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ROME (AP) — Pope Francis continued to improve from double pneumonia Thursday, the Vatican said, working from his hospital room and going to his private chapel to pray, though doctors said he needs more days of “clinical stability” before they revise their guarded prognosis.

The 88-year-old pope, who had part of one lung removed as a young man, was able to begin alternating high-flow supplemental oxygen, delivered by a nasal tube, with a mask in a sign of his improved respiratory condition, the Vatican said in a late update.

For the second day in a row, doctors avoided saying Francis was in critical condition. But they said that given the complexity of his lung infection, “further days of clinical stability are needed” before they revise their prognosis and decide he is out of danger.

Francis has been in Rome’s Gemelli hospital since Feb. 14 after a bout of bronchitis worsened.

He has shown steady, albeit slight improvements since a respiratory crisis and kidney trouble over the weekend sparked fears for his life. The improvements, as he nears the two-week mark on Friday, beat back speculation of an imminent death, resignation or conclave and signaled that he was still very much in charge.

Upcoming calendar in question

Nevertheless, his near-term upcoming calendar of events was being changed: The Vatican cancelled a Holy Year audience scheduled for Saturday, and it remained to be seen if Francis would skip his Sunday noon blessing for the third week in a row. Longer term, Ash Wednesday loomed on the horizon March 5, the start of the church’s Lenten season leading up to Holy Week and Easter, which this year falls on April 20.

In past years, when Francis has battled bronchitis and influenza in winter, he has had to cut back his participation in Ash Wednesday and Holy Week events, which call for the pope to be outdoors in the cold leading services, participating in processions and presiding over prayers in the solemn period in which the faithful commemorate Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection.

Beyond that, Francis has a few major events coming up that he presumably would hope to keep if well enough. On April 27, he is due to canonize Carlo Acutis, considered to be the first millennial and digital-era saint. The Vatican considers the Italian teenager, who died of leukemia in 2006 at the age of 15, as an inspiring role model for today’s young Catholics.

Another important appointment is the May 24 commemoration of the 1,700th anniversary of the Council of Nicea, Christianity’s first ecumenical council. The spiritual leader of the world’s Orthodox Christians, Patriarch Bartholomew I, has invited Francis to join him in what is today’s Iznik, Turkey to commemorate the anniversary, which he has called an important sign of reconciliation between the Catholic and Orthodox churches. Before he got sick, Francis said he hoped to go, though the Vatican hasn’t confirmed the trip.

Prayers nevertheless continue

Prayers for his heath continued to pour in from near and far, with a group of Mexican pilgrims in Rome for the Holy Year taking a detour to pray for Francis outside the Gemelli hospital.

Lili Iparea Fernandez, from La Cruz, Mexico, had come to Rome with plans to attend Francis’ Wednesday general audience this week, but it was cancelled.

“However, we firmly believe that the pope will recover because he is a very strong man,” she said Thursday outside Gemelli. “So I invite everyone to believe firmly, with certainty, with confidence, with hope that the pope is going to be well.”

Francis keeps governing while being treated

By now a certain rhythm appears to have emerged from the Vatican’s updates: The pope receives treatments in the morning, including respiratory physiotherapy, receives the Eucharist and resumes work in the afternoon from his hospital room. On Thursday, the Vatican said he had gone to the chapel located down the hall in the papal suite on the 10th floor of Gemelli to pray.

It was the first time since Feb. 21, before Francis’ weekend respiratory crisis, that he is known to have gone to the chapel.

The Vatican said Wednesday that he had appointed four new bishops and approved the creation of a new fundraising initiative to encourage donations to the Holy See, which has been enduring a financial crisis for years.

Francis likely approved the bishop appointments a while back and the new norms for the fundraising entity were approved Feb. 11, before he was hospitalized. But the announcements made them official and suggested Francis was still very much in charge and governing.

The invitation made the US president the first US leader in modern times to be received for two state visits by a British Monarch.

