Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses a meeting of the NATO's Mediterranean Dialogue, in Ankara, Turkey, Monday, May 6, 2019. Erdogan says Turkey's decision to purchase Russian-made S-400 missile defense systems does not mean that it is seeking "alternatives" in its relations with the West.(Presidential Press Service via AP, Pool)
Turkey's Defense Ministry says the first shipment of a Russian missile defense system has arrived in Turkey, a development that could move the country closer to U.S. sanctions.
The ministry said the first delivery of the S-400 air defense systems arrived on Friday at an air base near the capital, Ankara.
The United States has warned Turkey it will face economic sanctions if it goes ahead with the purchase of a Russian missile defense system. It has also said Turkey won't be allowed to participate in the program to produce the high-tech F-35 fighter jets.
SEOUL (Reuters) - Kim Jong Un has been formally named head of state of North Korea and commander-in-chief of the military in a new constitution observers said was possibly aimed at preparing for a peace treaty with the United States.
FILE PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during the 4th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) in Pyongyang in this April 10, 2019 photo released on April 11, 2019 by North Korea's Korean Central News Agency (KCNA). KCNA via REUTERS/File Photo
North Korea has also long called for a peace deal with the United States to normalize relations and end the technical state of war that has existed since the 1950-1953 Korean War concluded with an armistice rather than a peace treaty.
The new constitution, unveiled on the Naenara state portal site on Thursday, said that Kim as chairman of the State Affairs Commission (SAC), a top governing body created in 2016, was “the supreme representative of all the Korean people”, which means head of state, and “commander-in-chief”.
A previous constitution simply called Kim “supreme leader” who commands the country’s “overall military force”.
Previously, North Korea’s official head of state was the president of the titular parliament, known as the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly.
“Kim had dreamed of becoming the president of North Korea and he effectively made it come true,” said Kim Dong-yup, a professor at Kyungnam University’s Far East Institute in Seoul.
“He has long sought to shake off the abnormal military-first policy the country has stuck to for a long time.”
Kim shifted his focus to the economy last year, launched nuclear talks with the United States and moved to revamp his image as a world leader via summits with South Korea, China and Russia.
Hong Min, a senior researcher of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, said the title change was also aimed at preparing for a potential peace treaty with the United States.
“The amendment may well be a chance to establish Kim’s status as the signer of a peace treaty when it comes, while projecting the image of the country as a normal state,” Hong said.
Washington had baulked at signing a comprehensive peace treaty before North Korea takes substantial steps toward denuclearisation, but U.S. officials have signaled they may be willing to conclude a more limited agreement to reduce tensions, open liaison offices, and move toward normalizing relations.
Denuclearisation talks between the United States and North Korea have stalled, although fresh talks with Pyongyang are supposed to take place this month.
North Korea has frozen nuclear bomb and long-range missile testing since 2017. But it tested new short-range missiles after a second summit with the United States in February broke down, and U.S. officials believe it has expanded its arsenal by continuing to produce bomb fuel and missiles.
The new constitution continued to describe North Korea as a nuclear weapons state.
In reality Kim, a third-generation hereditary leader, rules North Korea with an iron-fist and the title change will mean little to the way he wheels power.
Reporting by Hyonhee Shin; Additional reporting by Joyce Lee; Editing by Michael Perry
Paris—A man who was in a vegetative state for 11 years who was at the center of a bitter dispute that divided his family and French courts, has died. Vincent Lambert, 42, died in a hospital nine days after doctors stopped providing artificial feeding and hydration, ending years of legal flip-flopping over whether to keep him alive.
Stopping treatment came four days after France's highest court quashed a Paris court decision to resume feeding so the United Nations could examine the case.
His nephew, Francois Lambert, expressed relief, saying that "it's the rational that takes over."
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"We've been ready for years," said the nephew who has emerged as a spokesman for the side of the family, including Lambert's wife, who felt that their loved one should be allowed to die. Lambert's parents, traditionalist Catholics, fought relentlessly to keep their son alive. They argued that Vincent was disabled and wanted him put in a facility that deals with disabilities.
Viviane Lambert, the mother of French quadriplegic Vincent Lambert, who has been in a vegetative state for more than a decade, arrives at the Sebastopol Hospital in Reims, France May 20, 2019.
