Italian Prosecutors who have opened up a criminal probe into multiple manslaughter and negligent shipwreck think the 56-meter (184-foot) yacht, the Bayesian, may contain highly sensitive data tied to a number of Western intelligence services, four sources familiar with the investigation and salvage operation said.

Lynch was associated with British, American and other intelligence services through his various companies, including the cyber security company he founded, Darktrace.

That company was sold to Chicago-based private equity firm Thoma Bravo in April. Lynch, whose wife’s company Revtom Limited owned the vessel, was also an adviser to British prime ministers David Cameron and Theresa May on science, technology and cyber security during their tenures, according to British government and public Darktrace records.

Lynch, his 18-year-old daughter Hannah, American attorney Chris Morvillo and his wife Neda, British banker Jonathan Bloomer and his wife Judy, and the yacht’s onboard chef Recaldo Thomas died when the ship sank in a violent storm in the early hours of the morning.

Preliminary results from autopsies suggest that the Bloomer and Morvillo couples died of suffocation or “dry drowning” when the oxygen in an air bubble in a sleeping cabin ran out. Autopsy results for Lynch and his daughter were less clear.

The chef, whose body was found outside the vessel, died by drowning, the coroner said. Toxicology reports on the dead have not yet been released, but none had suffered any physical injuries when the boat went down.

Lynch’s wife Angela Bacares and 14 others survived, including the captain James Cutfield, who, along with a deckhand and the yacht’s engine room manager, is under investigation for multiple manslaughter and causing a negligent shipwreck. They have all been allowed to leave Italy.

Morvillo represented Lynch when he was acquitted in a criminal fraud case in the US in June tied to the takeover by Hewlett Packard of his software company Autonomy, and survivors told investigators that the cruise was a celebration of that acquittal, according to the assistant prosecutor, Raffaele Cammarano. Though Lynch was acquitted of any criminal wrongdoing in the US, Hewlett Packard has indicated it will not drop its bid to collect a $4 billion civil payout from Lynch’s estate, awarded by a British court in 2022.

The Bayesian sank a few hours before Chamberlain died in the hospital, his lawyer said. Lynch would not have known of his partner’s death, and Chamberlain was in a coma so would not have known about the shipwreck, Chamberlain’s legal counsel said.

Local prosecutor Ambrogio Cartosio said no personal effects, including computers, jewelry or Lynch’s hard drives had been recovered from the vessel. However, the onboard hard drives and surveillance cameras tied to the yacht’s navigation system have been brought to investigators to determine if there is any usable data that might indicate how the yacht sank within 16 minutes of the storm hitting. The vessel did not have a traditional black box or voyage data recorder to record navigation data or audio on the bridge.

After divers complete surveys of the wreck this week, they will make suggestions for how to best raise the 473-ton vessel without spilling any of the 18,000 liters of oil and fuel still onboard, and how to make sure any sensitive data does not fall into the wrong hands. The costs of raising the ship will fall to its owner, Lynch’s widow, as is mandated by Italian maritime law.

At least 22 people, mostly women and children, have been killed in an Israeli strike on a school compound Saturday, Palestinian officials said, with Israel saying it targeted Hamas fighters sheltering there.

A spokesman for the Gaza Civil Defense, Mahmoud Basal, said the missile hit the Al-Zaytoun School, near Gaza City, where thousands were sheltering.

The Government Media Office in Gaza said 13 children, including a 3-month-old infant were killed. Other children needed amputations, the GMO said.

The Israeli military said that the compound was being used as a Hamas command center and precautions had been taken to avoid civilian casualties.

Aircraft “conducted a precise strike on terrorists who were operating inside a Hamas command and control center in Gaza City” the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said.

“The command and control center, which was embedded inside a compound that previously served as the Al Falah School, was used by Hamas terrorists to plan and carry out terrorist attacks.”

The woman, who did not give her name, added: “My message is that this war and the bloodshed should make you wake up. All of you are numb and don’t feel anything … No schools, no hospitals, no food, no water. Shame on you.”

A girl who said her name was Amal, and was also sheltering at the school, asked: “What have we, the children, done to wake up and go to sleep in fear? At least stop the bombing of schools. We have no schools, no homes — where should we go?

“Everyone was martyred, all of them were martyred, torn to pieces,” she said.

“The Arab countries are afraid and don’t want to intervene — why are you scared? What is our fault? Call for a truce and end this. What’s wrong with you?” asked Amal.

Amid a flare-up in tensions between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, Israel continues to operate in Gaza where it is seeking to destroy Hamas following the October 7 attacks, claiming the killing of a prominent Hamas operative and several other fighters.

The IDF also said Saturday that troops had recently detected “armed militants” robbing a humanitarian aid truck in the Rafah area, without giving a date.

While securing the humanitarian route, the IDF said, “troops identified armed militants robbing a humanitarian aid truck. In a swift operation, the troops directed drones that located the militants fleeing in a car, and they were eliminated by IAF aircraft.”

