British tech tycoon Mike Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter are among six tourists missing after a luxury yacht sank in a tornado off the coast of Italy.
One person has been confirmed dead, believed to be the vessel’s Canadian chef, while four of the missing passengers are British and two are American, according to Italian newspaper la Repubblica.
Survivors have been seen at the Di Cristina hospital in Palermo, while the Italian Coastguard said it believes Mr Lynch and the five others missing may still be inside the sunken yacht.
The Palermo Port Authority told Canadian broadcaster CBC News that officials recovered the body of Ricardo Thomas, a Canadian-born man who had been living in Antigua.
Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency said: “They were in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
Image: Survivors Charlotte Golunski, James Emsley and their one-year-old daughter Sophie Emsley, leave the Di Cristina hospital in Palermo. Pic: Reuters
Jonathan Bloomer, chairman of Morgan Stanley International, and Chris Morvillo, a lawyer at major firm Clifford Chance, and both of their wives are also among the missing.
A spokesperson for Morgan Stanley said they were “deeply shocked and saddened” and added: “Our thoughts are with all those affected, in particular the Bloomer family, as we all wait for further news from this terrible situation.”
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UK insurer Hiscox, which Mr Bloomer also chaired, confirmed his wife was also among the missing on Tuesday.
A Clifford Chance spokesperson added its priority was “providing support to the family as well as our colleague Ayla Ronald, who together with her partner, thankfully survived the incident”.
Image: Christopher Morvillo. Pic: Clifford Chance handout
Mr Lynch‘s daughter, Hannah Lynch, also remains unaccounted for but his wife, Angela Bacares, was rescued along with 14 others – including a mother who held her one-year-old baby above the waves.
Charlotte Golunski, 35, told la Repubblica she lost her baby Sofia for “two seconds”, adding: “I held her afloat with all my strength, my arms stretched upwards to keep her from drowning.
“It was all dark. In the water I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I screamed for help but all I could hear around me was the screams of others.”
Image: Charlotte Golunski
The baby’s father James Emsley also survived, Salvo Cocina of Sicily’s civil protection agency said. According to her LinkedIn profile, Ms Golunski is a partner at Mr Lynch’s firm, called Invoke Capital.
Mr Lynch, described as the British Bill Gates, was cleared earlier this year of conducting a massive fraud over the sale of software company Autonomy to Hewlett-Packard (HP) in 2011.
Image: Pic: Perini Navi
Eyewitness: Every hour that passes, this rescue mission moves closer to a recovery
In Sicily, they’re searching for survivors.
Fifty meters beneath these now calm waters are the remains of a superyacht, which was carrying 22 people when it was hit by extreme weather.
Relentless rain and wind battered the north coast of Sicily in the early hours of Monday, causing widespread damage on the land, and proving fatal at sea.
Fisherman Fabio was the first to the wreckage and told Sky News: “There were two sailboats half a mile away from the harbour with their anchors at sea.
“After 10 minutes, we saw a flare in the sky. We waited about 10 minutes to see the intensity of the tornado and went out to sea.
“We were first to give rescue, but we found no one at sea. We only found cushions and the remains of the boat.”
The weather was so bad overnight that locals described it as being like nothing they’d ever seen before.
Waterspouts – essentially like tornados on the water – tore into the coastline.
The yacht had been anchored. The sailing mast lights had been twinkling in the night sky. By morning, they were gone.
Authorities haven’t given up on those still lost at sea: Divers have already found one body near the wreckage, and they know with every hour that passes, this rescue mission moves closer to becoming a recovery.
There is also some speculation about the design of the ship, and perhaps what happened to the 75m mast, which was iconic on this particular yacht.
It was said to be the tallest aluminium mast in the world, and people here last night were talking about how they could see it glistening by night.
It’s thought that mast may have got caught up in this rotating column of cloud, these waterspouts that we’ve been talking about, and that may have caused it to break and may have caused the boat to then go on and capsize.
Investigators and inspectors from the UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch are making their way to Palermo today to assist.
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His co-defendant in that trial, Stephen Chamberlain, was separately confirmed dead after he was hit by a car on Saturday.
