Fresh political polling from Australia’s leading pollsters has delivered new data on shifting voter support, recording a second consecutive slight drop in the primary vote for Pauline Hanson’s One Nation that suggests the far-right party’s surge in popularity earlier this year may have hit a peak. The latest Newspoll, carried out for The Australian, surveyed 1,235 registered voters over four days last week, and found the party’s primary support fell by two percentage points to 24%. Both the ruling Labor Party and the centre-right Coalition remained unchanged, holding 31% and 21% of the primary vote respectively. The Greens gained one point to reach 13% support, while minor party and independent candidates grouped in the “other” category also saw a one-point uptick to hit 11%. The incremental decline of One Nation marks a continuation of a downward trend that began after the party hit a high of 27% support on two separate occasions in early and late February. Support dipped one point in March, making this latest drop the second in as many months. Even with the current dip, however, One Nation’s polling numbers remain vastly higher than its 2025 federal election result of 6.4%, demonstrating the party retains a far stronger hold on the electorate than it did during the last national vote. The broader trend of declining support identified in the Newspoll is echoed by separate data from the Resolve Political Monitor, which polled 1,807 voters this month for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. That survey also recorded a two-point drop in One Nation support, falling from 24% to 22%. Alongside primary voting intention, the Newspoll also measured public approval of preferred prime minister, finding incumbent Anthony Albanese’s lead over Opposition leader Angus Taylor widened slightly. Forty-six percent of respondents said Albanese would make a better prime minister, compared to 37% who backed Taylor. With the federal May budget just weeks away, pollsters also asked voters to weigh in on 10 separate proposals to increase national tax revenue. None of the proposals won majority support from the full electorate, though just 18% of respondents rejected all 10 options outright. The most popular policy was an increase to the petroleum resource rent tax, which earned 42% support from those surveyed. A reduction in tax concessions for property investors followed at 35%, while cutting tax concessions for family trusts won 29% backing from respondents. The results give the Albanese government clear signals on which tax reform proposals have the most public traction as it finalizes budget negotiations ahead of the official release.
作者： admin
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Pope Leo XIV heads to Catholic shrine in Angola that was a center of African slave trade
On a historic stop of his African pilgrimage in Luanda, Angola, Pope Leo XIV kicked off Sunday with a rousing call to action for Angolans to root out the pervasive “scourge of corruption” by embedding a culture of justice and collective sharing across the nation. The visit, which later brought the first U.S.-born pontiff to one of the trans-Atlantic slave trade’s most significant remaining sites, weaves together calls for national reconciliation in Angola with overdue reckoning over the Catholic Church’s centuries-old complicity in human trafficking.
Speaking to a crowd of roughly 100,000 worshippers gathered in Kilamba, a large residential development constructed by Chinese partners 15 miles outside the Angolan capital, the pontiff used his homily to lift up the aspirations of the Angolan people, while calling out the continued exploitation of the nation’s abundant mineral resources and its most vulnerable citizens. Decades after the end of a brutal post-independence civil war that left deep, unhealed scars across the country, Leo urged an end to old sectarian divides, hatred, and violence. “We wish to build a country where old divisions are overcome once and for all, where hatred and violence disappear, and where the scourge of corruption is healed by a new culture of justice and sharing,” he told the assembled crowd.
By Sunday afternoon, the pontiff traveled to the Sanctuary of Mama Muxima, a revered contemporary Catholic shrine located 70 miles south of Luanda on the banks of the Kwanza River. But the site’s origins stretch back to the late 16th century, when Portuguese colonizers built the Church of Our Lady of Muxima as part of a colonial fortress. For decades, it operated as a central hub of the trans-Atlantic slave trade: enslaved African people were held at the site, forcibly baptized by Portuguese clergy, then marched overland to the port of Luanda to be loaded onto slave ships bound for the Americas.
Today, the shrine’s layered history serves as a stark reminder of the Catholic Church’s institutional role in the trans-Atlantic slave trade, from the forced conversion of enslaved people to the Vatican’s long refusal to issue a full, formal acknowledgement and atonement for its complicity. The visit carries particular personal weight for Pope Leo XIV: genealogical research has confirmed the pontiff’s Creole ancestry includes both enslaved African people and white slaveholders in his family line that traces its North American roots to Louisiana.
