The Bulletin April 22, 2025
The rundown: Seals have been placed on the apartment where Pope Francis had resided as cardinals meet to decide on the arrangements for the funeral of the pontiff. Know more.
Why it matters: The Vatican News reported that the rite confirming the death and the placement of Pope Francis's body in the coffin took place on Monday in the chapel of the Casa Santa Marta in Vatican City. The Vatican's top doctor Andrea Arcangeli said that Pope Francis had died from a stroke, followed by a coma and irreversible cardiocirculatory collapse. The Vatican has released images of Pope Francis in an open coffin in the chapel of Casa Santa Marta during which the declaration of death was read aloud. Cardinals were meeting Tuesday morning in the Vatican to decide on arrangements including the date for Francis' funeral and when his body will be moved into St Peter's Basilica before burial so the public can pay their respects.
Read more in-depth coverage:
Who Picks the Next Pope? The 135 Cardinals Who Make Up Papal Conclave
TL/DR: Italian media citing Vatican sources have reported that the funeral is likely to take place on Saturday, April 26.
What happens now? Mourners from around the world have been queueing to visit St Peter's Square in Vatican City on Tuesday. The funeral is likely to take place this weekend and will be attended by world leaders, including French President Emmanuel Macron and U.S. President Trump, whose Vice President JD Vance spoke with the pontiff just before he died.
Deeper reading Pope Francis Death Update: Seals Placed on Pope's Residence
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Yahoo
British Netflix series Adolescence to be shown in French schools, says minister of education
Following UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer welcoming plans to air Netflix's hit show Adolescence in secondary schools, France is following suit, with French Minister of Education Élisabeth Borne stating yesterday that the mini-series will be screened from secondary school level upwards. In an interview for LCI news channel, Borne explained that the producer of the series 'gave us the rights' and that the Ministry of Education was therefore going to 'offer five educational sequences for young people based on this series'.These extracts from Adolescence, which have already been shown in British schools to stimulate debate and try to 'prevent young boys from being dragged into a whirlpool of hatred and misogyny,' are 'very representative of the violence that can exist among young people', according to Borne. The aim is to help raise awareness of the problem of 'overexposure to screens and the trivialisation of violence on these social networks,' as well as the spread of masculinist theories and misogyny, argues Borne. The four-part series follows how a father deals with the fallout of his 13-year-old son being suspected of stabbing one of his classmates to death. Beyond the spot-on acting, the show has felt like a cultural wake-up call, as it has prompted a wider discussion about toxic masculinity and the devastating influence of the so-called 'manosphere' on young minds who are faced with websites and online forums promoting misogyny and ultra-conservative models of masculinity that flirt with far-right ideologies. When it was confirmed that Netflix would be making the series available to all UK secondary schools, former British Prime Minister Boris Johnson wrote a column for the Daily Mail saying that he didn't see the good in the initiative, calling the show 'tosh'. He wrote: 'In making this announcement with full prime ministerial authority amid the ancient solemnity of the cabinet room, Keir Starmer has perfectly encapsulated the fundamental flatulence of the government, and its emetic finger-wagging mixture of humbug and wokery.' Johnson went on to say that he believes the move to show the series in school time demonstrates the government's 'cruel indifference to the real educational needs of children today,' adding: 'In case you haven't watched Adolescence I can save you the bother. It's tosh - well-acted tosh.' Predictably, Johnson also introduced race to his argument, saying that 'unlike the teenage couple in this drama, the victims and perpetrators are disproportionately young black males.' The show's co-creator Jack Thorne has already spoken out on this theory, saying, 'It's absurd to say that (knife crime) is only committed by black boys. It's not true and history shows a lot of cases of kids from all races committing these crimes.' Thorne also stated that the goal of the show was not about 'making a point about race' but to make a point 'about masculinity.' 'We're trying to get inside a problem,' he added. 'We're not saying this is one thing or another, we're saying that this is about boys.' The decision to show the series in French schools comes after Laëtitia Curetti, who has a 13-year-old son, wrote to Borne and launched an online petition to have the series shown in secondary schools across France. Curetti stated she believes the series could be an 'excellent educational tool' to raise awareness of the dangers of social networking, sexism, bullying and violence in schools. The discussion surrounding knife crime has increased since the success of the series in France. It has been further amplified after a 16-year-old stabbed a high school student to death and injured three other fellow students at the lycée Notre-Dame de Toutes Aides in Nantes on 24 April. "My thoughts go out first to the teenager who lost her life, to the three students who were injured, and I want to express all my support and solidarity to these victims, their families and their loved ones," declared Borne at the school, before paying tribute to the "establishment staff who intervened and neutralized the attacker." French Interior Minister Bruno Retailleau spoke of "a tragedy that rocks us." He said he was "appalled" and "shocked" by "the violence that has been unleashed," before adding that the tragic incident was "not a mere news item but a societal issue."
