The Vatican on Saturday opened two burial chambers discovered under a trapdoor as it attempts to get to the bottom of a riddle involving two 19th-century princesses and a teenager who went missing 36 years ago. The ossuaries were found last week under the floor of the Pontifical Teutonic College after the shock discovery earlier this month that the bones of the princesses had disappeared from tombs in the Teutonic Cemetery. The graves of Princess Sophie von Hohenlohe and Princess Charlotte Federica of Mecklenburg, who died in 1836 and 1840, were exhumed after an anonymous tip-off that they may hold the remains of a missing Italian youngster.
The Democratic National Committee raised $8.5 million in June and has $9.3 million in the bank, according to campaign finance records released late Friday.Both figures are far behind what the Republican National Committee said it has raised. The GOP said it raised $20.8 million in June, and has $43.5 million cash on hand, Fox News reported Wednesday. Republicans also said the party has no debt, while the DNC has $5.7 million in debt, according to FEC records. (RELATED: Bad News For DNC: The Democrats’ And GOP’s Money, By The Numbers)June doesn’t appear to be an anomaly. Republicans say they’ve raked in $51 million in the past three months. The RNC has been posting record fundraising numbers so far in 2019. In February, the party raised $14.6 million, a record high for that month in a non-election year.The RNC, which has yet to file its official campaign finance documents, shared its strong showing in an email blast Saturday.
Iran's top diplomat said on Sunday that only "prudence and foresight" could alleviate tensions between his country and Britain after Tehran's seizure of a British-flagged oil tanker. "Having failed to lure @realDonaldTrump into War of the Century, and fearing collapse of his #B_Team, @AmbJohnBolton is turning his venom against the UK in hopes of dragging it into a quagmire," Mohammad Javad Zarif said on Twitter.
Universal Orlando went under temporary lockdown Saturday night after police received a report of a gunman spotted in a parking garage.
PRIJEDOR, Bosnia-Herzegovina (AP) — Several thousand people attended a funeral service in Bosnia on Saturday for 86 Muslims who were slain by Serbs in one of the worst atrocities of the country's 1992-95 war. Relatives of the victims, religious leaders and others gathered at a soccer stadium near the eastern town of Prijedor, standing solemnly behind lines of coffins draped with green cloths. The Serbs later threw bombs onto the bodies, which made identifying the victims difficult.
The National Weather Service has baked biscuits inside a hot car, in a safety message about the peril of leaving children or pets inside a vehicle.As a heatwave takes grip of large swathe of the US, with up to 200m people expected to be affected by a heat index of up to 115f degrees (46c), the officials performed the experiment inside a car in Nebraska to show how hot vehicles can become when left unattended. To demonstrate the dangers, the NWS staff set about baking the biscuits in the city of Omaha, using only heat from the sun.“If you are wondering if it’s going to be hot today, we are attempting to bake biscuits using only the sun and a car in our parking lot,” NWS Omaha said on Twitter. “We will keep you posted with the progress.”CNN said four biscuits were placed on a baking sheet on the dashboard of a car and left to sit in the sun. After 60 minutes, the pan had reached 175.2f (80c) and the tops of the biscuits reached 153f. The back seat registered 120.4f in the shade.It said, four hours later, the tops of the biscuits were nearly finished baking, but the bottoms remained doughy.The car had to be turned around to adjust for the changing angle of the sun.> Biscuits are starting to get a slightly golden tinge to them. pic.twitter.com/ptL24RHQfs> > — NWS Omaha (@NWSOmaha) > > July 18, 2019The experiment was carried out to warn people about the dangers of leaving children or pets inside vehicles, even for for a short period of time. US summers frequently come with stories of tragic deaths as a result of a toddler or baby being left in a car.CBS News said six people had died in connection with the heat – four people in Maryland, one in Arizona, and another in Arkansas.Several events were cancelled in New York City, including OZY Fest and the NYC Triathlon.The NWS said the east coast and midwest are likely to see temperatures in the upper 90s, combined with high humidity. Experts are urging people to limit their time outside and drink lots of water. Cities in Vermont and New Hampshire are opening shelters where people can cool off. Some power outages have been reported in Philadelphia and after storms in Michigan’s Lower Peninsula. Police in Braintree, Massachusetts, asked residents “to hold off” all criminal activity until the extreme heat is over.“Folks. Due to the extreme heat, we are asking anyone thinking of doing criminal activity to hold off until Monday,” the department wrote on Facebook. “It is straight up hot as soccer balls out there. Conducting criminal activity, in this extreme heat is next level henchmen status, and also very dangerous.”Additional reporting by Associated Press
(Bloomberg Opinion) -- When Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan visits Washington this week, he will have the benefit of meeting an American president with a short memory.Just a year and a half ago, Donald Trump tweeted that the U.S. “has foolishly given Pakistan 33 billion dollars in aid over the last 15 years, and they have given us nothing but lies & deceit.” He then announced a suspension of that aid until Pakistan ended its relationship with various terrorist groups.Now Trump is changing his tune. Last week he welcomed Pakistan’s arrest of the leader of the terrorist group that went on a four-day killing spree in Mumbai in 2008, despite the fact that he has been arrested and released several times before. Trump tweeted that the arrest was the result of pressure building over the last two years.Some of this change in tone is to recognize the baby steps Islamabad has taken to address longstanding