For many Black Catholics across the globe, the trip to Muxima represents a long-awaited moment of reckoning and healing, according to Anthea Butler, a Black Catholic scholar and senior fellow at Oxford University’s Koch Center. Butler explained that millions of Black Catholics trace their connection to the faith directly to the era of slavery, when France’s Code Noir required all enslaved people owned by Catholic slaveholders to receive baptism, while many other enslaved Angolans brought their existing Catholic faith with them when they were trafficked to the Americas.
Scholars have long documented that 15th-century papal directives from the Vatican emboldened Portuguese colonizers to expand their slave trading operations across Africa. In 1452, Pope Nicholas V issued the papal bull *Dum Diversas*, which granted the Portuguese crown and its successors formal permission to “invade, conquer, fight and subjugate” non-Christian peoples across the globe, seize their lands and possessions, and “reduce their persons to perpetual slavery.” A second bull, *Romanus Pontifex*, issued three years later, alongside *Dum Diversas* formed the legal and ideological foundation of the Doctrine of Discovery, the framework that legitimized European colonial seizure of land across Africa and the Americas and justified the enslavement of Indigenous and African peoples.
While the Vatican formally repudiated the Doctrine of Discovery in 2023, it has never formally rescinded or rejected the original 15th-century papal bulls that authorized the slave trade. The Holy See has argued that a 1537 bull, *Sublimis Deus*, later reaffirmed that Indigenous peoples should not be stripped of their liberty, property, or enslaved, but scholars note this directive did not explicitly reverse or cancel the earlier authorization for the enslavement of African peoples.
Jesuit priest and slavery historian Christopher J. Kellerman, author of *All Oppression Shall Cease: A History of Slavery, Abolitionism, and the Catholic Church*, acknowledges that most of the 12.5 million Africans trafficked across the Atlantic were initially sold into slavery by African intermediaries, rather than captured directly by European traders. Even so, he notes, when the Muxima fortress and church were constructed, Portuguese forces both conducted independent slave raids and purchased enslaved people, openly relying on the papal permissions granted by the 15th-century bulls. “The popes repeatedly authorized Portugal’s colonization efforts in Africa and Portuguese participation in the slave trade, but the Vatican has never fully admitted this,” Kellerman said in comments to the Associated Press. “It would be so powerful if at some point Pope Leo were to apologize for the popes’ role in the trade.”
This is not the first time a sitting pope has addressed the harm of the slave trade during a visit to Africa. During a 1985 trip to Cameroon, St. John Paul II asked for forgiveness from African peoples for the crime of the slave trade, and during a 1992 visit to Goree Island, Senegal, West Africa’s largest historical slave trading center, he denounced the injustice of slavery, calling it a “tragedy of a civilization that called itself Christian.”
The connection between Pope Leo XIV and this painful history runs deeper than institutional responsibility. Harvard University professor Henry Louis Gates Jr., host of the popular genealogy series *Finding Your Roots*, published research confirming 17 of the pope’s American ancestors were Black, recorded in census records as mulatto, Black, Creole, or free people of color, with the pope’s family tree including both enslaved people and slaveholders. Gates presented his findings to Pope Leo during a private audience at the Vatican on July 5, and the Harvard Gazette reports the pope asked specifically about both his Black and white ancestors who held people in bondage. The pope has not yet spoken publicly about his family heritage or Gates’ findings, and some Black Catholic scholars say it would be inappropriate to impose a public narrative about the pope’s identity before he chooses to speak on the matter.
“It’s important that we tell our own stories,” said Tia Noelle Pratt, a sociologist of religion at Villanova University, Pope Leo’s alma mater, and author of *Faithful and Devoted: Racism and Identity in the African-American Catholic Experience*. “We haven’t heard anything from him about what he thinks about it, and so to impose anything on him, I think would be completely inappropriate.”
Cardinal Wilton Gregory, the retired first African American archbishop of Washington, who helped facilitate the meeting between Gates and Pope Leo, said he was delighted to support the encounter. “It’s one of the things that I think for many African Americans and people of color, they identify with great pride the pope has roots in our own heritage,” Gregory said. “And I think he’s happy about that too, because it’s another link to the people that he tries to serve and is called to serve.”
