World

Hamish Harding, an aviation tycoon and ardent explorer, made it his quest to probe the heavens as well as the depths, landing him a place in Guinness World Records and ultimately leading him to a fateful plunge to the wreckage of the Titanic some two and a half miles below the surface of the North Atlantic.The submersible craft in which he was traveling with four others lost contact with its mother ship on Sunday. After a five-day multinational search across an area the size of Massachusetts, the company that sponsored the voyage, OceanGate Expeditions, said on Thursday that all five were dead. The U.S. Coast Guard said that debris from the craft was found on the ocean floor on Thursday morning, about 1,600 feet from the bow of the Titanic.Mr. Harding was 58.Along with Mr. Harding, the Br...

Ukrainian soldiers, who recently returned from deployment on the front lines, practiced combat fighting in eastern Ukraine this month.Credit...Mauricio Lima for The New York TimesRussia’s defense minister claimed on Thursday that the country’s army was able to fend off Ukraine’s counteroffensive, echoing a sentiment that has become pervasive among some Russian commentators — although the notion was met with some pushback, including from President Vladimir V. Putin.The defense minister, Sergei K. Shoigu, told Mr. Putin at a meeting of the country’s Security Council that the Russian Army had successfully thwarted the initial wave of the Ukrainian counteroffensive. Mr. Shoigu also projected confidence that Moscow’s forces would be able to withstand further attacks even as Western allies deli...

Prime Minister Narendra Modi of India will receive a lavish welcome on Thursday in Washington, where he will address a joint session of Congress and be feted by President Biden and the first lady in a state dinner at the White House — only the third state leader to be hosted by the current administration.Swirling around the pageantry of a momentous visit for U.S.-India relations, seen as an affirmation of India’s rise as an economic and diplomatic power, will be weighty questions of geopolitical alignments with regard to China’s economic influence and Russia’s military aggression, as well as the erosion of India’s secular democracy under Mr. Modi. How much if any of that will be publicly addressed by the two leaders is unclear.The visit is a significant diplomatic prize for Mr. Modi, who ...

KYIV, Ukraine — More than 100 people were rooting for Ukraine’s national soccer team in the front of the Corner Pub, but a look at the back rooms of the bar made it clear that its customers were more than just sports fans.There were helmets, bandages, hand warmers and intravenous bags in one of the bar’s store rooms on Monday night, all destined for the front lines. “It’s a logistics hub,” the pub’s owner, Oleksii Marchuk, said.Named for its perch outside the capital’s now-closed Olympic Stadium, the Corner Pub has long been a gathering point for die-hard supporters of Dynamo Kyiv, one of Ukraine’s most famous professional teams. But since Russia’s full-scale invasion, it has also become a substitute for their shuttered stadium and a hub to help the war effort.Beyond just cheering on thei...

Many vessels that descend into the sunless depths of the sea for scientific exploration are sturdy behemoths with proven engineering and track records for safety.But Titan, the lost submersible from the company OceanGate, is a technological maverick based on novel concepts that differ from standard designs. Moreover, unlike most deep-sea craft, Titan has undergone no certification by a reputable marine group that does such licensing work for other craft, including one built by OceanGate that dives to shallower depths.“It suggests they were cutting corners,” said Bruce H. Robison, a senior marine biologist at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute in California, who has explored the ocean’s depths with more than a dozen different kinds of submersibles. Alfred S. McLaren, a retired Na...