this is bbc news. the headlines: california is being affected by widespread flooding and mudslides following weeks of heavy rain. there have been several deaths and forecasters say more rain is expected. new climate data suggests 2022 was the fifth—hottest year on record with europe and the polar regions hardest hit by global warming. the last eight years are now also the warmest eight yet recorded. australia's cardinal george pell, the former treasurer of the vatican who was acquitted of sexual abuse charges, has died aged 81. he spent more than a year

in prison after a jury found him guilty, but the verdict was quashed on appeal. those are the bbc news headlines. in scotland, primary schools were closed today as teachers took action in their dispute over pay. the teaching unions have asked for a 10% pay rise, but the scottish government has offered 5%. teachers in scotland's secondary schools will go on strike tomorrow, as our scotland correspondent lorna gordon reports. we wa nt we want 10% so we can pay the rent! out on strike again, these teachers are clear about what they want. they said they would neither be in the classroom but they have no choice but to pick up they have no choice but to pick up placards and stuff was very strongly about it, i want to be teaching, i want the kids to be learning but it has been lifted

this, we can't do anything else. i have taught for 32 years and this is the first time i have ever been out on struck it is not easy, not easy for the teachers of the parents. i am a parent myself. families across scotland have been left feeling the impact of the stroke. this means that she is concerned about what the effect on her children's schooling maybe. i think it is a complete kariong. i think that kids�* education was ruined enough with covid and ijust think that it with covid and ijust think thatitis with covid and ijust think that it is ridiculous that they are putting the kids through this again. i gather they want money but there should be another way they can go about it where it is not causing an issue to the kids�* education. who do you hold responsible? the government.— who do you hold responsible? the government. what we want? fair -a the government. what we want? fair pay step _ the government. what we want? fair pay stop when _ the government. what we want? fair pay stop when we _ the government. what we want? fair pay stop when we want - the government. what we want? fair pay stop when we want it? . fair pay stop when we want it? now _ fair pay stop when we want it? now nicola _ fair pay stop when we want it? now. nicola sturgeon- fair pay stop when we want it? now. nicola sturgeon and - fair pay stop when we want it? now. nicola sturgeon and says scottish government is doing all it can to resolve this dispute. she also says she is against any westminster

legislation curbing the right to strike. fundamentally opposed that legislation and the s&p will oppose it very, very vigorously at westminster. we highly value the teaching profession, that is demonstrated in a 21% pay increases teachers have had since 2010. the offer on the table now, it is affordable within a finite resources of the scottish government has. not so insists the unions, even all sides agree that children�*s education shall suffer. will magnay should be in classrooms learning, this morning and tomorrow, but it is also fair tomorrow, but it is also fair to teachers to accept another sub inflationary, substandard award against the drop of inflation running at 10%. as yet, no end in sight for this dispute. and of no decision is reached, further strike action will start next week, hitting

schools in different council areas on different days. and a mandate for union members forfurther action if and a mandate for union members for further action if necessary after that. lorna gordon, bbc news, glasgow. now on bbc news, the travel show. no turning back now. ijust need to get there. 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 i 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. 0ne 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. 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. 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 that we document through the video

and through the edna, so we can link these species observations to the environmental conditions that 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. so you can imagine a fish swimming through the environment is shedding skin cells and bodily fluids as it moves around, and all of that 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 for me, i don�*t believe that 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 isjust 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 too! 0n the way down, we saw a layer of animals we called mesopelagic animals. a lot of those animals are bioluminescent, so 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. 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 l the earth come up to you, and it does feel like i 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. i wow, it was amazing, so suddenly you 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 actually. i thought they were just rocks. and then someone in the subl said, "oh, look, there's coal." and that — that's the moment that connected me _ to the humanness of the titanic, - that people had shovelled this, people had brought it onto the boat, - and that during the sinking, itjust all spilled out. - 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 washhand 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, i feel 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, l but we had topside l confirm that with us and then give us a heading. is something wrong with my thrusters? i am thrusting and nothing is happening. range...and bearing...two... are we closer to the bank? i guess. we will find out. i don�*t recognise that mud out there, do you? no, no. here is the map! i haven�*t been here before. am i spinning? yes.