Russia signed at least five treaties guaranteeing Ukraine’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. Russian annexation of Ukrainian regions violates these agreements. It is also illegal under international law, which recognizes these territories as belonging to Ukraine.

A look at the best news photos from around the world.

DES MOINES, Iowa — Amid a heavy police presence and hundreds of vocal protesters, Iowa lawmakers on Thursday considered an unprecedented bill that would strip the state civil rights code of protections based on gender identity, a move opponents say could expose transgender people to discrimination in numerous areas of life.

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Both the House and Senate were expected to vote on the legislation Thursday, the same day the Georgia House backed away from removing gender protections from the state’s hate crimes law, which was passed in 2020 after the death of Ahmaud Arbery.

Iowa’s bill, first introduced last week, raced through the legislative process, despite opposition from LGBTQ+ advocates who rallied at the Capitol on Monday and Tuesday.

On Thursday, opponents of the bill filed into the Capitol rotunda with signs and rainbow flags to rally before, during and after a 90-minute public hearing, shouting, “No hate in our state!” There was a heavy police presence, with state troopers stationed around the rotunda and hearing room.

Read More: Thousands of Demonstrators Across the U.S. Protest the Trump Administration’s Policies

Of the 167 people who signed up to testify at the public hearing before a House committee, all but 24 were opposed to the bill. Each time a person who had spoken opened the hearing room door to leave, the roar of protesters outside filled the room, forcing repeated pauses.

To avoid delays, state troopers blocked off the hallway outside the room, creating a “natural buffer,” said Department of Public Safety Commissioner Stephan Bayens. The move was intended to allow the public hearing to proceed while also protecting First Amendment rights to demonstrate, Bayens said.

In Iowa, gender identity was added to the civil rights code in 2007 when Democrats controlled the Legislature. If removed, Iowa would be the first state to undo explicit nondiscrimination protections based on gender identity, said Logan Casey, director of policy research at the Movement Advancement Project.

In Georgia, the changes to the hate crimes law were proposed in a bill that would restrict sports participation for transgender students. That’s something the state’s high school athletic association now does by policy but that Republican leaders insist needs to be in law and also apply to colleges and universities.

A Georgia House committee rewrote the bill at the last minute Wednesday to leave the word “gender” in the state’s hate crimes law after Democrats warned removing the word could end extra penalties for crimes motivated by bias against transgender people.

Iowa’s bill would remove gender identity as a protected class and explicitly define female and male, as well as gender, which would be considered a synonym for sex and “shall not be considered a synonym or shorthand expression for gender identity, experienced gender, gender expression, or gender role.”

Read More: I’m a Veteran. Trump’s Trans Military Ban Betrays Our Troops

Supporters of the change say the current code incorrectly codified the idea that people can transition to another gender and granted transgender women access to spaces such as bathrooms, locker rooms and sports teams that should be protected for people who were assigned female at birth.

Iowa Republicans say their changes are intended to reinforce the state’s ban on sports participation and public bathroom access for transgender students. If approved, the bill would go to Republican Gov. Kim Reynolds, who signed those policies into law. A spokesperson for Reynolds declined to comment on whether she would sign the bill.

V Fixmer-Oraiz, a county supervisor in eastern Johnson County, was the first to testify against the bill. A trans Iowan, they said they have faced their “fair share of discrimination” already and worried that the bill will expose trans Iowans to even more.

“Is it not the role of government to affirm rather than to deny law-abiding citizens their inalienable rights?” Fixmer-Oraiz said. “The people of Iowa deserve better.”

Among those speaking in support of the bill was Shellie Flockhart of Dallas Center, who said she is in favor as a woman and a mother, a “defender of women’s rights” and someone “who believes in the truth of God’s creation.”

“Identity does not change biology,” Flockhart said.

About half of U.S. states include gender identity in their civil rights code to protect against discrimination in housing and public places, such as stores or restaurants, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank. Some additional states do not explicitly protect against such discrimination but it is included in legal interpretations of statutes.

