France becomes first EU country to officially ban social media for children
NewsFeed France will ban social media for under-15s from September 1, following the UK and Australia’s moves toward blanket restrictions. However, the approach remains highly contested, with research suggesting such bans may be ineffective as young users learn to bypass restrictions. Published On 22 Jul 2026 Adblock test (Why?)
Palestine weekly: Ahead of elections, Israel doubles down on attacks
On July 17, hours after Israel’s parliament formally dissolved itself and set an October 27 election date, an Israeli drone struck a funeral procession outside Ahmad Yassin Mosque in the Nuseirat refugee camp, killing at least eight mourners as they buried a man killed hours earlier. The UN human rights office said Israeli attacks have killed at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women, between July 13 and 20, warning that the pattern “raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza”. Recommended Stories list of 3 items list 1 of 3US defence chief Hegseth puts Iran war cost at $37.5bn so far list 2 of 3How will Khalil al-Hayya’s leadership shape Hamas? list 3 of 3Can mediators broker a truce between the US and Iran? end of list In the same week, Israel’s military carried out daily killings, ministers raced to pass legislation before parliament dissolved, the Civil Administration issued demolition and land-seizure orders, and settlers attacked Palestinians with near-total impunity. All of this points towards an unrelenting few months of violence and dispossession before elections take place. A mass-casualty week in Gaza Beyond the Nuseirat funeral strike, the week’s Gaza toll included a string of air attacks on homes and displaced families. On July 15, an Israeli helicopter attack killed Omar Sami Abu Qassem, his wife Asmaa Ghazi and their six-year-old daughter Habiba in Deir el-Balah; their three-year-old son was the only survivor. On July 18, an Israeli warplane struck a residential building in Gaza City’s Nassr neighbourhood without warning, killing Adham Nasman, his wife Marwa and three of their children; a third child survived only because he was not home. Israel claimed that Nasman was a Hamas commander – the group has not issued a statement confirming that. A day later, Rida Abu Asr was killed by Israeli artillery shelling in Zeitoun, one of several people killed in the neighbourhood that day as tanks advanced towards Dawla Junction, according to the Palestinian news agency Wafa. Israeli strikes also killed seven police officers, including the director of Jabalia’s police station, in an attack on a checkpoint on July 14, and repeatedly hit tents sheltering displaced families in al-Mawasi throughout the week, according to Wafa. Then, an overnight Israeli air attack on July 21 killed Firas al-Masri, his wife Salsabeel and their four children as they slept in Gaza City, according to medical officials. Amid this string of mass-casualty attacks, Israel’s Defence Minister Israel Katz told Channel 14, while touring northern Gaza, he felt satisfaction from the scenes of destruction, which he said resulted from a deliberate Israeli policy. He added that Israel was studying the establishment of three military-style settlement outposts in northern Gaza. Katz’s statements coincided with a march on Sunday by the Nachala settler movement to the Gaza border fence, in which right-wing Israelis – accompanied by more than a dozen ministers and legislators, including National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and endorsed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party – called for the re-establishment of settlements inside Gaza. On the other side of the fence, the Israeli-controlled “Yellow Line” has continued expanding westward, with new blocks placed near al-Qarara and reaching the Abu Miri roundabout east of Deir el-Balah, forcing hundreds more families to flee Israel’s advance, according to local sources. Amid such developments, the humanitarian picture in Gaza, laid out in the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs’ (OCHA) July 16 situation report, continues to deteriorate. Sixty-three percent of households in Gaza now access less than six litres of drinking water a day, while 60 percent live within 10 metres of exposed sewage. Livestock feed imports have been blocked for more than a month, the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) confirmed, tripling barley prices and threatening a die-off in