Mes: septiembre 2019

Last Updated 5:17 p.m. ET (AP) VATICAN CITY – The Vatican has brought in the Fox News correspondent in Rome to help improve its communications strategy as it tries to cope with years of communications blunders and one of its most serious scandals in decades, officials said Saturday. Greg Burke, 52, will leave Fox to become the senior communications adviser in the Vatican’s secretariat of state, the Vatican and Burke told The Associated Press. “I’m a bit nervous but very excited. Let’s just say it’s a challenge,” Burke said in a phone interview. He defined his job, which he said he had been offered twice before, as being along the lines of the White House senior communications adviser: “You’re shaping the message, you’re molding the message, and you’re trying to make sure everyone remains on-message. And that’s tough.” Burke, a native of St. Louis, Missouri, is a member of the conservative Opus Dei movement. Pope John Paul II’s longtime spokesman, Joaquin Navarro-Valls, was also a member of Opus Dei and was known for the papal access he enjoyed and his ability to craft the messages John Paul wanted to get out. After Pope Benedict XVI was elected in 2005, Navarro-Valls was replaced by the Rev. Federico Lombardi, a Jesuit who had long headed Vatican Radio and still does, along with running the Vatican press office and Vatican television service....

(CBS/AP) CAIRO – Egypt’s new president-elect, Islamist Mohammed Morsi, moved into the office once occupied by ousted leader Hosni Mubarak and started consultations Monday on forming his team and a new government, an aide said. Morsi was declared on Sunday the winner of Egypt’s first free presidential election in its modern history, following a tight race with Mubarak’s last Prime Minister Ahmed Shafiq. The campaign had deeply polarized the country, pitting a former regime official and former military man- feared to be a continuation of Mubarak’s autocratic rule but viewed by some as an agent of stability- against an Islamist. Many supported Morsi as a representative of the uprising that toppled the old regime and a chance to challenge the military. But Morsi was equally feared among youth groups behind the uprising, which campaigned for a secular democratic state, and among many of the country’s Christian minority. Almost half of the voters boycotted the runoff vote last weekend. More in After the Arab Spring Muslim Brotherhood’s Morsi named Egypt’s PresidentIsrael jittery after Brotherhood wins in EgyptTimeline: Key events in Egypt’s uprising and transition The victory of Morsi, the first civilian president to take over the country’s top job, is a stunning achievement for the Islamist group that remained for most of its eight decades a shadowy organization targeted by successive regimes. He pledged he will be a “president for...

(CBS/AP) KABUL, Afghanistan – The commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan said a militant attack on a lakeside hotel in which 18 people were killed was likely carried out by fighters loyal to the Haqqani network. The al Qaeda-linked group is based in Pakistan and regularly targets Afghan and coalition forces in Afghanistan, and conducts deadly attacks in Kabul. Late Thursday heavily-armed Taliban insurgents stormed the Spozhmai hotel at Qargha Lake, a popular weekend retreat about a half-hour drive north from the capital Kabul, and opened fire on guests inside. Most of those killed were civilians. The 12-hour long siege ended Friday morning, after Kabul police said five attackers had been shot and killed. More in Afghanistan: The way forward “This attack bears the signature of the Haqqani network, which continues to target and kill innocent Afghans and blatantly violate Afghan sovereignty from the safety of Pakistan,” U.S. Gen. John R. Allen said. Allen said that some victims were killed in their sleep. He added that the coalition provided “minimal support” at the Afghans’ request. 18 people killed in Afghanistan hotel siege Officials have told The Associated Press that U.S. military and intelligence officials are so frustrated with Pakistan’s failure to stop local militant groups from attacking Americans in neighboring Afghanistan that they have considered launching secret joint U.S.-Afghan commando raids into Pakistan to hunt them down....

(CBS News) In Syria on Thursday, the International Red Cross tried to evacuate civilians and the wounded from the battered city of Homs, but they never got the chance. A promised cease-fire never happened. The city came under renewed shelling that residents blamed on the Syrian army. The Red Cross convoy had to turn back to Damascus. Homs is at the center of the 16-month uprising against the dictator, Bashar al-Assad. He’s out to crush it, and thousands have died. Now, 구리출장마사지 some of Assad’s soldiers are joining the rebels, and on Thursday a Syrian air force pilot took himself and his plane out of the fight. The pilot defected and landed his MiG jet fighter at an airfield in Jordan. It’s only a small crack in the Assad regime’s determination to crush its opponents, but one that Pentagon spokesman George Little praised. “We very much welcome the pilot’s decision to do the right thing,” Little said. The opposition has no jets but relies instead on classic guerrilla tactics — fighters strike then melt away into the countryside. They are becoming increasingly better equipped thanks to weapons and money supplied by Arab countries hostile to Assad. Estimated to number about 40,000, the insurgents have fought the 200,000-strong Syrian military with its tanks, artillery and helicopter gunships to a standstill. The regime controls the major cities running from the capital...

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