Global Pulse

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  • Lebanon’s Aoun rejects call with Netanyahu as Israel severs last bridge to the south

    Lebanon’s Aoun rejects call with Netanyahu as Israel severs last bridge to the south

    Diplomatic tensions have escalated across the Lebanon-Israel border this week after a senior anonymous Lebanese official confirmed that Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has ruled out any near-term phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, quashing earlier reports of a planned historic first call between the two nations’ sitting leaders.

    Beirut has already communicated Aoun’s firm stance to the U.S. government ahead of a scheduled Thursday meeting between the Lebanese president and U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the official told Middle East Eye. This development comes just 48 hours after the U.S. hosted a landmark diplomatic meeting between Israeli and Lebanese ambassadors in Washington, the first formal diplomatic encounter between the two countries since 1993.

    In explaining the decision to reject the call, the senior official noted that Lebanon had already demonstrated flexibility by participating in the Washington talks, and would not take an additional step that would grant Netanyahu a domestic political and moral victory that he has failed to secure through military operations on Lebanese soil. The official added that a first-ever conversation between the two leaders would carry severe domestic political ramifications for Lebanon, and could even spark widespread internal unrest described as “an explosion in the country”.

    The planned call between Aoun and Netanyahu was first announced by U.S. President Donald Trump, shortly after Israel’s cabinet convened in a late Wednesday session to discuss a potential ceasefire agreement with Lebanese actors. For his part, Aoun has already clarified that any permanent ceasefire must act as a clear precursor to formal direct negotiations between Lebanon and Israel, a long-standing core position for the Lebanese government.

    According to Israeli outlet Haaretz, senior Israeli military command has received orders to prepare forces currently positioned in southern Lebanon for an impending ceasefire, which local reports indicate could take effect between 7 p.m. and midnight local time.

    Despite the ongoing ceasefire negotiations, Israeli military operations have continued and even intensified in some parts of Lebanon. On Thursday morning, shortly after Israeli media publicized reports of the planned Aoun-Netanyahu call, the Israeli Air Force carried out a strike that completely destroyed the Qasmiyeh bridge – the last remaining surface crossing connecting southern Lebanon to the country’s central and northern regions. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency confirmed that two consecutive airstrikes hit the infrastructure, fully destroying the span connecting the Sour and Saida regions.

    The Qasmiyeh strike is part of a broader Israeli campaign to cut off access to southern Lebanon. Last month, the Israeli military announced it would target all bridges and crossings along the Litani River, a waterway that runs east-west across southern Lebanon, to isolate large swathes of the region from the rest of the country. In recent weeks, the military has carried through on this threat, damaging or destroying at least nine crossings over the river. The Qasmiyeh bridge was first heavily damaged in an Israeli strike in late March, but the Lebanese army completed partial repairs and reopened it to vehicle traffic just last week. Prior to Thursday’s second strike, Lebanese troops stationed near the crossing had already closed access roads in anticipation of an attack, according to local Lebanese outlet L’Orient Today. A Lebanese security source told Reuters Thursday’s strike “shattered” the crossing, leaving it irreparable.

    The ongoing violence has continued to claim civilian lives across Lebanon. At least 11 people, including women and children, were killed in a series of Israeli strikes across southern Lebanon on Thursday alone. A separate airstrike targeting a vehicle on the highway connecting Beirut to the Syrian capital Damascus also killed one additional person.

    Since the start of the current conflict, more than 2,100 Lebanese people have been killed in Israeli attacks, according to official Lebanese government data. The violence has disproportionately impacted healthcare and rescue workers: on Wednesday alone, four Lebanese rescue workers were killed and six wounded in three sequential targeted Israeli strikes on the southern village of Mayfadoun. Lebanese paramedic groups reported that the strikes targeted three successive waves of medics: the first team responded to calls from wounded civilians, the second came to aid injured first responders, and the third arrived to support both teams after the initial attacks. To date, the Lebanese health ministry confirms that 91 healthcare workers have been killed by Israeli forces in the six weeks since hostilities resumed.

    Hostilities between the two sides escalated in early March following a joint U.S.-Israeli strike that killed Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, after which Lebanese armed group Hezbollah launched a cross-border rocket retaliatory attack on Israel. Israel has not carried out large-scale strikes on central Beirut since an 8 April attack that killed more than 350 people across Lebanon in a 10-minute wave of 100 strikes, but it continues to carry out daily deadly operations in southern Lebanon as its ground invasion progresses.

