COLU @ CONCEPTS

VATICAN CITY (AP) — The scandal was remarkable even by Vatican standards: The president of the “pope’s hospital” for sick children had taken nearly a half-million dollars in hospital donations and used them to spruce up the penthouse apartment of the Vatican cardinal who had appointed him. On Thursday, the Vatican tribunal indicted Giuseppe Profiti and the hospital’s former treasurer on charges they illegally diverted the money, and ordered them to stand trial. The case answers a key question raised by a recent Associated Press investigation that found that the hospital’s mission under Profiti’s leadership had been lost and was “more aimed at profit than caring for children.” So where did the money go? According to the indictment, at least some 422,000 euros ($481,000) in donations to the fundraising foundation of the Bambino Gesu Pediatric Hospital — popularly known as the “pope’s hospital” — went instead to renovate the penthouse of Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, who retired i...

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Education Department’s top civil rights official’s “flippant” remarks are raising questions about the government’s commitment to fighting campus sexual violence, even as she issued her second apology in as many days for attributing 90 percent of sexual assault claims to both parties being drunk. Candice Jackson, assistant secretary for civil rights, told victims of sexual assault meeting with Education Secretary Betsy DeVos on Thursday that she was sorry for her remarks. “As much as I appreciate apologies, which are difficult, unfortunately, there’s no way to take it back. It’s out there,” said Fatima Goss Graves, president of the National Women’s Law Center, who attended the meeting and relayed Jackson’s apology Thursday. “What’s extremely important now is that they do the hard work to counter those sorts of rape myths. They need to explicitly reject them.” DeVos also met Thursday with people who say they were falsely accused and disciplined and repr...

TEPEACA, Mexico (AP) — The police officers gripped their assault rifles tightly as they stared at the men filling plastic tanks and loading them onto a dozen pickup trucks in a cornfield in central Mexico. Even though a crime was being committed in front of them, the officers said it was too dangerous to move in. They had to wait until the army arrived to advance because the suspects were better-armed than they were and an earlier attempt to arrest them had been repelled by gunfire, officials said. “In the morning there were 40 trucks loading,” said Francisco, a security employee with the state oil company Petroleos Mexicanos, or Pemex, who asked that his last name not be used for safety reasons. “We saw them loading, we went in, and they started shooting at us. The criminals had an armored car.” The suspects weren’t cartel traffickers loading a drug shipment, but gasoline thieves tapping a state-owned pipeline — a form of organized crime that is growing in Mexico and has ...

BEIJING (AP) — A newspaper published by China’s ruling Communist Party is dismissing late Nobel Peace Prize laureate Liu Xiaobo as a political pawn of the West whose legacy will fade. The rare mention of Liu in Chinese-language media comes as international tributes flow in for the political prisoner. He died Thursday of liver cancer. The Global Times said in Friday’s editorial that Liu lived a “tragic life” because he sought to confront Chinese mainstream society with outside support. Liu, a prolific essayist and literary critic, was serving an 11-year sentence for incitement to subversion. He was in prison when he was awarded the 2010 Nobel for advocating democratic reforms and human rights in China. World leaders have praised Liu and called on China to release his widow, Liu Xia, from house arrest. Source: www.apnews.com 

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump was captured complimenting the French president’s wife’s appearance Thursday as he toured a famous Paris landmark. Video footage posted on the French government’s official Facebook page showed Trump, French President Emmanuel Macron and their wives chatting after their tour of the museums at Les Invalides. As they were saying their good-byes, Trump turned to Brigitte Macron and gestured toward her body. “You know, you’re in such good shape,” Trump said, before repeating the observation to her husband. “Beautiful,” he added. Brigitte Macron was her husband’s former high school teacher and their relationship has drawn international attention because of their significant age difference. But feminists and President Macron have denounced that attention as sexist, arguing that nobody would blink an eye if he were the older spouse. The Macrons’ age difference is identical to that of Donald and Melania Trump, who were spending two day...

