Latest news with #PolitiFact
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
Was the shooting of Israeli embassy staff at Jewish museum a false flag?
Following the fatal shooting of two Israeli embassy employees in Washington, DC, last week, some social media users claimed the incident was a 'false flag' because of when and where it happened. 'So you're telling me two Israeli diplomats got killed across the street from an FBI field office outside a Jewish museum that had *closed* 4 hours earlier,' said a May 22 X post. 'And one day after Israel fired at European diplomats and Europe was talking sanctions and you don't think it's a false flag?' Other X posts similarly speculated about the deadly shooting on May 21. The 'false flag' phrase stems from the misuse of literal flags. Historically, a false flag operation referred to a military force or a ship flying another country's flag for deception purposes. Some confirmed false flag operations have occurred throughout history. But they have been outpaced in recent years by conspiracy theories that label real events as 'false flags,' or an attack that's designed to look like it was perpetrated by one person or party, when in fact it was committed by someone else. Unfounded false flag claims often follow mass violence incidents, including Israel's war on Gaza, the 2022 Uvalde school shooting and the January 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol. Historians warn that social media rumours alleging that big news events are 'false flags' should be viewed sceptically. Real false flag operations are logistically complex and tend to involve many people. PolitiFact found no credible evidence to support the claim that the Israeli embassy employees' shooting is a false X post said the shooting, which happened on a Wednesday, is a 'false flag' because the museum had closed four hours earlier. The museum usually closes at 5pm on Wednesdays, except for the first Wednesday of each month, when it closes at 8pm. However, the American Jewish Committee hosted an event on May 21 at the museum, scheduled to end at 9pm. Preliminary investigations say the shooting happened after 9pm local time when the two victims, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim, were exiting an event at the Capital Jewish Museum, said Pamela A Smith, the Metropolitan Police Department police chief, at a May 21 press conference. Police identified the suspect as Elias Rodriguez, a 31-year-old man from Chicago, Illinois. Rodriguez chanted, 'Free, free, Palestine' after he was arrested, Smith said. The Justice Department charged him with the murder of foreign officials and other crimes. The shooting, which has widely been criticised, came as Israel's actions in Gaza has caused a global outrage and protests calling for ceasefire. Jeanine Pirro, interim US attorney for the District of Columbia, said on May 22 that the incident is being investigated as a hate crime and 'terrorism'. The Capital Jewish Museum is diagonally across the street from the FBI's DC field office. FBI Director Kash Patel and the Israeli government have condemned the shooting. There is no evidence that the shooting was a false flag. We rate this claim False.
Yahoo
7 days ago
- Politics
- Yahoo
Trump, South African president clash in White House meeting
President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa held a meeting on Wednesday in the Oval Office. The meeting included positive statements from both leaders about the importance of a strong trade relationship and a proposed deal to launch Elon Musk's Starlink satellite service in South African skies. But there was tension as Ramaphosa rejected Trump's assertion that genocide is taking place among white South Africans. For context, the United States recently welcomed 59 white Afrikaners and granted them refugee status. 'It will take President Trump listening to the voices of South Africans, some of whom are his good friends, like those who are here,' said Ramaphosa, who was accompanied by famous South Africans like golfer Ernie Els and billionaire Johann Rupert. 'When we have talks between us at a quiet table, it will take President Trump to listen to them. I will not be repeating what I've been saying.' In response, Trump dimmed the Oval Office's lights and played an alleged documentary that showed images of white South African burial sites. Ramaphosa denied that the video represented any government policy, as well as seeing the video before. 'We have dead white people, dead white farmers, mostly,' Trump replied. Trump called the meeting a 'great honor' and expressed gratitude to be with Ramaphosa, who, he said, 'is certainly in some circles, really respected, other circles, a little bit less respected, like all of us, in all fairness.' Ramaphosa said that his presence was meant to reset the relationship between the United States and South Africa, which country Trump has repeatedly criticized over the reported killings and land seizure from Afrikaners. South Africa is home to a mixed population of Black Africans as well as Afrikaners, who are white South Africans descended from Dutch colonists. Dutch colonists arrived in the country in the 1600s. From 1948 to 1994, a ruling party of Afrikaners instituted apartheid, or racial segregation, and the rights of Black inhabitants were heavily restricted. Apartheid eventually broke down after an avalanche of resistance from churches, civic groups, trade unions, students, athletes and more. Arrests and killings plagued the country until the government eventually overturned apartheid in 1994. Nevertheless, racial tensions still scar the country, which is home to about 64 million people, about 80% of whom are Black. Trump has spoken about white South African 'genocide' since 2018, and his claims have been backed by Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire. Facts compiled by PolitiFact seem to refute the existence of a widespread genocide. Though white farmers have been murdered in South Africa, these murders account for less than 1% of over 27,000 annual murders nationwide. The majority of murder victims in South Africa are young Black males. 'There is criminality in our country,' Ramaphosa said at the White House meeting. 'People who do get killed unfortunately through criminal activity, are not only white people. Majority of them are Black people.' Ramaphosa's government administration, including his Cabinet, includes a significant number of Afrikaners. Trump's claims have triggered denial from some Afrikaner residents as well as outrage from the South African government. In particular, Ramaphosa called the 59 Afrikaners who entered the U.S. 'cowards' who should have stayed to work together to solve the country's problems.
