By JUSTIN SPIKE and AAMER MADHANI, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — Ukraine’s leader will meet with President Donald Trump in Washington on Friday at a pivotal moment for his country, one that hinges on whether he can persuade Trump to provide some form of U.S. backing for Ukraine’s security against any future Russian aggression.

During his trip to Washington, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s delegation is expected to sign a landmark economic agreement with the U.S. aimed at financing the reconstruction of war-damaged Ukraine, a deal that would closely tie the two countries together for years to come.

Though the deal, which is seen as a step toward ending the three-year war, references the importance of Ukraine’s security, it leaves that to a separate agreement to be discussed between the two leaders — talks that are likely to commence Friday.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy listens during a news conference at a security summit in Kyiv, Ukraine, Monday, Feb. 24, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)

As Ukrainian forces hold out against slow but steady advances by Russia’s larger and better-equipped army, leaders in Kyiv have pushed to ensure a potential U.S.-brokered peace plan would include guarantees for the country’s future security.

Many Ukrainians fear that a hastily negotiated peace — especially one that makes too many concessions to Russian demands — would allow Moscow to rearm and consolidate its forces for a future invasion after current hostilities cease.

According to the preliminary economic agreement, seen by The Associated Press, the U.S. and Ukraine will establish a co-owned, jointly managed investment fund to which Ukraine will contribute 50% of future revenues from natural resources, including minerals, hydrocarbons and other extractable materials.

A more detailed agreement on establishing the fund will be drawn up once the preliminary one is signed.

Trump, a Republican, has framed the emerging deal as a chance for Kyiv to compensate the U.S. for wartime aid sent under his predecessor, President Joe Biden, a Democrat.

But Zelenskyy has remained firm that specific assurances for Ukraine’s security must accompany any agreement giving U.S. access to Ukraine’s resources. On Wednesday, he said the agreement “may be part of future security guarantees, but I want to understand the broader vision. What awaits Ukraine?”

Trump remains noncommittal about any American security guarantees.

“I’m not going to make security guarantees … very much,” Trump told reporters this week. “We’re going to have Europe do that.”

If a truce can be reached, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron have agreed to send troops for a potential peacekeeping mission to Ukraine to ensure that fighting between Ukraine and Russia doesn’t flare up again. Both leaders traveled to Washington this week before the Zelenskyy visit to discuss with Trump the potential peacekeeping mission and other concerns about the war.

White House officials are skeptical that Britain and France can assemble enough troops from across Europe, at least at this moment, to deploy a credible peacekeeping mission to Kyiv.

It will likely take a “consensual peace settlement” between Russia and Ukraine before many nations would be willing to provide such forces, according to a senior Trump administration official who briefed reporters on the condition of anonymity under ground rules set by the White House.

Zelenskyy and European officials have no illusions about U.S. troops taking part in such a mission. But Starmer and others are trying to make the case that the plan can only work with a U.S. backstop for European forces on the ground — through U.S. aerial intelligence, surveillance and support, as well as rapid-response cover in case the truce is breached.

“You’ve created a moment of tremendous opportunity to reach a historic peace deal — a deal that I think would be celebrated in Ukraine and around the world,” Starmer told Trump. “That is the prize. But we have to get it right.”

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Zelenskyy has been vague on exactly what kinds of security guarantees would be suitable for his country, and while he continues to advocate for Ukraine’s eventual membership in NATO, he has also suggested a similar security arrangement would suffice.

But Trump on Wednesday said Ukraine “could forget about” joining the Western military alliance.

Still, Zelenskyy’s meeting with Trump, their first since the U.S. leader’s inauguration in January, is seen in Kyiv as a diplomatic win for Ukraine. On Wednesday, Zelenskyy said being able to meet personally with Trump before Russian President Vladimir Putin does “is a good signal.”

Zelenskyy said he hopes to discuss whether the U.S. plans to halt its military aid to Ukraine and, if so, whether Kyiv would be able to purchase weapons directly from the U.S.