PARIS (AP) — President Donald Trump and French President Emmanuel Macron set aside lingering differences on climate change during their meeting in France on Thursday, asserting that it shouldn’t prevent them from working together toward a post-war roadmap for Syria and to enhance Mideast security. Trump, standing alongside Macron at a news conference, said the two nations have “occasional disagreements” but that would not disrupt a friendship that dates back to the American Revolution. He remained non-committal about the United States eventually rejoining the global climate agreement that bears Paris’ name, telling Macron, “if it happens that will be wonderful, and if it doesn’t that will be OK too.” U.S. President Donald Trump arrived in Paris on Thursday morning, ahead of Bastille Day celebrations in the French capital. (July 13) Macron acknowledged sharp differences on the Paris climate pact but said the two leaders could find other areas of cooperation. “Should t...

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump on Thursday defended his son’s meeting with a Russian lawyer, characterizing it as standard campaign practice and maintaining that “nothing happened” as a result of the June 2016 sit-down. The remarks in Paris during a joint news conference with French President Emmanuel Macron came even though Trump’s own FBI pick has said the authorities should be alerted to requests for such meetings during a campaign and even after Donald Trump Jr. said he would rethink his own conduct in agreeing to the gathering in the first place. “I think from a practical standpoint most people would’ve taken that meeting. It’s called opposition research, or even research into your opponent,” Trump said. Trump Jr. released emails this week from 2016 in which he appeared eager to accept information from the Russian government that could have damaged Hillary Clinton’s campaign. The emails were sent ahead of a Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer that Trum...

WASHINGTON (AP) — Republican leaders unveiled a new health care bill Thursday in their increasingly desperate effort to deliver on seven years of promises to repeal and replace “Obamacare.” They immediately lost two key votes, leaving none to spare as the party’s own divisions put its top campaign pledge in serious jeopardy. President Donald Trump declared a day earlier that failure would make him “very angry” and that he would blame Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. But talking with reporters aboard Air Force One en route to France, Trump also acknowledged the challenges lawmakers face. Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell released his new but still-reeling health care bill bidding for conservative support by letting insurers sell low-cost, skimpy policies and reaching for moderates with added billions to combat opioid abuse and help states rein in consumers’ skyrocketing insurance costs. (July 13) “I’d say the only thing more difficult than peace ...

HONOLULU (AP) — A federal judge in Hawaii on Thursday expanded the list of family relationships needed by people seeking new visas from six mostly Muslim countries to avoid President Donald Trump’s travel ban. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson ordered the government not to enforce the ban on grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States. “Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents,” U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson said in his ruling. “Indeed grandparents are the epitome of close family members.” The U.S. Supreme Court last month exempted visa applicants from the ban if they can prove a “bona fide” relationship with a U.S. citizen or entity. The Trump administration has said the ban won’t apply to citizens of the six countries with a parent, spouse, fiance, son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling already in the ...

HONOLULU (AP) — A federal judge in Hawaii on Thursday expanded the list of family relationships needed by people seeking new visas from six mostly Muslim countries to avoid President Donald Trump’s travel ban. U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson ordered the government not to enforce the ban on grandparents, grandchildren, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law, aunts, uncles, nieces, nephews and cousins of people in the United States. “Common sense, for instance, dictates that close family members be defined to include grandparents,” U.S. District Judge Derrick Watson said in his ruling. “Indeed grandparents are the epitome of close family members.” The U.S. Supreme Court last month exempted visa applicants from the ban if they can prove a “bona fide” relationship with a U.S. citizen or entity. The Trump administration has said the ban won’t apply to citizens of the six countries with a parent, spouse, fiance, son, daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law or sibling already in the ...

