LOS ANGELES – Specialist divers surveying the wreckage of the $40 million superyacht that sank off Sicily in August, killing eight people including British tech tycoon Mike Lynch, have asked for heightened security to guard the vessel, over concerns that sensitive data locked in its safes may interest foreign governments, multiple sources told CNN.

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.

The sunken vessel, lying on the seabed at a depth of some 50 meters (164 feet), is thought to have watertight safes containing two super-encrypted hard drives that hold highly classified information, including passcodes and other sensitive data, an official involved in the salvage plans, who asked not to be named, told CNN. Specialist divers with remote cameras have searched the boat extensively.

Initially, local law enforcement feared that would-be thieves might try to reach the wreckage to find expensive jewelry and other objects of value still onboard the yacht, according to divers with the Fire Brigade who spoke with CNN. Now they are concerned that the wreckage, expected to be raised in the coming weeks as part of the criminal investigation into the tragedy, will also be of interest to foreign governments, including Russia and China. They have requested that the yacht be guarded closely, both above water and with underwater surveillance.

“A formal request has been accepted and implemented for additional security of the wreckage until it can be raised,” Francesco Venuto of the Sicilian Civil Protection Agency confirmed to CNN. 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. (CNN)…[+]

NORTH KOREA – United States soldier Travis King, who fled to North Korea and was taken into custody there, was sentenced to one year of confinement and then freed based on time already served, according to his lawyer.

King pleaded guilty to five charges – including desertion, assault on a noncommissioned officer and three counts of disobeying an officer – as part of a plea deal that was accepted on Friday by a military judge in Fort Bliss, Texas, said his lawyer Franklin Rosenblatt.

The soldier was facing at least 14 charges – including desertion, assault and solicitation of child pornography – filed by the US Army under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. The government moved to dismiss nine offences after he pleaded guilty to five charges. King was stationed in South Korea and was supposed to fly back to Texas last year to face disciplinary hearings after spending nearly two months in a South Korean jail on assault charges following a drunken bar fight.

Instead, he walked out of the airport and crossed the border from South Korea into North Korea in July 2023, while on a civilian sightseeing tour of the Korean Demilitarised Zone (DMZ) that divides the Korean Peninsula. (Aljazeera)…[+]

UKRAINE – Ukraine has banned government and military officials from using the Telegram messaging app on state-issued devices because of concerns about Russian surveillance. The National Security and Defence Council announced the restrictions on Friday after Kyrylo Budanov, head of Ukraine’s GUR military intelligence agency, presented the council with evidence of Russian special services’ ability to snoop on the platform, it said in a statement. The ban was a “matter of national security”, it added.

Telegram is heavily used in both Ukraine and Russia and has become a critical source of information since  Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, who sits on the security council, as well as military commanders and regional and city officials, all regularly publish updates on the war and report important decisions on Telegram. Officials who use Telegram as part of their duties will not be affected by the new ban.

Based in Dubai, Telegram was founded by Russian-born Pavel Durov, who left Russia in 2014 after refusing to comply with demands to shut down opposition communities on his social media platform VKontakte, which he later sold. Durov was arrested in France last month and charged with publishing illegal content on the platform. The council statement said Budanov had provided evidence that Russian special services could access Telegram messages, including deleted ones, as well as users’ personal data.

“I have always supported and continue to support freedom of speech, but the issue of Telegram is not a matter of freedom of speech, it is a matter of national security,” Budanov said in his own statement. After the decision was announced, Telegram issued a statement saying it had never disclosed anyone’s data or the contents of any message. “Telegram has never provided any messaging data to any country, including Russia. Deleted messages are deleted forever and are technically impossible to recover,” Telegram said. (Aljazeera)…[+]

SRI LANKA – Voting has ended in Sri Lanka’s presidential election as the country seeks to recover from an economic crisis and political upheaval that triggered mass protests and forced then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa to flee.

The election on Saturday is widely seen as a referendum on his successor Ranil Wickremesinghe, who has restored some stability through austerity policies backed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Turnout was at nearly 70 percent an hour before polling stations closed at 4pm (10:30 GMT), an election commission official said, citing provisional figures, the AFP news agency reported.

The record for voter turnout in a Sri Lankan presidential election was set in 2019 at 83.72 percent. “I’ve taken this country out of bankruptcy,” Wickremesinghe said after casting his ballot. “I will now deliver Sri Lanka a developed economy, developed social system and developed political system,” said the 75-year-old veteran politician who has been prime minister multiple times. “Decide if you want to go back to the period of terror, or progress.”

The economic crisis has boosted support for Anura Kumara Dissanayake, the leader of the Janatha Vimukthi Peramuna (JVP). The party led two failed uprisings in the 1970s and 1980s that left more than 80,000 people dead, and it won less than 4 percent of the vote in the last parliamentary elections.

But Sri Lanka’s crisis has proven an opportunity for the 55-year-old Dissanayaka, who has seen a surge of support based on his pledge to change the island’s “corrupt” political culture. Fellow opposition leader Sajith Premadasa, 57, the son of a former president assassinated in 1993 during the country’s decades-long civil war, is also expected to make a strong showing. (Aljazeera)…[+]

NEW YORK – The United States Secret Service has acknowledged a series of security failures it made during a July campaign rally, where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was shot at and wounded in the ear. In a review of the July 13 assassination attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania, the Secret Service identified “deficiencies” in advanced security planning and poor coordination with local police, said the agency’s acting director, Ronald Rowe.

“While some members of the advance team were very diligent, there was complacency on the part of others that led to a breach of security protocols,” Rowe told a news briefing on Friday. Questions over the competency of the elite US law enforcement agency have swirled since a gunman perched on a rooftop opened fire at Trump during the rally, grazing the former president in the ear and hitting three people in the crowd, one fatally.

Congressional officials lambasted the agency for failing to clear the area or respond quickly to the attacker, who local officers were alerted to up to 20 minutes before the shooting. The backlash pushed the agency’s director, Kimberly Cheatle, to resign. Several other agents were placed on leave. (Aljazeera)…[+]