  • Activist Kemi Seba arrested in South Africa, faces extradition to Benin

    Activist Kemi Seba arrested in South Africa, faces extradition to Benin

    PRETORIA, South Africa — Law enforcement authorities in South Africa announced Thursday the arrest of high-profile Beninese dissident Kemi Seba, who is facing extradition to his home country on charges tied to last year’s unsuccessful coup attempt against Benin’s sitting government.

    Seba, 45, whose legal birth name is Stellio Gilles Robert Capo Chichi, was taken into custody during a coordinated police sting operation in Pretoria, South Africa’s administrative capital. He was arrested alongside his son, with both men facing two counts: conspiracy to commit a crime and violations of South African immigration law. The charges stem from allegations the pair plotted an irregular migration journey to Europe via neighboring Zimbabwe, authorities confirmed. A third individual accused of facilitating the plot by paying roughly 250,000 South African rand, equal to $15,000, to enable unauthorized cross-border movement is also in police custody.

    South African police confirmed the operation was carried out with direct support from Interpol, which had flagged Seba as an international fugitive wanted by Benin for crimes against the state. All three suspects made their first court appearance at Brooklyn Magistrates’ Court on Wednesday, where the judge scheduled the next hearing for April 20. Seba remains in pre-trial detention as South African authorities move forward with formal extradition proceedings.

    The legal pursuit of Seba traces back to December 2023, when Benin issued an international arrest warrant for the activist on charges of “incitement to rebellion.” The charge followed a viral social media video in which Seba publicly expressed support for the failed coup attempt against President Patrice Talon. In the clip, Seba incorrectly announced the coup had succeeded, hailed the attempt as “the day of liberation,” and labeled the soldiers who launched the putsch as “patriots.”

    Beyond his connection to last year’s coup attempt in Benin, Seba has built a regional profile as a vocal critic of French influence across West Africa, openly supporting a string of successful military coups in neighboring countries that brought pro-Russian military leaders to power. His long-standing anti-French rhetoric and advocacy for Russian-aligned governance in the region led to France revoking his French citizenship earlier this year in 2024.

  • Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian detainee allowed to return to service

    Israeli soldiers suspected of raping Palestinian detainee allowed to return to service

    In a decision that has drawn international condemnation and reignited debates about systemic human rights violations against Palestinian detainees, the Israeli military has authorized the return to reserve duty of five soldiers linked to the severe torture and sexual assault of a Palestinian detainee at the Sde Teiman detention facility in 2024.

    According to a Thursday report from Israeli outlet Haaretz, Israel’s army chief Eyal Zamir greenlit the return of the service members from Unit 100, the specialized unit tasked with guarding detainees in Israeli custody. The move comes just one month after all criminal charges against the soldiers were unexpectedly dropped, with no internal military probe ever launched into the brutal incident.

    The full scope of the abuse was first exposed when surveillance footage of the attack was leaked to Israeli media in August 2024, one month after a far-right Israeli mob rioted to protest military police questioning of the implicated soldiers. The leaked footage shows multiple Palestinian detainees bound and blindfolded on the facility floor, before a group of reservists pulls one detainee aside and uses riot shields to block the camera view of their assault.

    Following the attack, the detainee was rushed to hospital with life-altering injuries: broken ribs, a punctured lung, a ruptured bowel, and severe anal trauma. Initially filed in February, the original indictment detailed 15 minutes of unrelenting violence: the accused repeatedly kicked the detainee, stomped on his body, struck him with clubs, dragged him across the ground, and deployed a taser on multiple areas including his head. One soldier also stabbed the detainee in the buttocks, causing a full tear in the rectal wall. Two of the suspects failed polygraph tests when asked about inserting an object into the detainee’s anus and covering for the perpetrator, with examiners confirming their denials were deceptive.

    Professor Yoel Donchin, a former medical officer at Sde Teiman, told Haaretz he was stunned by the brutality of the attack. “He arrived, and we saw he had a stab wound in the anus,” Donchin said. “I saw how the soldiers behaved there, how they brought in detainees and forced them to sing songs. I saw a wounded man who had been abused and beaten severely.”