Iowa’s Supreme Court has expressly rejected the argument that discrimination based on sex includes discrimination based on gender identity.

Several Republican-led legislatures are also pushing to enact more laws this year creating legal definitions of male and female based on the reproductive organs at birth following an executive order from President Donald Trump.

Trump also signed orders laying the groundwork for banning transgender people from military service and keeping transgender girls and women out of girls and women’s sports competitions, among other things. Most of the policies are being challenged in court.

Associated Press writer Jeff Amy in Atlanta contributed to this report.

In the month since Donald Trump’s inauguration, the foreign policy of the new US administration has focused on efforts to broker a peace deal between Ukraine and Russia. This admirable initiative is in its infancy as daily trial balloons are floated. Currently, the Trump White House appears to favor a compromise peace that would establish a neutral Ukraine without clear security guarantees from the country’s Western partners. This formula is sometimes called “Finlandization,” in reference to Finland’s experience as a neutral front line nation during the Cold War.

The Cold War status of Finland reflects the realities of the country’s relationship with the USSR. In the aftermath of the August 1939 Nazi-Soviet Pact and the outbreak of World War II, the Soviet authorities began demanding territory from the Finns. The Kremlin accompanied this with a disinformation campaign referring to Finland’s leaders as a “reactionary fascist clique.”

In November 1939, the Red Army attacked Finland. The Finns fought bravely in a three-month winter war, inflicting over 300,000 Soviet casualties while suffering around 70,000 themselves. Nonetheless, the USSR eventually prevailed and annexed more than ten percent of Finnish territory. This history will sound eerily familiar to today’s Ukrainians.

In the decades after World War II, Finland was handcuffed to neutrality via a treaty with Moscow, but remained an independent state with a market economy. The constraints placed on Finland during this period prevented the country’s integration into the Euro-Atlantic community and came to be known as Finlandization. In essence, Finland was forced to cede land and accept a Kremlin-friendly form of geopolitical neutrality in exchange for nominal independence.

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Some in Washington DC and elsewhere now see the Finlandization format of neutrality as a suitable model for Ukraine. This includes influential members of the Trump administration. However, supporters of this approach ignore the obvious differences between Soviet policy toward Finland and the Putin regime’s objectives in Ukraine. While the USSR had limited territorial ambitions in Finland and was far more focused on the Cold War competition with the United States and Western Europe, today’s Russia is fully committed to erasing Ukrainian statehood and national identity.

The most powerful indictment of Finlandization has come from Finland itself. Following the fall of the Soviet Union, the Finns moved quickly to end decades of neutrality, joining the European Union in 1995. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, the Finnish authorities went even further and applied for NATO membership. Finland’s accession to the alliance in 2023 marked the final stage in the country’s rejection of Finlandization.

Instead of imposing neutrality on Ukraine, the country’s partners should seek to create a security environment that will prevent further Russian aggression and allow Ukrainians to define their own future. After eleven years of Russian military aggression and three years of full-scale invasion, pressuring Ukraine to accept Finlandization on the Kremlin’s terms would be the equivalent of forcing a victim of abuse to live with their abuser. Such an unjust settlement would be doomed to fail and could also significantly undermine the international standing of the United States for years to come.

Despite the evident problems with a peace deal that imposes neutrality on Ukraine, the new US administration has begun the negotiating process with Russia by proactively offering a series of concessions to the Kremlin such as ruling out Ukrainian NATO membership. US officials appear intent on avoiding anything that might offend the Russians as they seek to provide Putin with a face-saving off ramp. This approach is unlikely to result in a viable long-term peace deal. On the contrary, it risks emboldening Putin and encouraging him to increase his demands.

