Of all the relics kept at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Paris (Notre-Dame de Paris), the Crown of Thorns and a piece of the True Cross are the most revered. Their fate was in question as the 850-year-old church went up in flames.

Relics believed to be a piece of the cross on which Jesus was crucified, as well as the Crown of Thorns he wore, have been kept at the cathedral for centuries. The braided circle held together by golden thread has about 70 or so thorns attached. The relics were obtained from the Byzantine Empire in 1238, and brought to Paris by King Louis IX.

All of the relics were saved and the cathedral’s treasury was preserved despite the damage, according to a Paris Match journalist who quoted Father Frederic, one of the priests at Notre-Dame, on Monday evening.

Notre-Dame is the most visited monument in the French capital. Over 12 million people visit the cathedral every year, making it the most visited monument in Paris – ahead of the Louvre or the Eiffel Tower, according to official statistics.

READ MORE: Watch the moment Spire of Notre Dame cathedral collapses due to fire

It has been damaged and restored many times over its 850-year history, but never so severely as during Monday’s fire that has toppled its spire and caused its roof to completely collapse.

Construction on the original cathedral, located on the central island of Paris (Ile de la cite) began in 1163, and was largely completed by 1260. It was fitted with additional flying buttresses in the 1500s, to support the imposing Gothic structure.

READ MORE: Notre Dame cathedral in Paris on fire (PHOTO, VIDEO)

Built like a “poor people’s book,” the cathedral’s exterior featured sculptures and reliefs illustrating the stories from the Bible – for example, the western facade facing the square showed the Last Judgment – as well as gargoyles and other monstrous creatures.

Notre-Dame was damaged and desecrated during and after the 1789 French Revolution, but was somewhat repaired for the December 1804 coronation of Emperor Napoleon I.

Victor Hugo’s novel ‘The Hunchback of Notre Dame’ (1831) revived the popular interest in the landmark, and restoration work began in 1845. Its famous stained glass windows – first built in 1225 – and exterior statuary, were rebuilt at this time. Additional cleaning and restoration work was done in the 1960s and again in the 1990s.

The cathedral has been a target of several terrorist plots in recent years. In February 2017, four people were arrested in Montpelier on charges of plotting to attack the cathedral. A car filled with explosives was found outside Notre Dame in September 2016.

Think your friends would be interested?

Prosecutors say that two university students are responsible for letting their backyard barbecue get out of control by about 1000 hectares, and hit them with the bill for the damages: A cool $15.3 million… each.

Normally if a college student says ‘it was lit’ in reference to hanging out and eating barbecue, it would mean he had a good time. In the case of two 22-year-old students in northern Italy, however, it would just as likely refer to a massive fire which burned down forests across half of a mountain last December.

The two were having a cookout at a grandparent’s mountain-side home in the Upper Lake Como area when a blaze broke out. One of the men said that he and his mate immediately called the fire department when they saw the fire, and even “threw themselves at the flames” to try to extinguish them. Despite their effort, the fire spread rapidly over 1,000 hectares of land, including a farm where most of the animals were killed.

Having traced the path of destruction back to the barbecue, local officials concluded that the students were responsible. According to local media, authorities tallied up the eye-watering bill in accordance with a standard formula of $133-$670 per square meter. Officials even say they cut the boys a deal with the over $15 million dollar fine, because the actual total was somewhere around $40 million.

The students maintain their innocence and say local officials are using them as a “scapegoat” for a fire that had “many outbreaks,” and at the end of the day “could not be explained.”

“What is the sense to impose an administrative sanction… already knowing that the two boys, still students, cannot pay it?” Ivana Anomali, the lawyer to one of the accused said.

Authorities, however, told local media that the outlandish sum was justified, calling the incident “a signal that we need to push people to greater responsibility in protecting the environment.”

Like this story?

US National Security Advisor John Bolton has signaled that Washington’s latest sanctions on Venezuela are a “warning” to “external actors” against deploying military assets to support the government of Nicolas Maduro.