    Despite the overwhelming evidence captured on camera and detailed in the original indictment, Military Advocate General Itai Ofir ordered all charges withdrawn last month. Ofir justified the decision citing a “defense of justice” argument tied to what he called improper conduct by senior military prosecution and IDF law enforcement officials, as well as “complexities regarding the existing evidentiary basis.” He also noted that after the detainee was released back to the Gaza Strip, additional legal barriers emerged for the case.

    This decision is far from an isolated incident. Human rights investigators and UN experts have documented that the Israeli military almost never holds service members accountable for accusations of abusing Palestinian detainees, and reports of abuse, torture, and sexual violence have spiked dramatically since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.

    Last month, a group of UN experts warned that torture has become “state doctrine” in Israel, enabled by decades of systemic impunity and political protection for perpetrators. “Since the onset of the genocide, the Israeli prison system has degenerated into a laboratory of calculated cruelty,” said Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine. A UN inquiry has confirmed that “Sexual and gender-based violence is increasingly used as a method of war by Israel to destabilise, dominate, oppress and destroy the Palestinian people.”

    Earlier this month, Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor released a groundbreaking report compiling hundreds of testimonies from former detainees, concluding that the sexual torture of Palestinian detainees from Gaza constitutes an “organised state policy.” The report details widespread abuses including rape with foreign objects, the use of trained dogs to assault detainees, and repeated sexual assault. One 42-year-old female former detainee from northern Gaza, who was held at Sde Teiman, gave harrowing testimony of being bound naked to a metal table and raped repeatedly by two masked soldiers over two days. She was left shackled naked and bleeding overnight before the assault resumed, and the entire ordeal was filmed. During interrogation, while she was suspended by her wrists, soldiers threatened to release the footage publicly if she refused to cooperate. She described her experience as “another genocide behind walls” and said she repeatedly wished for death to end her suffering.

    Multiple independent investigations by rights groups and media outlets, including Middle East Eye, have corroborated these claims, documenting widespread, systemic sexual violence against Palestinian detainees across Israel’s prison system.

  • Iran war: What has the war done to the cost of humanitarian aid?

    Iran war: What has the war done to the cost of humanitarian aid?

    While the United Kingdom has drawn public attention to potential domestic food shortages linked to threats blocking the Strait of Hormuz, a far more devastating crisis is unfolding for the world’s most vulnerable populations, whose access to life-saving support has been crippled by the ongoing US-Israeli war on Iran. The conflict has thrown global humanitarian logistics into disarray, and the international community has moved far too slowly to address the cascading harms hitting at-risk communities across the Middle East, South Asia and the Horn of Africa.

    One of the least visible but most damaging outcomes of the conflict has been a sharp surge in the cost of delivering aid to crisis zones. As global oil prices skyrocket in the wake of regional instability, already tight international aid budgets have been squeezed even further, eroding the capacity of humanitarian organizations to reach people in need. In a new analysis released this week, UK-based international charity Save the Children laid out the staggering human cost of these rising costs: every $5 increase in global oil prices driven by Middle East conflict eliminates enough funding to deliver one month of life-saving aid to nearly 40,000 children. For Save the Children alone, the organization now needs an extra $340,000 per month just to cover the cost of shipping critical aid supplies.

    One urgent case already unfolding is a stalled shipment of nutritional support bound for Afghanistan, where more than 21.9 million people rely on humanitarian assistance. The supplies, meant to serve 5,000 children and 1,400 pregnant and breastfeeding women, were sourced from a New Delhi supplier but have been held up by war-related disruptions to global shipping. Since March, air freight costs for the shipment have jumped from $240,000 to $435,000 — now more than double the actual value of the nutritional supplies themselves. Save the Children teams are currently scrambling to lock in lower-cost delivery options, but Willem Zuidema, the organization’s global supply chain director, warned that Afghanistan could run out of critical life-saving supplies by the end of the month. “This is a race against the clock,” Zuidema told Middle East Eye.

    While the recent ceasefire in the region has offered a small measure of relief, Save the Children stressed that the economic and logistical ripples of the war will linger for months. Even if commercial shipping through key chokepoints like the Strait of Hormuz returns to normal, freight operators have made clear that oil carriers will receive priority loading and routing, leaving humanitarian aid shipments waiting at ports. Compounding these pressures is the Trump administration’s “trade over aid” policy framework, which prioritizes private business opportunities over humanitarian resourcing, forcing non-profit organizations to adapt rapidly to shrinking budgets and growing logistical barriers.

