Steps to reproduce the issue

Created a menu item pointing to "Featured Articles"
Under "Blog Layout" tab:

• select "All Categories"

• Leading Articles = 0

• Intro Articles = 5 (or more)

• Links = 0

• 'Article Order' set to 'Most Recent First"
• 'Date for Ordering' = Published (global)

Expected result

The menu item "Featured Articles" (usually homepage), is expected to display the 5 most recent articles that have the "featured" option enabled.

Actual result

The system will not display the 5 recently published featured articles, but instead list 5 articles from other categories.

System information (as much as possible)

Joomla 4.2.7
PHP 7.4.33 & 8.0.27 (tested with both)
MySQL 5.7.41
Database Collation: utf8_general_ci
Database Connection Collation: utf8mb4_general_ci
Web Server: Apache
WebServer to PHP Interface: cgi-fcgi

Additional comments

This behavior seems to be a bug with J4. I've also replicated the exact same settings as my J3.10.x site, where it works fine, but the problem seems to persist. The issue was discovered on my J4 dev site, used to migrate existing website (J3.10)

This bug is a fairly important one in terms of functionality as it won't allow a website using J4, to display the latest featured articles on its homepage or anywhere else on the site.