What we know about the missing Titanic sub 

Welcome to Tuesday’s Early Edition from i.

Two days ago, British businessman and adventurer Hamish Harding wrote in a post on his Instagram account how proud he was to be joining an underwater expedition “as a mission specialist on the sub going down to the Titanic”. Beside a picture of him signing a flag with the name of the mission, he added: “Due to the worst winter in Newfoundland in 40 years, this mission is likely to be the first and only manned mission to the Titanic in 2023. A weather window has just opened up and we are going to attempt a dive tomorrow.” The company running the trip – OceanGate – promises those who join its missions a guided tour around the shipwreck, which lies around 435 miles from the coast of Newfoundland, Canada and 13,000 ft beneath the sea. – The price tag for doing so is up to $250,000 (£195,270) per person. But the latest mission is now missing and air on the submersible is running out. Five people are on board. We’ll look at what we know so far, after the headlines.

Today’s news, and why it matters

 MPs overwhelmingly voted to sanction Boris Johnson on Monday night for lying to Parliament over Partygate, as Rishi Sunak attempted to sidestep the divisions in his party over the ex-PM’s legacy. 118 Tory MPs backed the report, while 225 abstained and seven opposed it – underlining the fractures between different factions in the party.

The squeeze on mortgage costs is set to last until at least 2025 with interest rates expected to rise again this week. Treasury insiders believe that it will take nine months for the effect of rate increases to feed through to people’s pockets – meaning financial pain, including higher mortgages, is highly unlikely to end before the next general election.

The Covid inquiry heard evidence from David Cameron and senior civil servants in the Department of Health on the fifth day of Lady Hallett’s investigation into the UK’s preparedness for a pandemic. No fewer than 18 separate areas of work carried out by the department on pandemic preparedness were paused or shelved by March 2019 – a year before the pandemic – due to no-deal Brexit planning. Here are eight things we learned.

The Metropolitan Police has launched a new probe into alleged lockdown-breaking parties in No 10 and other official residences during the pandemic. A spokesperson told i that the probe remains preliminary in nature, but that officers are assessing new information “to see if there is enough there to launch a criminal investigation”.

Businesses and local politicians have demanded answers over a sewage leak that has led to 14 miles of coastline around Blackpool being closed to bathers just as the summer tourism season is due to begin. Official advice not to enter the water at eight beaches on the Fylde coast remains in place nearly a week after United Utilities, one of Britain’s largest water companies, first admitted pumping raw sewage into the sea due to a damaged pipe.

Three questions about the missing sub:

What is OceanGate? The Washington-based luxury tour company founded in 2009 represents “a new type of travel”, blending adventure, luxury and history, its founder Stockton Rush said last year. The former aerospace engineer told CBS News the expeditions to the Titanic attract passionate guests. “We have clients that are Titanic enthusiasts, which we refer to as Titaniacs,” he said. “We’ve had people who have mortgaged their home to come and do the trip. And we have people who don’t think twice about a trip of this cost. We had one gentleman who had won the lottery.” In a separate interview with BBC Travel last year, Mr Rush said: “There will be a time when people will go to space for less cost and very regularly. I think the same thing is going to happen going under water.” The submersible, named Titan, is made of “titanium and filament wound carbon fibre” and is capable of diving 4,000 metres and weighs 9,072 kg. The company has said its technology provides an “unrivaled view” of the deep ocean. The expeditions also double as research opportunities for scientists, allowing them to study rare species in the depths of the Atlantic Ocean. Read more about the company here.

What happened? Images posted on social media and in The Sun show the submersible atop a barge just before it entered the water early on Sunday morning. The sub normally communicates with its pilot ship, the Polar Prince, every 15 minutes. However, contact was lost about an hour and 45 minutes into the dive, the US Coast Guard said. Its branch in Boston is now leading the rescue efforts. Searches are under way on the surface and underwater, using sonar and radar, Rear Admiral John Mauger of the US First Court Guard District said. “We need to make sure we’re looking both on the water, in case it surfaced but lost communications, but also in the water column, and we’re doing that right now, with sonar, to listen for any sounds we can detect,” he said. “Over the course of the next couple days, we anticipate adding additional capability to conducting additional searches in the water.” He added the vessel should have between 70 and 96 hours-worth of oxygen available. Experts have said submersibles can release a mass in an emergency to bring them to the surface, but if a problem such as a leak in the pressure hull had sent it to the bottom, rescue efforts could be extremely complicated. “If it has gone down to the seabed and can’t get back up under its own power, options are very limited,” Alistair Greig, a professor of marine engineering at University College London, said. “While the submersible might still be intact, if it is beyond the continental shelf, there are very few vessels that can get that deep, and certainly not divers.” CBS correspondent David Pogue, who joined an expedition on Titan last year, told the BBC the vessel’s resurfacing capabilities would be irrelevant if the sub became trapped or sprang a leak. “There’s no backup, there’s no escape pod,” he said. “It’s get to the surface or die”. But he also tweeted “two reasons for hope”.

