By Issy Ronald, CNN

(CNN) — The light fades as divers disappear farther into a cave system, until the greenish hue from their flashlight is all that’s visible, bouncing off walls, picking out creatures humans might never have seen before, and illuminating a world otherwise confined to total darkness.

These caverns can extend for hundreds of miles, dangerous, otherworldly mazes unlike anywhere else on Earth.

Any cave diver is well aware of the dangers involved in exploring these alien zones. In a 2024 documentary, “Diving Into the Darkness,” veteran Canadian cave diver Jill Heinerth recalls swimming “through the graves of my friends all the time. That list is well over a hundred people.”

The dangers of this highly specialized discipline were underscored once again this month when five Italian divers died while exploring the Vaavu Atoll caves in the Maldives on May 14, and Maldivian military diver Sgt. Mohamed Mahudhee also died attempting to recover their bodies.

Diving instructor Gianluca Benedetti’s body was found at the mouth of the cave, and the other four divers — Monica Montefalcone, an associate professor of ecology at the University of Genoa; her daughter, Giorgia Sommacal; Federico Gualtieri, a marine biologist; and Muriel Oddenino, a researcher — were all found in the deepest part of the cave system.

But even though they are acutely aware of the dangers, something constantly draws back cave divers who dedicate, and sometimes sacrifice, their lives to exploring these strange underwater worlds.

Navigating only with flashlights and a guideline — the thin thread that allows divers to find their way back to the cave entrance — they glimpse another side to life on Earth.

Cave divers often describe their chosen habitat as space-like, a whole other world filled with stalagmites, stalactites and alien-like creatures. Diving in these underwater cave systems is like “swimming through the veins of Mother Earth,” said Heinerth, who has completed more than 8,000 dives.

“Astronauts have that overview effect where they talk about looking back on the great blue planet, and they can never look at Earth the same way again,” she told CNN on Tuesday. “I guess I’m having a similar effect from being inside the planet … I’m literally within the sustenance of the planet that’s supplying the water for humanity, wildlife and even all of the industries we require for our modern life.”

‘All the things that could go wrong’

So many things can go wrong during a cave dive. Equipment can fail; guidelines can break; visibility can become nigh on impossible. And, if things go wrong, you cannot just ascend to the surface as in other types of scuba diving. You are reliant on your own wits, and your dive buddy.

While exploring these systems, cave divers will routinely squeeze through incredibly tight spaces. Sometimes, “my shoulders are scraping the ceiling and my belly is on the floor, and I can see less than a meter in high flow as the sand and silt is blasting me in the face,” Heinerth said.

So, before any dive, before she does anything else, Heinerth will “rehearse all of those things that could go wrong, all of the things that could kill me in this environment.”

Por Michael Williams, CNN

Dos meses después de asumir su nuevo cargo, el secretario de Seguridad Nacional, Markwayne Mullin, se encuentra intentando resolver un rompecabezas: ¿cómo cumple con el mandato de deportación que el presidente Donald Trump espera de él, al tiempo que evita caer en algunas de las mismas trampas que provocaron la destitución de su predecesora?

Las controvertidas patrullas de inmigración itinerantes, dirigidas a estados y ciudades de tendencia demócrata, han reducido su actividad. Sin embargo, Mullin sigue arremetiendo contra los funcionarios electos que gobiernan estas zonas y contra sus políticas de inmigración progresistas, todo ello mientras el “zar de la frontera” de la Casa Blanca prometía recientemente “inundar” esos lugares con agentes de inmigración.

Mullin cedió agentes del Servicio de Inmigración y Control de Aduanas (ICE) a los aeropuertos que sufrían escasez de personal durante el cierre parcial del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional, al tiempo que amenazaba con recortar la financiación a algunos de esos mismos aeropuertos situados en jurisdicciones que se niegan a cooperar con la aplicación de las leyes federales de inmigración.

El secretario está promocionando la participación de su agencia en la seguridad de docenas de próximos partidos de la Copa Mundial. No obstante, ha dejado abierta la posibilidad de que algunos de los agentes asignados a la vigilancia de esos encuentros puedan detener a inmigrantes, lo cual exacerba la inquietud de los aficionados que han manifestado que no asistirán a los eventos o que los boicotearán.

Al inicio de su mandato, Mullin suspendió los esfuerzos para instalar vastos centros de detención de migrantes. Sin embargo, según reportes, algunos de esos planes vuelven sobre la mesa ahora, a pesar de los litigios pendientes al respecto.