The US imposed new sanctions on the Central Bank of Venezuela on Wednesday, restricting US transactions and cutting off access to US dollars. It also targeted Cuba with sanctions, including travel restrictions.

Bolton said the measures should be seen by other powers, including Russia, as a warning against providing any help for Maduro government, which the Trump administration has branded “illegitimate.”

Bolton said Russia’s recent deployment of military planes to Venezuela posed a “threat to security” in the region, just two months after the US openly attempted to instigate a military coup in the country.

He said Russia’s “provocative” action was a threat to “international peace” and security.

“Today, we proudly proclaim for all to hear: the Monroe Doctrine is alive and well,” Bolton said, referencing the infamous US policy of opposition to European colonialism in the Western hemisphere beginning in 1823, which ultimately allowed the US to treat Latin America as its own background and experimental coup playground.

During his speech, Bolton also announced new sanctions on Nicaragua’s Bancorp and on Laureano Ortega, the son of Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega. Bancorp had previously been sanctioned for its links to Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA.

The US has also made recent threats to Nicaragua, with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo warning in February that Ortega’s “days are numbered” and the “the Nicaraguan people will soon be free.”

The Trump administration called for the overthrow of Maduro’s government in mid-January and announced it would recognize opposition leader and self-declared president Juan Guaido as the country’s “legitimate” leader.

Like this story?

The latest ‘Hellboy’ movie has made headlines in Russia after the Russian-dubbed version swapped the word ‘Stalin’ for ‘Hitler’ in an exchange between the movie’s superhero and one of its villains.

The supernatural scare-fest features Russian folklore character Baba Yaga, a deformed looking witch, who (in this interpretation) has only one eye and crawls around backwards instead of walking.

In one scene, Baba Yaga is accused by Hellboy of trying to“raise the spirit of Stalin” but Russian viewers watching the dubbed version hear“raise the spirit of Hitler” instead. It’s unclear why the former Soviet leader’s name was removed, but viewers were left perplexed by the switch.

Twitter users who saw the subtitled version of the movie in cinemas noticed something else strange, too. The word ‘Hitler’ is bleeped out, but the Nazi dictator’s name stills remains visible in the subtitles.

So far, Megogo Distribution, the company responsible for the film’s Russian release has not responded to inquiries from Russian media asking about the motivation behind the change.

It appears, however, that this is not the first time Megogo has changed some details of US films for the Russian audience. Film review website Kinopoisk noted that in the 2017 action movie The Hitman’s Bodyguard, the ruthless Belarusian dictator comes from Bosnia-Herzegovina instead.

Meanwhile, a new poll has found that Stalin’s approval rating is at a record high among Russians — although 45 percent still said his repression and crimes were unjustified.

If you liked this story, share it with a friend!

A bus carrying over 50 tourists on the Portuguese island of Madeira overturned and slid down a hill. Local media report as many as 28 fatalities, and there are fears that number may rise.

The bus slid off the road and crashed on top of a house around 6:30 pm local time, near the town of Caniço in the municipality of Santa Cruz, on the southeastern side of the island.

Videos from the scene show the wreckage of the white bus on a roadside slope, with rescue crews trying to extract the passengers.

“There are fatalities but information on the number of victims is still not certain,” Filipe Sousa, head of the municipality of Santa Cruz, told the Lusa news agency.

However, Sousa later told the Lisbon-based Jornal de Negocios that 11 men and 17 women, all German tourists, were dead. There were 57 people on the bus, including 55 tourists, a tour guide, and the driver.

Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa is on his way to the island to visit the crash site, Lusa agency reported. The German embassy in Portugal said it has reached out to local authorities, but declined to confirm the casualty figures just yet.

More than a dozen ambulances and other rescue vehicles are to the scene, near the Quinta Splendida hotel and botanical gardens in Caniço. Rescuers continue to pull victims out of the broken-up bus, amid fears that the death toll might rise.