Yahoo
37 minutes ago
- Yahoo
Frederick Forsyth: Life as a thriller writer, fighter pilot, journalist and spy
Frederick Forsyth, who has died at the age of 86, wrote meticulously researched thrillers which sold in their millions. A former fighter pilot, journalist and spy, many of his books were based on his own experience. He wove intricate technical details into his stories, without detracting from the lightning pace of his plots. His research often embarrassed the authorities, who were forced to admit that some of the shady tactics he revealed were used in real-life espionage. Frederick McCarthy Forsyth was born on 25 August 1938 in Ashford, Kent. The only child of a furrier, he dealt with loneliness by immersing himself in adventure stories. Among his favourites were the works John Buchan and H Rider Haggard, but Forsyth adored Ernest Hemingway's book on bullfighters, Death in the Afternoon. He was so captivated that - at the age of 17 - he went to Spain and started practising with a cape. He never actually fought a bull. Instead, he spent five months at the University of Granada before returning to do his national service with the RAF. Having spent years dreaming of becoming a pilot, Forsyth lied about his age so he could fly de Havilland Vampire jets. In 1958, he joined the Eastern Daily Press as a local journalist. Three years later, he moved to the Reuters news agency. At Tonbridge School, Forsyth had excelled in foreign languages but little else. Fluent in French, German, Spanish, and Russian, he was a born foreign correspondent. Posted to Paris, he covered a number of stories relating to assassination attempts on the life of France's President Charles de Gaulle, by members of the Organisation de l'Armee Secrete (OAS). The group of ex-army personnel were angered at de Gaulle's decision to give independence to Algeria after many of their comrades had died fighting Algerian nationalists. Forsyth called the OAS "white colonialists and neo-fascists". And he decided that, if they really wanted to kill de Gaulle, they would have to hire a professional assassin. Forsyth joined the BBC in 1965. Two years later, he was sent to Nigeria to cover the civil war that followed the secession of the south-eastern region of Biafra. When the fighting dragged on far longer than had been expected, Forsyth asked permission to stay and cover it. According to his autobiography, the BBC told him "it is not our policy to cover this war". "I smelt news management," he said. "I don't like news management." He quit his job and continued to cover the war as a freelance reporter for the next two years. He chronicled his experiences in The Biafra Story, which was published in 1969. He later claimed that, while in Nigeria, he began working for MI6, a relationship that continued for two decades. He also become friendly with a number of mercenaries, who taught him how to get a false passport, obtain a gun and break an enemy's neck. All these tricks of the trade would be incorporated in a tale of an attempted assassination of President de Gaulle, The Day of the Jackal, which he pounded out in his bedsit on an old typewriter in just 35 days. He spent months trying to get it published but faced a string of rejections. "For starters, de Gaulle was still alive," he said, "so readers already knew a fictional assassination plot set in 1963 couldn't succeed." Eventually, a publisher risked a short print run and sales of the book, described once as "an assassin's manual", took off, first in the UK and then in the US. The Day of the Jackal showcased what would become the traditional hallmarks of a Forsyth thriller. It wove together fact and fiction, often using the names of real individuals and events. The Jackal's forgery of a British passport, using the name of a dead child taken from a churchyard, was perfectly feasible in the days before electronic databases and cross-checking. The tale was made into an award-winning film in 1973, staring Edward Fox as the anonymous gunman. Forsyth followed up his success with The Odessa File, the story of a German reporter attempting to track down Eduard Roschmann - a notorious Nazi nicknamed the "Butcher of