feels like i've left earth and now i'm just returning. it feels incredible, thank you. both models are closed in the debris field. so, we've got two samples from the site. which makes me happy. 3,800 metres. there is enough pressure to break the cups. that's pretty good. that's cool. everybody kind of started to go out, and i was trying to gather myself. cheering. ship horn toots. the ship even blew the horn, which was fantastic. and once i saw stockton,

i started crying. happy tears! happy tears. one less dream. are you crying? it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. i needed to do that to feel complete, and ifeel now complete. we got it done.

hello there. friday was a calm and settled day, thanks to a ridge of high pressure. fine and to the working week, however, into the weekend, low pressure firmly in control. it's going to be windy with gales, certainly around the coast, and there will be some rain followed by bands of heavy showers. that's the early rain that will move through today and that will be followed by the rest of saturday and sunday with blustery showers, strong winds and some sunny spells in between. most of the showers in the south and west. you can see the rainfall accumulations over the next couple of days where most of those showers will be followed. it's going to be a very wet start for saturday across more central and western areas. that rain band gradually pushing its way eastwards, affecting eastern england during the latter part of the morning.

right around lunchtime it should clear out into the north sea. all areas are brighter with sunny spells, scattered showers, some heavy ones across southern and western areas, and it will be windy with gales around coast. you can see the wind speeds even further east, but touching gale force around southern and western coast. some huge waves crashing on shore as well. temperatures started mild and dropping back into the afternoon, highs of eight — 11 degrees. it stays blustery through the overnight here in saturday night, windy gales in the north and west, plenty of showers in southern and western areas, drier interludes further east. temperatures falling to those of 5—8 degrees, that is really typical. then for sunday, an area of low pressure to the north of scotland, lots of isobars on the charts. not quite as many as saturday. so it's not going to be windy, not as windy, and weather fronts towards the south will enhance the shower activity stop so, it could be southern and western parts of england and wales seen some heavy, some rumbles of thunder, some hail mixed in as well, but there will be some sunshine around to. it's going to be a chilly date across the board, highs of seven to maybe nine or 10

degrees in the south. monday is a little bit quieter, we are in between weather systems. still quite blustery in the north and west. here is where we will see most of the showers in northern ireland and scotland, could be a wintery element to some of these over the high ground, as it would be cooler, the air on monday. highs of five — 8 degrees here, up to around 10 degrees in the south. this is a bit closer to the seasonal norm. so, the weather is up and down as we head through the new week. tuesday is mild, wet, windy again. that will be followed by some slightly cooler weather on wednesday.

this is bbc news. i'm lewis vaughanjones with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. signs that the historic deadlock in the us house of representatives could be coming to an end — frontrunner kevin mccarthy appears to be making progress. ukrainian officials accuse russians of opening fire in several areas — in spite of a temporary ceasefire ordered by president putin. prince harry faces a backlash from former members of the military over his account of killing taliban fighters in afghanistan. britain's growing space industry — the uk gets ready for its first ever satellite launch from british soil. and the flamboyant stars of the drag queen world hit the pink carpet in east london.