This is the worst bus accident on the island in over 13 years. Five Italian tourists died in a 2005 bus crash in São Vicente, on Madeira’s north coast.

Located in the mid-Atlantic, off the coast of Africa, the Madeira archipelago is a popular tourist destination, with over a million visits every year. It was settled by the Portuguese in the XV century, and it is famous as the birthplace of soccer superstar Cristiano Ronaldo.

Think your friends would be interested?

Cuban officials didn’t even need to look for a punchline for their response to new US sanctions, announced on the same day that, almost six decades ago, the failed US-sponsored invasion of the socialist island began.

On April 17, 1961, a well-armed group of Cuban exiles, who were trained and financed by the CIA, landed in the Bay of Pigs with the aim of overthrowing Fidel Castro’s government. But the invaders faced a strong response from the Revolutionary Armed Forces and surrendered after just three days of fighting, while the US faced a massive international backlash for plotting the coup.

Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez was quick to remind Washington of the embarrassing blunder, writing on Twitter: “Aggressive escalation of US against Cuba will fail. As in Giron (Bay of Pigs), we shall overcome.”

Rodríguez blasted the sanctions, which he called “an attack against International Law and the sovereignty of Cuba and third states.”

The head of the US Division in the Cuban Foreign Ministry, Josefina Vidal, also chipped in, promising that the US will lose once again, just as had happened in the Bay of Pigs.

White House national security adviser John Bolton announced the new sanctions on Havana in a speech before the veterans of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion.

“Under this administration, we don’t throw dictators lifelines. We take them away,” he stressed.

The sanctions will see remittances sent by US citizens to Cuba limited to $1,000 per-person per-quarter and non-family travel restricted to stop Cuban government from benefiting from “veiled tourism.” Five more entities will also be added to the Cuban blacklist, including the military-owned airline Aerogaviota, Bolton said.

Think your friends would be interested?

Kim Jong-un has supervised the test of a new “tactical guided weapon” just months after the summit in Vietnam failed to achieve any results as the US continues to demand unconditional denuclearization before any sanctions relief.

The North Korean leader personally observed the new weapon test on Wednesday, KCNA said, without providing details, other than saying it has a “peculiar mode of guiding flight” with a “powerful warhead.”

“The completion of the development of the weapon system serves as an event of very weighty significance in increasing combat power,” Kim said.

The White House said it was aware of the weapons test report but refused to issue a comment.

The second summit between President Donald Trump and the North Korean leader in Hanoi, Vietnam in February wrapped up early, after the two leaders failed to reach an accord on the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. While Washington insisted that North Korea should get rid of their missile and nuclear weapon programs, Kim allegedly made it clear that Trump must offer sanctions relief before the denuclearization process can proceed. For the last two months, the negotiations have stalled.

In the wake of the failed summit, Kim had promised to boost defense while giving the White House until the end of the year to change its “posture” in dealing with Pyongyang.

“I don’t see this [weapons test] as a provocation,” former US diplomat Jim Jatras told RT America. “I think they feel that their expectations from Trump are not being met and this is their way of saying, ‘Hey, guys, listen, we’re still serious about this.’”

“Let’s remember that there has been a lot of resistance within the administration to president Trump’s outreach to North Korea. They don’t want this deal to go through because if there is the denuclearization of Korea, if there is an end to the Korean war, why do we have 29,000 troops in South Korea?” Jatras said.

Like this story?

A 68-million-year-old baby Tyrannosaurus rex fossil is up for sale on eBay for a jaw-dropping $2.95 million. The bones belong to a four-year-old dinosaur whose owner sparked controversy by suddenly flogging them online.

The rare fossilized skeleton was uncovered in Montana in 2013 and has been on loan to the University of Kansas Natural History Museum where it was on display until this week, when the exhibition was pulled after it learned that the dinosaur’s owner had listed it on eBay. The museum posted a statement on Twitter distancing itself from the entire enterprise.