BENOIT TESSIER / REUTERS
A 2008 car crash left Lambert in a vegetative state that required artificial feeding to keep him alive. He died Thursday morning at a hospital in Reims, east of Paris, where he had been treated.
The case has drawn attention around Europe. Even the United Nations has gotten involved. BBC reports the UN's Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities had previously called on France to intervene and delay the move to withdraw the life support while they investigate his case further, but France's ministry of health said it is not bound by that committee.
Lambert's parents had taken extraordinary steps to keep him alive in his vegetative state. In May, they tried to have the doctor caring for their son removed before he halts life-sustaining treatment the same day, their lawyers said. The parents also sought to have the doctor, Vincent Sanchez, criminally prosecuted and lodge new appeals to continue care for Lambert, the lawyers added.
Legal battles began in 2013. In the latest twist on June 28, France's highest court gave doctors permission to restart procedures introduced in May to stop feeding and hydrating Lambert. The Court of Cassation quashed a previous decision by a Paris court to resume life support after the parents appealed to the U.N. Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities. The high court ruled that the Paris court ordering life support to be resumed wasn't competent in the case.
Unbeknownst to him, the man lying in a hospital bed became central to the debate leading up to France's 2016 law on terminally ill patients. The law allows doctors to stop life-sustaining treatments, including artificial hydration and nutrition, and to keep the person sedated until death. It stops short, however, of legalizing euthanasia or assisted suicide.
The 59-year-old biologist went missing on July 2. Her body was discovered by two locals on Monday in a cave that had been turned into a bunker by Nazi soldiers during the Second World War, according to Crete's Chief of Police Konstantinos Lagoudakis.
Eaton's body was found around 60 meters inside the cave beneath an air shaft which had been covered by a large wooden pallet, Lagoudakis added.
Eaton was attending a conference at the Orthodox Academy in Crete and is believed to have disappeared during a run.
The police said on Wednesday that Eaton was asphyxiated. Minor stab wounds were also found on her body, but police said they were not believed to be the cause of her death. The police believe the body was dumped inside the cave, because it was found face down.
Lagoudakis told CNN on Thursday that he had never seen a case like this in his four years as police chief.
Her family initially believed Eaton, a regular runner, likely died during a run as a result of heat exhaustion or a fall in the rough terrain.
"Due to the rough terrain and extreme heat, we believe the most likely possibility is that Suzanne may have either become overheated and looked for shade or that she may have fallen," said a post on a Facebook page set up by her family.
The horrific details surrounding Eaton's death have shocked the locals, some of whom thought she died in a hiking accident. Crete is known to be among the safest of the Greek islands despite its size and the large number of tourists.
"We are deeply shocked and disturbed by this tragic event," the Planck Institute at Dresden University in Germany, Eaton's employer, said in a statement. "Suzanne was an outstanding and inspiring scientist, a loving spouse and mother, an athlete as well as a truly wonderful person beloved to us all."
Eaton was the wife of British scientist Tony Hyman and mother of two sons, according to institute.
ROME — Forensic experts searching two 19th century tombs in the heart of the Vatican in hopes of solving the mystery of a teenage girl who vanished more than 30 years ago came up empty handed Thursday.
"They found nothing, not even the remains of those who were meant to officially be buried there," said the missing girl's brother, Pietro Orlandi. "I am relieved by it. They dug under one of the tombs and found a room underneath completely empty. In the other one they found a sarcophagus, also empty"
Emanuela Orlandi, the daughter of a Vatican bank employee, was 15 when she disappeared after leaving a music lesson in Rome in 1983. The teenager's family believe her body could be buried in a tomb in a tiny cemetery inside the Vatican, after they received an anonymous tip last year.
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The next pope will prepare to engage the masses in his private office above St. Peter's Square.
The cardinals sleep and eat at the Domus Sanctae Marthae, a residence in Vatican City, during the conclave process.
The Council for the Proclamation of Saints decides who is canonized in this off-limits conference room.
The pope and his assistants will prepare letters and official documents in the study of the Papal Apartments.
The pope entertains guests in a private dining room, where the food is "simple, but good."
Pope Benedict occasionally played piano in the private papal living room.
The Swiss Guard, the world's smallest standing army, stocks its gear under the streets of Vatican City.
The garments that the guards wear under their 8-pound uniforms are made from scratch in the tailoring room.