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Zelensky condemns US extension of Russian sanctions waiver
As relentless Russian airstrikes and missile barrages continue to pummel Ukrainian cities, leaving a rising trail of death and civilian suffering, a new diplomatic rift has emerged over a U.S. decision to extend a key exemption to Western sanctions on Russian crude oil exports. The U.S. move extends the window for global buyers to purchase Russian oil and petroleum products already loaded onto cargo vessels at sea until May 16, a measure Washington says is designed to head off a catastrophic global energy supply crunch stoked by escalating conflict between the U.S., Israel and Iran.
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Iran tightens control of Strait of Hormuz amid continued US blockade
Just 24 hours after the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most critical energy shipping chokepoints, was reopened to global traffic, Iran’s military announced Saturday it is reimposing sweeping strict controls over the waterway. The move directly responds to the ongoing US blockade of Iranian maritime ports, with Tehran stating the enhanced military oversight will remain in place until Washington fully lifts the restrictive measure.
Iran has labeled the US blockade as nothing less than state-backed piracy and illegal maritime plunder, drawing a sharp rebuke from US President Donald Trump, who dismissed Iran’s actions as unacceptable blackmail while claiming negotiations between the two nations are still progressing smoothly. Multiple on-the-ground reports confirm escalating incidents in the strait over the past 24 hours: The Washington Post documented Iranian forces opening fire on a tanker attempting to transit the lane early Saturday, while the UK Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) confirmed an unidentified vessel was struck by unknown munitions, damaging several cargo containers but leaving no crew members injured. Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps also fired on and turned away two supertankers registered under the flag of India, according to regional maritime sources.
Following the escalation, Trump convened an emergency high-level strategy session in the White House Situation Room, bringing together top national security and economic officials including Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to map out the US response. The president told reporters he expected clarity on whether a comprehensive deal could be reached by the end of Saturday, but as of 8 pm Eastern Time that day, no official progress on negotiations had been announced. Iranian state media, however, confirmed the country’s Supreme National Security Council is currently reviewing new diplomatic proposals put forward by the US. Trump downplayed the renewed tensions, noting Iran “got a little cute” by reimposing controls, but maintained bilateral talks with Tehran remain productive.
Real-time shipping data captured by global maritime trackers showed dozens of commercial vessels executing U-turns in waters adjacent to the strait Saturday afternoon, diverting away from the restricted lane to avoid potential conflict. Amid growing market uncertainty over the disruption to global energy supplies, global oil prices ticked upward in early trading Saturday. The Strait of Hormuz, which connects the Persian Gulf to the Gulf of Oman, carries roughly 20 percent of all globally traded oil, making even minor disruptions a major risk to international energy markets.
The waterway has remained a persistent flashpoint for conflict since US-Israeli joint military strikes against Iranian targets began on February 28. Iran has officially confirmed that more than 3,300 Iranian citizens have been killed in the ongoing strikes, and recent satellite imagery shows persistent fires still burning at damaged Iranian refineries, with large plumes of crude oil leaking into the Persian Gulf from damaged infrastructure.
Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei reiterated Saturday that war reparations for damage from the US-Israeli strikes will be a non-negotiable top priority in any peace talks with Washington. In a small sign of de-escalation, Iran also announced that six major domestic airports, including Tehran’s flagship Imam Khomeini International Airport, have reopened for preparation, though no commercial or passenger flights have yet been authorized to operate.
The sudden re-escalation in the Strait of Hormuz has thrown already fragile peace negotiations into further jeopardy. Just one day before Iran’s announcement, a 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Lebanon went into effect, raising cautious hopes for broader regional de-escalation. But renewed tensions in the Hormuz region now threaten to unravel that fragile progress, pushing the Middle East back toward the brink of wider conflict.
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Allies back Starmer as Mandelson and Epstein leave the UK leader fighting for his job
LONDON – As Prime Minister Keir Starmer braces for a make-or-break showdown with restive British lawmakers on Monday, his grip on the highest office in the United Kingdom hangs by a thread, triggered by a explosive botched appointment of a disgraced political ally to the nation’s most critical diplomatic post.