Yahoo
19-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
HHS Secretary RFK Jr. falsely claimed measles vaccine was never fully safety tested
Statement: It's 'all true' that the measles vaccine wanes quickly, was never fully safety tested and contains fetal debris. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s comments about the measles vaccine briefly took center stage during his May 14 Senate testimony. Kennedy appeared before the Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee to discuss Health and Human Services' 2026 budget, and senators questioned him about the 2025 measles outbreak that has killed three people, including two children. Sen. Chris Murphy, D-Conn., questioned Kennedy's statements about the measles vaccine. "You have consistently been undermining the measles vaccine," Murphy said. "You told the public that the vaccine wanes very quickly. You went on the 'Dr. Phil' show and said that the measles vaccine was never fully tested for safety. You said there's fetal debris in the measles vaccine." Kennedy answered, "All true. All true." Murphy tried to point to Kennedy's remarks from his testimony earlier the same day, but Kennedy interrupted: Murphy: "This morning, in front of — " Kennedy: "Do you want me to lie to the public?" Murphy: "That's not — None of that is true." Kennedy: "Of course it's true." Before becoming the nation's top public health official, Kennedy notched two decades of work as a leader in the antivaccine movement. Kennedy's inaccurate statements mischaracterize how the measles vaccine is made, how it was tested and how it works. Infectious disease and vaccine experts told PolitiFact that the two-dose MMR vaccine provides lifelong protection; that scientists safety tested it before it was approved for use; and that it does not contain human fetal cells or whole fetal DNA. We contacted HHS and received no response. In early April, Kennedy told CBS News that measles persists because the vaccine's effectiveness decreases fast. "We're always going to have measles, no matter what happens, because the vaccine wanes very quickly," he said. That's inaccurate, vaccine experts said. The measles vaccine is part of a combination vaccine known as the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine, or the MMR vaccine. It also can include the varicella vaccine, called the MMRV vaccine. Two infectious disease doctors and a vaccinology professor told PolitiFact that when people receive the measles vaccine's recommended two doses, it provides strong, long-lasting protection against measles infection. "You will have about a 97% chance of being protected and that protection will extend lifelong," said Dr. William Schaffner, infectious disease professor at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. That matches what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention — an agency Kennedy oversees — says about the measles vaccine's efficacy. The MMR's measles vaccine "provides one of our most remarkably durable and long-lasting protective vaccine-induced antibodies," said Patsy Stinchfield, a retired pediatric nurse practitioner and the immediate past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. Measles antibodies might decrease over time, but that doesn't mean a person's vaccine-induced protection against measles infection is waning, experts said. Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, said that to be protected against disease, "all you need is immunological memory cells," Offit said. When you're exposed to the virus, there's plenty of time for those memory cells to become activated and trigger the immune system to make measles antibodies, he said. For other diseases covered by the MMR vaccine, the protection can wane over time, said Paulo Verardi, a University of Connecticut virology and vaccinology professor. That's true of mumps immunity, for example, so people who got vaccinated as children might be less protected from infection as adults, he said. But the measles vaccine doesn't have that issue, he said. "It is rare for someone who has been vaccinated to get measles, and if they do, it is usually a mild case," Verardi said. "Most outbreaks happen not because the vaccine wears off quickly, but because not enough people are vaccinated." During a town hall hosted by TV personality Phil McGraw, known as Dr. Phil, Kennedy said, "The measles vaccine works," and said HHS recommends vaccination against measles. But there are "problems" with the vaccine, Kennedy added. "The problem is — it's really with the mumps portion of the vaccine and the combination — and it was never safety tested," he said. "That combination was never safety tested, and people just assumed that, you know, if the three separate vaccines were