Pope Francis’ overall clinical condition is “improving slightly” and his heart is working well as he battles pneumonia, the Vatican said Thursday, as some of his cardinals cheered him on and insisted that the Catholic Church was very much alive and well even in his absence.

In a late update, Vatican spokesman Matteo Bruni said Francis has no fever and that his key heart parameters “continue to be stable.”

The 88-year-old pope was admitted to the hospital on Feb. 14 after a case of bronchitis worsened; doctors later diagnosed the onset of pneumonia in both lungs on top of asthmatic bronchitis and prescribed “absolute rest.”

“If you really want him to rest, you have to hospitalize him,” quipped Cardinal Jean-Marc Aveline, the archbishop of Marseille, France, referring to Francis’ work ethic.

Aveline was speaking at a Vatican news conference about a Mediterranean youth peace initiative alongside his counterpart from Barcelona, Cardinal Juan Josè Omella. But given the limited amount of information about Francis’ condition, they were peppered with questions about the pope’s health and whether he might decide to resign if he doesn’t recover fully.

“Everything is possible,” Aveline said.

Regardless, Omella insisted that the life of the church continued even with Francis in the hospital.

Chinese navy ships raise Australia alarm

A group of Chinese navy vessels, including a formidable warship, sailing legally in the Tasman Sea have raised alarm in Australia and New Zealand because they were in unusually southern waters and on an undeclared mission.

Australian officials said Thursday that they were closely monitoring the ships — a cruiser, a frigate and a supply vessel. They have been tracking them since last week, when they were detected off Australia’s northeast coast.

This week, the three ships were traveling within about 150 nautical miles of Sydney, outside Australia’s territorial waters but within its exclusive economic zone, according to an Australian government official speaking on condition of anonymity. Their presence near Sydney was first reported by The Financial Times.

China’s military has not publicly commented on the naval vessels, and the Chinese Embassy in Australia did not respond to a request for comment.

Some charges dropped in Liam Payne’s death

A court in Argentina dropped charges of criminal negligence against three of the five people indicted in connection with the death of Liam Payne, the former One Direction singer who fell from a third-floor hotel balcony in Buenos Aires last October, according to a ruling obtained by The Associated Press on Thursday.

In its decision issued Wednesday, the Argentine federal appeals court ordered the other two defendants in the case to remain in custody. They are facing prosecution on charges that they supplied the famed British boyband star with narcotics.

The ruling drops charges against three key defendants: Rogelio Nores, an Argentine businessman with U.S. citizenship who had accompanied Payne during his trip in Buenos Aires; Gilda Martin, the manager of the CasaSur Hotel in the trendy neighborhood of Palermo where Payne died on Oct. 16; and Esteban Grassi, the hotel’s main receptionist.

A toxicology report from tests taken after an autopsy revealed that Payne, 31, had alcohol, cocaine and a prescription antidepressant in his system when he fell from the balcony.

CDC: Cats possible source of bird flu cases

Two dairy workers in Michigan may have transmitted bird flu to their pet cats last May, suggests a new study published Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In one household, infected cats may also have passed the virus to other people in the home, but limited evidence makes it difficult to ascertain the possibility.

The results are from a study that was scheduled to be published in January but was delayed by the Trump administration’s pause on communications from the CDC.

A single data table from the new report briefly appeared online two weeks ago in a paper on the wildfires in California, then quickly disappeared. That odd incident prompted calls from public health experts for the study’s release.

The new paper still leaves major questions unanswered, including how the cats first became infected and whether farmworkers spread the virus to the cats and to other people in the household, experts said.

“I don’t think we can say for sure if this is human-to-cat or cat-to-human or cat-from-something-else,” said Jennifer Nuzzo, director of the Pandemic Center at the Brown University School of Public Health.

Ex-deputy convicted of killing man in crisis

A former Colorado sheriff’s deputy was convicted Thursday in the shooting death of a 22-year-old man in distress who called 911 for help after his car got stuck in a small mountain community.

