By Ankur Banerjee SINGAPORE Asian shares were subdued on Wednesday and the dollar hovered around a five-week peak

They would have called him Jonah in a past life… When lobster diver Michael Packard found himself being swallowed up by a humpback whale he was convinced his time had come. But just as he was having what he assumed to be his final thoughts, the whale decided against it and spat him out. Packard was able to swim to safety after the incident, which was in June 2021. Since then, he has given a series of interviews about the death-defying episode. “[I was] trapped for about 30-40 seconds. Yes, I was almost convinced I was going to die that day,” he said in a Reddit Ask Me Anything. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter “All of a sudden, I felt this huge shove and the next thing I knew it was completely black,” he said in a separate interview with the Cape Cod Times. “I could sense I was moving, and I could feel the whale squeezing with the muscles in his mouth,” Packard was 56 at the time, and initially thought he was inside a great white shark. However, he couldn’t feel any teeth and he hadn’t suffered any obvious wounds, and it dawned on him that the situation was far more biblical than that. “I was completely inside; it was completely black,” Packard said. “I thought to myself, ‘there’s no way I’m getting out of here. I’m done, I’m dead.’ All I could think of was my boys — they’re 12 and 15 years old.” Experts think the incident was likely a freak accident, and that the humpback whales are not aggressive towards humans. (That puts them in a different category to orcas, which have spent the first half of 2023 exacting their revenge on humankind.) Jooke Robbins, director of Humpback Whale Studies at the Center for Coastal Studies in Provincetown, said: “Based on what was described, this would have to be a mistake and an accident on the part of the humpback.” When a humpback opens its mouth to feed, it billows out like a parachute, blocking the animal’s forward vision, which is why so many become entangled in fishing gear in their mouth and jaws, said Robbins. It isn’t even Packard’s first brush with death. The diver also managed to survive a plane crash in Costa Rica in 2001 in miraculous circumstances. The crash, which killed three people, saw Packard sustain “severe facial injuries and multiple broken long bones in his arms and legs”, according to a Cape Cod Times dispatch in 2001. A doctor who treated the survivors told the Associated Press: "They would not have survived another night at that site." As for the whale escape? Packard didn’t sustain any serious injuries, telling Reddit he was left with “soft tissue damage, nothing serious”. A close shave indeed. Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Duke’s opening-week rout of then-No. 9 Clemson served notice that the Atlantic Coast Conference wouldn’t necessarily fall in line behind the perennial powerhouse Tigers

A cyberattack at Clorox is causing wide-scale disruption of the company's operations, hampering its ability to make its cleaning materials, Clorox said Monday.

By Brendan Pierson A Louisiana judge's order sharply limiting U.S. officials' contacts with social media companies could soon

Athletic-wear retailer Dick's Sporting Goods said on Tuesday it would recruit 8,600 workers across the United States for

Russia’s current-account surplus slumped in the second quarter from its peak a year earlier, reflecting a rapidly worsening

SAN JOSE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jul 19, 2023--

Keanu Reeves was initially unwilling to change his birth name but later considered the alias ‘Chuck Spadina’, which his agents rejected

A former employee of Twitter/X has spoken about the working conditions under Elon Musk, claiming that it was the ‘hardest experience of her life’. The social media platform’s head of trust and safety, Ella Irwin, resigned from the company in June, confirming the decision to Reuters. Her decision to leave the company came after Musk doubled down on his stance on trans issues, confirming he would be lobbying legislators to “criminalise making severe, irreversible changes to children below the age of consent” through gender-affirming surgery, and that “nobody knows who they are as a child”. Writing in June, Irwin said that it had become clear “there was no longer alignment” between her “nonnegotiable principles” and the policies of Twitter/X. Now, Irwin has spoken further about her decision and criticised the “terrible” decisions made by Musk. Irwin released a statement to NBC News, saying: “It absolutely was the hardest experience that I've gone through in my career. Speaking about Musk’s decision making, Irwin said: “There's more emotion behind his decisions than I would have maybe expected before I met him. “I think that contributes to some of the impulsiveness… I think there were a lot of situations in which I would have handled things very differently.” Reflecting on Musk’s leadership, Irwin added: “There were things that I wouldn't have tweeted in the middle of the night, [and] there were certainly things that could have been stated better.” It comes after Kanye West accused Musk of taking advantage of his clout in a bid to boost the “struggling” platform’s numbers. West is used to causing outrage on Twitter/X, having been banned from the platform in the past. Sign up for our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings

The son and 8-year-old grandson of a former Boston Red Sox player were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide in their Massachusetts home Friday as the investigation axfor the boy's mother -- who has been missing , according to local officials.

Water levels at Lake Titicaca -- the highest navigable lake in the world and South America's largest -- are dropping precipitously after an unprecedented winter heat wave. The shocking decline is affecting tourism, fishing and agriculture, which locals rely on to make a living.