The crisis centers on Starmer’s January 2025 decision to name Peter Mandelson, a veteran politician with longstanding ties to late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, as Britain’s ambassador to the United States. It has now been revealed that Mandelson failed the mandatory intensive security vetting process required for the role – and Starmer claims he was never notified of the damning vetting recommendation that barred Mandelson from receiving clearance. The Prime Minister says he is “furious” over the withheld information, insisting he would never have moved forward with the appointment had he been informed of the outcome. The Foreign Office, which holds final authority over diplomatic nominations, ultimately approved Mandelson’s appointment despite the vetting panel’s opposition.
Senior figures within Starmer’s own Cabinet have rushed to shore up his position this weekend. Deputy Prime Minister David Lammy defended the Prime Minister, stating, “if Starmer had known, he would never, ever have appointed him ambassador.” Technology Secretary Liz Kendall echoed the defense during a Sunday interview with Sky News, arguing Starmer “is a man of integrity and there is no way he would have proceeded” with the nomination had he been aware of the failed security check.
The fallout has already claimed one high-profile casualty: Olly Robbins, the top civil servant at the Foreign Office, was forced to step down on Thursday. Supporters of Robbins, however, insist he is being made a scapegoat for the political failure, claiming he only followed established protocol in handling the sensitive vetting process. Robbins is set to deliver his own account of the chain of events to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee on Tuesday. Simon McDonald, who served as Foreign Office permanent secretary until 2020, backed that narrative, telling the BBC that Robbins had been “thrown under the bus.” McDonald added that highly classified vetting information “would never be shared” with the prime minister or his political staff, per longstanding security rules.
All major opposition parties have already united in calling for Starmer’s immediate resignation. Kemi Badenoch, leader of the right-of-center Conservative Party, called the prime minister’s position “untenable.” Liberal Democrats leader Ed Davey doubled down on that demand Sunday, saying, “the government is in perpetual crisis, and I don’t think they can get out of that unless Keir Starmer moves aside.”
While Starmer’s Labour Party holds a substantial parliamentary majority, any push to remove him from office will have to come from his own party lawmakers – many of whom are already deeply frustrated by the party’s plummeting approval ratings. Starmer temporarily defused tensions over the appointment back in February, when a small group of Labour MPs first called for his resignation. But political analysts widely expect a formal leadership challenge to launch after local and regional elections conclude on May 7, where polling projects major losses for Labour.
Internal divisions within Labour run deeper than just the Mandelson scandal. Some MPs argue that changing leadership mid-term would be deeply damaging amid ongoing global instability, including the active wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, with a national election not required for another three years. But other party members have grown despairing over Starmer’s string of missteps since he led Labour to a landslide general election victory in July 2024. The Prime Minister has struggled to deliver on campaign pledges to boost economic growth, repair strained public services, and ease the country’s ongoing cost-of-living crisis, and has already been forced to reverse course on multiple key policy positions.
Critics argue the Mandelson appointment lays bare a fundamental failure of judgment on Starmer’s part. Government documents released in March 2025, after Parliament forced transparency, show Starmer’s own own staff warned him that Mandelson’s close friendship with Epstein – who died in prison in 2019 while serving a sentence for sex offenses – created significant “reputational risk” for the government. Despite those warnings, Downing Street moved forward with the nomination, pointing to Mandelson’s experience as a former European Union trade chief and his extensive network of contacts among global political and business elites, which officials framed as a major asset for engaging with U.S. President Donald Trump’s second administration.
Mandelson’s tenure in Washington lasted less than nine months. Starmer fired him in September 2025, after new evidence emerged that Mandelson had lied about the full extent of his connections to Epstein. The release of millions of pages of court documents related to Epstein by the U.S. Department of Justice earlier this year brought fresh damaging revelations, showing Mandelson maintained his relationship with the financier even after Epstein’s 2008 conviction for sexual offenses involving a minor. Emails included in the document dump also suggested Mandelson shared sensitive, potentially market-moving British government information with Epstein in 2009, following the global financial crisis.
British law enforcement launched a criminal investigation into the allegations, and arrested Mandelson on February 23 on suspicion of misconduct in public office. He has since been released from custody without bail conditions as the investigation proceeds. Mandelson has repeatedly denied all wrongdoing, has not been formally charged with any crime, and does not face any allegations of sexual misconduct connected to the Epstein case.
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War in the Middle East: latest developments
The already volatile landscape of the Middle East has seen a fresh wave of destabilizing developments in recent days, even as a fragile 10-day ceasefire between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah holds tenuously along the Israel-Lebanon border.
