VATICAN CITY: Pope Francis recorded and released an audio message on Thursday thanking those who have been praying for his recovery, his voice breathless as he nears three weeks in hospital with pneumonia.
“I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers for my health from the Square, I accompany you from here,” Francis said in a message broadcast in St. Peter’s Square.
“May God bless you and the Virgin protect you. Thank you,” he said, taking labored breaths as he spoke in his native Spanish, with some words fading away into nothing.
It was the first time the world has heard Francis’s voice since the 88-year-old was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14.
Pilgrims have been gathering in St. Peter’s Square every evening to pray for the pope’s recovery. The hundreds of people there on Thursday applauded when they heard his message.
The Vatican said earlier Thursday that the Argentine, head of the worldwide Catholic Church since 2013, is in a “stable” condition.
There had been no repeat of Monday’s respiratory failure, it said, and the pope’s blood work “remained stable.”
Francis continued with his breathing exercises and physiotherapy, did not have a fever, and managed to do a bit of work in both the morning and afternoon, it said.
The Vatican has been providing twice daily updates on the pope’s health, a morning one on how the night went, and an evening medical bulletin.
But on Thursday it said that “in view of the stability of the clinical picture, the next medical bulletin will be released on Saturday.”
Nonetheless, “the doctors are still maintaining a reserved prognosis,” it said, meaning they will not say how they expect his condition to evolve.
For the last three nights Francis — who had part of a lung removed as a young man — has worn an oxygen mask to help him sleep.
On Thursday morning, as on the previous day, he switched to a less onerous nasal cannula — a plastic tube tucking into his nostrils — which provides high-flow oxygen, a Vatican source said.
Francis missed the formal Ash Wednesday celebrations in Rome marking the start of Lent, but took part in a blessing in his private suite on the 10th floor of the Gemelli.
The leader of the world’s almost 1.4 billion Catholics has not been seen in public since his hospitalization — the longest of his papacy.
Nor has the Vatican issued any photos, although Francis has published several texts.
During previous hospitalizations, the pope appeared on the Gemelli balcony for his weekly Angelus prayer at noon on Sundays.
But he has missed the last three, and no announcement has yet been made about whether he will make an appearance this weekend.
The Vatican confirmed Thursday that senior cardinal Michael Czerny would stand in for the pope and lead the mass this weekend marking the first Sunday of Lent.
The mass was also part of celebrations for the Jubilee 2025, a Holy Year led by the pope, dedicated this weekend to volunteers.
The Holy See said Thursday the event “takes on an even deeper meaning, as the thoughts and prayers of all the brothers and sisters turn to the Holy Father and the experience he is going through.”
Pilgrims will pray in front of the hospital on Saturday, it said, as well-wishers have done since Francis was admitted.
The pope was initially diagnosed with bronchitis but it developed into pneumonia in both lungs, sparking alarm across the globe.
On Feb. 22, he suffered a “prolonged asthmatic respiratory crisis” and on Feb. 28 had “an isolated crisis of bronchospasm” — a tightening of the muscles that line the airways in the lungs.
On Monday, Francis “experienced two episodes of acute respiratory failure, caused by a significant accumulation of endobronchial mucus and consequent bronchospasm,” according to the Vatican.
Francis’s health has regularly led to speculation, particularly among his critics, as to whether he could resign like his predecessor, Benedict XVI.
Weak-sounding pope releases audio message from hospital
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Weak-sounding pope releases audio message from hospital
- “I thank you from the bottom of my heart for your prayers for my health from the Square, I accompany you from here,” Francis said
- It was the first time the world has heard Francis’s voice since the 88-year-old was admitted to Rome’s Gemelli hospital on Feb. 14
US defense department draws up rules on possible use of force by Marines deployed to LA protests
- 700 Marines will augment about 4,100 National Guard members already in LA
- President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in LA in 1992
WASHINGTON: The US Department of Defense was scrambling Monday to establish rules to guide Marines who could be faced with the rare and difficult prospect of using force against citizens on American soil, now that the Trump administration is deploying active duty troops to the immigration raid protests in Los Angeles.
US Northern Command said it is sending 700 Marines into the Los Angeles area to protect federal property and personnel, including federal immigration agents. The 2nd Battalion, 7th Marines are coming from Twentynine Palms, California, and will augment about 4,100 National Guard members already in LA or authorized to be deployed there to respond to the protests.
The forces have been trained in de-escalation, crowd control and standing rules for the use of force, Northern Command said.