August that would reverse the modest herd recovery recorded between October 2025 and May 2026. Israeli settler roads open – and Palestinian gates close The escalation in Gaza parallelled a sharpening campaign to create “facts on the ground” across the occupied West Bank. This past week, the Israeli security cabinet approved 1.3 billion shekels ($426.3m) to establish 34 new illegal settlements. On July 15, it approved an additional 1.075 billion shekels ($352.5m) for settler road infrastructure, Wafa reported, which will support much of the new settlements and outposts reaching far-flung areas of the West Bank. Smotrich called the decision a “settlement and security revolution”, aiming to establish more than 100 settlements and 160 agricultural and pastoral outposts. That funding framework provided the context for this week’s wave of demolitions, whose stated purpose has moved beyond permit enforcement to clearing land for the proliferating settlement infrastructure campaign. Israel’s Crimson Thread barrier project continued with the systematic destruction of Palestinian water infrastructure in the northern Jordan Valley, with Israeli forces and settlers destroying three artesian wells near Atuf, confiscating pumps and generators, and severing roughly 800 metres of pipeline serving 4,500 dunams (4.5 square kilometres) of farmland, according to the Atuf Village Council. In Masafer Yatta, the Wall and Settlement Resistance Commission has tied a wave of demolition and stop-work orders in Ad-Deirat and Ar Rifaiyya directly to a planned settlement road to run alongside Route 356 – a project that puts three of five local schools serving 700 children at risk, including Ar Rifaiyya’s, which lost a court appeal against demolition on July 8. Israeli authorities also issued a military order seizing land in Jaba, north of occupied East Jerusalem, for what Palestinian officials say is another settlement road linking Route 60 to the Nabi Yaqub settlement – the latest in a string of military seizure orders used to facilitate settlement infrastructure. The same infrastructure drive has increasingly shaped the geography of violence in the occupied West Bank, including in al-Mughayyir, northeast of Ramallah, where 17-year-old national youth football player Fadi al-Naasan died on July 18 of wounds from a settler-and-army raid on July 11 –
More than 140 dead, missing on refugee boat stranded off Mauritania
UN says a boat carrying refugees and migrants from Africa drifted for 25 days before arriving at a port with dead and living on board. At least 143 refugees and migrants are dead or missing from a single boat off the coast of Mauritania that was trying to reach Europe, the United Nations refugee agency, UNHCR, says. The agency said on Tuesday that it was “extremely saddened” by the deaths, which came despite three rescue operations off Mauritania between July 14 and 18 that pulled 387 people to safety from other stranded boats. Recommended Stories list of 2 items list 1 of 2‘We can’t go out’: Migrants hide as Mauritania presses deportation campaign list 2 of 2EU-backed migrant crackdowns in Mauritania fuel fear and deportations end of list The vessel had set off from Bafuloto in The Gambia and was rescued on July 18 after 25 days adrift, carrying bodies and 38 survivors when it reached the port of Nouadhibou, the UNHCR said. “Among the survivors of… that ship were two children who have lost all their family members during the journey, and they are recovering in hospital,” UNHCR spokesperson Matt Saltmarsh told reporters in Geneva. Another person died on another vessel that disembarked in Mauritania on July 14. The dead were from sub-Saharan African countries, he said, without giving details of how they died. Mauritania’s coastguard put the number missing at 122, saying the boat ran out of fuel after leaving The Gambia with 160 people on board. The UNHCR called the route to the Canary Islands “one of the world’s deadliest”, citing long distances and overcrowded, unseaworthy boats, and urged more access to education and jobs to offer alternatives to the crossings. Mauritania is a major departure point on the Atlantic route, where tens of thousands attempt to reach the Canary Islands, part of Spain, each year. Arrivals have fallen sharply under a European Union-funded crackdown, in which Mauritanian authorities have deported thousands of asylum seekers and migrants and pushed departures to longer, deadlier journeys from further down the coast. Adblock test (Why?)