One of the most striking recent incidents is the deadly ambush that claimed the life of a French peacekeeper deployed with the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) in southern Lebanon, leaving three additional service members wounded. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres issued a swift and forceful condemnation of the attack, noting that an initial UNIFIL investigation points to Hezbollah as the perpetrator. France has formally placed blame on the militant group, though Hezbollah has issued a categorical denial of any involvement in the ambush.
Along the border, Lebanon’s military has begun moving to restore critical infrastructure damaged by weeks of cross-border fighting. Officials confirmed Sunday that a key highway connecting the city of Nabatieh to the Khardali region has been fully reopened to traffic, while a second major crossing, the Burj Rahal-Tyre bridge, is now partially operational. This incremental recovery comes as the ceasefire continues to hold in broad terms, though sporadic clashes have persisted. The Israeli military confirmed Saturday that one additional Israeli soldier had been killed in ongoing combat operations in southern Lebanon, marking the second Israeli military fatality since the truce went into effect Friday. To date, AFP’s tally based on official Israeli military data puts the total Israeli army death toll at 15 across six weeks of open conflict with Hezbollah. Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem has emphasized that the ceasefire cannot be a one-sided agreement, warning that his fighters remain on high alert and will respond immediately to any Israeli violation of the truce terms. “Because we do not trust this enemy, the resistance fighters will remain in the field with their hands on the trigger, and they will respond to violations accordingly,” Qassem said in a televised address Saturday. Despite the ceasefire, the Israeli military carried out an airstrike Saturday targeting what it described as a Hezbollah terrorist cell operating near its troops in southern Lebanon. Lebanese state media also reported that Israeli forces conducted demolition operations in multiple border towns, including Bint Jbeil, which saw some of the heaviest fighting before the truce took effect.
Beyond the Lebanese border, the wider regional conflict has triggered major shifts in geopolitics and global energy security. The strategic Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly 20% of the world’s daily oil and liquefied natural gas shipments pass, has been re-closed by Iranian authorities. The closure came just one day after Iran briefly reopened the waterway following the announcement of the Israel-Hezbollah ceasefire, after U.S. President Donald Trump rejected any easing of the American naval blockade of Iranian ports, insisting the restriction would remain in place until a comprehensive peace deal is reached to end the wider regional war. Iran’s leadership called the U.S. position unacceptable and reimposed the closure, a move Trump has labeled “Iranian blackmail.” Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Navy has issued a stark warning to commercial and military shipping, announcing that no vessels may depart anchorages in the Persian Gulf or Sea of Oman, and any ship attempting to approach the Strait of Hormuz will be treated as an enemy collaborator and targeted.
Diplomatic efforts to end the wider conflict between Iran, the U.S. and Israel remain stalled, according to senior Iranian officials. Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, a key member of Iran’s negotiation team, said in a televised address Saturday that while incremental progress has been made in bilateral talks with the U.S., major gaps and fundamental disagreements remain to be resolved. “We are still far from the final discussion,” Ghalibaf said. “We made progress in the negotiations, but there are many gaps and some fundamental points remain.” The human cost of the conflict for Iran has also been made public for the first time: Iranian state news agency ISNA quoted the country’s state-run Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs reporting that 3,468 Iranians have been killed since the start of the war with the U.S. and Israel.
The ongoing conflict has also triggered a major realignment in British foreign policy, according to government insiders. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s administration is preparing to introduce new legislation next month aimed at significantly deepening the country’s economic and political ties with the European Union, a shift accelerated by the Iran war and growing strains in the UK’s long-standing “special relationship” with the United States. Sources note that President Trump’s well-documented unpredictability and repeated public insults toward the U.K. have given added momentum to the move, which comes a full decade after British voters narrowly approved the decision to leave the 27-nation bloc.
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Zelensky slams oil sanctions relief for Russia
A fresh political controversy has erupted over the Trump administration’s last-minute decision to extend a sanctions waiver allowing seaborne Russian oil to enter global markets, drawing sharp condemnation from Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and fierce criticism from top Democratic leaders.