The Papal Sacristy (the pope's walk-in closet) holds treasures handed down from previous popes.
Three restoration laboratories for marble, tapestries and paintings sit beneath the Vatican's museums and galleries.
Tapestries are rehabilitated in this immaculate white room.
This two-story underground bunker houses the secret archives.
The archives comprise over 50 miles of shelves that include invaluable artifacts, such as a note written by Michelangelo dated January 1550.
In a room near the secret archives, one man restores the thousands of wax seals from letters sent to the Vatican over the centuries.
The Vatican Printing Press, which was founded in 1626, handles over 5,000 orders per year printed in at least 15 languages.
The Vatican radio station broadcasts in 40 different languages (and costs $25 million per year to run).
The body of Pope John Paul II lies in the grottoes below St. Peter's Basilica.
Also under St. Peter's basilica is the supposed tomb of St. Peter (i.e. the first pope).
The Room of Tears is where the new Pope will put on his white papal vestment for the first time.
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"'If you want to find Emanuela, search where the angel looks," a tipster wrote in an unsigned letter posted alongside a picture of a statue of an angel in the Teutonic Cemetery, the family's lawyer, Laura Sgrò, told NBC News.
Shortly before 8.15 (2.15 a.m. ET) on Thursday morning, the rector of the Teutonic College recited a prayer in front of the "tomb of the angel" and an adjoining tomb, Alessandro Gisotti, the director of the Vatican press office said in a statement. A 15-person team then began excavating the tombs of Princess Sophie von Hohenlohe and Princess Charlotte Frederica of Mecklenburg, who died in 1836 and 1840, respectively.
The Orlandi family had asked for the tomb under the statue of an angel holding a "rest in peace sign" to be opened, but the Vatican decided a second nearby tomb should also be excavated to "avoid misunderstandings," Gisotti said. He said he could not predict how long the operation would take.
This is not the first time a tomb has been opened in the mysterious case that has gripped Italy for more than three decades.
In 2005, an anonymous tipster claimed Orlandi's body was buried in the tomb of Enrico de Pedis, a criminal gangster who operated in Rome in the 1970s and 1980s, according to Giancarlo Capaldo, a state prosecutor who worked on the case between 2012 and 2016. In 2012 his tomb was finally opened, but Orlandi's remains were not found.
Pietro Orlandi earlier told reporters that after years of the Vatican not cooperating it appeared the Holy See was beginning to accept the idea that it may hold some responsibility for what happened. If his sister's remains were found, Orlandi said he would expect the Vatican to open up an investigation into the murder and the concealment of the corpse.
"Now it's not just us as a family, it seems also the Vatican wants to find out the truth about what happened," he said.
Claudio Lavanga reported from Rome; Saphora Smith from London.
The 59-year-old biologist went missing on July 2. Her body was discovered by two locals on Monday in a cave that had been turned into a bunker by Nazi soldiers during the Second World War, according to Crete's Chief of Police Konstantinos Lagoudakis.
Eaton's body was found around 60 meters inside the cave beneath an air shaft which had been covered by a large wooden pallet, Lagoudakis added.
Eaton was attending a conference at the Orthodox Academy in Crete and is believed to have disappeared during a run.
The police said on Wednesday that Eaton was asphyxiated. Minor stab wounds were also found on her body, but police said they were not believed to be the cause of her death. The police believe the body was dumped inside the cave, because it was found face down.
Lagoudakis told CNN on Thursday that he had never seen a case like this in his four years as police chief.
Her family initially believed Eaton, a regular runner, likely died during a run as a result of heat exhaustion or a fall in the rough terrain.
"Due to the rough terrain and extreme heat, we believe the most likely possibility is that Suzanne may have either become overheated and looked for shade or that she may have fallen," said a post on a Facebook page set up by her family.
The horrific details surrounding Eaton's death have shocked the locals, some of whom thought she died in a hiking accident. Crete is known to be among the safest of the Greek islands despite its size and the large number of tourists.
"We are deeply shocked and disturbed by this tragic event," the Planck Institute at Dresden University in Germany, Eaton's employer, said in a statement. "Suzanne was an outstanding and inspiring scientist, a loving spouse and mother, an athlete as well as a truly wonderful person beloved to us all."
Eaton was the wife of British scientist Tony Hyman and mother of two sons, according to institute.