But the use of the active duty forces still raises difficult questions.
The Marines are highly trained in combat and crisis response, with time in conflict zones like Syria and Afghanistan. But that is starkly different from the role they will face now: They could potentially be hit by protesters carrying gas canisters and have to quickly decide how to respond or face decisions about protecting an immigration enforcement agent from crowds.
According to a US official, troops will be armed with their normal service weapons but will not be carrying tear gas. They also will have protective equipment such as helmets, shields and gas masks.
When troops are overseas, how they can respond to threats is outlined by the rules of engagement. At home, they are guided by standing rules for the use of force, which have to be set and agreed to by Northern Command, and then each Marine should receive a card explaining what they can and cannot do, another US official said.
For example, warning shots would be prohibited, according to use-of-force draft documents viewed by The Associated Press. Marines are directed to de-escalate a situation whenever possible but also are authorized to act in self-defense, the documents say.
The AP reviewed documents and interviewed nine US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details not yet public, about the guidance being determined for the Marines.
The Pentagon also is working on a memo with clarifying language for the Marines that will lay out the steps they can take to protect federal personnel and property. Those guidelines also will include specifics on the possibility that they could temporarily detain civilians if troops are under assault or to prevent harm, the first US official said.
Those measures could involve detaining civilians until they can be turned over to law enforcement.
Having the Marines deploy to protect federal buildings allows them to be used without invoking the Insurrection Act, one US official said.
The Insurrection Act allows the president to direct federal troops to conduct law enforcement functions in national emergencies. But the use of that act is extremely rare. Officials said that has not yet been done in this case and that it’s not clear it will be done.
President George H.W. Bush used the Insurrection Act to respond to riots in Los Angeles in 1992 after the acquittal of white police officers who were videotaped beating Black motorist Rodney King.
If their role expands if the violence escalates, it is not clear under what legal authority they would be able to engage, said Elizabeth Goitein, a senior director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law.
“If in fact those Marines are laying hands on civilians, doing searches, then you have pretty powerful legal concerns,” Goitein said. “No statutory authority Trump has invoked so far permits this.”
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth tweeted late Saturday that he was considering deploying the Marines to respond to the unrest after getting advice earlier in the day from Gen. Dan Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to one of the US officials.
Still, the tweet, which was posted to Hegseth’s personal X account and not to his official government account, caught many inside the Pentagon by surprise. As late as Monday, the military’s highest offices were still considering the potential ramifications.
But the Marine Corps were asking broader questions, too: Do they send more senior, experienced personnel so as not to put newer, less experienced troops at risk of potentially making a judgment call on whether to use force against a civilian?
What’s lawful under a domestic deployment — where troops may end up in a policing role — is governed by the Fourth Amendment in the US Constitution, which forbids seizure of persons, including temporarily restraining them, unless it could be considered reasonable under the circumstances.
Troops under federal authorities are in general prohibited from conducting law enforcement on US soil under the Posse Comitatus Act.
US deploys Marines to Los Angeles as police break up fourth day of protests
- Military forces previously deployed domestically for major disasters
- California files lawsuit to block National Guard deployment *
LOS ANGELES/WASHINGTON: The US military will temporarily deploy about 700 Marines to Los Angeles until more National Guard troops can arrive, marking another escalation in President Donald Trump’s response to street protests over his aggressive immigration policies.
Tensions have been rising since Trump activated the National Guard on Saturday after street protests erupted in response to immigration raids in Southern California. It is the biggest flashpoint yet in the Trump administration’s aggressive efforts to deport migrants living in the country illegally.
The announcement that marines would be deployed was made on the fourth straight day of protests. Late on Monday police began to disperse hundreds of demonstrators who gathered outside a federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles where immigrants have been held.
National Guard forces had formed a human barricade to keep people out of the building. Then a phalanx of Los Angeles police moved up the street, starting to push people from the scene and firing “less lethal” munitions such as gas canisters. Police had used similar tactics since Friday.
The LAPD said late on Monday afternoon that some protesters had started throwing objects at officers and the use of less lethal munitions had been authorized, adding in an X post: “Less lethal munitions may cause pain and discomfort.”
California sued the Trump administration to block deployment of the National Guard and the Marines on Monday, arguing that it violates federal law and state sovereignty.
US Marines have been deployed domestically for major disasters such as Hurricane Katrina and the September 11, 2001, attacks, but it is extremely rare for US military troops to be used for domestic policing.