Gary Lincenberg, his lawyer, said in a statement: “Our dear client and friend Steve Chamberlain was fatally struck by a car on Saturday while out running.
“He was a courageous man with unparalleled integrity. We deeply miss him.
“Steve fought successfully to clear his good name at trial earlier this year, and his good name now lives on through his wonderful family.”
Cambridgeshire Police said in a statement on Monday evening that the driver of the car, a 49-year-old woman from Haddenham, remained at the scene and is assisting with enquiries.
Image: Stephen Chamberlain
Pic: Cambridgeshire Police/PA
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Emergency responder Luca Cari told the news outlet the divers “can stay underwater for a maximum of 12 minutes, two of which are needed to go up and down,” meaning “the real time to be able to carry out the search is 10 minutes per dive”.
He added divers had identified a glass window on the Bayesian from which they could enter but said: “The spaces inside the sailing ship are very small and if you encounter an obstacle it is very complicated to move forward, just as it is very difficult to find alternative routes.”
The UK Marine Accident Investigation Branch said four of its inspectors are being deployed to Palermo for a preliminary assessment, while cave divers have joined the ongoing search.
The hull of the ship is resting at a depth of 50 metres.
A spokesman for the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO) said: “We are in contact with the local authorities following an incident in Sicily, and stand ready to provide consular support to British nationals affected.”
Donald Trump has announced a 10% trade tariff on all imports from the UK – as he unleashed sweeping tariffs across the globe.
Speaking at a White House event entitled “Make America Wealthy Again”, the president held up a chart detailing the worst offenders – which also showed the new tariffs the US would be imposing.
“This is Liberation Day,” he told a cheering audience of supporters, while hitting out at foreign “cheaters”.
He claimed “trillions” of dollars from the “reciprocal” levies he was imposing on others’ trade barriers would provide relief for the US taxpayer and restore US jobs and factories.
Mr Trump said the US has been “looted, pillaged, raped, plundered” by other nations.
Image: Pic: AP
His first tariff announcement was a 25% duty on all car imports from midnight – 5am on Thursday, UK time.
Mr Trump confirmed the European Union would face a 20% reciprocal tariff on all other imports. China’s rate was set at 34%.
The UK’s rate of 10% was perhaps a shot across the bows over the country’s 20% VAT rate, though the president’s board suggested a 10% tariff imbalance between the two nations.
It was also confirmed that further US tariffs were planned on some individual sectors including semiconductors, pharmaceuticals and critical mineral imports.
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6:39
Trump’s tariffs explained
The ramping up of duties promises to be painful for the global economy. Tariffs on steel and aluminium are already in effect.
The UK government signalled there would be no immediate retaliation.
Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds said: “We will always act in the best interests of UK businesses and consumers. That’s why, throughout the last few weeks, the government has been fully focused on negotiating an economic deal with the United States that strengthens our existing fair and balanced trading relationship.
“The US is our closest ally, so our approach is to remain calm and committed to doing this deal, which we hope will mitigate the impact of what has been announced today.
“We have a range of tools at our disposal and we will not hesitate to act. We will continue to engage with UK businesses including on their assessment of the impact of any further steps we take.
“Nobody wants a trade war and our intention remains to secure a deal. But nothing is off the table and the government will do everything necessary to defend the UK’s national interest.”
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0:43
Who showed up for Trump’s tariff address?
The EU has pledged to retaliate, which is a problem for Northern Ireland.
Should that scenario play out, the region faces the prospect of rising prices because all its imports are tied to EU rules under post-Brexit trading arrangements.
It means US goods shipped to Northern Ireland would be subject to the EU’s reprisals.
The impact of a trade war would be expected to be widely negative, with tit-for-tat tariffs risking job losses, a ramping up of prices and cooling of global trade.
Research for the Institute for Public Policy Research has suggested more than 25,000 direct jobs in the UK car manufacturing industry alone could be at risk from the tariffs on car exports to the US.
The Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) had said the tariff costs could not be absorbed by manufacturers and may lead to a review of output.
