The apparent sound made when the Titan submersible imploded in June 2023 has been revealed in new footage released Thursday by the Marine Board of Investigation, the US Coast Guard’s highest level of inquiry.

Cameras on the sub’s mother ship captured the moment when Wendy Rush – whose husband Stockton founded OceanGate, the company which built the ill-fated vessel, and was one of five people who died in its implosion – heard a faint cracking sound similar to a car door slamming.

“What was that bang?” she says, turning to the people next to her.

At that point, the sub had reached a depth of about 3,300 meters and was about 90 minutes into its descent to the ocean floor to give passengers on board an up-close view of the Titanic.

That “bang” is thought to be the moment the sub imploded. However, moments later, the crew on the support ship received a message from the sub saying it had dropped two weights – which may have created the false impression it was still operating normally.

Every system which transmits data through the water has “some inherent buffering or delay related to how they do the signal timing or processing,” he explained.

“If the ‘weights dropped’ message was sent a few seconds before the implosion … the computer may not show the message immediately when it is received. The timing is tight, but possible. It really depends on the system they were using.”

Six seconds after that message, the mother ship lost contact with the sub, according to the timeline established by authorities investigating the doomed expedition.

When the sub failed to resurface, a dramatic international search and rescue mission unfolded in the remote waters several hundred miles southeast of Newfoundland.

Authorities found the Titan’s wreckage on the floor of the North Atlantic Ocean days later, several hundred yards from the Titanic’s remains.

Rush, businessman Shahzada Dawood and his 19-year-old son, Suleman; businessman Hamish Harding; and French diver Paul-Henri Nargeolet were all killed.

Since the implosion, the sub’s fate has been held up by some as an example of the dangers of hubris and greed.

Testimony given during the hearings into the disaster painted a damning portrait of OceanGate and Rush, who charged passengers about $250,000 per dive despite several concerns being raised about the sub’s durability.

Two documentaries scheduled for release in the coming weeks – one produced by the BBC and the other by Netflix – will further investigate the causes behind the disaster.

A federal judge temporarily halted the Trump administration’s ban on Friday, after the nation’s oldest and wealthiest college filed a suit in federal court. Harvard argued revocation of its certification in the Student and Exchange Visitor Program was “clear retaliation” for its refusal of the government’s ideologically rooted policy demands.

“They’re literally like, teenagers, thousands of miles away from their hometowns having to deal with this situation, which lawyers often fear to engage in,” said Sial, who is currently traveling overseas after exams and is uncertain if he’ll be able to return to campus.

About 27% of Harvard’s student body is international, with 6,793 international undergraduates and grad students hailing from nearly every country in the world.

Sial said the university and deans have been helpful in supporting international students at a time of uncertainty and “pure panic,” which is happening days after final exams ended and just one week before graduation.

As student body president, he says he is working to encourage the university to assist international students who want to transfer to other colleges and pushing for students’ financial aid packages to transfer, as well. But the window to transfer to other universities for the fall semester is already closed at most colleges, Sial said.

“Many of us have worked our entire lives to get to a university like Harvard, and now we need to wait around and see if we might have to transfer out and face difficulties with visas,” says rising junior Karl Molden, from Austria.

Molden, who is also traveling abroad and concerned he won’t be allowed to return to campus, said he feels international students are being used as a “ball in this larger fight between democracy and authoritarianism.”

Jewish students ‘being used as pawns,’ says one Israeli student

Harvard and Trump officials have been locked in conflict for months as the administration demands the university make changes to campus programming, policies, hiring and admissions to root out what the White House has called antisemitism and “racist” practices.

Like many other colleges and universities, Harvard drew intense criticism last year for its handling of pro-Palestinian protests and encampments following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, as well as complaints from Jewish alumni and students about antisemitism on campus.

Harvard has acknowledged antisemitism on its campus, particularly during the previous academic year, and said it has begun taking concrete action to address it.

An Israeli postdoctoral student studying at Harvard said she feels like Jewish students are “being used as pawns” by the Trump administration, which has accused the university of perpetuating an unsafe campus environment that is “hostile to Jewish students” and “employs racist diversity, equity and inclusion practices.”

The Israeli student, who did not want to be named in fear of being denied reentry to the United States, said she believed the Trump administration was “using” the university to “have this battle with academia that is much bigger than Harvard.”

She said the government was clamping down on ideas that “don’t always align with the administration, rather than (having) an actual concern for the safety of Jewish students, Israeli students.”

