The mother of the teenager who died with his multi-millionaire father in the Titan submarine disaster has revealed she originally intended to make the doomed journey – but gave up her place to her son because he was “really wanted to join”.

Christine Dawood and her husband Shahzada Dawood initially booked a trip to the Titanic wreck for themselves but had to cancel due to the pandemic.

She said that when her family reserved spots for this year’s OceanGate Expeditions mission, she “resigned” because her 19-year-old son Suleman loved being there.

The family boarded the Polar Prince, the submarine’s supply ship, on Father’s Day in hopes of the trip of a lifetime. Ms Dawood and her 17-year-old daughter Alina were still on board when it was announced on June 18 that communications with Titan had been lost.

She and her daughter initially had hope after initially not returning – but admitted she had “lost hope” when 96 hours had passed since her husband and son boarded the submersible, suggesting that they ran out of oxygen.

Her daughter held out a little longer, she said, until a call was made to the US Coast Guard last Thursday to tell her debris had been found — something they didn’t know about at the time. Then it became clear that an implosion had taken place.

The US Navy had spotted sounds “suggesting an implosion” shortly after Titan lost contact on Sunday. However, this was deemed “not definitive” and the details were not released publicly – the search and rescue mission continued until debris was found.

Ms Dawood told the BBC she initially expressed hope: “We all thought they were just going to show up so the shock was delayed by like ten hours or so.”

Christine Dawood and her husband, Pakistani businessman Shahzada Dawood, initially booked a trip to the Titanic wreck for themselves but had to cancel their trip due to the coronavirus pandemic. The couple are pictured together

Christine said that when her family reserved spots for this year’s OceanGate Expeditions mission, she “resigned” because her 19-year-old son Suleman “really wanted to get involved.” She and Suleman are pictured together

“When they were supposed to be back up there was a time … when they were supposed to be back up on the surface and as that time passed the real shock came, not shock but worry and the other not good feelings, started.” .

Search for a lost submarine that has tumbled into the sinking: timeline of Titan’s disappearance

SUNDAY

• 1:00 p.m. (BST): Titan begins the dive to the wreck, departing from its support vessel, the Polar Prince, approximately 435 miles south of St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada
• 2:45 p.m.: The ship loses contact with the Polar Prince
• 10:40 p.m.: US Coast Guard alert

MONDAY

• 2 a.m.: A joint US-Canada maritime search operation is launched with the establishment of a “unified command center” on the Polar Prince

TUESDAY

• 7 p.m.: The Coast Guard announces that passengers have only 40 hours of oxygen left

WEDNESDAY

• 5:30 p.m.: The US Coast Guard confirms that a Canadian P-3 aircraft detected “underwater noise” later described as “popping”.

THURSDAY

• 12:08 p.m.: The theoretical oxygen reserves of the Titan are exhausted
• 4:48 p.m.: The US Coast Guard confirms that they have discovered debris from the submersible

“We had loads of hope, I think that was the only thing that kept us going because we were hoping and … there were so many actions people could take on that sub to surface … they would drop it.” let weights, then the ascent would be slower, we constantly looked at the surface. There was that hope.

“There were so many things that we went through where we were like, ‘Right now it’s just slow, right now it’s slow.'” But there was a lot of hope.”

She said she “lost hope” when 96 hours had passed since her husband and son boarded the submersible.

She revealed that she had sent a message to her family at the time, saying she was “prepared for the worst.”

Her daughter held out a little longer, she said, until the call to the US Coast Guard told her debris had been found.

According to the US Coast Guard, UK-based contractors Shahzada and Suleman were two of five victims who died instantly when the submersible suffered a “catastrophic implosion” just 1,600 feet from Titanic’s bow.

Ms Dawood revealed that she had planned to visit the Titanic wreck in the OceanGate submarine with her husband but her trip was canceled due to the Covid pandemic.

“Then I took a step back and gave them space to settle in.” [Suleman] “Get up because he really wanted to go,” she said.

“I was really happy for them because they’ve both wanted to do this for a long time.”

Ms Dawood shared how she and Alina hugged and joked with Shahzada and Suleman before the couple boarded the submersible.

Suleman, a student at Strathclyde University, had brought his Rubik’s Cube with him on the trip in hopes of breaking the world record for solving the puzzle at greatest depth, she revealed.

“He said, ‘I’m going to solve the Rubik’s Cube 12,000 feet under the sea on the Titanic,'” Ms. Dawood recalled.

Her son, she said, is practical and intellectual, and wouldn’t go anywhere without his Rubik’s Cube — which he taught himself to solve in just 12 seconds.

