New Pope Is Chosen as White Smokes Rises From Sistine Chapel: Live Updates
White smoke over the Sistine Chapel and ringing bells have signaled that a new Pope of the Catholic Church has been chosen.
The conclave began Wednesday with 135 eligible cardinals—those under the age of 80—gathering in the Sistine Chapel, where they were locked in seclusion from the outside world. The word "conclave" comes from the Latin cum clave, meaning "with a key.
The new pope will be revealed with a proclamation of "Habemus Papam!" ("We have a pope!"), and an appearance on the balcony of St. Peter's Basilica where he delivers the Urbi et Orbi blessing.
What to Know
Former pope, Pope Francis, passed at the age of 88, on April 21, after 12 years as pope.
The conclave began Wednesday with 135 eligible cardinals—those under the age of 80—gathering in the Sistine Chapel, where they were locked in seclusion from the outside world. The word "conclave" comes from the Latin cum clave, meaning "with a key."
Modern conclaves typically last between one and five days with the most recent for Francis, in 2013, lasting just two days.
The next pope comes at a pivotal time for the Catholic Church, and must decide whether to continue down Francis' reformist path, or shift toward a more traditional model.
Stay with Newsweek for the latest updates.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Wall Street Journal
42 minutes ago
- Wall Street Journal
U.S. Supreme Court 9, Wisconsin Supreme Court 0
Justice Sonia Sotomayor's unanimous opinion last week in favor of a Catholic Charities nonprofit was a good win for religious liberty, and we've already discussed what it says about the Supreme Court. Permit us to add a final thought, which is that the 9-0 decision is a humiliation for the Wisconsin Supreme Court's new 4-3 liberal majority. The state jurists had denied a religious tax exemption to a local diocese's Catholic Charities Bureau (CCB) and associated groups. Their activities were 'secular in nature' and didn't involve teaching the faith or supplying religious materials, the Wisconsin court said. It rejected almost out of hand the First Amendment argument that ultimately won the day.
Newsweek
2 hours ago
- Newsweek
Port Traffic Plummets for Full Month Following Trump Tariff Announcement
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Port traffic has plummeted significantly since President Donald Trump announced his widespread tariffs on imports, with the Ports of Seattle and Tacoma recording lower numbers over the past month. For the last week in May, volumes were down for the fourth consecutive week, according to the Northwest Seaport Alliance. International imports had decreased 27.7 percent from the week before and 41 percent from the 2024 weekly average. Why It Matters Trump issued a "Liberation Day" order months ago for a 10 percent minimum tariff on all imports and up to 145 percent on Chinese goods. Following this, the Treasury Department brought in $15.9 billion from tariffs for April, compared to $9.6 billion the previous month, according to official data reviewed by Newsweek. As the tariffs influence international trade, many countries and companies may pull out of the U.S., impacting port traffic and the larger economy. Container ships and gantry cranes are pictured in Seattle, Washington, on November 16, 2014. Container ships and gantry cranes are pictured in Seattle, Washington, on November 16, 2014. Lonnie Kishiyama What To Know The Northwest Seaport Alliance reported that truck trips were also down 26 percent from the week before and 35.4 percent from the May 2024 weekly average. These drops were attributed largely to ships skipping their regularly scheduled stops at the port due to the higher tariffs in effect. "The Northwest ports had a surge earlier in the year as shipments were sped up to beat the tariffs, and now we are seeing the shipping industry crash," Drew Powers, founder of Illinois-based Powers Financial Group, told Newsweek. "It is not just a problem with imports; the number of cancelled shipments out of the port have increased by 33 percent, and I believe will only get worse before it gets better." While Trump paused some of his tariffs in the last few months, the 10 percent baseline tariff remains in effect, hurting the bottom line for many small businesses. "In retail, margins are everything, and while we've seen a pause on some of the higher tariffs proposed during the administration's initial proposal, they're still higher than they were just a few months ago," Alex Beene, financial literacy instructor for the University of Tennessee at Martin, told Newsweek. "Businesses are going to be more selective on the items and the amount they import, and that's already being reflected in slower port traffic." What People Are Saying Powers also told Newsweek: "This is a perfect example of the economic adage 'there is no such thing as a free lunch.' Placing a tariff on steel, for example, will certainly help the domestic steel producers, but at the same time will hurt the port workers who now do not have a shipment to unload. This will ripple down the line to the port's vendors and suppliers and their suppliers and vendors and so on and so on." Beene also told Newsweek: "Tariffs are going to have a tremendous effect on some imports because businesses - particularly smaller ones that specialize in a specific industry - are going to have a harder time turning a profit on items while having to pay an additional 10 percent or more to bring it into the United States." Michael Ryan, finance expert and founder of told Newsweek: "The collapse in port traffic is a textbook case of tariffs doing exactly what economists warned about. When you make imports more expensive, demand falls off a cliff—and the pain doesn't stop at the docks." Kevin Thompson, CEO of 9i Capital Group and host of the 9innings podcast, told Newsweek: "The larger implications can be summed up into one word: JOBS. Truckers, doc workers, shippers will all be impacted by the slowing economics of tariffs. People will lose their jobs, no question about it. It just depends how far downstream the tentacles stretch." What Happens Next As international ports navigate the new tariffs, employees and small businesses will experience the fallout, experts say. "The individual workers and the small business owners cannot fund a dramatic downturn," Powers said. "Businesses will go under, retail spaces will go vacant, houses will be foreclosed on, and kids will delay going to college. The major corporations with deep pockets will survive and grab more market share and power at the expense of every small business owner and hard working American. This is not a good thing." Ryan called the reduced port traffic a "blinking red light" for the economy. "The math is simple: tariffs raise costs, demand drops, and the whole economic engine slows down," Ryan said. "This is no longer a game of chicken, or 'cards.' The tariffs are real, the losses are mounting, and the economic fallout is hitting home."