The tariffs now on UK exports pose a big risk to growth and the so-called headroom Chancellor Rachel Reeves was forced to restore to the public finances at the spring statement, risking further spending cuts or tax rises ahead to meet her fiscal rules.
A member of the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR), David Miles, told MPs on Tuesday that US tariffs at 20% or 25% maintained on the UK for five years would “knock out all the headroom the government currently has”.
But he added that a “very limited tariff war” that the UK stays out of could be “mildly positive”.
He said: “There’s a bit of trade that will get diverted to the UK, and some of the exports from China, for example, that would have gone to the US, they’ll be looking for a home for them in the rest of the world.
“And stuff would be available in the UK a bit cheaper than otherwise would have been. So there is one, not central scenario at all, which is very, very mildly potentially positive to the UK. All the other ones which involve the UK facing tariffs are negative, and they’re negative to very different extents.”
Mature, developed economies like the UK and US became ever more reliant on cheap imports from China and, in the process, saw their manufacturing sectors shrink.
Large swathes of the rust belt in the US – and much of the Midlands and North of England – were hollowed out.
And to some extent that’s where the story of Donald Trump’s “Liberation Day” really began – with the notion that free trade and globalisation had a darker side, a side he wants to remedy via tariffs.
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He imposed a set of tariffs in his first term, some on China, some on specific materials like steel and aluminium. But the height and the breadth of those tariffs were as nothing compared with the ones we have just heard about.
Not since the 1930s has the US so radically increased the level of tariffs on all nations across the world. Back then, those tariffs exacerbated the Great Depression.
It’s anyone’s guess as to what the consequences of these ones will be. But there will be consequences.
Consequences for the nature of globalisation, consequences for the US economy (tariffs are exceptionally inflationary), consequences for geopolitics.
Image: Imports from the UK will face a 10% tariff, while EU goods will see 20% rates. Pic: Reuters
And to some extent, merely knowing that little bit more about the White House’s plans will deliver a bit of relief to financial markets, which have fretted for months about the imposition of tariffs. That uncertainty recently reached unprecedented levels.
But don’t for a moment assume that this saga is over. Nothing of the sort. In the coming days, we will learn more – more about the nuts and bolts of these policies, more about the retaliatory measures coming from other countries.
We will, possibly, get more of a sense about whether some countries – including the UK – will enjoy reprieves from the tariffs.
To paraphrase Churchill, this isn’t the end of the trade war, or even the beginning of the end – perhaps just the end of the beginning.
Heathrow bosses were warned its power supply was vulnerable less than a week before a major outage, and a terminal could have got some flights moving by mid-morning rather than being shut for a day, a committee of MPs has heard.
The chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee Nigel Wicking told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring theft took out lights on a runway.
Mr Wicking said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, as “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.
A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe’s largest airport for a day – causing travel chaos for nearly 300,000 passengers, the committee heard.
“I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience”, said Mr Wicking, the head of a body representing more than 90 airlines using Heathrow Airport.
“So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern.
“And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned.”
Other problems
The biggest challenge was getting information, Mr Wicking said.
The desire for information on the outage and closure was so large that a Teams call on the day of the closure was “maxed out” with “a thousand participants”, he added.
However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month’s power outage would have been “disastrous”.
There was a risk of having “literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them”, Mr Woldbye told MPs.
Fire surveillance and CCTV systems were down as a result of having limited electricity, he added, meaning it would not have been safe to reopen.
‘The most expensive airport in the world’
Heathrow should have top quality infrastructure and service, Mr Wicking said.
“It is the most expensive airport in the world with regard to passenger challenges. So from our perspective, that means we should actually have the best service. We should have the best infrastructure,” he added.
Image: Aerials show burned substation which shut Heathrow Airport
A review on resilience at Heathrow was done in 2018, he told MPs, but was told it was “not for sharing” with airlines.
“I think it is for sharing now because frankly, we’re paying enough”, Mr Wickling said he told Mr Woldbye.
“I don’t feel that we should be paying more attention for further resilience. The resilience should have been there in the first place.”