The fossil has a 15-foot body and a 21-inch skull. It is owned by Alan Detrich, who describes himself as a “world famous fossil hunter” and found the remains on private property he leased to hunt for fossils. He shared the fossils with the KU museum two years ago because he thought “the public ought to see it.”

Museum director Leonard Krishtalka explained they took issue with how “abruptly” Detrich put the dinosaur on eBay and how the listing made it appear that the university was promoting the sale, and that it falsely claimed a KU researcher was writing a paper on the fossil for a journal.

The retired oil investor appeared nonplussed by the outrage his eBay post generated, telling his critics in a statement: “You’re welcome — for me to allow my dinosaur to be in the museum and to be able to show the people. People have had the opportunity to actually see the baby T. rex.”

Detrich also tweeted about his previous dinosaur sales, saying he sold an adult T. rex skeleton he found in South Dakota in 1992 and named ‘Samson’ for over $8 million in 2001.

News of the sale is being met with horror and dismay among the scientific community who feel private sales prevent them from studying rare fossils. The Society of Vertebrate Paleontology (SVP) voiced its concerns in a letter which explained the fossil “represents a unique part of life’s past [and] may be lost from the public trust.”

The Paris prosecutor has opened an investigation into the disastrous fire, that devastated one of the most well-known landmarks in the city. The blaze itself is not contained yet.

The fire broke out at the Notre Dame Cathedral late on Monday, promptly engulfing the 13th-century building and causing a complete collapse of its spire and roof.

The Paris prosecutor office has launched a probe into the incident, entrusting it to French judiciary police, which indicates that the investigation is criminal. The city prosecutor has attended the scene of the incident, while firefighters continue to battle fire on the remains of the iconic landmark.

French President Emmanuel Macron and PM Edouard Philippe have also arrived at the scene. The fire has disrupted Macron’s plans to address the nation and unveil a set of measures in response to the Yellow Vest protests.

Think your friends would be interested?

After the ‘worst case scenario’ was avoided and firefighters managed to save the Notre Dame’s structure from total destruction, President Emmanuel Macron has vowed to restore the historic cathedral to its former glory.

“This cathedral, we will all rebuild together,” Macron promised while visiting the heartbreaking scene at the center of Paris. “We will appeal to the greatest talents… and we will rebuild… Because that’s what the French expect, because that’s what our history deserves, because it’s our deep destiny.”

The chief architect in charge of the works at Notre-Dame, Philippe Villeneuve, also pledged to rebuild the national symbol.

“We have rebuilt the cathedral of Reims after the bombing by the Germans during the First World War and today we still see in its splendor,” he said.

While Macron promised to launch an international fundraising campaign, the Heritage Foundation said it will launch a “national collection” of funds for the reconstruction of Notre-Dame de Paris on Tuesday, after the tragic incident raised a wave of condolences around the world.

Rebuilding the cathedral will take “years of work,” said Eric de Moulins-Beaufort, president of the Conference of Bishops of France (CEF).

“I am completely dismayed because we were at the start of a major restoration program of the cathedral,” said Michel Picaud, president of the patronage foundation Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris. “Victor Hugo had sounded the alarm about the state of the cathedral resulting in twenty years of restoration work in the nineteenth century, and we will have to do the same.”

Meanwhile the Pinault family of the retail conglomerate Kering announced that it will donate €100 million for the reconstruction of the building.

Hundreds of firefighters are still working the scene of the terrible fire, trying to preserve whatever is left of the world art treasures. The Crown of Thorns, one of the major reliquaries of the church, was saved from the inferno along with many other treasures, Bishop Patrick Chauvet, rector of Notre-Dame de Paris noted earlier. The altar and the cross also survived the fire, local media reported citing the mayor’s office.

While no one has died in the blaze, at least one firefighter was “seriously” injured trying to contain the fire, local media reported.