The 30-day extension, announced Friday, greenlights the sale of Russian crude and petroleum products already loaded onto tankers through 12:01 a.m. GMT on May 16. The move renews an earlier sanctions relief measure that expired on April 11, and comes as the White House seeks to rein in skyrocketing global energy prices amplified by ongoing conflict in the Middle East. The reversal of policy is particularly notable: just two days before the extension was issued, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent publicly stated the waiver would not be renewed.
In a Sunday post on the social platform X, Zelensky lashed out at the easing of restrictions, arguing that every dollar of revenue generated by Russian oil sales directly funds Moscow’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. He highlighted that more than 110 tankers carrying roughly 12 million tonnes of Russian crude are currently sailing the world’s oceans in violation of existing international sanctions, and the waiver now clears the way for these shipments to be sold without legal consequence. Zelensky valued this volume of oil at roughly $10 billion, a sum he says will be converted directly into new military strikes targeting Ukrainian civilian and military infrastructure.
To underscore the immediate human cost of Russia’s continued funding, the Ukrainian president noted that in just the past seven days, Russian forces have launched over 2,360 attack drones, more than 1,320 guided aerial bombs, and nearly 60 projectiles of varying ranges against Ukrainian population centers. Local officials in the northern Ukrainian city of Chernihiv confirmed one such overnight attack left a 16-year-old boy dead and four additional civilians wounded. “It is important that Russian tankers are stopped, not allowed to deliver oil to ports. The aggressor’s oil exports must decrease, and Ukraine’s long-range sanctions continue to work toward that goal,” Zelensky said. He did not explicitly name the U.S. in his public statement.
The decision has also sparked outrage from leading Democratic lawmakers, who have labeled the move “shameful.” In a joint statement, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, Senators Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren argued that the reversal flies directly in the face of Bessent’s recent public commitment, and benefits Russian President Vladimir Putin disproportionately. “Make no mistake, Putin has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of President Trump’s war against Iran, as Russia saw oil revenues nearly double in March,” the statement read.
Ukraine currently relies heavily on U.S. military and diplomatic support to fend off Russia’s invasion, which entered its fifth year this year. Relations between Zelensky and Trump have been fraught, with a high-profile public disagreement between the two leaders during a 2024 Oval Office meeting making headlines. Political observers note Trump’s decision to push for energy price relief comes ahead of critical midterm elections in the U.S., where rising fuel costs have become a top voter concern.
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Thousands gather for Pope Leo’s first mass in Angola
On the second day of his high-stakes visit to Angola, a resource-rich southern African nation grappling with systemic widespread poverty, Pope Leo XIV led a massive open-air Holy Mass on Sunday that drew tens of thousands of pilgrims and hopeful attendees to the Kilamba district on the outskirts of the capital, Luanda.
The pontiff arrived in the Portuguese-speaking country Saturday to kick off the third leg of his 11-day, four-nation tour across the African continent. Immediately after landing, he held a formal meeting with Angolan President Joao Lourenco and top government officials, where he delivered sharp criticism of systemic oppression, the deep human suffering driven by extreme poverty, and the unregulated exploitation of Angola’s abundant natural resources. These remarks aligned with the core theme of his entire tour, which has centered on repeated warnings about the scourge of transnational corruption and the continued plunder of African natural wealth by foreign and domestic elites.
For many in the crowd, the Pope’s visit represented a rare opportunity to appeal for global attention to Angola’s paradox of plenty: a nation sitting on some of the continent’s largest reserves of crude oil and diamonds, yet marked by crippling income inequality. Thirty-two-year-old attendee Patricio Musanga, who wore a branded cap and T-shirt emblazoned with the Pope’s image, told reporters he had come seeking a message of encouragement for Angola’s struggling youth. Facing persistent mass unemployment, thousands of young Angolans flee every year to Western countries in search of better economic prospects. Musanga noted, “We are very rich in natural resources but … there is a glaring inequality between those who live well and the others,” adding that he hoped the Pope would reinforce that Angolans can build prosperous lives at home without leaving for opportunities abroad.
World Bank data underscores this gap: despite its status as one of Africa’s top crude oil producers, roughly one-third of Angola’s 36.6 million residents live below the international poverty line. Father Pedro Chingandu, who traveled from Angola’s eastern Moxico Province to attend the mass, pointed to decades of conflict as a key driver of persistent inequality. “There’s a concentration of wealth in the hands of very few, and of course the war just aggravated the situation,” he told Agence France-Presse, calling for “real democracy and the redistribution of wealth and justice” across the country. Angola has yet to fully heal from the 27-year civil war that broke out immediately after the nation gained independence from Portugal in 1975, only ending in 2002.