He also wants to know whether Ukraine can use frozen Russian assets for the purchase of weapons and whether Washington plans to lift sanctions on Moscow.

Fears that Trump could broker a peace deal with Russia that is unfavorable to Ukraine have been amplified by recent precedent-busting actions by his administration. Trump held a lengthy phone call with Putin, and U.S. officials met with their Russian counterparts in Saudi Arabia without inviting European or Ukrainian leaders — both dramatic breaks with previous U.S. policy to isolate Putin over his invasion.

Trump later seemed to falsely blame Ukraine for starting the war, and called Zelenskyy a “dictator” for not holding elections after the end of his regular term last year, though Ukrainian law prohibits elections while martial law is in place.

As Zelenskyy seeks to lower the temperature with the U.S. while in Washington, American officials are saying the economic deal, if implemented, would itself provide a measure of security to Ukraine through the presence of U.S. investments on its territory.

On Wednesday, Trump said the U.S. working on mineral extraction in Ukraine would amount to “automatic security because nobody’s going to be messing around with our people when we’re there.”

“It’s a great deal for Ukraine too, because they get us over there and we’re going to be working over there,” Trump said. “We will be on the land.”

That perspective is echoed by the text of the economic agreement, which says the U.S. “supports Ukraine’s efforts to obtain security guarantees needed to establish lasting peace.”

Washington, it continues, has “a long-term financial commitment to the development of a stable and economically prosperous Ukraine.”

Spike reported from Kyiv, Ukraine.

In 2016, three men escaped from an Orange County jail, and then, out of options, called a cab. The driver who showed up was an elderly Vietnamese man, Long Mã, a divorced war veteran, whom they kidnapped and held hostage during a weeklong ordeal, the trio and their captive evading capture by hiding out in Southern California motel rooms.

Mã’s experience was elaborated in a 2017 GQ article by Paul Kix, “The Accidental Get Away Driver,” which described the unique bond he formed with Bac Duong, one of his kidnappers, a Vietnamese national, and the terror he experienced at the hands of Hossein Nayeri, the ringleader. This wild story has now been brought to the screen by co-writer/director Sing J. Lee, in a lyrical and meditative adaptation that focuses on mood and feeling, rather than action-oriented suspense.

There’s an excellent unknowingness to the first moments of “The Accidental Getaway Driver.” The concrete sprawl and traffic lights indicate we’re in Orange County, and the Vietnamese spoken everywhere lets us know we’re in the OC enclave known as Little Saigon. Long Mã, played with a heart-piercing soulfulness by Hiep Tran Nghia, answers the call for a ride, but the elderly man doesn’t feel like working so late and tries to decline. Tây (Dustin Nguyen) convinces him it’s a short trip and they’ll pay double, so he picks up the three men, who then request more and more stops. When he protests, Tây pulls a gun on him. The journey is only just beginning.

Lee’s approach to the material is to focus on performance and tone, and specifically the relationship between Tây (the character based on Bac Duong) and Long, which emerges as the two Vietnamese men start to share their life stories with each other during the long stretches of downtime while they’re hiding out and trying to figure out the next move. Tây protects his elder from the skittish, young Eddie (Phi Vu) and the psychopathic Aden (Dali Benssalah), who brags to the older man about his crimes, which includes torturing and mutilating a man in the desert.

Cinematographer Michael Fernandez brings a texture and tactility to this crime story, capturing the inadvertent beauty of this gritty, unremarkable setting: faces bathed in the glow of crimson brake lights and neon convenience store signs; realistically rumpled motel rooms and cigarette smoke swirling in the backseat of an old Corolla.

Rather than hone in on the details of these three escaped prisoners’ crimes, Lee and co-writer Christopher Chen focus on Long’s subjective experience in his time with them. All we know about them is what he does: we glean information about their pasts in warm conversations with Tây, or via a threatening monologue from Aden. Eddie remains a bit of a cipher until the group sees his mother and sister on the news and he breaks down.