En definitiva, las acciones de Mullin durante sus primeros 60 días como secretario revelan que intenta mantener un difícil equilibrio entre el enfoque conciliador y exento de dramatismo en la aplicación de las leyes de inmigración que prometió a los legisladores durante su audiencia de confirmación en marzo y el deseo de los partidarios de la línea dura del movimiento MAGA —así como del propio presidente— de cumplir con una de las promesas emblemáticas que impulsaron el regreso de Trump a la Casa Blanca.

Un portavoz del Departamento de Seguridad Nacional declaró en un comunicado que, bajo el liderazgo de Mullin, la agencia mantiene un “foco absoluto en su misión de hacer que Estados Unidos vuelva a ser un país seguro”.

“El DHS continúa deteniendo a los peores criminales, garantizando la frontera más segura de la historia de Estados Unidos e impidiendo que las drogas inunden nuestras comunidades”, afirmó el portavoz.

Por su parte, los funcionarios de la administración han adoptado medidas para reafirmar su visión inalterable de llevar a cabo deportaciones masivas, especialmente ante audiencias conservadoras que han criticado al Gobierno por no haber cumplido dichas promesas.

“No nos rendimos”, declaró Tom Homan, el “zar de la frontera” de la Casa Blanca, ante un grupo de funcionarios del DHS y representantes del sector durante una conferencia celebrada a principios de este mes. El presidente Trump llegó al cargo por una gran razón —por muchas razones—, pero ¿la razón principal? La aplicación de las leyes de inmigración.

Mullin ha buscado rehabilitar la imagen de los agentes de inmigración bajo su mando, quienes durante la gestión de la secretaria anterior, Kristi Noem, se enfrentaron a una oleada de noticias negativas casi diarias por sus operaciones agresivas en ciudades como Chicago, Los Ángeles y Minneapolis. (Trump, por su parte, incluso sugirió cambiar el nombre de ICE a “NICE” —añadiendo la palabra “National” al principio—, pero se topó con la oposición de Homan y de los agentes de base).

Durante el cierre parcial de

By Kara Alaimo, CNN

(CNN) — Manoush Zomorodi has some good and bad news for you.

The bad news? All that sitting you do — whether you’re working at a desk or scrolling — is way worse for your health than you probably realized, the New York City-based NPR journalist warned in her new book, “Body Electric: The Hidden Health Costs of the Digital Age and New Science to Reclaim Your Well-Being.”

The good news? There’s a simple, free way to eliminate a lot of the negative effects of being sedentary.

I spoke to Zomorodi about how building five-minute movement breaks every 30 minutes into our daily routines can leave us healthier, happier and more productive.

This conversation has been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.

CNN: You warn that sitting all day is killing people. Why is it so bad for us?

Manoush Zomorodi: There are three reasons it’s so physically detrimental. One is that your leg muscles need stimulation, so being at a standing desk doesn’t make a difference. They need stimulation in order to suck the glucose and the lipids out of your bloodstream and push the oxygen up to your brain.

The other thing is that when we sit, we’re constricting our diaphragm, which doesn’t let us take in deep breaths. The third thing is interoception, which is the body telling the brain what it needs. When we’re staring at a screen, we’re in thrall with what is happening externally, and we ignore the signals that are coming from our bodies. So, your body could be begging for a break, and you don’t even hear it.

CNN: How do you suggest adding movement to our lives? What happened when you and your listeners tried it?

Zomorodi: NPR combined forces with Keith Diaz, a physiologist at Columbia University Medical Center. Based on the findings of his previous research, we asked people to move for five minutes every half hour, five minutes every hour or five minutes every two hours for two weeks.

They could do anything. They could march while they were on a phone call. They could walk around the house collecting all the dirty dishes to put them in the dishwasher. They could take the dog out for a walk. It could be an imaginary dog. If walking was not an option, arm movements really do count.

We had to close it after 23,000 people signed up, so clearly people need this.

By the end, 80% of the people who committed to taking the breaks stuck with them, and 82% actually enjoyed taking the breaks. We saw up to a 28% reduction in fatigue levels.

We heard from people who found their attention spans again. They were able to focus and lost that brain fog so many of us have these days. They also got back more energy and a little taste of positivity. The main thing is that their moods stabilized.

CNN: While you say we shouldn’t stop other forms of exercise, we can’t counteract the negative effects of sitting all day by going to the gym in the morning first. Why not?

Z