“So, I do feel like we’re being used,” she said, adding that she thinks university leadership is taking the issue of antisemitism on campus seriously. “I don’t want to diminish anyone’s experience at the university. I know people have had tough experiences, but I do feel like I have, personally, 100% trust and faith in our leadership.”

Young researchers say they will leave US

“As a graduate student, we are just fully occupied with our research work, which I would say I spend 80 to 100 hours on each week,” said the Australian student, adding that the showdown between the Trump administration and Harvard will likely lead to researchers leaving the country. “If things really hit the fan, (I) would probably be trying to transfer to a school in the UK.”

Other graduate students said they are also feeling fear and uncertainty, with concerns for their research work, their future careers and their loved ones.

“There’s the ramifications for their family, you know, spouses, their children, their enrollment, their work status, their rent, housing, everything,” said Fangzhou Jiang, 30, from China. He is a Harvard Kennedy School student going into his second year of a master’s program. “You just don’t know what’s going to happen.”

Facing deportation from the US, and retribution at home

For some international students, like those from countries at war or experiencing political turmoil, the stakes are even higher.

Maria Kuznetsova, a former spokesperson for OVD-Info, a Russian independent human rights monitoring group, is currently a graduate student at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government. She’s graduating in a week and had planned to work on a Harvard-sponsored visa that had already been granted, but she fears it may be canceled now.

“From what I see, people are still in a state of panic – everyone’s waiting for the court’s decision,” Kuznetsova said.

“It’s not just me from Russia here – there are also many Ukrainians, a lot of political students from Venezuela, and people from Afghanistan and Palestine. I even have a classmate from North Korea. These are people who, quite literally, cannot return to their home countries,” she added.

Ivan Bogantsev, also from Russia, was planning to stay in the US after completing his program at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. His wife, currently in Russia and also on a Harvard-sponsored visa, is due to arrive for his graduation, but he’s unsure whether she’ll be allowed entry.

But he said going back to Russia is not an option he is considering.

“I was detained at rallies (in Russia), and let’s just say the atmosphere was growing increasingly tense. And secondly, most of my friends are essentially labeled (in Russia) as criminals, traitors or foreign agents.”

‘Harvard campus will not be the same’

“I was looking forward to celebrating commencement next week, but now, you know, I might leave this place and it will not look the same next semester, because without these international students and its international researchers, the Harvard campus will not be the same,” Gerdén said.

“We are being used essentially as poker chips in a battle between the White House and Harvard, and it feels honestly very dehumanizing.”

A popular Mexican singer, Julión Álvarez, says he and his band have had to cancel a show in Texas on Saturday night after the singer’s visa to enter the United States had been allegedly revoked.

The band, called Julión Álvarez y Su Norteño Banda, was due to play at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, around 30 miles west of Dallas, for a sold-out concert with nearly 50,000 tickets sold, the artist’s team said in a statement Friday.

The artist, show promoter CMN and management company Copar Music said that the show had been cancelled “due to unforeseen circumstances,” and that Álvarez was “unable to enter the United States in time for the event.”

Álvarez also announced the news on his Instagram account, saying in a video that he and his team were notified that his work visa had been revoked by US authorities earlier Friday.

“It is not possible for us to go to the United States and fulfill our show promise with all of you. It’s a situation that is out of our hands. That’s the information I have and what I can share,” he said in the video.

Álvarez said the stage had already been built and that his production team was already in Texas preparing for the show.

“I apologize to all of you, and if God permits, we will be in touch to provide more information,” he said.

The show’s promoter and Copar Music said they were working with Álvarez’s team to reschedule the performance. All previously purchased tickets will be honored for the new date and refund details will be provided for those who cannot attend, it said.

Álvarez and his band are the latest Mexican artists to allegedly have their US visas revoked amid Trump’s sweeping immigration crackdown.

Last month, the State Department revoked the tourist visas of members of the Mexican band Los Alegres del Barranco, after they projected the face of a drug cartel boss onto a screen during a performance in the western state of Jalisco.

The Trump administration has also cracked down on foreign nationals allegedly linked directly or indirectly to drug cartels. This includes revoking the visas of artists whose work depicts drug cartels that the administration has deemed foreign terrorist organizations.

In 2017, Álvarez had his US work visa revoked after the US alleged he and around 20 other people – including soccer player Rafael Márquez – had ties to a drug trafficker linked to major cartels and were put under sanctions, according to a US Treasury statement.

Álvarez denied those allegations and said he was only connected to the trafficker over a real estate purchase.

Álvarez was removed from the sanctions list in 2022 and was able to regain his visa, making a return to the United States earlier this year with three sold-out shows at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles in April.