safe, then when you combined them they would be safe. But we now know there's some viral interference." Varardi said U.S. regulators approved the first combined MMR vaccine in 1971 "after extensive clinical testing to make sure it was safe and worked well." Kennedy also often talks about testing vaccines against placebos — inactive substances that provide no protection against disease — and HHS recently announced potential changes to vaccine testing that would require placebo testing. When the MMR vaccine was combined, research had shown that each of the components was safe and effective individually, and it isn't always ethical to test them against placebos that would leave test subjects unprotected from infection, Offit said. Fortunately, Offit said, we have "about 50 years of data" on the billions of doses of the MMR vaccine that have been administered. Schaffner said scientists continue to monitor the MMR vaccine's safety. Ongoing vaccine safety surveillance is important to catch extremely rare side effects. A Finland MMR vaccine study found that 5.3 in every 100,000 people vaccinated experienced serious adverse reactions. A 2021 study found that among 12,032 vaccinated people, four people reported serious vaccine-related events. During an April 30 News Nation interview, Kennedy said some people "have religious objections to the vaccination, because the MMR vaccine contains a lot of aborted fetus debris and DNA particles, so they don't want to take it." The MMR vaccine contains weakened live viruses, and viruses must be grown in cells. The measles and mumps viruses are grown in chicken embryo cells and the rubella virus is grown in human fetal cells, which first came from an elective abortion performed in the early 1960s and have been replicated in labs and used to manufacture vaccines for decades. Before it becomes a vaccine component, the virus is extracted from the cells where it is grown and then it is weakened and treated with an enzyme that fragments any remaining DNA, Offit said. So, does the MMR vaccine contain "fetal debris," fetal cells or whole fetal DNA? No, said Offit and Varardi. Whatever DNA is present from the original cell line used to grow the virus likely could be measured in picograms, "meaning trillionths of a gram," Offit said. The origin of the cells used to grow the virus has historically sparked religious concerns. Religious leaders including the Catholic Pontifical Academy for Life concluded that it is both morally permissible and responsible to use the vaccine, the Catholic News Agency reported. Kennedy told Murphy that it's "all true" that the measles vaccine wanes quickly, was never fully tested for safety and contains fetal debris. Scientists say the measles vaccine offers lifelong protection that is 97% effective at preventing the virus. Scientists tested the MMR vaccine before it was approved for use and perform ongoing safety surveillance research; studies show that serious adverse effects are rare. Finally, the MMR vaccine may contain trace amounts of fragmented DNA, but it does not contain whole fetal cells or fetal DNA. We rate Kennedy's statement False. PolitiFact Researcher Caryn Baird contributed to this report. PBS News, WATCH: RFK Jr. defends his questioning of measles vaccine while saying he recommends it, May 14, 2025 Interview with Dr. William Schaffner, professor of infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, May 15, 2025 Interview with Dr. Paul Offit, director of the Vaccine Education Center at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and professor of pediatrics in the division of infectious diseases at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, May 15, 2025 Email interview with Paulo Verardi, virology and vaccinology professor at the University of Connecticut, May 15, 2025 Email interview with Patsy Stinchfield, a retired pediatric nurse practitioner and the immediate past president of the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, May 16, 2025 Dr. Phil Primetime on YouTube, Inside RFK Jr.'s Health Agenda 100 Days In | Dr. Phil Primetime, April 30, 2025 Medical News Today, Fact check: How long does protection from the measles vaccines last? April 16, 2025 CBS News, Watch: RFK Jr.'s first network TV interview as HHS secretary, April 9, 2025 Reuters, US Health secretary Kennedy revives misleading claims of 'fetal debris' in measles shots, May 1, 2025 Health, Fact Check: Does the MMR Vaccine Really Contain 'Aborted Fetus Debris'? May 2, 2025 Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Vaccine Ingredients: Fetal Cells, accessed May 15, 2025 New York, RFK Jr. Claims the MMR Vaccine Contains 'Aborted Fetus Debris,' May 1, 2025 CIDRAP, Texas announces second measles death in unvaccinated