Jurors found Andrew Buen guilty of criminally negligent homicide in the June 2022 death of Christian Glass, whose death drew national attention and led to changes in how officers are trained to respond to people in mental health crises under a $19 million settlement with his family.

Buen was charged with second-degree murder, but jurors had the option of convicting him on the lesser charge of homicide, which carries a sentence of up to three years in prison. As the verdict was read, he stood with his head bowed, flanked by his attorneys.

Murder convictions of police officers for actions taken while they were on duty is rare and have happened only nine times in the U.S. over the past two decades, according to criminal justice expert Philip Stinson at Bowling Green University.

Thursday’s verdict “is a typical result that we see. It’s not uncommon that in these cases an officer will be convicted of a lesser offense, if convicted at all,” Stinson said.

6 N.Y. guards charged in fatal prison beating

Six New York prison guards have been indicted for second-degree murder in the beating death of a handcuffed inmate, a brutal incident captured on body-worn cameras that triggered widespread outrage and calls for justice.

Four other corrections workers were charged with lesser crimes in the December death of Robert Brooks at Marcy Correctional Facility in an indictment unsealed Thursday.

The special prosecutor, Onondaga County District Attorney William Fitzpatrick, said especially disturbing to him was the “sense of normalcy” of the employees on the video, which was caught unintentionally on the body-worn cameras.

“I think any sentient human being looking at the tapes naturally comes to the conclusion that he must have said something. He must have spit at the officers. He must have resisted in some way. And the fact of the matter is, he did absolutely nothing,” Fitzpatrick said during a news conference after the court proceeding.

Handcuffed corrections employees appeared one after another in a packed Utica court to enter not guilty pleas.

Grand jury: Abolish Alabama police force

A grand jury recommended abolishing a small Alabama police department because of a “rampant culture of corruption” after charging five officers with a variety of crimes, officials announced Wednesday.

Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker announced Wednesday that a grand jury had indicted Hanceville Police Chief Jason Marlin and four of his officers on a variety of charges that included accusations of mishandling or removing evidence from the department’s evidence room.

“This is a sad day for law enforcement, but at the same time it is a good day for the rule of law,” Crocker said at a news conference.

The grand jury also issued a series of scathing findings about the department following an investigation that included looking at video of the department’s evidence room.

Study: Glaciers melting at accelerating pace

Climate change is accelerating the melting of the world’s mountain glaciers, according to a massive new study that found them shrinking more than twice as fast as in the early 2000s.

The world’s glaciers lost ice at the rate of about 255 billion tons annually from 2000 to 2011, but that quickened to about 346 billion tons annually over about the next decade, according to the study in this week’s journal Nature.

And the last few years, the melt has accelerated even more, hitting a record 604 billion tons lost in 2023, the last year analyzed.

The study drew on an international effort that included 233 estimates of changes in glacier weight. In all, the world’s glaciers have lost more than 7 trillion tons of ice since 2000, according to the study.

“The thing that people should be aware of and perhaps worried about is that yes, the glaciers are indeed retreating and disappearing as we said they would. The rate of that loss seems to be accelerating,” said William Colgan, a glaciologist for the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland and one of about 60 authors of the study.

David Boren, Oklahoma politico, dies at 83

Former Oklahoma Gov. David Boren, who became one of the nation’s youngest governors in the 1970s at age 33 and later helped shape national intelligence as a U.S. senator, has died. He was 83.

Boren, who went on to serve as president of the University of Oklahoma after retiring from politics, died early Thursday at his home near Newcastle, said Bob Burke, a longtime family friend. He said Boren’s death was the result of complications from diabetes.

The son of a Democratic congressman, Boren quickly followed in his father’s footsteps into elected office and oversaw a dramatic downsizing of government in Oklahoma, where over decades in legislative corridors and university offices he became one of the state’s most influential figures. His son, Dan Boren, also served four terms as an Oklahoma congressman.

In 2019, David Boren cut ties with the university he had led for 24 years amid a probe into allegations that he had sexually harassed male subordinates. Boren denied wrongdoing and the allegations never resulted in charges or civil litigation.

— From news service