Christine Dawood revealed that she was “really excited” that Shahzada and Suleman embarked on this journey together, adding that the teenager planned to solve the Rubik’s Cube at 12,000 feet

Suleman, (pictured) a student at Strathclyde University, had brought his Rubik’s Cube with him on the trip in hopes of breaking the world record for solving the puzzle at the greatest depth. Christine recalled, “He said, ‘I’m going to solve the Rubik’s Cube 12,000 feet under the sea on the Titanic'”

“Suleman built a 10,000-piece Lego Titanic.” He was competing for a world record by trying to solve a Rubik’s Cube at the deepest point.

Although his application was denied, they still planned to film the attempt.

Ms. Dawood said she and her daughter swore to learn how to complete the Rubik’s Cube in Suleman’s honor and that she intended to continue her husband’s work.

She said: “He’s been involved in so many things, he’s helped so many people and I think Alina and I really want to carry on that legacy and give him that platform as his work goes on and that’s great for my daughter too important.”

“Alina and I said we’ll learn how to solve the Rubik’s Cube. It’s going to be a challenge for us because we’re really bad at it, but we’re going to learn.”

And the heartbroken mother tearfully said, ‘I miss her.’ I really, really miss her.’

In addition to her husband and son, three other people died aboard Titan: Stockton Rush, CEO of OceanGate, 61, British businessman Hamish Harding, 58, and Paul-Henry Nargeolet, 77, a former French Navy diver and veteran Titanic diver.

Suleman Dawood, 19, was the youngest victim of the Titan submarine tragedy. He is pictured with his father, Vice Chairman of Engro Corporation Limited Shahzada Dawood

According to the US Coast Guard, OceanGate’s Titan submarine submerged about 400 miles southeast of St. John’s, Newfoundland as of 8 a.m. Sunday, June 18. It lost contact at 9.45am but was not reported to the Coast Guard until 5.40pm

Ms Dawood said those afloat were trying to stay hopeful, telling themselves, “There were so many things people on that sub could do to come up…they dropped the weights, then the climb would be slower, we were constantly at it.” .” look at the surface. There was that hope.’

She and her daughter initially gave hope after initially not returning.

She said: “We all thought they were just going to show up so the shock was delayed by like ten hours or so.”

“When they were supposed to be back up, there was a time … when they were supposed to be back up on the surface and when that time was up, the real shock came, not the shock but the worry and the not so good.” Feelings started .’

Despite the bleak outlook as the hunt dragged on, she said her teenage daughter never lost hope of saving her father and older brother.

Billionaire adventurer Hamish Harding, who lost his life aboard the Titan, is pictured gazing out to sea before boarding the submersible

French naval veteran PH Nargeolet (left) and Stockton Rush (right), CEO of the OceanGate Expedition, also perished on Titan

Alina’s mother said of her daughter, “She’s such an incredible young woman, she’s so confident.”

“She believes in science, and she really believes, just like when you get on an airplane, that the science, the mechanics, the engineering is going to work.”

Ms Dawood, aged 96, said she tried “really hard” not to show her daughter that she had lost hope.

After it was announced on Thursday that debris from the submarine had been found, the family returned to St. John’s in Newfoundland, Canada, on Saturday.

Yesterday they held a funeral prayer for Shahzada and Suleman, which Christine said had “helped”.

In a tribute to her son, she admitted that he was a “mama’s boy” but also “loved his father.”

Five people died aboard the Titan submersible after it suffered a “catastrophic implosion” 1,600 feet off the Titanic’s bow

When asked what the family’s last words were to each other, she told the BBC: “We just hugged and joked because Shahzada was so excited to go down, he was like a little kid.”

“He had this ability to generate excitement in childhood, they were both so excited.”

Ms. Dawood and her husband met at university when she did not speak English.

She recalled that the history buff knew more about the history of her native Germany than she did and that he was obsessed with documentaries.

“He let us all watch David Attenborough and the kids loved it.”

“His enthusiasm brought out the best in me and that’s how I really learned to love the story.” “He was really able to inspire and motivate others with his knowledge.”

Regime change in Russia has been a key objective of the globalist wing of American foreign policy since the 2014 Maidan coup, which was carried out at the direction of then-Deputy Secretary of State Victoria Nuland, now Undersecretary for Policy at the US State Department. President Joe Biden hailed calls for regime change on March 26, 2022, declaring that Putin “cannot stay in power” after invading Ukraine on February 24.

The Wagner Group mutiny this weekend sparked a flurry of commentary across editorial offices and social media suggesting that the Russian president might be ousted after all. After Wagner boss Yevgeny Prigozhin accepted the deal proposed by Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko, called off his march on Moscow and made his way to Moscow’s closest ally, Putin was still in power.

