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LONDON: The Princess of Wales has a suggestion for parents: Please put down the phone.
Kate, as she is commonly known, collaborated with adult development researcher Robert Waldinger to warn that technology is contributing to an epidemic of disconnection that is hurting family relationships. Devices that promise to keep us connected often do the opposite, they say in an essay posted on the Royal Foundation Center for Early Childhood website.
“We sit together in the same room while our minds are scattered across dozens of apps, notifications, and feeds,’’ the authors wrote. “We’re physically present but mentally absent, unable to fully engage with the people right in front of us.’’
The princess has made early childhood development one of her primary causes. She has now teamed up with Waldinger, who is the director of the Harvard Study of Adult Development, a long-term study of adult life and happiness that concluded those with stronger relationships were more likely to live happy, satisfying and healthier lives.
“Look the people you care about in the eye and be fully there — because that is where love begins,” they said.

VATICAN CITY: Pope Leo made an urgent plea for the world to help immigrants in his first major document, which was released on Thursday and invoked one of the late Pope Francis’ strongest criticisms of US President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies.
Leo’s document, known as an apostolic exhortation, is focused on the needs of the world’s poor. It calls for widespread changes to the global market system to address rising inequality and to help people living paycheck-to-paycheck.
The 104-page text started as a writing project by Francis, who was unable to complete it before his death in April after 12 years leading the global Church of 1.4 billion people. It was finished by Leo, the first US pope.
“I am happy to make this document my own – adding some reflections – and to issue it at the beginning of my own pontificate,” Leo writes at the beginning of the text.
Cardinal Michael Czerny, a senior adviser to both Francis and Leo, said that while the new document was started by the late pope it represents Leo’s positions.
“This is Pope Leo’s document,” Czerny told a Vatican press conference.

DOCUMENT REFERENCES CRITICISM OF BORDER WALLS
Elected in May to replace Francis, Leo has shown a much more reserved style than his predecessor, who frequently criticized the Trump administration.
But Leo has been ramping up his disapproval in recent weeks, drawing heated backlash from some prominent conservative Catholics.
“The Church, like a mother, accompanies those who are walking,” the pontiff writes in the document, titled “Dilexi te” (I have loved you). “She knows that in every rejected migrant, it is Christ himself who knocks at the door of the community.”
“Where the world sees threats, (the Church) sees children; where walls are built, she builds bridges,” Leo says, referencing Francis’ 2016 criticism of Trump as “not Christian” because of the president’s plan in his first term to build a wall on the US-Mexico border.
The White House has said Trump was elected based on his many promises, including to deport “criminal illegal aliens.”

WARNS OF ‘CESSPOOL’ WITHOUT MORAL DIGNITY
The number of people living in poverty “should constantly weigh upon our consciences,” the document said.
“There is no shortage of theories attempting to justify the present state of affairs or to explain that economic thinking requires us to wait for invisible market forces to resolve everything,” it said.
“The poor are promised only a few ‘drops’ that trickle down, until the next global crisis brings things back to where they were.”
The document signals that Leo shares some of the same priorities of Francis, who shunned many of the trappings of the papacy and frequently criticized the global market system as not caring for society’s most vulnerable people.
“The illusion of happiness derived from a comfortable life pushes many people toward a vision of life centered on the accumulation of wealth and social success at all costs, even at the expense of others,” the text says.
“Either we regain our moral and spiritual dignity or we fall into a cesspool.”