    Facing these constraints, aid groups have been forced to rethink longstanding supply chain routes to get critical support to where it is needed. For example, medical equipment and supplies bound for Yemen and Sudan — where Sudan hosts what the United Nations describes as the world’s worst ongoing humanitarian crisis — are currently stuck in Dubai. Save the Children is now pursuing alternative routes: driving aid overland into Yemen, or moving supplies across the border to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, before arranging final shipment to Sudan.

    Even though U.S. officials have given repeated assurances that humanitarian aid will be exempt from its regional blockade, the indirect impacts of the conflict are still driving sharp increases in food and essential commodity prices worldwide. In Somalia, where 70 percent of the country’s food supply comes from imports or international aid, the World Food Programme reports that prices of essential goods have jumped by at least 20 percent since the war began, with the cost of key agricultural fertilizers such as urea surging by as much as 70 percent in just a few weeks.

    This week, the international community pledged 1.3 billion euros (equivalent to $1.53 billion) in new aid for Sudan, as the country’s own internal civil conflict enters its fourth year. While the pledge was broadly welcomed by humanitarian groups, it comes as global aid efforts are already failing to keep up with the exploding demand for support across multiple crisis zones. Long before the outbreak of the war on Iran, global humanitarian funding had already fallen by almost a third since 2023, with major donor nations including France, Germany and the United Kingdom all scaling back their official aid commitments. The war has accelerated this crisis dramatically: in Iran alone, 3.2 million people have been displaced by the conflict since attacks began, and the first large shipment of aid to the country since February 28 only arrived this Tuesday, with aid workers on the ground reporting overwhelming unmet need.

    Amid these growing gaps, independent observers note that the cascading effects of regional conflict are hitting vulnerable populations that are already reeling from years of underfunded crises, raising the risk of widespread hunger, preventable illness and child mortality in the coming months if the international community does not step up emergency support.

  • Vessels cross Hormuz destined for Iran despite US blockade

    Vessels cross Hormuz destined for Iran despite US blockade

    Tracking data released Thursday has confirmed that multiple sanctioned cargo and tanker vessels have successfully traversed the Strait of Hormuz en route to Iranian ports, directly defying a new U.S. blockade imposed amid the ongoing seven-week Middle East conflict. The breach of the U.S. restrictions comes just days after Washington implemented its counter-blockade, which followed the collapse of regional peace talks aimed at ending the sustained hostilities.

    In an update posted to the social platform X Thursday, the U.S. military claimed that over the first 72 hours of enforcement, 14 vessels had altered their courses to comply with the blockade at U.S. forces’ direction. Notably absent from this update, however, was the military’s previous assertion that it had stopped all vessel traffic heading to or departing from Iranian ports, a change that experts say hints at growing gaps in enforcement.

    Marine Traffic, a leading global vessel tracking platform, has documented the journeys of two sanctioned vessels that have already reached waters adjacent to their intended Iranian destinations. The sanctioned container ship Zaynar 2 completed its westward passage through the strait into the Persian Gulf late Wednesday, with its destination listed as Larak Island — a key logistics hub just off the coast of Iran’s major Bandar Abbas port. The ship’s last transponder signal placed it near the island by Wednesday evening. A second sanctioned cargo vessel, the Neshat, followed the same general route early Thursday, sailing close to the Iranian coastline while transiting the strait, also bound for Bandar Abbas. As of 15:00 GMT Thursday, its signal showed it anchored roughly 16 kilometers off the port.

    In addition to the smaller cargo vessels, two large U.S.-sanctioned very large crude carriers (VLCCs), the RHN and the Alicia, have also broken through the blockade, crossing westward through the strait via Iran’s officially approved shipping lane. As of Thursday, both tankers continued sailing west through the Gulf, listing their destination only as “For Order,” leaving their final port of call unclear. Industry analysts note this vague designation follows a pattern seen in recent weeks with other sanctioned Iranian-linked vessels, which often falsely list Iraq as their destination to avoid U.S. enforcement — a loophole that allows them to cross without intervention. Two more vessels, the VLCC Agios Fanouris I and the liquefied petroleum gas tanker G Summer, are currently sailing toward what tracking data indicates is a likely Iraqi destination, putting them outside the scope of the current U.S. blockade.