But the political sand has shifted towards Russia’s ultra-nationalist right, which poses serious strategic risks, including a greater likelihood of using tactical nuclear weapons.

Russia has turned to a bad form of nationalism since the Maidan, which Nuland and her colleagues saw as the prelude to overthrowing Putin. The US-backed coup against President-elect Viktor Yanukovych threatened Russia’s holdings in Crimea, home of its Black Sea fleet, and led to Russia’s annexation of the peninsula, which has been Russian territory since the reign of Catherine the Great.

Prigozhin reflects a growing consensus within the Russian armed forces and key sections of civil society that Putin was a pushover in the face of Western plans against Russia. That consensus includes Chechen warlord Ramzan Kadyrov, whom Putin persuaded to send troops to defend Moscow against Prigozhin’s mutinous march on the capital. Kadyrov and Prigozhin were allies against Putin’s military leadership and called for more aggressive and decisive action in Ukraine by what was perceived as a cautious Kremlin.

Remarkably, Prigozhin managed to assemble a military column for more than a week without Putin’s knowledge – despite press reports that Western intelligence services were observing this. Even more remarkable is that there were no Russian forces between Moscow and Rostov when the convoy got within 200 kilometers of Moscow, except for a few helicopters, three of which were shot down by Wagner’s forces.

Yevgeny Prigozhin, head of the Wagner group, speaks in Bakhmut in a video released earlier this year. Photo: Telegram channel / @concordgroup_official

Most notably, Putin had to urge Prigozhin’s ally Kadyrov to defend the capital before reaching a compromise with Lukashenko that dropped all charges against the mutineers. It seems that Russia’s regular military stood by and let Prigozhin send a message to Putin.

The ultra-nationalist “Greater Russia” current in Moscow believes Putin is soft on the West. In 2000, Putin applied to then-President Bill Clinton for Russia to join NATO and was turned down. He received a pledge from Washington not to intervene in Ukraine, which the Bush administration violated when it backed the 2004 Orange Revolution.

And he struck a deal with former German Chancellor Angela Merkel to ensure the security and rights of Ukraine’s Russian-speaking minority through the Minsk II accords, which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy canceled in 2022 with Anglo-American backing.

The Prigozhin mutiny now makes Putin dependent on Russia’s extreme right. Should he be overthrown, his successor will not be the liberal democrat Washington dreams of, but a Russian nationalist who seeks absolute victory in Ukraine, even if that will likely require the use of tactical nuclear weapons.

There is no significant liberal current in Russia. But the Russian ruling elite is producing a powerful group of right-wing nationalists who dream of a revived Greater Russia. Disturbingly, this current is merging from several disparate groups.

These include Liberal Democratic Party leader Leonid Slutsky, “Eurasian” philosopher Alexander Dugin, popular TV presenters Vladimir Soloviev and Dmitry Dibrov, Chechen leader Kadyrov, Moscow Patriarchate TV channel SPAS, and the neo-Tsarist Union of the Russian People.

Among them are former Russian flag officers forcibly retired by Putin and Wagner boss Prigozhin, who has lamented Putin’s military timidity and the poor performance of his handpicked commanders. What holds this motley coalition together is the idea that Russia must defeat Ukraine at all costs and that the war can only end in victory on the western borders of the former Soviet Union.

The potential for deploying Russia’s 2,000 tactical nuclear weapons, starting at a kiloton, is not a matter of mere media speculation. The most prominent mouthpieces of “Greater Russia” nationalism are calling for their use.

The ultra-nationalist Hydra has many heads, but one has a louder voice than the others: the self-proclaimed “Red Nazi” Dugin. In a March 2023 Telegram viral post, Dugin called for a general mobilization of all Russian military forces, a militarization of the economy, the internment of war opponents, and the use of tactical nuclear weapons if other measures fail.

Dugin suggested “doing everything possible” to avoid using “non-strategic nuclear weapons” but using them when necessary. Russia should also be “ready to use strategic nuclear weapons,” Dugin said. Dugin’s daughter died in August 2022 when a bomb destroyed the car she was traveling in, which may have been intended for Dugin himself.

The bomb that killed Aleksandr Dugin’s daughter and the aftermath of which is shown here was probably intended for the self-proclaimed “Red Nazi”. Image: Twitter

Dugin, a self-proclaimed disciple of Nazi philosopher Martin Heidegger, has criticized Putin for prioritizing Russian polity over Russky Mir, or Russianness. “He puts the Russian state first, while I think of Russky Mir. This Russian world is much larger than the Russian state. “Putin is desecrating Russian identity and has disappointed many patriots,” the ideologue told a Dutch newspaper in 2018.

