Pope Francis “had a restful night,” and Thursday morning “got out of bed and had breakfast in an armchair,” the Vatican said in a statement.

Francis was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli Hospital last week with bronchitis, which then developed into double pneumonia.

Vatican spokesperson Matteo Bruni said Thursday that the pope now has focal pneumonia with limited areas of infection in the lungs. Bruni said Francis is breathing on his own, and his heart is stable.

An earlier statement Thursday reported the pope’s clinical condition as “stable,” and his blood tests had shown “a slight improvement, particularly in the inflammatory indices.”

Wednesday evening, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni visited the pope for 20 minutes in the hospital’s special papal suite.

“We joked as always,” the prime minister said in a statement afterward. “He hasn’t lost his proverbial sense of humor.”

Francis, whose birth name is Jorge Mario Bergoglio, has been the head of the Roman Catholic Church since 2013, when his predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, resigned from the papacy.

In a recent memoir, Francis addressed the possibility of his own resignation if he became incapacitated. He said such a move would be a “distant possibility,” justified only if facing “a serious physical impediment.”

“We are all worried about the pope,” Cardinal Matteo Maria Zuppi, head of the Italian Bishops’ Conference, told Agence France-Presse. Zuppi said, however, that the reports about Francis eating and greeting people are good indications that “we are on the right path to a full recovery, which we hope will happen soon.”

Speaking at a Vatican news conference about a Mediterranean youth peace initiative, Cardinal Juan Jose Omella Omella of Barcelona compared the papacy to a train to give reassurances that the work of the papacy will continue, even with Francis’ hospitalization.

“Popes change, we bishops change, priests in parishes change, communities change, but the train continues being on the move,” the cardinal said.

Some information in this report came from Reuters and Agence France-Presse.
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Vice President JD Vance sketched his conservative view of foreign affairs Thursday at the Conservative Political Action Conference, accompanied by foreign politicians who say they support President Donald Trump’s agenda. VOA White House correspondent Anita Powell reports from Washington.
Camera: Anthony LaBruto
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WASHINGTON — Hoping to head off a potential trade conflict, a top European Union official stressed the importance of active engagement and fairness in trade during a four-hour meeting with Trump administration officials.

“The top objective as it was presented to us yesterday by our American partners is reciprocity,” Maros Sefcovic, the European commissioner for trade and economic security, told reporters at a Thursday briefing.

Sefcovic met on Wednesday with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, White House National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett and Jamieson Greer, President Donald Trump’s nominee to be the U.S. trade representative.

Trump has thrown the decades long partnership between the U.S. and Europe into turmoil by pledging to charge higher taxes on imports from Europe that he says would match the tariffs faced by American products.

But Trump’s plan for fair tariffs would also include the value added tax — which is akin to a sales tax — charged in Europe that could drastically push up import taxes and potentially trigger a broader trade conflict if the EU imposed retaliatory measures. A broader trade war risks both an economic slowdown and higher inflation that could create financial challenges for millions of families and potentially hurt political support for Trump, as voters in 2024’s election specifically wanted him to lower price pressures.

Trump also has proposed separate sectoral tariffs on autos, pharmaceutical drugs and computer chips, in addition to having already imposed 25% steel and aluminum tariffs with no avenues to provide exceptions or exemptions.

Additionally, the U.S. president also has tariffs ready on Mexico and Canada over his claims that more should be done on illegal immigration and drug smuggling, though he suspended those tariffs for 30 days for ongoing talks. The import taxes that could potentially harm the U.S. auto sector and other industries could potentially begin in March.

At Thursday’s White House news briefing, Hassett said that he and Lutnick had talks with a Mexican delegation about resolving the issues.

“We want trade to be fair,” Hassett said.

The EU official tried in his conversation with White House officials to equate the value added tax as similar to a sales tax as its paid by the final consumer, but he said that the issue had not been resolved.

Sefcovic also said they discussed the industrial overcapacity of China, particularly in steel, and that the U.S. and EU should work together to tackle that problem, instead of targeting each other.

He stressed that the meeting ended with a focus on looking for ways to “generate positive momentum,” adding that the EU would like to “see where we can, like, move first and fast, because I really would like to avoid the pain of measures and countermeasures.”

The EU official said it was critical to establish a personal relationship with his U.S. counterparts.