Newsweek
4 hours ago
- Newsweek
The Scholar Who Predicted America's Breakdown Says It's Just Beginning
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. Fifteen years ago, smack in the middle of Barack Obama's first term, amid the rapid rise of social media and a slow recovery from the Great Recession, a professor at the University of Connecticut issued a stark warning: the United States was heading into a decade of growing political instability. It sounded somewhat contrarian at the time. The global economy was clawing back from the depths of the financial crisis, and the American political order still seemed anchored in post-Cold War optimism — though cracks were beginning to emerge, as evidenced by the Tea Party uprising. But Peter Turchin, an ecologist-turned-historian, had the data. "Quantitative historical analysis reveals that complex human societies are affected by recurrent—and predictable—waves of political instability," Turchin wrote in the journal Nature in 2010, forecasting a spike in unrest around 2020, driven by economic inequality, "elite overproduction" and rising public debt. A protestor holds up a Mexican flag as burning cars line the street on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Tensions in the city remain high after the Trump administration called in the National... A protestor holds up a Mexican flag as burning cars line the street on June 08, 2025 in Los Angeles, California. Tensions in the city remain high after the Trump administration called in the National Guard against the wishes of city leaders following two days of clashes with police during a series of immigration raids. More Photo byNow, with the nation consumed by polarization in the early months of a second Donald Trump presidency, institutional mistrust at all-time highs, and deepening political conflict, Turchin's prediction appears to have landed with uncanny accuracy. In the wake of escalating protests and the deployment of National Guard troops to Los Angeles under President Trump's immigration crackdown, Turchin spoke with Newsweek about the latest escalation of political turbulence in the United States—and the deeper structural forces he believes have been driving the country toward systemic crisis for more than a decade. Predicting Chaos In his 2010 analysis published by Nature, Turchin identified several warning signs in the domestic electorate: stagnating wages, a growing wealth gap, a surplus of educated elites without corresponding elite jobs, and an accelerating fiscal deficit. All of these phenomena, he argued, had reached a turning point in the 1970s. "These seemingly disparate social indicators are actually related to each other dynamically," he wrote at the time. "Nearly every one of those indicators has intensified," Turchin said in an interview with Newsweek, citing real wage stagnation, the effects of artificial intelligence on the professional class and increasingly unmanageable public finances. Turchin's prediction was based on a framework known as Structural-Demographic Theory (SDT), which models how historical forces—economic inequality, elite competition and state capacity—interact to drive cycles of political instability. These cycles have recurred across empires and republics, from ancient Rome to the Ottoman Empire. Turchin's forecast is based on a framework known as Structural-Demographic Theory (SDT), which models how historical forces—economic inequality, elite competition, and state capacity—interact to drive cycles of political instability. Turchin's forecast is based on a framework known as Structural-Demographic Theory (SDT), which models how historical forces—economic inequality, elite competition, and state capacity—interact to drive cycles of political instability. Courtesy Peter Turchin "Structural-Demographic Theory enables us to analyze historical dynamics and apply that understanding to current trajectories," Turchin said. "It's not prophecy. It's modeling feedback loops that repeat with alarming regularity." He argues that violence in the U.S. tends to repeat about every 50 years— pointing to spasms of unrest around 1870, 1920, 1970 and 2020. He links these periods to how generations tend to forget what came before. "After two generations, memories of upheaval fade, elites begin to reorganize systems in their favor, and the stress returns," he said. One of the clearest historical parallels to now, he notes, is the 1970s. That decade saw radical movements emerge from university campuses and middle-class enclaves not just in the U.S., but across the West. The far-left Weather Underground movement, which started as a campus organization at the University of Michigan, bombed government buildings and banks; the Red Army Faction in West Germany and Italy's Red Brigades carried out kidnappings and assassinations. These weren't movements of the dispossessed, but of the downwardly mobile—overeducated and politically alienated. "There's a real risk of that dynamic resurfacing," Turchin said. A 'Knowledge Class' Critics have sometimes questioned the deterministic tone of Turchin's models. But