    Maritime experts have voiced confusion over how easily vessels have been able to breach the blockade, given the U.S. military’s significant regional presence. “There’s evidence that ships are perhaps breaking through” the U.S. blockade, Tom Sharpe, a former commander with the UK’s Royal Navy, told a Thursday briefing hosted by maritime analytics firm Windward. “That I don’t understand particularly, because from a military perspective, from a tactical perspective, this blockade is not that hard to do. They’ve got the ships there to do it,” he added.

    While Bridget Diakun, senior risk and compliance analyst at Lloyd’s List Intelligence, confirmed that some Iran-linked vessels have halted their voyages or reversed course to avoid running afoul of the blockade, she also acknowledged that the restrictions have not stopped all traffic. “We’ve also seen ships that have reached Iranian ports and that have departed as well,” she told the briefing. Summing up the chaotic state of shipping through the strategic waterway, Lloyd’s maritime risk analyst Tomer Raanan noted that after 24 hours of the new blockade, “Confusion reigns.”

  • BP sued in Kenya over alleged toxic waste from 1980s oil exploration

    BP sued in Kenya over alleged toxic waste from 1980s oil exploration

    NAIROBI, Kenya — In a landmark decision that opens the door for affected communities to seek accountability for decades of alleged environmental harm, Kenya’s High Court ruled Thursday that a high-stakes class action lawsuit against global energy giant BP can proceed to trial. The legal challenge centers on claims of widespread toxic contamination of northern Kenya’s drinking water from negligent waste disposal practices during 1980s oil exploration activities.

    The suit was first brought in February by 299 local petitioners to the Land and Environment Court in Isiolo, the regional administrative hub for the affected area in northern Kenya. At the heart of the allegations is the claim that waste generated during oil exploration operations, including hazardous radioactive materials, was improperly handled, resulting in severe and long-lasting damage to local ecosystems and public health.

    The exploration work at the center of the dispute was originally conducted by U.S.-based Amoco Corporation, which drilled multiple dry wells in the Chalbi Desert near the remote communities of Kargi and Kalachi in the 1980s. BP acquired all of Amoco’s global assets and operations, including its Kenyan exploration holdings, in a 1998 merger, leaving BP as the primary corporate defendant in the current case.

    Court documents detail damning allegations: contaminants including radioactive radium isotopes, arsenic, lead, and nitrates were allegedly dumped in unlined, uncovered pits rather than being disposed of according to regulated safety standards. Over decades, these toxins have leached into the region’s groundwater, the primary source of drinking water for local residents and their livestock. The petition claims this contamination has directly caused the death or illness of hundreds of local people and thousands of area animals. More than 500 resident deaths are linked to cancers and other chronic conditions tied to exposure to heavy metals and carcinogens in the contaminated water supply.

    Beyond the corporate defendant, the lawsuit also names multiple Kenyan national government agencies — including the ministries and regulatory bodies overseeing environment, water resources, mining, and public health — accusing them of negligence for failing to intervene and address the contamination even after receiving clear evidence of the public health risk.

    BP has not issued any public statement addressing the allegations, and did not respond to requests for comment from media ahead of the court’s ruling. The case is scheduled to resume for further proceedings in May.

    This reporting, part of the Associated Press’ global climate and environmental coverage, receives financial support from multiple private philanthropic foundations. The AP maintains full editorial independence over all its reporting, and public details of its partnership standards, funding sources, and covered areas are available on AP.org.

  • Pope criticises ‘tyrants’ who spend billions on wars, days after Trump spat

    Pope criticises ‘tyrants’ who spend billions on wars, days after Trump spat

    In an extraordinary departure from typical diplomatic Vatican rhetoric, Pope Leo has issued a blistering rebuke of global leaders who pour billions of dollars into military conflicts, arguing that the entire global order is currently being exploited and destabilized by a small group of authoritarian rulers. The unusually harsh comments came during the pontiff’s tour of Cameroon’s Northwest region, an area that has been torn apart by a nearly 10-year-long separatist insurgency that has claimed thousands of lives and displaced hundreds of thousands of residents.