The security of humanitarian convoys has been an issue for aid agencies, with looting a frequent problem.

Zelensky has been pushing Ukraine’s allies to ease restrictions on weapons and although there have been signs of the US shifting its stance he said they are yet to be given the go-ahead.

“We do have long-range weapons. But let’s just say not the amount we need.” Zelensky said Friday, adding that “neither the US nor the United Kingdom gave us permission to use these weapons on the territory of Russia.”

Speaking to journalists, Zelensky blamed the allies’ hesitation to authorize such use on escalations fears.

“There are many different factors, someone is talking about something, someone is negotiating with someone, for someone it is indeed an escalation. I think Biden is actually receiving information from his circle today that there may be an escalation. However, and this is important, not all of his entourage think so. And that’s an achievement, that not all of his entourage thinks so,” Zelensky said.

The Ukrainian leader said he was hopeful his arguments would be heard next week.

“We have had some decisions in the history of our relationship with Biden, some very interesting and difficult dialogues. He would later change his mind,” he said.

Zelensky added that, besides Biden, he would also meet the Democratic presidential nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris.

“I want to see what she thinks about this victory plan. As I told you, the plan includes not only what is needed from Biden today. But it also includes the fact that we will have a different situation after November. That is, there will be a new president in the United States. And we need to talk to each of the candidates about their perception of this,” he said.

He added that he will also “definitely” have a meeting with former president, Donald Trump, who in a recent debate refused to say if he wanted Ukraine to win the war.

Zelensky is expected to visit the US next week, taking part at the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Ammunition depots hit

Ukrainian officials meanwhile said on Saturday that they struck two ammunition facilities in Russia’s Krasnodar and Tver regions, part of continued efforts to degrade Russian military infrastructure.

The General Staff of the Armed Forces of Ukraine said on Saturday, that the Tikhoretsk arsenal in Russia’s Krasnodar region was targeted overnight in a joint operation with country’s Security Service (SBU), claiming that the facility is “one of the three largest ammunition storage bases of the occupiers and is one of the key facilities in the logistics system of the Russian troops.”

In a post on Telegram overnight, Krasnodar governor Veniamin Kondratiev acknowledged what he said was a “terrorist attack by the Kyiv regime,” but did not mention any ammunition depot being hit. He said that two drones were intercepted with its falling debris causing a fire, leading to the temporary evacuation of nearby settlements.

“The SBU, jointly with the entire Ukrainian Defense Forces, is systematically reducing the enemy’s missile and artillery potential,” the source said.

On Wednesday, Ukraine claimed it destroyed a large Russian ammunition depot in the western Russian region of Tver.

“Today, it was the next largest depot – one of the enemy’s important logistics facilities where ammunition was stored for attacks on Ukraine” said the source,” the source added on Saturday.

Next week, an already very public debate over whether Ukraine should be allowed to use long-range Western-supplied missiles on Russian soil will come under an even brighter international spotlight.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky is set to meet not only US President Joe Biden, who has signaled he is open to discussing the issue, but also likely both US presidential candidates on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.

Those meetings come as experts say the public wrangling on this topic has raised the stakes of the decision, and potentially shifted the role these missiles – the Franco-British Storm Shadow/Scalps and US-made Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) – might play in this expanding war.

It was almost exactly a year ago, also during an in-person meeting with Zelensky in the United States, that Biden made the decision to supply the ATACMS to Ukraine.

The news did leak out, but official confirmation only came a month later, Zelensky burying it at the end of a nightly address on October 18. “Our agreements with President Biden are being implemented,” he said.  “And they are being implemented very accurately – ATACMS have proven themselves.” By that point the missiles had, according to US officials, already been used in several strikes on Russian-occupied Luhansk and the southern coastal town of Berdiansk.

A few months earlier, a similar story played out with the British Storm Shadows when then-Defence Secretary Ben Wallace only confirmed they had been supplied once they were already in use. In both cases, Ukraine promised not to use them on Russian territory.

This September, Zelensky is employing a strategy of more openly challenging his allies, and that, combined with Russia’s open threats that any lifting of restrictions on their use would mean war with NATO, has turned the issue of firing these missiles into Russia into a political touchstone, an ultimate determinant of the extent of Western support.

Zelensky has refused to allow the topic to fall out of the headlines – publicly criticizing his allies’ hesitation after a Russian strike on a military educational facility in Poltava killed  more than 50 people earlier this month.

“Every day of delay is, unfortunately, the death of people,” he said.

Last weekend, after a Russian bomb attack on an apartment block in Kharkiv, he even made veiled accusations of cowardice, saying: “This terror can be stopped. But to stop it, the fear of making strong, objectively necessary decisions must be overcome.”

“Zelensky has taken a bit of a risk on this,” said Matthew Savill, director of military sciences at the Royal United Services Institute, a think-tank in London. “He’s almost playing political chicken. He’s kind of daring people to support him.” If it happens though, the political dividend would be significant, says Savill, blunting Russian rhetoric and “demonstrating firm international support” for Ukraine.