child, April 7, 2025 NBC News, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. falsely claims measles vaccine protection 'wanes very quickly,' April 11, 2025 The Guardian, RFK Jr and health agency falsely claim MMR vaccine includes 'aborted fetus debris,' May 1, 2025 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Measles Vaccine Recommendations, accessed May 16, 2025 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Health Alert Network, Expanding Measles Outbreak in the United States and Guidance for the Upcoming Travel Season, March 7, 2025 Medpage Today, Here's How We Know Vaccines Are Safe and Effective, May 15, 2025 Science News, HHS says new vaccines should be tested against placebos. They already are, May 14, 2025 News Nation YouTube channel, RFK Jr.: Measles cases in US not as bad as in other countries | CUOMO Town Hall: Trump's First 100 D, April 30, 2025 The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Serious adverse events after measles-mumps-rubella vaccination during a fourteen-year prospective follow-up, December 2000 The Pediatric Infectious Disease Journal, Evaluation of the Safety and Immunogenicity of M-M-RII (Combination Measles-mumps-rubella Vaccine), November 2021 Cleveland Clinic, MMR Vaccine, accessed May 16, 2025 U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, About the Vaccine MMR and MMRV Vaccine Composition and Dosage, accessed May 16, 2025 Catholic News Agency, What does the Catholic Church teach about vaccines? May 6, 2019 The Reporter Lansdale Pennsylvania, Merck Vaccine Tests Completed, Dec. 17, 1971 This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: RFK Jr. falsely claimed measles vaccine was never fully safety tested
Al Jazeera
11-05-2025
- Business
- Al Jazeera
What percentage of US toys and Christmas goods are imported from China?
Whether you are gift-wrapping a toy car or hanging Christmas ornaments, there is a strong chance you are handling products made in a Chinese factory. The day after President Donald Trump spoke in an interview about his tariff policies that girls in the United States do not need to 'have 30 dolls', some political commentators discussed China's influence over the US toy market. The US currently has a 145 percent tariff on goods from China. 'China makes 80 percent of all toys sold in this country and 90 percent of all Christmas goods sold in this country,' former New York Times columnist Charles Blow said during a May 5 appearance on CNN's News Night with Abby Phillip. 'We have a lot of leverage with China. The Christmas and the doll industry is not one of them.' Blow told PolitiFact his source was an April 29 report in The New York Times. It said, 'Factories in China produce nearly 80 percent of all toys and 90 percent of Christmas goods sold in America.' Data shows those figures are rounded up, but not far off. Blow's statement is 'directionally accurate but slightly overstated on toys', said Gilberto Garcia-Vazquez, chief economist at Datawheel, which operates an online economic data platform called the Observatory of Economic Complexity. He said out of $41bn worth of imports in toys, games and sports equipment in 2024 by the US, $30bn, or about 73 percent, was manufactured in China. 'If you include domestic production – small but non-negligible – China likely supplies closer to 72 percent of toys actually sold in the US, not 80 percent,' Garcia-Vazquez said. The Observatory of Economic Complexity uses data sources from 'statistical offices, open data portals or custom union websites'. Claire Huber, spokesperson for the US International Trade Commission (USITC), provided PolitiFact with an analysis of 2024 data that showed 78.3 percent of toy imports and 85 percent of Christmas-related imports, such as lights, trees and decorations, are manufactured in China. The toy category includes dolls, wheeled toys and scale models. The data was compiled using the USITC's DataWeb, which cites statistics published by the US Department of Commerce's Census Bureau, accessed on May 9. Garcia-Vazquez also analysed 2024 data for Christmas goods and said 90 percent of US imports in that category came from China. He said Christmas lights are an exception because 'Cambodia has recently overtaken China as the top source'. The New York Times published an April 27 report that showed 76 percent of 'toys and puzzles' and 87 percent of 'Christmas decorations' come from China. Bloomberg, citing the trade organisation Toy Association, said 'roughly 80 percent of toys sold in the US are made in China'. Data shows 73 to 78 percent of toy imports and 85 to 90 percent of Christmas-related imports in 2024 came from China, supporting Blow's point that the vast majority of these goods come from China. We rate his statement True.