    Standing before crowds gathered at a cathedral in Bamenda, the heart of Cameroon’s conflict zone, Pope Leo called out actors who fuel the region’s ongoing violence, noting that external and local groups that extract natural resources from the affected land often funnel a large share of their profits into weapons, prolonging a never-ending cycle of violence and collapse. “Those who rob your land of its resources generally invest much of the profit in weapons, thus perpetuating an endless cycle of destabilisation and death,” he told the assembled audience of community members, clergy and displaced residents.

    The pontiff expanded his critique beyond Cameroon’s local conflict to the global stage, condemning the misplaced global priorities that prioritize destruction over human development. “The masters of war pretend not to know that it takes only a moment to destroy, yet often a lifetime is not enough to rebuild,” he said. He added that it is a moral travesty that leaders “turn a blind eye to the fact that billions of dollars are spent on killing and devastation, yet the resources needed for healing, education and restoration are nowhere to be found.” He also called out actors who “manipulate the very name of God” to justify their violent, self-serving actions.

    Pope Leo’s comments come just days after a high-profile public conflict with former U.S. President Donald Trump, sparked by the pontiff’s vocal opposition to the joint U.S.-Israeli military operation in Iran. Pope Leo had previously raised alarm over Trump’s stark threat that “a whole civilisation will die” if Iran refused to meet U.S. demands to end the war and reopen the strategically critical Strait of Hormuz. This is not the first public disagreement between the two men: since his election as the first U.S.-born pope in history last year, Pope Leo has repeatedly criticized the Trump administration’s hardline approach to immigration policy, prompting a sharp rebuke from Trump on his TruthSocial platform, where the former president wrote “Leo should get his act together as Pope.”

    The Cameroon visit is a key stop on Pope Leo’s multi-country African tour, which will include 11 stops across four nations. This marks only his second major international visit since taking office last year, a schedule that underscores the growing strategic and demographic importance of the Catholic Church in Africa. Recent 2024 demographic data shows that Africa is home to roughly 288 million Catholics, accounting for more than one-fifth of the entire global Catholic population – a share that continues to grow steadily year over year.

  • What to know about Cameroon’s separatist violence that the pope seeks to end

    What to know about Cameroon’s separatist violence that the pope seeks to end

    BAMENDA, CAMEROON – On Thursday, Pope Leo XIV touched down in Bamenda, the northwestern hub of Cameroon, to convene a landmark peace gathering in a region scarred by nearly 10 years of separatist violence that has left thousands dead and hundreds of thousands displaced. The summit forms a core part of the pontiff’s four-nation African tour, designed to center grassroots interfaith efforts that have long worked to de-escalate tensions and support conflict survivors navigating deep psychological trauma.

  • Blunt-speaking Pope tells Cameroon to root out corruption to find peace

    Blunt-speaking Pope tells Cameroon to root out corruption to find peace

    On the second stop of his landmark 11-day tour across Africa, Pope Leo XIV delivered a blunt, unflinching address to Cameroon’s leadership at Yaoundé’s presidential palace, calling on the government to dismantle systemic corruption as a foundational step toward lasting peace and justice. His remarks, delivered in the presence of 93-year-old President Paul Biya — the world’s oldest sitting head of state, who secured a contested eighth term in office last year — marked a rare public rebuke of an administration long dogged by allegations of graft, poor governance, and ineffective security management.

    “In order for peace and justice to prevail, the chains of corruption – which disfigure authority and strip it of its credibility – must be broken,” the 70-year-old pontiff told the assembled crowd. He expanded on the theme, adding, “Hearts must be set free from an idolatrous thirst for profit.” According to reporting from the Associated Press, Cameroon’s state television cut its live broadcast of portions of the Pope’s speech, with no clarity on whether the interruption stemmed from technical issues or intentional editing. Biya sat through the entire address without visible reaction, multiple observers confirmed.

    Following his meeting with Cameroon’s government, Pope Leo traveled north to Bamenda, the epicenter of a nearly decade-long separatist insurgency in Cameroon’s English-speaking North-West and South-West regions. The conflict, which erupted in 2017 when Anglophone separatists launched their push for an independent state, has killed at least 6,000 people and displaced hundreds of thousands more. Separatist leaders had pre-emptively declared a temporary “safe travel passage” to allow the papal visit to proceed, and throngs of excited local residents lined city streets to greet the pontiff upon his arrival.