U.S. concerns. Khan’s government recently announced that it was investigating the funding of some terrorist groups the U.S. has long accused Pakistan’s military intelligence service of sponsoring.Nonetheless, these steps are not nearly enough. Dr. Shakil Afridi, the heroic Pakistani physician who helped the CIA identify Osama bin Laden before the 2011 raid that killed him, remains in a high-security prison. According to recent reports, he is severely underweight.A more powerful reason that Trump is changing his tune is that he needs Pakistan’s cooperation for his plan to withdraw U.S. forces from Afghanistan. Since the fall, U.S. special representative Zalmay Khalilzad has been negotiating what he says will be a peace agreement with the Taliban, whereby the group shares power with the elected government in Kabul. Nonetheless, the Taliban have continued a terror rampage against civilians and the military, killing a U.S. service member this month. The Pakistanis have enough short-term leverage with the Taliban to get them to allow an orderly exit of U.S. forces fighting America’s longest war.In this respect, one might argue that a little amnesia can go a long way. Isn’t the pageantry of a White House visit a small price to pay for tamping down the Taliban?Maybe so — but this logic also exposes the foundational problem with the U.S.-Pakistani relationship. Pakistan’s military and intelligence agencies play a double game. Its leaders give lip service to the wider war on terrorism when in Washington. Meanwhile its operatives in Southeast Asia continue to supply and fund the terrorists the U.S. has been fighting. Husain Haqqani, a former Pakistani ambassador to Washington and now a fellow at the Hudson Institute, said Pakistan’s support for the Taliban is evident even in the peace negotiations. The planes that fly Taliban leaders to negotiations in Doha, he said, are provided by Pakistan’s military intelligence service.Thomas Joscelyn, a senior fellow at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies and co-founder of the Long War Journal, said the olive branch from Trump counts as a reversal of his administration’s policy. “The strategy that Trump endorsed in August 2017 was intended to put pressure on Pakistan to try to change their behavior,” he said. Yet to this day, the Pakistani military continues to support senior Taliban leaders as well as the deadly Haqqani network in the border region near Afghanistan.All of which raises the question: Why should anyone believe the Pakistanis this time around?Trump’s advisers would say that the meeting offers an opportunity for Pakistan to get out of the president’s doghouse. A senior administration official told reporters Friday that Khan could agree to make permanent his government’s recent gestures toward counterterrorism. What’s the harm in trying a softer touch after taking a hard line? The Pakistanis have proved they can be spoilers when it comes to Afghanistan. A little pomp and flattery could persuade them to be more constructive.That’s the positive spin, anyway. The deeper problem is that the U.S. has no real leverage in Afghanistan. Khan knows this, and so does the Taliban. Trump has made it clear that he wants U.S. forces out of the country, the sooner the better. Even if the Pakistanis can coerce or persuade their Taliban allies to back off until the U.S. leaves, what will stop them from violating a peace agreement after the U.S. is gone?To contact the author of this story: Eli Lake at elake1@bloomberg.netTo contact the editor responsible for this story: Michael Newman at mnewman43@bloomberg.netThis column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.Eli Lake is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering national security and foreign policy. He was the senior national security correspondent for the Daily Beast and covered national security and intelligence for the Washington Times, the New York Sun and UPI.For more articles like this, please visit us at bloomberg.com/opinion©2019 Bloomberg L.P.
Original videotapes of the Apollo 11 moon landing which a NASA intern bought for $217.77 (£174.14) were sold for $1.82 million at a Sotheby's auction in New York on Saturday. They were bought by Gary George at a government surplus auction in 1976. Lasting two hours and 24 minutes, the tapes are far sharper than those seen around the world at the time of the moon landing on July 20 1969. The footage broadcast across the globe lost quality by the time they were seen on television sets, because of being transmitted via microwave towers, Ticker tape welcome for Apollo 11 astronauts in New York Credit: NASA/Reuters These tapes remained in-house. They represent the "earliest, sharpest, and most accurate surviving video images of man's first steps on the moon," Sotheby's said. They show the entire moonwalk as it was seen by Mission Control staff in Houston, as well as Neil Armstrong's phone call with US president Richard Nixon. The tapes were recorded on a Westinghouse camera NASA had commissioned to send the footage back to earth. Placed in a shock-proof insulated mount, the camera captured Armstrong's descent onto the lunar surface, before being placed on a tripod. Mr George was an engineering student at Lamar University in Texas as well as an intern at the NASA Johnson Space Centre in Houston. He bought around 1,500 reels of magnetic tape and gave most away, apart from three which his father noticed were labelled "APOLLO 11 EVA | July 20, 1969 REEL 1. Mr George gave the reels little attention until 2008 when he heard that NASA was trying to locate the original tapes. The purchaser of the tapes was not disclosed by Sotheby's.
Iraqi Kurdish authorities announced Saturday they had arrested two suspects involved in the murder of three people, including a Turkish diplomat, in the regional capital Arbil this week. The autonomous region's security council first said its counterterrorism unit had arrested "the main perpetrator" Mazloum Dag, a 27-year-old from Turkey's Diyarbakir region. The council had put out a wanted notice for Dag a day earlier in connection to Wednesday's killing of Turkish Vice Consul Osman Kose and two Iraqi nationals.