As for the battlefield dividend, that, experts say, is less clear cut.

Opinion is divided on the extent to which the public debate around the missile permissions has blunted their potential utility – especially when it comes to targeting Russian fighter jets and missiles before they can be used against Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure. US intelligence believes 90% of Russian aircraft that launch deadly glide bombs (at least 100 per day, according to Zelensky), are more than 300 kilometers (186 miles) from Ukrainian-controlled territory, so outside of ATACMS range. And that number may be increasing. Russia recently relocated planes from two bases near the border further east, according to one US official.

Savill agrees “lots of the juiciest targets” have likely been moved deeper into Russian territory, meaning the impact on the war may be “limited.” But that doesn’t mean the missiles have no utility. Storm Shadows, designed to penetrate deep into concrete, could be effective against military headquarters, or ammunition stores, many of which are still in range.  ATACMS, some of which have cluster warheads, could be used to do significant damage to airfields. The Institute for the Study of War (ISW), a think-tank in Washington DC, has calculated that 15 Russian airfields are in range of ATACMs (though it’s not clear how many aircraft are still housed on them).

George Barros, the author of that ISW research, agrees a less public debate may have been preferable, but if the very prospect of these permissions being granted has forced Russia to move aircraft further from the border, it’s a good thing. It could reduce the number of bombing missions Russian planes can make (known in the military as the “sortie rate”) and buy Ukraine valuable detection and reaction time for incoming attacks.

More importantly, he believes that if Ukraine could strike Russian troops, weaponry and logistics within the 300-kilometer range of the top-end ATACMS, it would for the first time force Russia to calculate the risks of moving large amounts of troops and equipment into Ukraine.

Barros’ research has pinpointed at least 200 potential targets that would be in range of ATACMs, ranging from military regiments to fuel depots, weapons storage depots, and even the headquarters of Russia’s Southern Military district in Rostov (all of which would be much harder to move than aircraft).

The list is also conservative, Barros acknowledges, and has not accounted for new targets installed after the start of the full-scale invasion in February 2022.  And some of the newest targets of all could, according to Savill, include Iranian FATH-360 ballistic missiles, which the US believes have already been supplied and have a range of just 75 kilometers (47 miles), far less than the Western missiles.

Experts also agree the missiles could provide valuable support to Ukraine’s drone and ground operations. Savill believes ATACMS could do serious damage to Russian air defense radars and systems, adding that “if you punch a hole through, actually Ukrainian long-range drones have got better options to penetrate deeper into Russia.” Hitting Russian air defense systems in the border areas could also improve Ukraine’s chances of retaking its own territory, said Barros.

“You actually do open up some interesting areas where there’s parts of occupying Ukraine that are no longer under Russia’s air defense umbrella,” he said.

There’s also the option in theory, Savill said, to extend the range of the missiles by launching from Ukrainian positions inside Kursk, though that could put Ukrainian bombers and missile launchers in the crosshairs of Russian air defenses.

Ultimately, Ukraine continues to argue that the ability to use Western-supplied long-range missiles inside Russia is part of the complex jigsaw puzzle of ending this war on Kyiv’s terms — and a way to show Russia it cannot outlast Ukraine’s allies.

Zelensky is heading to the US on the one hand buoyed by the Kursk offensive providing fresh evidence of both Ukrainian ingenuity and, he argues, the flimsiness of Russian “red lines,” but on the other hand motivated by the prospect of a third winter with critical electricity shortages, and still inadequate supplies of equipment and manpower.

“We need to have this long-range capability not only on the occupied territory of Ukraine, but also on Russian territory,” he told a large gathering of Ukraine’s allies at the US’ Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany earlier this month, “so Russia is motivated to seek peace.”

One person has died and several people are missing after record rainfall brought flooding and landslides to coastal Japan, in the same region that was hit by a massive earthquake on New Year’s Day, local authorities said.

Japan’s weather agency issued its highest emergency warning for Ishikawa prefecture Saturday, urging residents to take extreme precautions in what it said is the heaviest rainfall the region has ever experienced. The warning was downgraded Sunday morning, but the weather agency asked residents to remain on high alert.

The torrential downpour caused 16 rivers in the area to breach their banks, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported.

One person in the city of Suzu died after their home was swallowed by a landslide, NHK reported. At least six people are missing, Ishikawa authorities said, and tens of thousands of people have been forced to evacuate, according to NHK.

The storm has knocked out power in more than 6,200 households, authorities said.

It’s a region that has already endured destruction and misery once this year.

On January 1, a powerful 7.5 magnitude earthquake struck the Noto peninsula in Ishikawa, killing hundreds of people and causing widespread destruction that the region is still recovering from.

Temporary housing built for people who lost their homes in the earthquake was surrounded by several feet of murky floodwater, photos showed.

According to the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism, four workers who were doing earthquake restoration work in Wajima city have gone missing. The ministry says it’s possible they were caught up in a landslide.

Earthquakes make soil unstable and prone to further landslides, especially after heavy rains.