‘There is no safe place’: Israeli attack kills family of six in Gaza
Israeli forces launch regular attacks on Gaza despite a US-backed ‘ceasefire’ agreed in October. An Israeli air strike has killed a man, his wife and their four children in Gaza City in the latest of Israel’s frequent deadly attacks on Palestinians in the devastated enclave, which have continued despite a US-backed “ceasefire” signed more than nine months ago. The strike hit the al-Masri family home in the Sabra neighbourhood on Tuesday, killing Firas and Salsabeel al-Masri and their three daughters and son as the family was sleeping, health officials said. Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4MSF demands Israel release detained Palestinian healthcare workers list 2 of 4‘We just want to live’: Palestinians in Gaza react to Hamas election list 3 of 4Five Palestinians killed in fire after Israeli attack in Gaza list 4 of 4Can AI systems make moral decisions in war? end of list The deaths add to a toll of more than 1,150 Palestinians, mostly civilians, killed by Israeli strikes since the “ceasefire” was agreed. The truce has halted full-scale fighting but not the near-daily Israeli strikes that have continued since. The Israeli military confirmed the strike, saying it was targeting a Hamas member and was still looking into the results of the attack. A video obtained by the Reuters news agency showed rescue workers struggling to put out fires in the house and bring out bodies in white shrouds. Firas al-Masri’s father, Abu Yusuf al-Masri, told Reuters the explosion took place as the family was asleep. “We were unable to save our grandchildren and children from the flames and the devastation. Around five or six were martyred, most of them children and women, without mercy and without any prior warning,” he said, standing outside the family house. “There is no relative calm, and there is no safe place at all,” the grey-bearded man added. Mediators – including Egypt, Qatar, Turkiye and the United States – have been trying to advance US President Donald Trump’s plan for ending the conflict in Gaza, which calls for Hamas’s disarmament and Israeli withdrawals, but there has been little sign of progress. The United Nations has condemned the ongoing Israeli strikes on Gaza. “Nine months after the announcement of a ceasefire, still nowhere is safe for Palestinians in Gaza,” UN human rights office spokesman Thameen Al-Kheetan told reporters in Geneva on Tuesday. Israeli attacks have killed “at least 57 Palestinians, including six children and eight women,” from July 13 to 20, he said. The figures did not include the al-Masri family. “The killing of civilians in these attacks raises concerns of continuing violations of international humanitarian law, war crimes and other possible atrocity crimes in Gaza,” Al-Kheetan said. “Under international law, deliberately attacking civilians is a war crime.” Adblock test (Why?)
Clashes between police and people protesting Italy arrest death
Clashes between police and people protesting Italy arrest death NewsFeed Clashes broke out between Italian police and protesters in Bologna during a demonstration held after a Moroccan-born man died in police custody on Monday. 42-year-old Abderrahim Fakir died while being held down by two police officers. Published On 21 Jul 2026 Adblock test (Why?)
India tunnel collapse at a hydropower project kills 10 as 17 remain missing
Rescue teams have been struggling to reach the 17 people trapped because of hazardous conditions inside the tunnel. At least 10 people have died and 17 others remain missing after a suspected gas explosion triggered the collapse of a tunnel under construction at a hydropower project in India’s northeastern state of Sikkim, officials said. The blast ripped through the tunnel on Monday at Samardung village, near the border with Bhutan and Tibet in the Himalayas, officials said. Recommended Stories list of 4 items list 1 of 4At least six feared dead after bridge collapses in northern India list 2 of 4Police attack Cockroach activists as thousands march on Indian parliament list 3 of 4‘Now or never’: Students defy Delhi lockdown to march on India’s parliament list 4 of 4Data breach reportedly targets India’s Kudankulam nuclear power plant end of list Multiple workers were carrying out construction projects on the 500-megawatt project for the state-owned National Hydroelectric Power Corporation (NHPC) on the Teesta River. Survivors told authorities they heard a loud explosion before debris came crashing through the tunnel, trapping dozens inside. NHPC said in a statement that a sudden burst of gas suspected to be methane trapped or embedded in rocks in the tunnel caused the blast. As news of the accident spread, six officials from the NHPC entered the tunnel to assist in rescue efforts but became trapped themselves, officials said. “We have recovered 10 bodies so far, and 17 others are feared trapped,” local police chief Sonam Dolma said. Rescue teams, including the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF), have been struggling to reach those trapped because of hazardous conditions inside the tunnel, where toxic gases have accumulated. “We found toxic gases such as methane, carbon monoxide and hydrogen sulphide inside the tunnel,” NDRF official Nitin Kumar told reporters at the scene. He said rescuers were using specialised breathing equipment as they tried to search for survivors amid dangerous air conditions. Construction accidents are not uncommon in India, especially in the Himalayan region, where seismic activity and unpredictable underground conditions make tunnel projects especially risky. In 2023, 41 workers were trapped for 17 days before being rescued after a section of a tunnel in northern Uttarakhand state collapsed. Experts told AP that the Teesta River basin, where the hydropower project is being built, lies in a seismically active region marked by young, fragile rock formations riddled with fractures and underground pockets that can trap and accumulate gases, triggering explosions. Adblock test (Why?)