“I’m glad that it happened and that we could have such an intense meeting,” he said. “Now, I think we will both be thinking how to keep the momentum going on and how to hopefully avoid I would say, the pain.”
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The fallout from U.S. President Donald Trump’s comments criticizing Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy continued Thursday, with Trump doubling down on his claim Zelenskyy is a dictator because he has not held elections since Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022. VOA’s Congressional Correspondent Katherine Gypson has reaction from around the world.
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Azerbaijan’s government has ordered the suspension of the Azerbaijani operation of BBC News, the British news agency confirmed Thursday.

In a statement, the BBC said it had made the “reluctant decision” to close its office in the country after receiving a verbal instruction from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

“We deeply regret this restrictive move against press freedom, which will hinder our ability to report to and from Azerbaijan for our audiences inside and outside the country,” a BBC spokesperson said in a statement.

The suspension comes after Azerbaijani state-run media last week reported that the Azerbaijani government wanted to reduce the number of BBC staff working in the country to one.

The BBC said it has received nothing in writing about the suspension from the Azerbaijani government. While the news agency seeks clarification, its team of journalists in the country have stopped their journalistic activities, according to the BBC.

Neither Azerbaijan’s Foreign Ministry nor its Washington embassy immediately responded to VOA’s emails seeking comment.

The BBC has operated in Azerbaijan since 1994. The news agency says its Azerbaijani service reached an average of 1 million people every week.

The BBC suspension marks the continuation of a harsh crackdown on independent media that the Azerbaijani government has engaged in for years.

Azerbaijan is among the worst jailers of journalists in the world. As of last week, at least 23 journalists were jailed in the former Soviet country in retaliation for their work, according to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists.

Many of the journalists jailed in Azerbaijan are accused of foreign currency smuggling, which media watchdogs have rejected as a sham charge.

Among those jailed is Farid Mehralizada, an economist and journalist with the Azerbaijani Service of VOA’s sister outlet Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

Jailed since May 2024, Mehralizada faces charges of conspiring to smuggle foreign currency and “illegal entrepreneurship, money laundering, tax evasion and document forgery.” He and his employer reject the charges, which carry a combined sentence of up to 12 years behind bars.
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U.S. envoy Keith Kellogg met in Kyiv Thursday with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, but there was no immediate word on whether they had eased U.S.-Ukrainian relations after U.S. President Donald Trump and Zelenskyy traded barbs this week over Russia’s three-year war against Ukraine.

Kellogg said upon arriving in the Ukrainian capital that he was there to listen to Zelenskyy’s views after officials in Kyiv voiced their anger at being excluded this week when the top U.S. and Russian diplomats met in Saudi Arabia to lay the groundwork for talks to end the fighting.

After Kellogg met with Zelenskyy, the two men were expected to hold a news conference, but the Ukrainian side said the Americans asked that it be called off, and it was.

Trump and Zelenskyy assailed each other this week. The U.S. president, echoing Russian attacks, called Zelenskyy a “dictator without elections,” while Zelenskyy accused Trump of living in a Russian-influenced “disinformation space” when the U.S. leader indicated that Ukraine started the war. It was Moscow that invaded its neighbor three years ago next week.

Ukraine fears that Trump is moving to settle the war on terms more favorable to Moscow. Russia currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine’s internationally recognized territory.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance told a gathering of conservative activists outside Washington on Thursday that Trump “wants the killing to stop” in Ukraine and that “peace is in the interest of the American people.”

He said after the U.S.-Russian talks in Riyadh, “We’re on the cusp of peace.” Vance did not mention Ukraine’s role in settling the conflict, although U.S. officials have said Kyiv and Moscow will both be involved in the settlement and have to make concessions to achieve peace.

European leaders have responded to Trump’s recent remarks about Ukraine by pledging to step up spending on defense, and some are considering a U.S.-backed European peacekeeping force for the country if the fighting ends. The Kremlin says the plan is a major cause for concern, but Zelenskyy and NATO have welcomed it.

“It is vital that … Russia will never again try to take one more square kilometer of Ukrainian land,” NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte said, adding that a peace pact would have to entail robust security guarantees for Ukraine.

“While there is much that still needs to be decided, there is no question that Europe has a vital role to play in securing peace in Ukraine,” he told reporters in Bratislava.

In a string of comments on his Truth Social platform this week, Trump accused Zelenskyy of refusing to hold elections in Ukraine, which had been scheduled for April 2024 but were delayed after Russia invaded in 2022.

Trump disparaged Zelenskyy as “a modestly successful comedian” and said, “The only thing he was good at was playing [former U.S. President Joe] Biden ‘like a fiddle'” for more U.S. military assistance.”

“I love Ukraine,” Trump said, “but Zelenskyy has done a terrible job, his Country is shattered, and MILLIONS have unnecessarily died — And so it continues.”