For now, the Trump administration was not invoking the Insurrection Act, which would allow troops to directly participate in civilian law enforcement, according to a US official speaking on condition of anonymity.
The Pentagon confirmed on Monday that a contingent of 2,000 National Guard troops would be doubled to 4,000. Trump said on Monday he felt he had no choice but to increase the level of force to prevent violence from spiraling out of control.
Trump also said he supported a suggestion by his border czar Tom Homan that California Governor Gavin Newsom should be arrested over possible obstruction of his administration’s immigration enforcement measures. “I would do it if I were Tom. I think it’s great,” Trump told reporters.
Democrats said Trump’s decision to deploy military force to handle the protests amounts to an abuse of presidential power, and California’s lawsuit claimed it was illegal.
“The level of escalation is completely unwarranted, uncalled for, and unprecedented,” Newsom’s press office said on X.
Four days of protests
The protests so far have resulted in a few dozen arrests and some property damage, including some self-driving Waymo vehicles that were set ablaze on Sunday evening. The Los Angeles Police Department said five officers sustained minor injuries on Saturday and Sunday, as did five police horses used in crowd control.
Before the police intervention on Monday, several hundred protesters chanted “free them all” outside the Los Angeles federal detention facility where immigrants have been held.
“What is happening effects every American, everyone who wants to live free, regardless of how long their family has lived here,” said Marzita Cerrato, 42, a first-generation immigrant whose parents are from Mexico and Honduras.
Some in the crowd punched and tossed eggs at a Trump supporter at the event, while others fired paintballs from a car at the federal building.
Protests also sprang up in at least nine other US cities on Monday, including New York, Philadelphia and San Francisco, according to local news outlets.
The Trump administration has argued that Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration allowed far too many immigrants to enter the country and that Democratic-run cities such as Los Angeles are improperly interfering with efforts to deport them. Trump has pledged to deport record numbers of people who are in the country illegally and to lock down the US-Mexico border, setting a goal of at least 3,000 daily arrests.
Trump can deploy Marines under certain conditions of law or under his authority as commander in chief.
The last time the military was used for direct police action under the Insurrection Act was in 1992, when the California governor at the time asked President George H.W. Bush to help respond to Los Angeles riots over the acquittal of police officers who beat Black motorist Rodney King.
More than 50 people were killed in the 1992 riots, which also caused some $1 billion in damage over six days.
Federal law allows the president to deploy the National Guard if the nation is invaded, if there is “rebellion or danger of rebellion,” or the president is “unable with the regular forces to execute the laws of the United States.”
RFK Jr. ousts entire US vaccine panel over alleged conflicts
- Kennedy, known for promoting vaccine misinformation, claims the committee had been compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies
- Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor, fears Kennedy would pack the panel with "people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion"
WASHINGTON: US Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. on Monday announced he was dismissing all current members of a key federal vaccine advisory panel, accusing them of conflicts of interest — his latest salvo against the nation’s immunization policies.
The removal of all 17 experts of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) was revealed in a Wall Street Journal op-ed and an official press release.
Kennedy, who has spent two decades promoting vaccine misinformation, cast the move as essential to restoring public trust, claiming the committee had been compromised by financial ties to pharmaceutical companies.
“Today we are prioritizing the restoration of public trust above any specific pro- or anti-vaccine agenda,” he said in a statement from the Department of Health and Human Services.
“The public must know that unbiased science — evaluated through a transparent process and insulated from conflicts of interest — guides the recommendations of our health agencies.”
In his op-ed, Kennedy claimed the panel was “plagued with persistent conflicts of interest” and had become “little more than a rubber stamp for any vaccine.”
He added that new members were being considered to replace those ousted — all of whom were appointed under former president Joe Biden.
ACIP members are chosen for their recognized expertise and are required to disclose potential conflicts of interest.
“RFK Jr. and the Trump administration are taking a wrecking ball to the programs that keep Americans safe and healthy,” Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer said in response.
“Of course, now the fear is that the ACIP will be filled up with people who know nothing about vaccines except suspicion,” Republican Senator Bill Cassidy, a medical doctor who expressed concern about Kennedy’s track record during his Senate nomination but ultimately voted in his favor, wrote on X.
“I’ve just spoken with Secretary Kennedy, and I’ll continue to talk with him to ensure this is not the case.”