Chaos in India as ‘Cockroach activists’ march on parliament
NewsFeed Chaos erupted outside India’s parliament as thousands attempted to storm the building, amid growing protests challenging Modi’s government. The ‘Cockroach Janta Party’ began as a satirical online movement. Now it’s become something far bigger. Al Jazeera’s @avawarrinerr explains. Published On 20 Jul 2026 Adblock test (Why?)
What are the new British Prime Minister’s biggest challenges?
NewsFeed Britain has a new Prime Minister: Andy Burnham. The former Mayor of Manchester must now unite a nation divided politically, economically, & socially. Will he take a firm stance on the genocide in Gaza, or focus on domestic challenges? Al Jazeera’s Antoine Allen explains. Published On 20 Jul 2026 Adblock test (Why?)
Argentina, minus Messi, return home after World Cup final heartbreak
Thousands wait to greet the team, who return without captain Messi and a few other players after the World Cup. Thousands of Argentinians lined up to welcome their football team, who returned without iconic captain Lionel Messi and a few other players after their loss to Spain in the World Cup final in the United States. The Argentinian Football Association (AFA) said on Monday that some squad members would not be on the flight, and Messi was not seen descending from the aircraft in images broadcast on local television. Coach Lionel Scaloni and the rest of the team were welcomed with a red carpet outside the aircraft and a military band. Thousands of fans braved the cold and the rain, waiting outside the AFA training complex near the Ezeiza international airport to welcome home the players, draped in flags and holding blue-and-white umbrellas to shield them from the drizzle. It was not the homecoming Argentinians had hoped for, four years after millions filled the streets to celebrate their team’s victory in 2022, but many turned out to thank the team for their performance. A fan waves a flag bearing images of Messi [Luis Robayo/AFP] ‘Thank you to Messi’ “Argentinians will celebrate anyway,” said Marga Ledezma, 36, who thanked Messi for “all the years he made us happy”, urging him not to quit playing for Argentina. Argentina lost 1-0 to Spain, failing to win back-to-back World Cups in a match that has been criticised for a plethora of fouls and displays of poor sportsmanship from La Albiceleste. “I think they criticise us because we know what it’s like to suffer, that we get up, we fall down again, and we keep going,” said Ledezma. Many fans highlighted that the real victory for Argentina was the 2-1 semifinal win over England, played against the backdrop of a lingering dispute between the countries over the sovereignty of the Falkland Islands. “This team united us all, and we should be grateful for that. We will always be there for them, rain or shine. I would say thank you to Messi, and that he gave it his all,” said Leonardo Barrientos, 36, who works in a textile workshop. Maria Ortiz, 28, came to welcome the team with her two-year-old, and said that Spain “deserved the win” but she was “happy for what the team gave us”. While crestfallen after the loss, thousands of Argentinians headed to the traditional celebration point at the Obelisk in Buenos Aires, where they partied for hours on Sunday evening, with fireworks and gratitude for their team. Late at night, brief clashes broke out at the monument, and police used water cannon, tear gas, and rubber bullets to disperse revellers. Fifteen people were detained, according to police sources. Adblock test (Why?)
Infantino tries to usher Trump away as Spain lift World Cup
Skip linksSkip to Content Live Navigation menu News Africa Asia US & Canada Latin America Europe Asia Pacific World Cup Middle East Explained Opinion Video Features Economy Sport Human Rights Climate Crisis Investigations Interactives In Pictures Science & Technology Podcasts Travel Sponsored Content Live Navigation menu Trending US-Israel war on Iran World Cup 2026 Tracking Israel’s ceasefire violations Donald Trump Infantino tries to usher Trump away as Spain lift World Cup NewsFeed FIFA President Gianni Infantino attempted to usher Donald Trump to move away from the stage as Spain’s team lifted the World Cup trophy on Sunday. Published On 20 Jul 2026 Adblock test (Why?)