Digest

Vatican: Pope OK ///to leave hospital

ROME — Doctors cleared Pope Francis for discharge on Saturday from the Rome hospital where he was treated for bronchitis, the Vatican said Friday.

Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni, in one of several updates on Friday, also said Francis will be in St. Peter’s Square for Palm Sunday Mass at the start of Holy Week, though he didn’t say if the pontiff would deliver the homily during the particularly lengthy service.

Francis, 86, was hospitalized Wednesday at Gemelli Polyclinic, where doctors said the pontiff received antibiotics intravenously to treat his bronchitis.

Key inflation gauge slowed in February

WASHINGTON — The Federal Reserve’s favored inflation gauge slowed sharply last month, an encouraging sign in the Fed’s yearlong effort to cool price pressures through steadily higher interest rates.

Friday’s report from the Commerce Department showed consumer prices rose 0.3% from January to February, down from a 0.6% increase from December to January. Measured year-over-year, prices rose 5%, slower than the 5.3% annual increase in January.

Excluding volatile food and energy prices, so-called core inflation rose 0.3% from January and 4.6% from a year earlier. Both were slowdowns from the previous month. The Fed is believed to pay particular attention to the core measure as a gauge of underlying inflation pressures.

Taken as a whole, Friday’s figures show that inflation pressures, though easing gradually, still maintain a grip on the economy. The Fed has raised its benchmark rate nine times since March of last year in a strenuous drive to tame inflation, which hit a four-decade high in mid-2022.

BRIEFLY

BELARUS: Russian strategic nuclear weapons might be deployed to Belarus along with part of Russia’s tactical nuclear arsenal, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko said Friday. Russian President Vladimir Putin announced last week that his country plans to deploy tactical, comparatively short-range and small-yield nuclear weapons in Belarus.

JOURNALIST ARREST:  President Joe Biden on Friday urged Russia to release Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, who was arrested on espionage charges — allegations the newspaper denies. Russia’s Federal Security Service accused Gershkovich, a U.S. citizen, of trying to obtain classified information.  

CANADIAN BORDER: The bodies of two more migrants who died trying to cross from Canada into the United States, were found Friday, bringing the death toll to eight, including two children, police in the Mohawk Territory of Akwesasne said. A police helicopter spotted the latest two bodies in the water.

HARRIS: The global rivalry between the United States and China has been a recurring backdrop during Vice President Kamala Harris’ trip to Africa. Beijing’s influence was particularly apparent during the second and third stops in Tanzania and Zambia, where Harris arrived Friday at an airport that’s doubled in size and features glittering new terminals.

MINNEAPOLIS POLICE: The Minneapolis City Council approved an agreement with the state Friday to revamp policing, almost three years after a city officer killed George Floyd. The state Department of Human Rights issued a blistering report last year that said the police department engaged in a pattern of discrimination for at least a decade.  

GERMANY: King Charles III commemorated the more than 30,000 people, mostly German civilians, who were killed in the Allied bombing of Hamburg almost 80 years ago as he visited the northern city Friday on the last leg of his first foreign trip since becoming monarch.

— Associated Press