标签： Oceania

On the opening day of his high-stakes trip to Cameroon, Pope Leo XIV delivered an unusually blunt public address Wednesday, challenging the Central African nation’s ruling authorities to confront systemic corruption and human rights shortcomings while calling for a collective examination of national conscience.

Greeted by throngs of cheering supporters lining the capital Yaoundé’s streets upon his arrival, the U.S.-born pontiff spoke directly to senior officials, including 93-year-old President Paul Biya, who has held unbroken power in the country since 1982. The visit comes just months after Biya’s disputed October re-election to an eighth term, which sparked widespread protests that were met with a harsh government crackdown.

Standing beside Biya during the address, Pope Leo emphasized that while national security remains a core governing priority, it must always be pursued in full alignment with fundamental human rights protections. “Public authorities are called to serve as bridges, never as sources of division, even when insecurity seems prevalent,” he told the assembled crowd of officials, diplomats, and community leaders.

Just one day before the pope’s arrival, a coalition of Cameroonian civil society groups released a public statement decrying what they called an “unprecedented period of repression” in the wake of the presidential polls. The groups have repeatedly demanded the immediate release of hundreds of political detainees, many of whom are being held without any formal legal grounding. Herve Nzouabet Kweto, representative of NGO Source de Vie and a signatory to the statement, confirmed to Agence France-Presse that out of nearly 2,782 political prisoners registered by the coalition, more than 2,630 have not yet received any trial or sentencing.

“It is time to examine our conscience and take a bold leap forward,” Pope Leo asserted. “In order for peace and justice to prevail, the chains of corruption… must be broken.”

In his formal response to the pontiff’s remarks, Biya acknowledged that “the world needs the message of peace” that Pope Leo brought to Cameroon during his tour. This visit marks the second stop on Pope Leo’s four-nation African pilgrimage, which launched against a backdrop of political friction: U.S. President Donald Trump recently publicly stated he is “not a big fan” of the pontiff, after Pope Leo called for renewed diplomatic efforts to secure peace in the Middle East.

Widespread systemic corruption has plagued Cameroon throughout Biya’s decades-long tenure, with Transparency International’s 2025 Corruption Index ranking the country 142nd out of 180 surveyed nations. In recent years, the 93-year-old president has faced growing criticism over his frequent trips abroad, most of which are for medical care or luxury stays at an upscale Geneva hotel. Opposition leaders have accused Biya of diverting massive amounts of taxpayer money to fund these private getaways. A 2018 investigation by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), an international consortium of investigative journalists, estimated that Biya has spent a cumulative total of 4.5 years outside of Cameroon over his 43 years in office, with public costs for these stays topping $65 million.

Pope Leo used his address to highlight the critical role that civil society, including women’s groups, youth organizations, trade unions, humanitarian NGOs, and traditional and religious leaders, plays in building a foundation of lasting social peace. On Thursday, he is set to travel to Cameroon’s restive English-speaking Northwest region, where a long-running separatist conflict has displaced thousands and destabilized the area for years. The visit will proceed under heavy security deployment to protect the pontiff during his time in the conflict zone.

In a shocking outbreak of school violence that has shaken Turkey, a second mass shooting in as many days left nine people dead and 13 others injured Wednesday when an 8th-grade student opened fire randomly at a school in the country’s southern Kahramanmaras province, a region where such mass casualty attacks have historically been extremely rare.

According to local and national officials, the 13-year-old attacker brought multiple firearms — which authorities believe belonged to his father, a former police officer — hidden in his backpack to the school. After entering two separate classrooms, the teen began shooting indiscriminately. Initial reports had placed the death toll at four, but Interior Minister Mustafa Ciftci later confirmed the updated fatality count in an official statement, adding that six of the 13 wounded remain in intensive care, with three in critical condition. Kahramanmaras Governor Mukerrem Unluer told reporters the suspect was carrying five handguns and seven ammunition magazines, and died during the incident. Authorities have not yet confirmed whether the teen’s death was a suicide or an accidental shooting amid the chaos of the attack, Unluer added. Turkish police have since detained the suspect’s father, Ugur Mersinli, for questioning, state-run Anadolu Agency reported.

Verified footage from the scene has captured the panic and terror that unfolded during the attack. A video recorded by a nearby resident and verified by Agence France-Presse shows terrified students leaping from first-floor windows to escape the gunfire, while dozens more run for safety through the school’s courtyard. Roughly 15 gunshots can be heard in the 90-second clip. Other footage from private Turkish news agency IHA shows an evacuated victim being carried into an ambulance, alongside distraught parents rushing to the school after news of the attack broke. Law enforcement quickly locked down the area surrounding the school, and emergency response vehicles flooded the site. Both Turkey’s interior minister and education minister traveled immediately to Kahramanmaras to oversee the response, while Justice Minister Akin Gurlek confirmed public prosecutors have launched an urgent investigation into the incident.