Following the Kilamba mass, Pope Leo is scheduled to travel 110 kilometers by helicopter to Muxima, Angola’s most sacred Catholic pilgrimage site. The small river town is home to a 300-year-old church that overlooks the Kwanza River, once a major transit route for enslaved Africans trafficked to the Americas. Built by Portuguese colonial settlers to baptize enslaved people before they were shipped across the Atlantic, the church houses the beloved statue of the Virgin Mary known locally as “Mama Muxima,” which draws two million pilgrims annually. Large crowds are expected to greet the pontiff during his stop at the historic slave-route shrine.
The Angolan government has drawn criticism for its multi-million-euro infrastructure project to build a new basilica, residential housing, and expanded public services in Muxima ahead of the Pope’s visit, with opponents questioning the government’s spending priorities at a time when widespread poverty persists across the country. Economic frustration already boiled over into public unrest last July, when a three-day looting spree across Luanda and other urban centers left roughly 30 people dead, many killed during what critics called a heavy-handed police crackdown. Political analysts have framed the unrest as a clear signal of widespread public dissatisfaction with the ruling socialist MPLA party, which has held uninterrupted control of the Angolan government since independence in 1975.
In comments to reporters on his flight to Angola, the Pope, who was elected to the papacy one year ago, opened up about a recent public dispute that has overshadowed much of his African tour. He expressed regret over his public war of words with U.S. President Donald Trump, who has attacked the Pope as “weak” after Leo called for an immediate ceasefire to end the ongoing war in the Middle East. “It is not in my interest at all” to publicly debate the U.S. leader, the Pope affirmed.
After wrapping up his engagements in Angola, Pope Leo will travel to Equatorial Guinea for the final stop of the 18,000-kilometer cross-continental tour, concluding a journey that has centered the needs of African nations and the urgent need for equitable global development.
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UAE investors view China as an attractive market
At a bilateral China-UAE business promotion convened in Beijing this week, senior business leaders and industry experts from the United Arab Emirates have publicly affirmed their enduring confidence in China’s market, framing the world’s second-largest economy as an increasingly attractive hub for cross-border capital.
The delegation of UAE investors highlighted three core strengths that set China apart for foreign capital: a stable, predictable regulatory framework that delivers a safe and reliable operating environment for overseas firms, fast-growing world-leading high-tech industrial ecosystems that drive new growth opportunities, and a deep pool of skilled, professional talent across key sectors from advanced manufacturing to digital innovation.
The remarks come amid growing bilateral economic ties between China and the UAE, with two-way trade and cross-border investment flows hitting new records in recent years. For UAE investors, expanding exposure to China’s market is not just a short-term opportunity, but a long-term strategic priority that aligns with both global diversification goals and China’s ongoing opening-up to foreign business.
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Watch: Runners v robots at China half marathon
In a groundbreaking clash between human athleticism and artificial engineering, Sunday’s half marathon in Beijing delivered a stunning result that turned heads across the global sports and technology communities: a robotic competitor outperformed all its human runners, finishing far ahead of the pack to claim a historic victory.
The unusual race, which pitted elite and amateur human runners against a fleet of advanced robotic entrants, marked one of the first public head-to-head competitions between man and machine in a mainstream long-distance running event. The event organizers designed the matchup to showcase advancements in robotics and mobility technology, while also creating a one-of-a-kind spectacle for spectators gathered along the race route.
By the final kilometer of the 21.1-kilometer course, the top-performing robot had already opened an insurmountable lead over the nearest human contender. Crossing the finish line well ahead of the entire human field, the winning machine cemented its place as the unlikely champion of the day, leaving even the fastest human rivals trailing far in its wake.
The event has sparked new conversations about the rapid progress of robotic engineering, and how automated systems are increasingly crossing into domains long dominated by human physical performance. While many in attendance viewed the matchup as a lighthearted exhibition, the outcome also highlights just how far mobility technology has advanced in recent years, opening new questions about future intersections of sports, technology and human competition.