The alternative to Kremlin-friendly neutrality is clear. Ukraine seeks binding security guarantees from its Western partners and an invitation to join NATO. Kyiv’s vision for a sustainable peace offers obvious advantages for the West. At a time when the US is calling on Europeans to take greater responsibility for their own security, closer defense ties with Ukraine would be a major asset. With more than a million soldiers and unique combat experience on the twenty first century battlefield, the inclusion of Ukraine would dramatically increase the size and effectiveness of NATO forces in Europe while enabling the US to potentially withdraw troops.

Integrating Ukraine into the Western security architecture would bring lasting peace to Europe because it would project strength to Russia, which is the only language Vladimir Putin understands. Striking a temporary peace deal by appeasing aggression is easy, as Neville Chamberlain demonstrated at Munich in 1938. However, the long-term consequences are likely to be disastrous. The Trump administration appears well aware of this and says it is committed to achieving peace through strength. The question is whether this principle will now be applied to negotiations with Russia over the fate of Ukraine.

Brian Mefford is a senior nonresident fellow at the Atlantic Council. He has lived and worked in Ukraine since 1999.

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The views expressed in UkraineAlert are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Atlantic Council, its staff, or its supporters.

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The post The Finlandization fallacy: Ukrainian neutrality will not stop Putin’s Russia appeared first on Atlantic Council.

Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif’s government is accused of suppressing political rivals, curtailing dissent and violating human rights

A White House document slated for release on Friday says sanctions on Russia “must continue in effect beyond March 6, 2025.”

In the late afternoon of Feb. 26, members of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA)’s expert committee on vaccines received an unusual email. It informed them that their upcoming meeting on March 13 to determine which influenza strains to include in the next flu shot—a meeting that has occurred every year since the late 1960s, even during the pandemic—was canceled.

One of the email recipients was Dr. Paul Offit, director of the vaccine education center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, co-inventor of the rotavirus vaccine, and a member of the committee since 2017. “It said the meeting was canceled—not postponed—and there was no evidence that it would be rescheduled,” he says. In a statement, the FDA said: “The FDA will make public its recommendations to manufacturers in time for updated vaccines to be available for the 2025-2026 influenza season.”

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“I assume that will be without the advice of the expert independent advisory committee,” Offit says. “I don’t know what this means, who made the decision, or why they made the decision. We were told nothing about it.”

The cancellation came one day before new government-issued data was published showing the high effectiveness of the latest flu vaccine at keeping kids and adults out of the hospital.

Here’s what to know.

What the vaccine committee does

The Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC) is a group of vaccine experts who volunteer their time to review data on the yearly update to the flu vaccine. They do the same for any new vaccines against infectious disease, as well as biological products that companies hope to sell to the public. The committee’s primary responsibility is to discuss the safety and effectiveness of these health therapies.

To ensure the members are reviewing and analyzing the data objectively, the committee is independent; voting members are not active employees of the government, although government officials join the discussion.

Read More: When Is the Best Time to Get a Flu Shot?

After reviewing data provided by vaccine makers on studies the companies have conducted on their vaccines, the committee votes on whether it believes a vaccine should be approved or not. In the case of the annual flu shot, they vote on which strains to include in the vaccine, based on recommendations from the World Health Organization and data from flu cases in the southern hemisphere, which goes through its flu season before the northern part of the world.

This process led to the emergency use authorizations and ultimately approvals of the COVID-19 vaccines. The VRBPAC members met to discuss data, as they became available, on each of the new COVID-19 vaccines; based on the recommendations from the committee, the FDA then made the final decision on whether vaccines were safe and effective enough for the public.

What usually happens after the committee meets

Once the FDA commissioner decides to approve a vaccine or update the strains in a vaccine, the work then shifts to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). The CDC has a vaccine committee of its own: the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, which meets several times a year to make recommendations for the childhood and adult vaccine schedule.

Based on these insights, CDC then recommends certain vaccines to the public and outlines how frequently and how many doses should be provided. Doctors rely almost exclusively on the data from both the FDA and the CDC when discussing and administering vaccines to their patients.