iam? yes. looks like it. 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 backwards 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. well, 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, three hours in the gym, but one of them is boxing for an hour, and i found 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 all—clear 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. 0n 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. got it — 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. hey, 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, looking to see if there�*s 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. i know that one does the 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, he 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. i would crab steer. try turning right. then we go forward, do we? go straight now. am i? go forward, 77. so forward... forward. right is forward. i�*m gonna have to write this down. laughs right is forward. great, live with it. perfect. 0k. 0k, 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. laughs 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...we see colour at the bottom of this ocean. this is definitely the most challenging piloting

that i've ever done! laughs 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 don�*t see any wreckage. i lost my dvl, my altitude. ok, i see the wreck on sonar, though. 0k. how close are we to the titanic? very close. two metres. the bow should be visible, right? if you guys see anything,

you've got to let me know, 0k? 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, rotate! bow, bow, bow, bow, bow! we are at the bow. please send that message. my god, you did it!

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

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 in theirfinery, 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, and 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, the time went by so quick. i�*m gonna tell them, "no hablo ingles." yeah. they have to relay that they're out there... 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? 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 this dive, 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. good job! cheering ship horn toots the ship even blew the horn, which was fantastic. and once i saw stockton, i started crying. happy tears!

yeah, yeah. happy tears. 0ne less dream. are you crying? it was like a weight lifted off my shoulders. i needed to do that to feel complete, and. . .i feel now complete. we got it done. clapping hello. 0ur wet and windy week of weather continues on wednesday with the

low pressure still very much driving our weather. there�*s going to be heavy downpours for some of us through the day, and actually over the next few days. 0ften we�*re going to see rain, strengthening winds. mainly still quite mild for the time of year. but gales developing, overnight rain sweeping its way eastwards. so by the time we get to about 6:00 on wednesday morning, most of us generally frost—free, but some heavy showers from the word go pushing in from the north and the west. and low pressure is going to sit to the north of the uk through the day. you can see the proximity of all these isobars on the chart. that�*s showing us that it is going to be a blustery sort of day. plenty of showers driven in from the atlantic, so the heaviest of the downpours will be in the west during this morning — parts of scotland, northern ireland, and also then pushing into wales and western england too. gales around coastal parts of the english channel, through the irish sea coasts, up towards the western isles for instance, so 60mph gusts possible there. but even further inland, we�*re looking at 30, possibly 40mph gusts of wind through the day on wednesday,

so a blustery day. heavy downpours reaching eastern areas during the afternoon after a fairly bright morning here, and temperatures a little cooler than recent days — about 7—11 degrees, feeling colder if you�*re exposed to the brisk wind and those heavy showers that many of us will see. some snow for a time over the higher ground of scotland too. 0vernight showers ease in the north, but the next batch of heavy rain sweeps eastwards across much of england and wales. so it�*s going to be a really quite damp start to thursday morning, i think. could be a touch of frost for some sheltered glens of scotland, but still mild to start the day towards the south on thursday. and thursday�*s weather driven by yet another low—pressure system, this time just moving in towards the north—west. this occluded front bringing some heavy showers. but down towards the south, we�*ve also got more heavy rain across southern parts of england, lingering on that frontal system, combined with gales that are once again going to develop through the english channel around some of these irish sea coasts, and turning windy later in the day across the northwest too. so the next band of rain crosses from west to east, followed by sunny spells and scattered heavy downpours moving in from the northwest.

temperatures still about 7—9 in the north, but up to about 13, possibly 1a, down towards the southeast. so it stays mild. a hint that through the weekend things turn a little less unsettled, and those temperatures are going to drop a little bit by the time we get to sunday. bye— bye.

welcome to bbc news, i�*m monika plaha. our top stories: torrential rains continue in california, where storms have now killed 17 people. new climate data suggests 20.22 was the fifth—hottest year on record, with europe and the polar regions hardest hit by global warming. fierce fighting in the eastern ukrainian town of soledar. ukranian forces battle to keep the russian mercenary wagner group back. cardinal george pell, the australian former vatican treasurer who was found guilty of sexual abuse before his conviction was quashed, has died. and at the golden globes, an award—winning performance from colin farrell.

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