    During his remarks ahead of a planned peace Mass at Bamenda’s airport, Pope Leo waded into the long-running conflict, noting that while security must remain a priority for the state, it must always be exercised in full respect for fundamental human rights. The separatist movement grew out of decades of grievances over what the Anglophone minority describes as systemic marginalization by Cameroon’s French-speaking majority government.

    Beyond his calls for anti-corruption action and peace, Pope Leo used his address to center marginalized groups in Cameroon’s future. He emphasized that young people represent the country’s greatest hope, arguing that investment in their education, professional training, and entrepreneurial ventures is critical to curbing brain drain and addressing deep-rooted social inequality. He also highlighted the underrecognized role of women, who are often disproportionately harmed by conflict and injustice but serve as persistent, unsung architects of peace, calling for their full inclusion in all national decision-making processes. Biya, who was re-elected in October, has made public promises to prioritize young people and women, and expectations remain high for a looming cabinet reshuffle to deliver on those pledges.

    Local church leaders have framed the papal visit as a rare moment of hope for a region shattered by years of violence. “I can confidently say now is the time for peace,” Archbishop Andrew Nkea of Bamenda told worshippers ahead of the Mass, adding that the visit would bring comfort to thousands whose lives have been upended by the conflict.

    This tour is the first papal visit to Africa under Pope Leo XIV, with peace as its overarching central theme. The pontiff launched his trip in Algeria, marking the first ever papal visit to the majority-Muslim North African nation — which is also the birthplace of St. Augustine, the theological figure whose teachings shape Pope Leo’s own spiritual background as the first pope from his religious order. During his two days in Algeria, the Pope visited Algiers’ Great Mosque, a moment he called a powerful demonstration that people of differing faiths and backgrounds can coexist peacefully. After wrapping up his time in Cameroon, Pope Leo will travel on to visit Angola and Equatorial Guinea to conclude the 11-day tour.

  • Chinese man jailed for one year by Kenyan court over ant trafficking

    Chinese man jailed for one year by Kenyan court over ant trafficking

    In a high-profile wildlife trafficking case that highlights Kenya’s ongoing crackdown on unregulated insect trade, a Kenyan court has handed down a one-year prison sentence to a Chinese national convicted of unlawfully holding hundreds of live native ants, the latest conviction in the east African nation’s campaign against underreported trafficking of lesser-known wildlife species.

    Zhang Kequn, who entered a guilty plea to the charge of holding protected wildlife without a valid government license, was also ordered to pay a fine of 1 million Kenyan shillings, equal to roughly $7,700, according to court documents released Wednesday. His co-accused, Kenyan national Charles Mwangi, has maintained a not guilty plea to the same charge and was released on cash bail as the case against him proceeds.

    Prosecutors laid out the details of the trafficking operation during court proceedings, confirming that Zhang sourced the live ants directly from Mwangi. The pair completed two separate transactions: the first batch of 600 ants cost Zhang 60,000 Kenyan shillings ($463), while a second shipment of 700 ants came at a price of 70,000 Kenyan shillings ($540). Authorities first took the two suspects into custody on March 10, when a search turned out a total of 2,248 live ants. Most of the insects – 1,948 garden ants – were stored in custom-made transportation tubes, while an additional 300 ants were hidden in tissue rolls. Investigators confirmed that neither suspect held the mandatory permits required under Kenya’s strict wildlife conservation legislation to collect, hold, or trade native wildlife species, including native ant populations.

    This conviction is not an isolated incident. Just last year, Kenyan authorities charged two Belgian teenagers with similar wildlife trafficking offenses after seizing 5,000 ants stored in test tubes from their possession. That case drew international attention to a growing, underreported trend: traffickers target smaller, lesser-known Kenyan wildlife species for international markets, where the ants are valued both as exotic pets and unusual delicacies among collectors and consumers in Europe and Asia. At the time of that seizure, Kenyan officials estimated the value of the trafficked ant shipment at 1 million Kenyan shillings ($7,700), matching the fine issued to Zhang in this week’s ruling. Kenya has a long-standing reputation for aggressive enforcement of wildlife protection laws, targeting poaching and trafficking of all protected species – from iconic large mammals to overlooked native insects that make up a critical part of the country’s unique biodiversity.