Russia’s war with Ukraine is practically a war between the Russian Federation and NATO. Russia is fighting an army of Ukrainians armed, trained, and paid for by the United States and other NATO countries. The sanctions against Russia, including the unprecedented seizure of some $500 billion of its foreign exchange reserves without a full declaration of war, were intended to destroy Russia’s combat capability.

All major Russian currents believe that the West’s goal in this war is to force regime change in Russia and possibly divide the ethnically diverse and geographically dispersed Russian Federation itself.

The Russians are not paranoid about this matter. Regime change in Russia has been on the agenda of some senior Biden administration officials for a decade.

As Undersecretary Nuland, then head of the State Department’s Eastern Europe Division, told a congressional committee on May 6, 2014, “Since 1992, we have provided $20 billion to Russia to support its pursuit of a transition to a peaceful, prosperous, ‘A democratic state its people deserve.” The same theme is dutifully reiterated in the major Washington think tanks and the editorials of the mainstream press.

Under Secretary Nuland. Photo: Asia Times files

There is no effective democratic opposition to the current Russian regime. Before 2022, the supposed democrat Alexei Navalny had the support of a few opinion leaders.

But even before the invasion of Ukraine, the Russian security services forced most of Navalny’s supporters to emigrate or put them in prison. The 24 February 2022 invasion was followed by another wave of immigration, effectively stripping the countryside of any liberal opposition.

Putin’s most likely policy response to the mutiny, and its temporary solution, will be to step up mobilization of Russian manpower, thereby adopting a key element of Dugin’s program. This is all the more likely after the Ukrainian government announced stricter mobilization standards in several oblasts, starting in Kyiv, on June 19.

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Montreal, like many other cities, is shrouded in thick smoke and extremely polluted. Forests have been burning in Canada for weeks, creating smoke that is spreading throughout the country, but also in the USA.

This Monday the fumes, driven by shifting winds, will cross the Atlantic, arriving in France and the UK in particular.

“Smoke from the Quebec fires reaches the mid-Atlantic and is partially picked up by a cold front approaching Brittany on a narrow band,” the observatory points out Keraunos on twitter. The resulting ocean current will help bring these vapors back to Europe in the coming days.

As our colleagues from Ouest France explain, the area burned in 2023 with the millions of hectares already burned, corresponding to several French departments, already exceeds the totals of the last 10 years for the period June-September. As of this Sunday, June 25, the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Center (CIFFC) says 462 fires are currently active and nearly half are out of control. A total of 7.4 million hectares have burned down since the beginning of the year.

premium Mega fires and heatwaves in France… Are extremes becoming the norm?

Yevgeny Prigozhin’s attempted coup in Russia opens up several scenarios. Dario Fabbri, director of Domino, speaking in Agorà on Rai3 on Monday 26 June, analyzed the situation between the war in Ukraine and Vladimir Putin’s possible next steps. After the compromise with the Kremlin, the head of the Wagner group fled to Belarus, although this was not officially confirmed. Minsk “is more than a satellite, Lukashenko is like in the nerve centers of the Russian state and Putin owes his political survival and is manipulated by him,” explains the geopolitical analyst. This points to some unusual details about Wagner’s uprising. For example, Prigozhin complained that his people had been hit hard by the Russian army in the past few days, but if he had said to march on Moscow because the war was going badly and Putin had been too soft, he would have had more Sympathy found part of sectors of the apparatuses and the population.

Also read: Russia Background on Putin-Prigozhin Contact: Secret Trial and Expulsion

In short, more than one thing doesn’t add up. According to some minority analyses, Putin is emerging stronger from this affair. Fabbri responds to this idea: “I can’t understand how he can come out of this stronger.” Of course, it’s fair to say that Wagner made a fool of himself for suddenly quitting, Lukashenko’s intercession was enough to get her to stop. It’s a bit strange,” the reporter points out.

Also read: Putin nowhere to be found: Escape suspected. Moscow receives Chinese support

However, Putin “could get stronger in the medium to long term,” the analyst explains, and the scenario is certainly not reassuring. Because the Russian president could decide to “embody the soul that wants to end the war in Ukraine with the worst, even catastrophe,” says Fabbri. In short, in order to fully regain the power that until Friday seemed insurmountable, the tsar was finally able to accept the thesis of the hawks, “although his strength has always been to be the arbiter between the different factions” of the struggle in Russia. With potentially catastrophic consequences.