Yahoo
04-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
How faithful is ‘Conclave' about the process of picking a new pope? Fact-checking the movie
The secretive process to elect a new Roman Catholic pope begins May 7, two weeks after Pope Francis' death at age 88. Fans of the Oscar-nominated movie "Conclave," which is about a papal election, might think they have a head start on what's to come. But how faithful is the movie to the real thing? "Conclave" tells the story of Cardinal Thomas Lawrence, dean of the College of Cardinals, played by actor Ralph Fiennes. Lawrence is tasked with leading a papal election or conclave after the pope dies. PolitiFact's occasional MovieFact feature reports on the accuracy of nonfiction films, typically comparing their details with historical events. "Conclave" is fictional, but we decided to examine what the movie gets right and wrong about the real process for choosing the next pope. "Conclave" sticks close to the logistics of a real papal election, but it takes more liberties with how its characters participate in one. As dean, Cardinal Lawrence makes decisions that would not be permissible in a real-life conclave. The movie "does a fair job" of depicting conclave procedures, said B. Kevin Brown, Gonzaga University religious studies lecturer. But Brown had some notes. Referring to the sets and costumes, Brown said some cardinals wore Roman collars that "are not entirely correct," and the Mass held before the conclave appeared to have no altar, a raised structure used for ceremonies. Some of its storylines have no public precedent in the Catholic Church's history. PolitiFact compared movie scenes with conclaves and cardinals' real-life controversies. (Here's your last chance to avoid spoilers!) After a pope dies, the College of Cardinals assumes governance of the Catholic Church. These cardinals, chosen by popes, serve countries around the world. Only cardinals under the age of 80 can be electors. The conclave that begins May 7 will have 133 electors from 71 countries. (Two more electors are eligible but will not participate for health reasons.) Before the conclave, cardinals gather for meetings called "general congregations" where they discuss the Catholic Church's priorities. The conclave takes place at the Sistine Chapel in Vatican City, as the film showed. The balloting shown in the film is largely accurate, based on the process outlined by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops: Electors vote by secret ballot, walk up to a chalice — a large goblet — say a prayer and drop their ballots in the chalice. They conduct four rounds of balloting per day until a candidate receives a two-thirds majority. Ballots are burned after each round with chemicals that produce colored smoke to signify whether a pope has been chosen — black smoke means no one has been elected, and white smoke means the Church has a new pope. In the movie, it takes the cardinal electors three days to elect a pope. That's consistent with recent history; Brown said conclaves in the last 100 years have lasted three to four days. According to a article, "no conclave has lasted longer than a week" since 1831. The movie shows Cardinal Lawrence communicating with Monsignor Raymond O'Malley (played by Brían F. O'Byrne), asking him to check into things such as the pope's final meeting with Cardinal Joseph Tremblay (John Lithgow), and medical history of Cardinal Vincent Benitez (Carlos Diehz). After the cardinals feel tremors in the Sistine Chapel, O'Malley later tells Lawrence there has been an explosion in the Piazza Barberini, a large plaza in Rome. Brown said getting information about events happening outside the conclave "would violate the rules of the conclave." Cardinal electors are sequestered throughout a conclave, and have no access to phones, TV or other ways to be in contact with the public. In the movie, Benitez, described as the archbishop of Kabul, Afghanistan, makes a surprise entrance. He was selected as a cardinal "in pectore," or in secret, by the pope who died. Senior cardinals debate whether Benitez should be allowed to join the conclave, and Cardinal Lawrence ultimately decides he is "legally a cardinal," and "has a right to take part in the election." In a real conclave, it would be impossible for a cardinal whose identity was not revealed before the death of the pope who appointed him to join the conclave. Canon law, the Catholic Church's system of laws and regulations, says a pope