Wednesday’s attack comes just 24 hours after another school shooting in Turkey, which also ended in the attacker’s death. On Tuesday, a former student opened fire with a shotgun at his old high school in the Siverek district of Sanliurfa province, wounding 16 people — 10 of whom were students — before killing himself during a confrontation with police. In the wake of that first attack, police detained one suspect and suspended four local officials from their posts over alleged failures, and the school was ordered closed for four days.

Speaking to lawmakers from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) in parliament, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed that any individual found negligent or responsible for security lapses that allowed the attacks will face full accountability. “There will certainly be accountability for anyone found at fault,” Erdogan said.

Main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Ozgur Ozel has called for sweeping, nationwide upgrades to school security, arguing that the back-to-back attacks prove school violence in Turkey can no longer be dismissed as a series of isolated events. “This issue has turned into a growing and deepening security vulnerability,” Ozel wrote on social media platform X. He outlined a series of urgent measures he says are now non-negotiable: full screening at all school entrances and exits, an increase in on-site security personnel, upgraded campus camera systems, more frequent police patrols around school grounds, and updated, ready-to-deploy emergency crisis response plans. “The security of schools is entrusted to our state. No negligence or deficiency in this regard can be excused anymore,” Ozel added.

School shootings were an extremely rare occurrence in Turkey before this week. The most recent prior incident occurred in May 2024, when a expelled former student shot and killed a private high school principal in Istanbul. The country already enforces some of the strictest gun control regulations in the region, requiring all firearms to be licensed and registered, mandatory mental health and criminal background checks for gun owners, and harsh legal penalties for anyone found in possession of unregistered weapons.

Three years after conflict erupted between Sudan’s regular army and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group in April 2023, the northeastern African nation remains mired in one of the world’s worst humanitarian catastrophes, even as global attention has shifted to other crisis hotspots. As international stakeholders gathered in Berlin this week for a high-stakes donor conference, German officials are pushing to secure more than $1 billion in new humanitarian pledges — exceeding the total raised at the previous London-hosted conference — to address an unfolding emergency that has been largely overlooked by the international community.

Speaking to public broadcaster Deutschlandfunk ahead of the conference opening, German Foreign Minister Johann Wadephul expressed cautious optimism that the funding target would be met, noting that new pledges were already flowing in ahead of the gathering. “Despite the fact that global diplomatic focus is currently absorbed by Ukraine and Iran, this massive humanitarian catastrophe in Africa cannot be pushed to the margins of global consciousness,” Wadephul emphasized.

Unlike previous diplomatic gatherings, neither the Sudanese army nor the RSF — the two warring parties that have torn the country apart since 2023 — were invited to participate in the Berlin conference. Beyond rallying much-needed humanitarian funding, the gathering also carries a secondary diplomatic goal: to jumpstart stalled peace talks that have collapsed since last November. The so-called Quad diplomatic bloc, made up of the United States, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, has led international peace efforts to date, but those efforts have ground to a halt amid deep disagreements and accusations of foreign interference. Rival regional powers back opposing sides in the conflict: Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Turkey publicly support the Sudanese army, while the UAE has been widely accused of supplying arms to the RSF. All four nations deny direct involvement in the fighting, and talks collapsed after Sudanese army chief Abdel Fattah al-Burhan accused the Quad of pro-RSF bias due to the UAE’s membership in the group.

Wadephul argued that even without the warring parties in the room, the Berlin conference can still advance the cause of peace by creating space for local Sudanese stakeholders to open dialogue with one another. But Luca Renda, the United Nations Development Programme’s representative in Sudan, struck a far more pessimistic tone. “There are many external actors involved in this war, and as long as this continues, unfortunately, the chances of peace are very slim,” Renda warned.

The human cost of three years of continuous war is staggering. Tens of thousands of people have been killed since fighting began, with the United Nations recording nearly 700 civilian deaths from drone strikes alone since the start of 2025, as attacks have intensified in southern Kordofan and Blue Nile State. More than 11 million Sudanese have been displaced from their homes, and nearly 25 million — almost half the country’s population — face acute food insecurity. Famine was officially declared last year in El-Fasher, the capital of North Darfur, and Kadugli, the capital of South Kordofan, with 20 additional regions across the country at imminent risk of famine. The conflict has pushed more than 90 percent of Sudan’s population below the poverty line, and global humanitarian funding for the crisis currently meets only 16 percent of the UN’s requested target.

For ordinary Sudanese who have lived through three years of violence, the toll has been crippling. “People are exhausted,” Amgad Ahmed, a 42-year-old resident of Omdurman, Khartoum’s twin city, told Agence France-Presse. “Three years of war have worn people down. We have lost work, savings and any sense of stability.”

A fragile veneer of normality has begun to emerge in Khartoum after the Sudanese army retook full control of the capital last year. Roughly 1.7 million displaced residents have returned to the city, markets have reopened, traffic has returned to long-deserted streets, and national secondary school exams were held this week for the first time after two years of widespread school closures. But visible scars of war remain everywhere, and deadly hazards still lurk beneath the tentative recovery: authorities are still working slowly to clear tens of thousands of unexploded ordnance left scattered across the city by years of urban combat.