Riga" - who is protected by a secret society of former SS men known as Odessa. As part of his research, Forsyth travelled to Hamburg posing as a South African arms dealer. "I managed to penetrate their world and was feeling rather proud of myself," he later said. "What I didn't know was that the (contact) had passed a bookshop shortly after our meeting. And there, in the window, was The Day of the Jackal, with a great big picture of me on the back cover." The film of the book led to the identification of the real "Butcher of Riga", who was living in Argentina - after one of his neighbours went to see it at the local cinema. He was arrested by the Argentinian authorities, but skipped bail and fled to Paraguay. The book also mentioned a hoard of Nazi gold that was exported to Switzerland in 1944. Twenty-five years after publication, the Jewish World Congress discovered this passage and, eventually, located gold valued at £1bn. According to the Sunday Times, Forsyth's third novel, The Dogs of War, drew on his experience of organising a coup in Africa. The newspaper reported that Forsyth had once spent $200,000 hiring a boat and recruiting European and African soldiers of fortune for a raid designed to oust the President of Equatorial Guinea in 1972. The plan was said to have failed when the arrangements broke down and the soldiers were intercepted by the Spanish police in the Canary Islands, 3,000 miles from their objective. Then came Devil's Alternative, in which Britain's first female prime minister, Joan Carpenter, was firmly based on Margaret Thatcher, a politician Forsyth greatly admired. She later appeared, under her real name, in four Forsyth novels. There was a move into biography in 1982 with Emeka, the life story of Forsyth's friend Col Chukwuemeka Odumegwu Ojukwu, the head of state of Biafra during that country's brief independence. In 1984, he returned to the novel with The Fourth Protocol: a complex tale of a Soviet plot to influence the British general election and install a hard-left Labour government. The book so impressed Sir Michael Caine that he persuaded Forsyth to allow a film version, in which the veteran actor starred alongside Pierce Brosnan. In the late 1980s, Forsyth separated from his first wife, the former model Carole Cunningham and was photographed alongside the actress Faye Dunaway. The Negotiator, published in 1991, continued the successful run while The Deceiver, the tale of a maverick but brilliant MI6 agent, was made into a BBC mini-series. After two more thrillers, The Fist of God and Icon, Forsyth took an abrupt detour with The Phantom of Manhattan: a sequel to the Phantom of the Opera, which had been a successful musical. It was not a great success but, in 2010, Andrew Lloyd Webber took elements of it for his musical follow-up to Phantom, Love Never Dies. A second set of short stories, The Veteran, also had mixed reviews but Forsyth bounced back in his usual style with Avenger, a 2003 political thriller and, three years later, The Afghan, which had links with the earlier Fist of God. By now, Forsyth had established a reputation as a broadcaster and political pundit. He was a frequent guest on the BBC's topical debate programme Question Time, as someone who held views on the right of the political spectrum. A committed Eurosceptic, he once derailed former Prime Minister Ted Heath on the programme - after proving that he had indeed, despite his denials, once signed a document agreeing to transfer UK gold reserves to Frankfurt. On turning 70, the pace of his writing began to slow. The Cobra, published in 2010, saw the return of some of the characters from Avenger. In 2013, Forsyth published The Kill List, a fast-moving tale built round a Muslim fanatic called The Preacher, whose online videos encouraged young Muslims to carry out a series of killings. He wrote all his books on a typewriter and refused to use the internet for his research. Ironically, his 18th novel, The Fox - published in 2018 - was a spy thriller about a gifted computer hacker. Forsyth announced it was to be his final book, but he later came out of self-imposed retirement after the death of his second wife, Sandy, in 