Who is on board? Five people – one pilot and four “mission specialists” are aboard. Hamish Harding wrote: “The team on the sub has a couple of legendary explorers, some of which have done over 30 dives to the RMS Titanic since the 1980s including PH Nargeolet.” Mr Harding, who founded the Dubai-based aircraft sales firm Action Aviation, had taken part in the mission. The Explorers Club, of which he is a founding trustee, said it had “difficult news to share” in a social media post. Its president, Richard Allen Garriott de Cayeux wrote: “When I saw Hamish last week at the Global Exploration Summit, his excitement about this expedition was palpable. I know he was looking forward to conducting research at the site.” Mr Harding was a seasoned explorer, having visited the Mariana Trench’s Challenger Deep, the deepest known point of the seabed on Earth, on a similar vessel in 2021 alongside explorer Victor Vescovo. In 2019, Mr Harding was part of a team that achieved the fastest circumnavigation of Earth via both geographic poles by plane and last year, he travelled to space as a tourist with fellow billionaire Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin company. You can read more about him here. Mr Rush, the founder of OceanGate, is also believed to be on board. An avid scuba diver since aged 12, Mr Rush first held aspirations to be astronaut, pursuing an aerospace degree from Princeton. According to Sky News, French submersible pilot Paul-Henry Nargeolet, a former commander who served in the French Navy, was also on board. The identities of the other two explorers have not been released.

Around the world

 Children and elderly people are dying at the Sudanese border after exhausting journeys fleeing the bloody conflict in Khartoum. People arriving in neighbouring South Sudan said they had walked for several days with little food, slept on bare ground, and traded their possessions for a ride out of the warzone. Molly Blackall reports.

Nine people suspected of causing a fishing trawler to capsize last week as it carried hundreds of migrants across the Mediterranean have reportedly pleaded not guilty in a court in Kalamata, Greece. The death toll from last Wednesday’s shipwreck off the Greek coast stands at 78, but the number is expected to jump as hope of finding the hundreds missing is starting to fade.

British holidaymakers heading for Spain may have trouble sleeping as tropical heat of up to 45°C is expected to hit the Iberian Peninsula from next weekend, forecasters said. A spokesman for Spain’s state forecasters said unstable weather caused by low pressure over the Atlantic would dominate this week but this would change from Thursday onwards when an “anticyclone” (an area of high atmospheric pressure) arrives.

The spot where Julius Caeser was stabbed to death will soon be opened to tourists, as Rome prepares to open a new walkway. Until recently, the ruins of Largo Argentina square were below street level and could only be viewed from behind barriers.

 Watch out for…

 the Covid inquiry again, where today Oliver Letwin and George Osborne will appear. 

 Thoughts for the day

 There is a silent scandal around the treatment of politicians’ spouses. Even now, the powerful can still treat their partners with abominable callousness after they are exposed by the media, writes Yasmin Alibhai-Brown.

Dad dancing, braces and contempt: the new Partygate video sums up the self-satisfaction of the political class. There is a particular quality to this footage that references entitlement, argues Simon Kelner.

The ecosystems that surround our island nation are doomed if this weather continues. To avoid plunging it into even hotter water, Rishi Sunak must stop the burning of fossil fuels, says James Dyke.

Culture Break

 Chris McCausland: ‘A miracle to cure my blindness completely? I’d consider that’. The comedian talks to Nick Duerden about challenging perceptions, being turned down by MI5 and shaking up the celebrity travelogue genre with his new Channel 4 show.

The Big Read

 Technology used in Avatar and Lord of The Rings will help stroke patients and injured athletes. It works by using infrared cameras which pick up retroreflective material to build a virtual skeleton of a stroke victim, reports Aasma Day.

Sport

 England’s attack humiliates North Macedonia and shows why they are capable of winning Euro 2024. It is just as well Gareth Southgate remained in charge as he continues to oversee a brilliant, effervescent England who look full of tournament-winning potential.

Something to brighten your day

 Having an afternoon snooze may actually help preserve your brain’s capacity, new research suggests. The average difference in brain volume between people programmed to be habitual nappers and those who were not was equivalent to 2.6 to 6.5 years of ageing. “Our findings suggest that, for some people, short daytime naps may be a part of the puzzle that could help preserve the health of the brain as we get older,” a senior author on the study said.