Earlier, Trump had scoffed at Zelenskyy’s complaint about not being invited to the Tuesday talks in Riyadh headed by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“Today I heard, ‘Well, we weren’t invited.’ Well, you’ve been there for three years,” Trump said of Ukraine’s leaders.
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BRUSSELS — The European Commission said Thursday it had approved 920 million-euro of German state aid, or $960 million, to Infineon Technologies for the construction of a new semiconductor manufacturing plant in Dresden.

The measure will allow Infineon to complete the MEGAFAB-DD project, which will be able to produce a wide range of different types of computer chips, the Commission said.

Chipmakers across the globe are pouring billions of dollars into new plants, as they take advantage of generous subsidies from the United States and the EU to keep the West ahead of China in developing cutting-edge semiconductor technology.

The European Commission has earmarked 15 billion euros for public and private semiconductor projects by 2030.

“This new manufacturing plant will bring flexible production capacity to the EU and thereby strengthen Europe’s security of supply, resilience and technological autonomy in semiconductor technologies, in line with the objectives set out in the European Chips Act,” the Commission said in a statement.

The Commission said the plant — which is slated to reach full capacity in 2031 — will be a front-end facility, covering wafer processing, testing and separation, adding that its chips will be used in industrial, automotive and consumer applications.

The aid will take the form of a direct grant of up to 920 million euros to Infineon to support its overall investment, amounting to 3.5 billion euros. Infineon, Germany’s largest semiconductor manufacturer, which was spun off from Siemens 25 years ago, has said the plant will be the largest single investment in its history.

Infineon has agreed with the EU to ensure the project will bring wider positive effects to the EU semiconductor value chain and invest in the research and development of the next generation of chips in Europe, the Commission said.

It will also contribute to crisis preparedness by committing to implement priority-rated orders in the case of a supply shortage, in line with the European Chips Act. 
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BEIJING — China has been “doing its best” to push for negotiations with the European Union over its tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles, a commerce ministry spokesperson said on Thursday, almost four months after the punitive import curbs took effect.

The bloc voted to increase the tariffs to as much as 45.3% in October after the European Commission — which oversees EU trade policy — launched an anti-subsidy probe into whether Chinese firms benefited from preferential grants and financing as well as land, batteries and raw materials at below market prices.

“China has been doing its best to push for negotiations with the EU,” He Yadong said. “It is hoped that the EU will take notice of the call from industry and promote bilateral investment cooperation through dialogue and consultation.”

China launched its own probes last year into imports of EU brandy, dairy and pork products.

He told reporters China’s anti-dumping probe into Europe’s pork products and anti-subsidy investigation into the 27-strong bloc’s dairy trade were still ongoing, when asked how the cases were progressing.

“We will conduct the investigation in an open and transparent manner in accordance with Chinese laws and regulations and World Trade Organization rules,” he added. China’s commerce ministry in December decided to extend its anti-dumping investigation into EU brandy imports by three months to April 5.
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Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has praised the recent U.S.-Russia talks aimed at ending the war in Ukraine.

“This is a good initiative; it is also beneficial for Kazakhstan,” he said. “We will try to support it as much as possible.”

Tokayev’s comments are the first official response from Central Asia to the talks, which sparked serious international debate. Central Asia has been officially neutral in the Ukrainian war and has been largely silent on the three-year-old conflict. 

Click here for the full story in the Uzbek. 
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Thousands of residents in Ukraine’s city of Odesa were without electricity or heating after Russia launched a massive drone attack for the second night in a row. 

In his address to the nation on Wednesday night, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said repair work was underway after 80,000 people lost power and the same number lost heating.  

Governor Oleh Kiper, writing on the Telegram messaging app, said drone strikes damaged an administration building and triggered a fire at a restaurant and a storage facility. One person was injured. 

During the Tuesday attack, four people were injured, including a child. Officials said 500 apartment buildings, 13 schools, a kindergarten, and several hospitals lost heating. 

In Ukraine’s northeastern city of Kupiansk, one person was killed Wednesday by a Russian guided bomb, Regional Governor Oleh Syniehubov said. Two others were injured in an attack on a village south of the city. 

Guided bombs also hit an apartment building in the Ukrainian city of Kherson, the head of the city’s military administration posted on Telegram. Three people, including 13-year-old twins, were injured. 

One man was killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on Russia’s border region of Belgorod, the regional governor Vyacheslav Gladkov said on Wednesday.   

Some information for this story was provided by Reuters 
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