Often, we’re taken into dreamlike memories of Long’s: snippets of his childhood in Vietnam, watery, muddled remembrances of his lost marriage and family, a few abstract, surreal images that gesture to his past but don’t reveal much. The intent is to remain in his inner world as he goes through this extreme event, but while it is beautiful and poetic, it is also somewhat abstruse and feels in conflict with the momentum of the larger story.

“The Accidental Getaway Driver” seeks not to elucidate the facts of this true crime tale, but rather to imagine Long’s state of mind during it, which is emotionally evocative but hinders the viewing experience as the film grinds to a halt for meandering asides. The performances, especially from Nguyen, Benssalah and Nghia, are moving, but it does feel like the film loses steam under its own conceit, despite the wealth and narrative richness of the material at hand.

‘The Accidental Getaway Driver’

2.5 stars (out of 4)

MPA rating: R (for language)

Running time: 1:42

How to watch: In select theaters on Friday, Feb. 28 and nationwide on March 7

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A measles outbreak in West Texas and New Mexico has killed a child and sickened more than 130 people, and public health experts fear it’s only the beginning. It’s an entirely avoidable health emergency fueled by weaknesses in our vaccine forcefield.

It’s also not hard to imagine this type of emergency becoming much worse, much faster if Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, further undermines the safety of and access to the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine.

Troubling signs are already emerging that Kennedy, notorious for his vaccine misinformation, might influence the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s messaging and vaccine recommendations.

Measles outbreaks rise to nearly 100 cases between Texas and New Mexico. Here’s what you should know

Members of Kennedy’s Make America Healthy Again inner circle have dismissed the measles threat. Health care entrepreneur Calley Means, who is helping to shape and implement the MAHA agenda, complained on CNN last week about the media’s focus on the Texas outbreak. “Day after day, it’s breathless — it’s breathless coverage of five measles cases,” he said, suggesting chronic disease is meanwhile being ignored.

There’s a reason for that “breathless” coverage. Measles is both scarily contagious and easily preventable.

“It’s more contagious than COVID, more contagious than the flu, more contagious than Ebola,” says Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

After someone with measles coughs or sneezes — or even breathes — tiny droplets of the virus hang in the air like ghosts for up to two hours, waiting to infect anyone who wanders by.

Moreover, people with measles — most often children — typically get very sick with a fever, cough and sore throat before the telltale rash sets in. So far, 18 of the 124 Texans infected have been hospitalized, according to state health officials. The majority of the cases are unvaccinated children, who are susceptible to pneumonia and, more rarely, brain swelling that can cause permanent damage. Two or three out of every 1,000 children with measles will die. One of the hospitalized Texas patients, an unvaccinated child, died Tuesday night.

That’s why, with even a few cases, public health officials race to retrace patients’ steps and who they might have encountered. The goal is to warn vulnerable people so they can take steps to minimize their risk of serious infection and quarantine to prevent further spread. Most at risk are those too young or too immunocompromised to be protected by the MMR vaccine.

Each cluster becomes more dangerous as vaccination rates in the U.S. soften. Measles was officially eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, but maintaining that status means ensuring that roughly 93-95% of the population is vaccinated.

Pioneer Press headline, March 7, 1967. (Pioneer Press)

Although Texas’ childhood vaccination rate is just over 94%, its outbreak started in Gaines County, where some 18% of kindergarteners have vaccine exemptions. That creates a pocket of vulnerability that can allow the disease to rip through a community and spread into neighboring areas.

The numbers and size of those pockets are growing around the country. Some are in counties where many people have religious exemptions, while others are in places that have fallen victim to anti-vaccine rhetoric, like that coming from Kennedy.

“Even at a low level, we could get some endemic spread,” former FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said Sunday on “Face the Nation,” pointing to low levels of MMR vaccination in several states, including Idaho, Alaska, Wisconsin and Minnesota. “The U.S. could be at risk of losing its measles elimination status, which would have more profound implications on things like travel advisories that could be initiated from other countries.”

The worry is that these numbers — and the opportunity for measles and other infectious diseases to spread — could get much worse. Kennedy has spent years railing against the safety of the MMR vaccine (and falsely connecting it to autism) and now has the power to act on his beliefs.

