Sen. JD Vance of Ohio, former President Donald Trump’s running mate, appeared to backtrack Tuesday on an outlandish false claim that he had promoted a day earlier saying that Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio, were abducting and eating their neighbors’ pets.

In a social media post Tuesday morning, Vance said his office had “received many inquiries” about the false claims, but added that “it’s possible, of course, that all of these rumors will turn out to be false.”

Local officials have found no evidence, credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed by Haitian residents, and a spokesperson for Vance did not provide evidence to support the claim Monday.

But even as he acknowledged the possibility that the rumors were false, Vance encouraged his supporters to continue spreading them.

“Don’t let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots. Keep the cat memes flowing,” Vance said, referencing a particularly gruesome false claim that came from a viral social media post.

Vance, as Ohio’s junior senator, has in recent months attacked Springfield’s growing Haitian population, a group whose members are living and working in the United States legally. Job opportunities in Springfield have attracted thousands of Haitians since the pandemic, with city officials estimating that as many as 20,000 have arrived. By most accounts, the immigrant community has helped revitalize the town, though it has put pressure on housing, schools and hospitals. (Springfield had roughly 58,000 people as of the last census in 2020.)

Resentment has also brewed among some residents over the immigrants’ presence, and surged since an immigrant driver was involved in a fatal school bus crash last year. Vance has latched onto the complaints of community members and has denounced the Haitians as being in the United States illegally, “draining social services” and “generally causing chaos.”

Iran missiles: The United States and Britain formally accused Iran on Tuesday of supplying short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to use against Ukraine, announcing new sanctions on Moscow and Tehran before a joint visit to Kyiv by their top diplomats.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken, speaking alongside British Foreign Secretary David Lammy during a visit to London, said Iran had ignored warnings that the transfer of such weapons would be a profound escalation of the conflict.

He said dozens of Russian military personnel had been trained in Iran to use the Fath-360 close-range ballistic missile system.

Iran’s foreign ministry denies providing ballistic missiles to Russia, the semiofficial ISNA news agency reported.

“Publishing wrong and misleading reports about transferring Iranian weapons to some countries is merely an ugly propaganda and lie aimed at hiding illegal massive size weaponry support by the U.S. and some Western nations for genocide in the Gaza Strip,” it quoted ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani as saying.

Pope in East Timor: An estimated 600,000 people — nearly half of East Timor’s population — packed a seaside park Tuesday for Pope Francis’ final Mass, held on the same field where St. John Paul II prayed 35 years ago during the nation’s fight for independence from Indonesia.

The remarkable turnout was a testament to the overwhelmingly Catholic Southeast Asian country and the esteem with which its people hold the church, which stood by the Timorese in their traumatic battle for freedom and helped draw international attention to their plight.

Other papal Masses have drawn millions of people in more populous countries, such as the Philippines, and there were other nationalities represented at Tuesday’s Mass.

But the crowd in East Timor, population 1.3 million, was believed to represent the biggest turnout for a papal event ever in terms of the proportion of the national population.

Haiti policing: Jamaican Prime Minister Andrew Holness announced Tuesday that his country would send two dozen soldiers and police officers to Haiti this week to boost a U.N.-backed mission led by Kenya to fight violent gangs.

The 20 soldiers and four police officers are scheduled to arrive Thursday and will join nearly 400 Kenyan police who are working alongside Haitian police and military, said Vice Admiral Antonette Wemyss- Gorman, chief of defense staff for Jamaica’s military.

The Jamaicans will be responsible for providing command, planning and logistics support, Holness said at a news conference.