can select a person to be a cardinal and keep that person's identity secret. As long as the cardinal's identity is not revealed, the cardinal in pectore is not bound to carry out cardinal duties but also does not possess cardinal rights, such as participating in a conclave. "This may be done, as the movie suggests, for safety reasons in situations where the cardinal's appointment may put him at risk due to the political situation where he resides," Brown said. If a cardinal in pectore did not have his appointment made public before the death of a pope, Brown said, the cardinal's status would expire, and "he is no longer considered a cardinal, even if the name of the cardinal is discovered in the will of the pope or some other writing after his death." This happened in real life: Pope John Paul II selected four cardinals in pectore, revealing only three, from China, Ukraine and Latvia, before he died. The other cardinal's appointment expired when John Paul II died in 2005. In the movie, Cardinal Joshua Adeyemi (played by Lucian Msamati) and Tremblay emerge as frontrunners to become pope during the balloting, but their ambitions are quashed as Lawrence brings findings about their past to light. Adeyemi had a secret relationship and possibly fathered a child, and Tremblay was accused of simony, or what Brown said involves the "sale of an office." In practice, cardinals try to snuff out controversies and scandals before the election. "There is certainly politicking that takes place and the cardinals will do their best to be sure that no cardinal associated with scandal is elected," Brown said. "However, it is likely that the cardinals would do their best to identify any scent of scandal before the conclave begins." For example, in real life, Cardinal Angelo Becciu resigned his cardinal rights and privileges in 2020 and was convicted of financial crimes in 2023; he claimed he could still vote in the 2025 conclave because Francis did not bar him from participating. Cardinal Pietro Parolin, the Roman Curia's secretary of state, revealed two letters from Francis saying that Cardinal Becciu could not take part in the conclave, according to reports in Italian media. This happened during general congregation, Brown said, when cardinals are not sequestered. It is "not unheard of for cardinals to try to raise doubts about a candidate who they oppose," he said. It happened to Francis — then known as Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio. As Francis gained momentum during the 2013 conclave, "rumors began to circulate that he had only one lung," Brown said. Francis recounted the episode in an interview for a book published in 2024. When a cardinal asked Francis if the rumor was true, he said he had part of his lung removed after a respiratory infection more than 50 years before. Email interview, B. Kevin Brown, Gonzaga University religious studies lecturer, April 29, 2025 United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, How Is a New Pope Chosen?, accessed April 30, 2025 Holy See Press Office, Composition of Cardinals according to geographical region, accessed April 30, 2025 EWTN, Cardinals hold sixth general congregation, confirm 2 electors will not be at conclave, April 30, 2025 History, 8 Facts About the Papal Conclave, April 28, 2025 USA Today, What to expect from the conclave that will choose Pope Francis' successor, April 27, 2025 Florida International University, The Cardinals of the Holy Roman Church, accessed May 1, 2025 The Holy See, The Roman Curia, accessed May 1, 2025 Code of Canon Law, accessed May 1, 2025 Los Angeles Times, Mystery Cardinal Will Never Be Able to Join Peers, April 7, 2005 The New York Times, Powerful Cardinal, a Fixture of Vatican Intrigue, Resigns Suddenly, Sept. 24, 2020 The Associated Press, Pope exposes confidential details of past conclaves and settles scores with Pope Benedict XVI's aide, April 2, 2024 The New York Times, Powerful Cardinal, a Fixture of Vatican Intrigue, Resigns Suddenly, Sept. 24, 2020 CNN, Vatican's 'trial of the century' sees cardinal given five-and-a-half-year jail sentence, Dec. 18, 2023 L'Unione Sarda, The Conclave begins on May 7. The cardinals are preparing, but there is a risk of division over Becciu, April 28, 2025 Catholic Herald, Becciu backs down: fallen Cardinal bows to Pope Francis's final will, April 29, 2025 This article originally appeared on Austin American-Statesman: How faithful is 'Conclave' about the process of picking a new pope?