“Fixing a problem that doesn’t exist”
The decision drew sharp criticism from Paul Offit, a pediatrician and leading expert on virology and immunology who served on the panel from 1998 to 2003.
“He believes that anybody who speaks well of vaccines, or recommends vaccines, must be deeply in the pocket of industry,” Offit told AFP. “He’s fixing a problem that doesn’t exist.”
“We are witnessing an escalating effort by the Administration to silence independent medical expertise and stoke distrust in lifesaving vaccines,” added Susan Kressly, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, in a statement.
Once a celebrated environmental lawyer, Kennedy pivoted from the mid-2000s to public health — chairing a nonprofit that discouraged routine childhood immunizations and amplified false claims, including the long-debunked theory that the Measles, Mumps and Rubella (MMR) vaccine causes autism.
Since taking office, he has curtailed access to Covid-19 shots and continued to raise fears around the MMR vaccine — even as the United States faces its worst measles outbreak in years, with three reported deaths and more than 1,100 confirmed cases.
Experts warn the true case count is likely far higher.
“How can this country have confidence that the people RFK Jr. wants on the Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices are people we can trust?” Offit asked.
He recalled that during US President Donald Trump’s first term, several states formed independent vaccine advisory panels after the administration pressured federal health agencies to prematurely approve Covid-19 vaccines ahead of the 2020 election.
That kind of fragmentation, Offit warned, could happen again.
ACIP is scheduled to hold its next meeting at the headquarters of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta from June 25 to June 27.
Vaccines for anthrax, Covid-19, human papillomavirus, influenza, Lyme disease, respiratory syncytial virus, and more are on the agenda.
Russia has plans to test NATO’s resolve, German intelligence chief warns
- Germany has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory
BERLIN: Russia is determined to test the resolve of the NATO alliance, including by extending its confrontation with the West beyond the borders of Ukraine, the Germany’s foreign intelligence chief told the Table Media news organization.
Bruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed the collective defense obligations enshrined in the NATO treaty no longer had practical force.
“We are quite certain, and we have intelligence showing it, that Ukraine is only a step on the journey westward,” Kahl told Table Media in a podcast interview.
“That doesn’t mean we expect tank armies to roll westwards,” he added. “But we see that NATO’s collective defense promise is to be tested.”
Germany, already the second-largest provider of armaments and financial support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory.
Without detailing the nature of his intelligence sources, Kahl said Russian officials were envisaging confrontations that fell short of a full military engagement that would test whether the US would really live up to its mutual aid obligations under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
“They don’t need to dispatch armies of tanks for that,” he said. “It’s enough to send little green men to Estonia to protect supposedly oppressed Russian minorities.”
Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea involved occupation of buildings and offices by Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms and civilian clothes, who came to be known as the “little green men” when Moscow initially denied their identity.
Kahl did not specify which officials in Moscow were thinking along these lines.
Merz, who visited Donald Trump in Washington last week, pushed back against the US president’s assertion that Ukraine and Russia were like two infants fighting, telling Trump that where Ukraine targeted Moscow’s military, Russia bombed Ukraine’s cities.
Kahl said his contacts with US counterparts had left him convinced they took the Russian threat seriously.
“They take it as seriously as us, thank God,” he said.
US State Dept resumes processing Harvard student visas after judge’s ruling
- Under that order granted to Harvard late on Thursday, US District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked Trump’s proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter
WASHINGTON: The US State Department directed all US missions abroad and consular sections to resume processing Harvard University student and exchange visitor visas after a federal judge in Boston last week temporarily blocked President Donald Trump’s ban on foreign students at the Ivy-League institution.
In a diplomatic cable sent on June 6 and signed by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the State Department cited parts of the judge’s decision, saying the fresh directive was “in accordance with” the temporary restraining order.
Under that order granted to Harvard late on Thursday, US District Judge Allison Burroughs blocked Trump’s proclamation from taking effect pending further litigation of the matter.
Trump had cited national security concerns as justification for barring international students from entering the United States to pursue studies at Harvard.
The Trump administration has launched a multi-pronged attack on the nation’s oldest and wealthiest university, freezing billions of dollars in grants and other funding and proposing to end its tax-exempt status, prompting a series of legal challenges.
Harvard argues the administration is retaliating against it for refusing to accede to demands to control the school’s governance, curriculum and the ideology of its faculty and students.
The State Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
In the cable, the State Department added that all other guidance regarding student visas remained in effect, including enhanced social media vetting and the requirement to review the applicants’ online presence.