INDIANAPOLIS (AP) — An Indiana senator railed against Carrier Corp. for moving manufacturing jobs to Mexico last year, even as he profited from a family business that relies on Mexican labor to produce dye for ink pads, according to records reviewed by The Associated Press. Joe Donnelly, considered one of the nation’s most vulnerable Democratic senators up for re-election next year, has long blasted free-trade policies for killing American jobs. He accused Carrier, an air conditioner and furnace maker, of exploiting $3-an-hour workers when it announced plans to wind down operations in Indiana and move to Mexico. However, an arts and crafts business Donnelly’s family has owned for generations is capitalizing on some of the very trade policies — and low-paid foreign labor — the senator has denounced. For more than a year, Stewart Superior Corp. and its subsidiaries have been shipping thousands of pounds of raw materials to Mexico, where the company has a factory that produces ...

WASHINGTON (AP) — U.S. officials will allow a group of Afghan girls into the country to participate in an international robotics competition after President Donald Trump intervened, White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed Wednesday, ending a saga that had sparked international backlash. Homeland Security Department spokesman David Lapan said the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services approved a State Department request for six girls from the war-torn country to be allowed in, along with their chaperone, so they can participate in the competition. The girls’ applications for U.S. visas had been denied twice. The non-profit organizing the competition celebrated the reversal in a jubilant statement Wednesday. “I truly believe our greatest power is the power to convene nations, to bring people together in the pursuit of a common goal and prove that our similarities greatly outweigh our differences,” said Joe Sestak, the president of First Global. He credited ...

ROMEOVILLE, Ill. (AP) — McDonald’s is hoping to make a difference in its future seven seconds at a time. The company that helped define fast food is making supersized efforts to reverse its fading popularity and catch up to a landscape that has evolved around it. That includes expanding delivery, digital ordering kiosks in restaurants, and rolling out an app that saves precious seconds. Americans are eating at McDonald’s less often, a trend the fast-food chain is fighting to reverse when people have more eating options than ever before. CEO Steve Easterbrook thinks he has a plan that can help turn the tide over the longer term. (July 13) Much of the work is on display in an unmarked warehouse near the company’s headquarters in suburban Chicago, where a blowup of a mobile phone screen shows the app launching nationally later this year. McDonald’s estimates it would take 10 seconds for a customer to tell an employee their order number from the app, down from the 17-secon...

LOS ANGELES (AP) — With “Game of Thrones” off the Emmy battlefield this time around, the likely beneficiaries will be streaming dramas and, in a reversal of fortune, a broadcast series. Netflix’s “The Crown” and “Stranger Things” and Hulu’s “The Handmaid’s Tale,” all streamed shows, could be among the nominees to be announced Thursday at the TV academy by Anna Chlumsky (“Veep”) and Shemar Moore (“Criminal Minds,” the upcoming “S.W.A.T.“) The announcement will be streamed live at 11:30 a.m. EDT on  www.emmys.com  . The NBC freshman series “This is Us,” a hit with viewers and critics, has a chance to show network dramas can be Emmy worthy again. A commercial broadcast network hasn’t fielded a best drama series contender since CBS’ “The Good Wife” was nominated in 2011. The last network winner was Fox’s “24” in 2006. HBO’s “Game of Thrones,” which dominated last year’s Emmys with 23 nods and 12 trophies, including its second consecutive best drama award, falling outsid...

NEW YORK (AP) — Chuck Blazer, the disgraced American soccer executive whose admissions of corruption set off a global scandal that ultimately toppled FIFA President Sepp Blatter, died Wednesday. He was 72. Blazer’s death was announced by his lawyers, Eric Corngold and Mary Mulligan. At a November 2013 court hearing during which Blazer entered guilty pleas to 10 federal charges, Blazer said he had rectal cancer, diabetes and coronary artery disease. A person familiar with his death said Blazer died in New Jersey. The person spoke on condition of anonymity because the place of his death was not disclosed in the statement. “I’ve known Chuck for a lot of years. He did a lot for the sport. Sorry about all the issues regarding FIFA, but he was a good man,” U.S. national team coach Bruce Arena said. “He helped the sport in the United States.” With girth, charm and a pet parrot, Blazer was a bon vivant as he made deals from an office and apartment in Trump Tower. The No. 2 officia...