Despite Kennedy’s lukewarm assurances during his Senate confirmation hearings that he would not take away Americans’ vaccines, early signs raise concerns. Sweeping job cuts at HHS this month targeted CDC employees, including those in a critical public health training program. The CDC also appears to have pulled an ad campaign to improve the country’s dismal flu vaccination rates, a move that came at the tail end of a brutal outbreak and rising pediatric flu deaths.

More worrisome was the indefinite postponement of a meeting of a CDC committee on vaccines, originally scheduled for this week. The Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends who, when, and how often people should get specific vaccinations, advice that directly affects access and insurance coverage.

While the MMR vaccination was not on ACIP’s agenda, punting the committee’s discussion has ominous undertones. Some are concerned the delay could be related to an executive order issued by Trump last week calling for the heads of government agencies “to identify and submit to the president additional unnecessary governmental entities and federal advisory committees that should be terminated on grounds that they are unnecessary.”

But even if ACIP doesn’t fall to the administration’s scrutiny, there is plenty of reason to fear that Kennedy will throw the committee into disarray. During his confirmation hearings, he made a passing reference to ACIP members he claimed had a conflict of interest. It’s an accusation that one could easily imagine being used to replace some members with appointees whose views more closely align with his own.

Any measles outbreak is serious, yet Kennedy’s influence amid weakened vaccine acceptance raises the stakes. Public health officials like to say that measles can spread like wildfire. I worry that the U.S. will soon have a lot more kindling.

Lisa Jarvis is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering biotech, health care and the pharmaceutical industry. Previously, she was executive editor of Chemical & Engineering News.

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Today is Friday, Feb. 28, the 59th day of 2025. There are 306 days left in the year.

Today in history:

On Feb. 28, 1993, a gun battle erupted at a religious compound near Waco, Texas, when Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms agents tried to arrest Branch Davidian leader David Koresh on weapons charges; four agents and six Davidians were killed as a 51-day standoff began.

Also on this date:

In 1844, a 12-inch gun aboard the USS Princeton exploded as the ship was sailing on the Potomac River, killing Secretary of State Abel P. Upshur, Navy Secretary Thomas W. Gilmer and several others; President John Tyler, who also was aboard the ship, was uninjured.

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In 1953, Francis H.C. Crick announced that he and fellow scientist James D. Watson had discovered the double-helix structure of DNA.

In 1975, 43 people were killed in London’s Underground when a train failed to stop at Moorgate station, smashing into the end of a tunnel.

In 1983, the final episode of the television series “M(asterisk)A(asterisk)S(asterisk)H” aired; nearly 106 million viewers saw the finale, which remains the most-watched episode of any U.S. television series to date.

In 1986, Swedish Prime Minister Olof Palme was assassinated while walking on a Stockholm street with his wife; his assailant was never captured and remains unidentified.

In 2013, Benedict XVI became the first pope in 600 years to resign, ending an eight-year pontificate. (Benedict was succeeded the following month by Pope Francis.)

In 2014, delivering a blunt warning to Moscow, President Barack Obama expressed deep concern over reported military activity inside Ukraine by Russia and warned “there will be costs” for any intervention.

Today’s birthdays:

Architect Frank Gehry is 96.
Rock singer Sam the Sham (aka Domingo Samudio) is 88.
Actor-director-choreographer Tommy Tune is 86.
Hall of Fame auto racer Mario Andretti is 85.
Actor Mercedes Ruehl is 77.
Actor-singer Bernadette Peters is 77.
Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman is 72.
Basketball Hall of Famer Adrian Dantley is 70.
Actor John Turturro is 68.
Actor Maxine Bahns is 55.
Actor Robert Sean Leonard is 56.
Musician Pat Monahan (Train) is 56.
Actor Tasha Smith is 54.
Hockey Hall of Famer Eric Lindros is 52.
Actor Ali Larter is 49.
Country musician Jason Aldean is 48.
NBA guard Luka Dončić is 26.