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....

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(AP) LONDON – An official involved in the Olympic movement said Friday that Britain has refused to grant a visa to Syrian Olympic Committee chief Gen. Mowaffak Joumaa to attend the London Games. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the decision publicly, confirmed that Joumaa has been barred over his links to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s regime. Britain’s Home Office, which decides on visa applications, declined to confirm details, 나주출장샵 insisting it would not comment on individual cases. Diplomats from the country’s Foreign Ministry and staff from the sport and culture ministry are also involved in considering sensitive visa applications ahead of the Summer Games, though the final decision rests with Home Secretary Theresa May. More in London 2012: Summer Olympics British Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg had said last month that Syrian delegation members with connections to the Assad regime would be banned. In April, Joumaa told The Associated Press that he would regard it as an “honor” to be blacklisted from Britain because of his links to Assad. “Once I am blacklisted, it would be an honor for me to be one of the citizens who were banned from entering Britain because of their country’s dignity and freedom,” Joumaa said. The rejection of Joumaa’s visa was first reported by the BBC. About 10 athletes are due to compete...

Privilege doesn’t necessarily offer protection from drug addiction, new research suggests. Teens at elite U.S. high schools seem to face a higher risk of addiction as young adults, the study found. “We found alarmingly high rates of substance abuse among young adults who we initially studied as teenagers,” said study author Suniya Luthar, a professor of psychology at Arizona State University. “Results showed that among both men and women and across annual assessments, these young adults had substantial elevations, relative to national norms, in frequency of several indicators — drinking to intoxication and of using marijuana, stimulants such as Adderall, cocaine, and club drugs such as ecstasy,” she said in a university news release. The study included more than 500 students from affluent communities in the Northeast. They were assessed when they were high school seniors, then each year for four college years, and from ages 23 to 27. “We found rates of addiction to drugs or alcohol among 19 to 24 percent of women in the older cohort by the age of 26, and 23 to 40 percent among men. These rates were three and two times as high respectively, as compared to national norms,” Luthar said. In the younger group, rates of addiction for women were between 11 and 16 percent by 22 years old. That’s close to national norms, according to the researchers. But for men...