Signs of trouble for vaccines

Soon after Robert F. Kennedy Jr., became head of the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees both the FDA and the CDC, the CDC announced that its vaccine committee meeting scheduled for Feb. 26 to Feb. 28 was postponed. Kennedy has been a long-time skeptic of vaccines; he continues to question their safety and highlights what he describes as conflicts of interest in the vaccine review and approval process.

Read More: What to Know About the Measles Vaccine

Not having a discussion and incorporating advice from independent experts “is worrisome,” says Offit, who has also served on ACIP. “We are getting the sense that expertise isn’t really valued.” Without the work of both the FDA and CDC committees, the message is that “doctors and parents should figure it out for themselves,” he says. “But there are things discussed at these meetings that most physicians in private practice aren’t going to intuit on their own. That’s why they look to the advisory committees to help give them advice and provide that information.”

Committee members don’t always agree. But “it’s important to have dissenting votes and have a vigorous discussion to make sure the science behind public policy is well-tuned,” Offit says. “This is an independent group. It is independent of the pharmaceutical industry, and independent of government.” Without its advice, it means the government would be making important decisions affecting the public’s health on its own.

New research on the importance of flu vaccines

The meeting cancellation came one day before the CDC issued its weekly MMWR report, a scientific update on the latest public-health news. In the Feb. 27 edition, CDC scientists published new data on the benefits of flu shots in protecting both children and adults from serious complications.

The latest data on the most recent flu season from 2024 to 2025 show that children and teens who were vaccinated were up to 78% less likely to be hospitalized for flu than those who weren’t, and adults who got their flu shot were up to 55% less likely to get hospitalized.

The report concludes by reiterating the agency’s recommendation that people who are eligible should get a flu shot every year.

U.S. consumers are being encouraged to abstain from purchasing any non-essential goods on Feb. 28 as part of a 24-hour buying blackout that aims to showcase the economic power of everyday people.

The push for the day of action comes from The People’s Union USA, a movement advocating for “economic resistance, government accountability, and corporate reform.” The group identifies as a nonpartisan entity and a “movement for all.”

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“February 28 is a symbolic start to economic resistance, a day where we show corporations and politicians that we control the economy,” reads a note on the organization’s website.

The initiative arrives as consumers are growing weary of rising prices on goods and services. 

In 2022 alone, the price of food shot up by nearly 10% year-over-year, faster than any year since 1979, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA.) While inflation has since slowed, families are still being affected by supply chain issues, other inflationary pressures, and even the looming threat of tariffs against countries such as China, Mexico, and Canada—which could raise prices for consumers. In fact, inflation expectations are expected to reach 4.3%, according to a University of Michigan consumer sentiment survey.

Here’s what to know about the planned economic blackout. 

What stores are people boycotting?

Those interested in participating in the economic blackout are specifically being asked to avoid spending any money on fast food, gas, or making purchases at major retailers. The organization says exceptions can be made for the purchase of necessary goods such as food, medicine, or emergency supplies.

The economic blackout appears to specifically be targeting mega corporations, citing stores like Walmart, Amazon, and Best Buy. But consumers are encouraged to stop shopping overall. 

Participants are also encouraged to take the day off work, if they can “safely” do so, according to an Instagram post belonging to John Schwarz, founder of The People’s Union USA. 

Read More: The Major U.S. Companies Scaling Back DEI Efforts as Trump Targets Initiatives

What does this have to do with DEI?

While the People’s Union USA says it stands firmly with diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and calls rollbacks to such initiatives “regressive and unacceptable,” Friday’s economic blackout has nothing to do with DEI.

However, there are other boycotts happening that are focused on companies such as Target, which announced in January that it would rollback its DEI goals. The corporation is one of several major retailers who decided it would do so after President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order looking to end all DEI at the federal level.

Where can you shop instead?

Per People Union USA’s website: “If you must spend, ONLY support small, local businesses.”