Free Republic

Adnan Khashoggi, a Saudi middleman-for-hire who amas­sed huge wealth and influence peddling everything from American weapons to favors for Riyadh’s rulers and CIA spymasters, only to see his fortunes collapse amid the Iran-contra affair and other scandals, died June 6 at a hospital in London. He was 81, by most accounts. The cause was complications from Parkinson’s disease, the family said in a statement reported by the Associated Press. Mr. Khashoggi’s name may have lost its luster since his peak in the 1970s and 1980s, but not so the list of misdeeds and abuses that remain defining events of the...

ABOARD THE PAPAL PLANE - Pope Francis said Tuesday that the latest round of financial scandal at the Vatican is actually a success story, because the situation was revealed thanks to an internal Vatican probe, which he said demonstrates that new controls are working. The pontiff also called both owning and deploying nuclear weapons “immoral,” saying that point should be added to the Catholic catechism, and suggested that it might be time to re-think the veto power wielded by a handful of countries in the United Nations Security Council. His comments came during an airborne news conference on the return...