With nearly 17 million monthly listeners on Spotify, Álvarez is renowned in Mexico for his traditional music style with elements of banda, norteña, and mariachi. Some of his top hits include heartbreak hits like “Póngamonos de Acuerdo” and “Te Hubieras Ido Antes.”

Ukraine’s capital Kyiv came under a large-scale Russian drone and missile attack overnight into Saturday, just hours after Russia and Ukraine began a major prisoner exchange.

At least eight people were injured in the attacks, which triggered fires and left debris strewn in districts throughout the city, the city’s mayor Vitali Klitschko said in a post on Telegram.

Klitschko said two residents had required hospital treatment and that air defense units were in action, Reuters reported, adding that fragments from one drone struck the top floor of an apartment building.

Explosions and loud sirens could be heard blaring across the capital in video shared by Reuters news agency. Several fires could be seen against the nighttime skyline.

Timur Tkachenko, head of Kyiv’s military administration, said a fire had broken out on two floors of an apartment building in Dniprovskyi district, according to Reuters.

Officials also reported a fire in Obolon in the city’s northern suburbs and fallen debris on a shopping center in the same area, Reuters reported. They also said drone fragments hit the ground in a number of other widely separated neighborhoods.

The nighttime attack came after Russia and Ukraine completed the first phase of what is expected to be the biggest prisoner exchange since the start of the war.

The swap started on Friday and will continue on Saturday and Sunday, with Kyiv and Moscow expected to swap 2,000 people – 1,000 from each side.

The agreement to release 1,000 prisoners on each side was the only significant outcome of the meeting between Kyiv and Moscow in Istanbul last week, which marked the first time the two sides have met directly since soon after Russia’s full-scale unprovoked invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

The Istanbul meeting was initially proposed by Russian President Vladimir Putin in response to a ceasefire-or-sanctions ultimatum given to Moscow by Kyiv’s European allies – which many saw as a clear attempt by the Kremlin leader to distract and delay.

Ukraine and its allies demanded that Russia agree to an immediate and unconditional ceasefire in Istanbul, but that did not happen.

Neither Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky nor Russian President Vladimir Putin attended the talks in Istanbul.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

The Trump administration issued orders Friday to begin easing sanctions on Syria, marking a major policy shift after US President Donald Trump pledged earlier this month to roll back the measures during a trip to the Middle East.

Trump administration officials had been carrying out quiet engagements for months to pave the way for sanctions relief to help the nation recover from years of a devastating war and rebuild after the toppling of ousted leader Bashar al-Assad.

On Friday, the US Treasury Department said Syria has been issued a general license that authorizes transactions involving the interim Syrian government, as well as the central bank and state-owned enterprises.

The GL25 license “authorizes transactions prohibited by the Syrian Sanctions Regulations, effectively lifting sanctions on Syria,” and “will enable new investment and private sector activity consistent with the President’s America First strategy,” it said in a press release.

The US State Department concurrently issued a 180-day waiver under the Caesar Act to ensure sanctions do not impede investment, and advance Syria’s recovery and reconstruction efforts, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.

Rubio said the waivers will facilitate the provision of electricity, energy, water, and sanitation, and enable a more effective humanitarian response across Syria.

“Today’s actions represent the first step in delivering on the President’s vision of a new relationship between Syria and the United States,” Rubio said.

While in Saudi Arabia last week, where he met with Syria’s interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa, Trump announced that sanctions on Syria would be swiftly removed, taking some officials by surprise and triggering a scramble across the US government to implement the decision,

Rubio said shortly after that the US would issue waivers to Syria sanctions, which are currently required by law. Meanwhile, the administration is engaged in a complicated technical review of the sanctions, which is expected to take weeks, officials said at the time.

“If we make enough progress, we’d like to see the law repealed, because you’re going to struggle to find people to invest in a country when any in six months, sanctions could come back. We’re not there yet. That’s premature,” Rubio said.

Speaking in Saudi Arabia, Trump said he made the decision to lift sanctions after speaking with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Saudi officials had coordinated behind the scenes on the topic for months, making the case that removing sanctions would boost the Syrian economy and help to stabilize the entire region.

The Turkish government also had contacts with the US about Syria and knew about the work being done to see if the lifting of sanctions was possible, a source familiar with the matter said. The Turkish government expressed support for those efforts.

But not all US allies in the region were in favor of where Trump was headed: Israel had opposed the move and Trump ignored their objections.

Trump acknowledged last week that he “didn’t ask” Israel about the Syria sanctions relief.

“I thought it was the right thing to do,” he said as he wrapped up his tour of the Middle East.