he emphasizes that he does not predict exact events—only the risk factors and phases of systemic stress. While many political analysts and historians point to Donald Trump's 2016 election as the inflection point for the modern era of American political turmoil, Turchin had charted the warning signs years earlier — when Trump was known, above all, as the host of a popular NBC reality show. President Donald Trump takes part in a signing ceremony after his inauguration on January 20, 2025 in the President's Room at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. President Donald Trump takes part in a signing ceremony after his inauguration on January 20, 2025 in the President's Room at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, DC. Melina Mara-Pool/Getty Images "As you know, in 2010, based on historical patterns and quantitative indicators, I predicted a period of political instability in the United States beginning in the 2020s," Turchin said to Newsweek. "The structural drivers behind this prediction were threefold: popular immiseration, elite overproduction, and a weakening state capacity." According to his model, Trump's rise was not the cause of America's political crisis but a symptom—emerging from a society already strained by widening inequality and elite saturation. In Turchin's view, such figures often arise when a growing class of counter-elites—ambitious, credentialed individuals locked out of power—begin to challenge the status quo. "Intraelite competition has increased even more, driven now mostly by the shrinking supply of positions for them," he said. In 2025, he pointed to the impact of AI in the legal profession and recent government downsizing, such as the DOGE eliminating thousands of positions at USAID, as accelerants in this trend. This theory was echoed by Wayne State University sociologist Jukka Savolainen, who argued in a recent op-ed in The Wall Street Journal that the U.S. is risking the creation of a radicalized "knowledge class"—overeducated, underemployed, and institutionally excluded. "When societies generate more elite aspirants than there are roles to fill, competition for status intensifies," Savolainen wrote. "Ambitious but frustrated people grow disillusioned and radicalized. Rather than integrate into institutions, they seek to undermine them." Peter Turchin forecasted a spike in unrest around 2020, driven by economic inequality, elite overproduction, and rising public debt. Peter Turchin forecasted a spike in unrest around 2020, driven by economic inequality, elite overproduction, and rising public debt. Courtesy of Peter Turchin Savolainen warned that Trump-era policies—such as the dismantling of D.E.I. and academic research programs and cuts to public institutions—have the potential to accelerate the pattern, echoing the unrest of the 1970s. "President Trump's policies could intensify this dynamic," he noted. "Many are trained in critique, moral reasoning, and systems thinking—the very profile of earlier generations of radicals." Structural Drivers Turchin, who is now an emeritus professor at UConn, believes the American system entered what he calls a "revolutionary situation"—a historical phase in which the destabilizing conditions can no longer be absorbed by institutional buffers. Reflecting on the last few years in a recent post on his Cliodynamica newsletter, he wrote that "history accelerated" after 2020. He and colleague Andrey Korotayev had tracked rising incidents of anti-government demonstrations and violent riots across Western democracies in the lead-up to that year. Their findings predicted a reversal of prior declines in unrest. "And then history accelerated," he wrote. "America was slammed by the pandemic, George Floyd, and a long summer of discontent." A police officer points a hand cannon at protesters who have been detained pending arrest on South Washington Street in Minneapolis, May 31, 2020, as protests continued following the death of George Floyd. A police officer points a hand cannon at protesters who have been detained pending arrest on South Washington Street in Minneapolis, May 31, 2020, as protests continued following the death of George Floyd. AP Photo/John Minchillo, File While many saw Trump's 2020 election loss and the January 6 Capitol riot that followed as its own turning point in that hectic period, Turchin warned that these events did not mark an end to the turbulence. "Many commentators hastily concluded that things would now go back to normal. I disagreed," he wrote. "The structural drivers for instability—the wealth pump, popular immiseration, and elite overproduction/conflict—were still running hot," Turchin continued. "America was in a 'revolutionary situation,' which could be resolved by either developing into a full-blown revolution, or by being defused by skillful actions of the governing elites. Well, now we know which way it went." These stressors, he argues, are not isolated. They are systemwide pressures building for years, playing out in feedback loops. "Unfortunately," he told Newsweek, "all these trends are only gaining power."