Al-Basheer Babker al-Basheer, a 41-year-old Sudanese who returned to Khartoum twice this year after three years away, said the capital will require decades to fully recover from the destruction. “I was happy to come back,” he said. “But when I went into the city centre, it was heartbreaking. The road to the university where I studied is no longer the same. The walls are black. They are not the same places we used to go to.”

The Berlin conference brings together more than 80 participants, including foreign government representatives, international aid agencies, and Sudanese civil society groups, marking the third high-level international donor gathering for Sudan after conferences hosted by London and Paris over the past two years. Organizers hope the new pledges will help scale up life-saving aid across the country, even as the ongoing conflict and lack of progress on peace leave the long-term future of the world’s third-poorest nation deeply uncertain.

Just hours after Lebanon and Israel reached an agreement to begin direct negotiations in Washington, fresh military violence upended the region on Wednesday, bringing new volatility to a conflict that continues to ripple across global energy markets and international diplomacy.

Israeli military forces carried out two targeted strikes on vehicles in southern Lebanon, Lebanese state media confirmed Wednesday. One strike hit a vehicle in the coastal town of Saadiyat, while the second targeted a car on the coastal highway in nearby Jiyeh, located roughly 12 miles south of Beirut and outside the traditional strongholds of the Iran-aligned militant group Hezbollah. In response to the strikes, Hezbollah launched approximately 30 rocket projectiles toward northern Israeli territory starting in the early hours of Wednesday, an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson confirmed to Agence France-Presse. Israeli authorities also issued a new mandatory evacuation order for civilian residents in southern Lebanon, escalating warnings ahead of anticipated further clashes.

The fresh outbreak of violence came as diplomatic activity surrounding the broader Middle East conflict accelerated across multiple fronts. Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif launched a four-day shuttle diplomacy tour Wednesday, with stops planned in Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey, as regional powers position themselves ahead of potential new peace negotiations between the United States and Iran.

In a major development that lifted global market sentiment, former U.S. President Donald Trump announced Wednesday that a second round of direct talks between U.S. and Iranian negotiators could begin within 48 hours, stoking widespread optimism that a breakthrough deal could reopen the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz, through which roughly a fifth of global oil supplies pass daily. Trump reinforced that optimistic tone in an interview with Fox Business Network’s *Mornings with Maria*, set to air Wednesday, saying the open conflict with Iran is “very close to being over.”

Market indicators reacted immediately to the news of upcoming talks: South Korea’s Kospi index surged more than 2%, ending the trading session just hundreds of points away from its all-time record high, while major European indices in London and Frankfurt held steady. Crude oil prices, which have spiked repeatedly amid conflict-related supply disruptions, dropped for a second consecutive session, with West Texas Intermediate crude trading at approximately $90.39 per barrel and Brent North Sea crude settling at $94.62 per barrel.

Despite the upbeat rhetoric around upcoming negotiations, U.S. authorities have moved to maintain harsh economic pressure on Tehran. U.S. Central Command confirmed that American naval forces have “completely halted economic trade going into and out of Iran by sea,” though maritime tracking data from Tuesday showed multiple commercial vessels that recently docked at Iranian ports passing through the Strait of Hormuz in open defiance of the U.S. naval blockade. Industry analysts note that Trump’s blockade strategy targets not just Iranian oil export revenue, but also aims to pressure China — Iran’s largest crude oil customer — to compel Tehran to reopen the critical chokepoint.

The U.S. Treasury Department announced Tuesday it will not extend a temporary sanctions waiver that allowed for the sale of Iranian oil already held in storage tankers at sea, a measure originally introduced to cushion global supply shocks caused by the conflict. The short-term authorization is set to expire in coming days and will not be renewed, the department confirmed, adding that it remains committed to “maintaining maximum pressure” on the Iranian government.

U.S. Vice President JD Vance laid out the core U.S. negotiating position Wednesday during an event hosted by conservative advocacy group Turning Point USA, saying Trump has offered Iran a clear grand bargain: Tehran will be allowed to rebuild economically and “thrive” if it commits to permanently abandoning its nuclear weapons program. The dispute over Iran’s nuclear activities remains the central sticking point in any potential diplomatic deal; Trump launched the original conflict on the claim that Iran was developing an atomic weapon, a charge Tehran has repeatedly denied. “That’s the kind of Trumpian grand bargain that the president has put on the table. Man, we’re going to keep on negotiating and try to make it happen,” Vance said.

Diplomatic activity is also ramping up in Beijing, where regional and global powers are coordinating positions amid the conflict. Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov this week, Chinese state media reported, as a wave of leaders from conflict-impacted states travel to the Chinese capital for talks. Lavrov told reporters after the meeting that Russia stands ready to “compensate” for any energy shortages China may face if Strait of Hormuz shipping remains disrupted by the ongoing conflict, according to Russian state media reports.

In a separate humanitarian development, Sri Lanka has completed the repatriation of 238 Iranian sailors who were stranded in the South Asian nation after their vessel was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine in the Indian Ocean on March 4, a Sri Lankan government minister confirmed to AFP.