2024. He said he was writing another adventure, and even suggested a raffle might give someone the chance to name a character after themselves. Having sold the film rights for £20,000 in the 1970s, Forsyth received no payment for Eddie Redmayne's version of The Day of the Jackal when it was re-imagined for television last year on Sky. Well into his 80s, he had long since agreed to stop research trips to far-flung parts of the world - when a trip to Guinea-Bissau left him with an infection that nearly cost him a leg. "It is a bit drug-like, journalism," he admitted. "I don't think that instinct ever dies." It was an instinct that made his life as full and exciting as his thrillers. The Day Of The Jackal author Frederick Forsyth dies Lee Child: Why Forsyth's Jackal changed thriller writing Frederick Forsyth reveals spy past
USA Today
an hour ago
- USA Today
Who is Greta Thunberg? What to know about the activist as ship stopped by Israeli forces
Who is Greta Thunberg? What to know about the activist as ship stopped by Israeli forces Show Caption Hide Caption Israel seizes Gaza aid boat carrying activist Greta Thunberg Israeli forces have taken command of a charity vessel operated by the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. The crew includes activist Greta Thunberg. Climate change activist Greta Thunberg is among a dozen activists on board a charity ship stopped by Israel forces on June 9, attempting to reach the Gaza Strip, sparking international outcry over blockade enforcement and humanitarian aid. The vessel, named the Madleen, tried to break a naval blockade en route to port in the Gaza Strip, prompting Israeli forces to board the vessel, Reuters reported. In addition to Thunberg, French lawmaker Rima Hassan was among the 12 people on the ship. The crew was headed to the Gaza Strip to deliver humanitarian aid including food, Thunberg said during a press conference eight days earlier in Catania, Italy. International nonprofit organization Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FFC) said its vessel was headed to Gaza after a previous attempt failed due to a drone attack on a separate ship in the Mediterranean. The ship departed the Italian port of Catania on June 1. While en route, those on board rescued four migrants between the coasts of Libya and Greece. But who is Greta Thunberg and why is she famous? Here's what to know about the activist. Who is Greta Thunberg? Greta Tintin Eleonora Ernman Thunberg is a 22-year-old environmental activist from Sweden. The writer and actress has been credited with raising global awareness of the risks posed by climate change and with holding politicians accountable for their lack of action on the climate crisis. In 2018, Thunberg founded Fridays for Future, a climate action movement which garnered international attention. At age 15, she started taking weeks off school to demonstrate outside the Swedish parliament. At 16, the teen inspired what some have considered the largest climate strike in history, testified before Congress and addressed the United Nations for the second time. Prison riot: 4 injured including guard, lockdown in effect at Middle Tennessee prison What films has Greta Thunberg been in? Thunberg stars in the three-part PBS documentary, "Greta Thunberg: A Year to Change the World." In the series, she travels the globe observing the effects of climate change and advocating for action. She also stars in the 2020 documentary "I Am Greta." The film follows the activists rise to prominence, going from one-girl school strikes outside the Swedish parliament to regularly scolding world leaders at climate conferences. What did Greta Thunberg say about being on the ship? In a pre-recorded video posted to social media, Thunberg pre-emptively described the incident as her boat being "kidnapped." "I urge all my friends, family and comrades to put pressure on the Swedish government to release me and the others as soon as possible," Thunberg says in the video while standing on the ship, holding onto a rope. Contributing: Brian Truitt Natalie Neysa Alund is a senior reporter for USA TODAY. Reach her at nalund@ and follow her on X @nataliealund
