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China is to raise the retirement age for the first time since 1978, as the world’s second-largest economy faces up to a sharply ageing population that will leave it short of workers.

The country will gradually extend the retirement age for all men from 60 to 63, for women in white-collar jobs from 55 to 58, and for women in blue-collar work from 50 to 55, state-owned news agency Xinhua reported on Friday.

The measures were approved by the standing committee of China’s rubber-stamp parliament on Friday. They will take effect in January and be phased in over 15 years in line with the principle of “small-step adjustments”, Xinhua said.

The U.S. military has announced the sale of billions of dollars of missiles, bombs, and other weapons to Israel in the past year, as the campaign on Gaza grinds on. Now, the Department of Defense is also building aircraft facilities in Israel to accommodate American-made refueling tanker planes, according to newly issued public contracting documents reviewed by The Intercept.

The project includes new construction and upgrades of existing buildings, including one or more hangars, warehouses, and storage facilities, at an Israeli military base in the south of Israel, according to Army Corps of Engineers documents.

At around 7:30 am today, Israeli warplanes bombed a group of Palestinians near a food kiosk in Gaza City’s Al-Shawa Square, killing five people, including a child.

The bombing specifically targeted the area around a food kiosk in the neighbourhood of Al-Tuffah, which is situated between three locations that were deemed safe for administering polio vaccinations.

Based on information gathered by the Euro-Med Monitor field team, the targeted food stall is located in the Tuffah neighbourhood in the east of Gaza City, just a short distance from the safe vaccination centres that have been designated for the Tuffah, Al-Daraj, and Al-Balad neighbourhoods of Gaza City.

From the beginning of the polio vaccination campaign on 1 September, the Israeli army has ignored all calls for a humanitarian truce or a temporary cessation of attacks during vaccination hours. Instead, it has continued its military attacks on all areas of the Gaza Strip, from the north to the south, launching dozens of air raids targeting sites near vaccination centres in the southern, central, and now northern sections of the Strip.

Three forensic experts that reviewed dossier on slain Turkish-American activist say bullet did not appear to have ricocheted off the ground as Israel said

Three separate forensic experts who viewed the autopsy report told Middle East Eye that the damage on Ezgi’s skull and the destruction within suggest that it was a direct hit.

Biden initially issued a muted statement backing the Israeli assessment that the bullet that killed Eygi appeared to have “ricocheted off the ground", but as criticism has grown about the incident and the US response, his administration has become more vocal.

An artist who goes by @tofu_rabbit on X says that the look of Nerf’s Ace of Spades handgun from Bungie's Destiny games came from a commissioned artwork they drew almost a decade ago.

Nerf and Bungie unveiled its newest foam dart gun collaboration on Tuesday featuring a limited edition version of Cayde-6’s iconic “Ace of Spades” blaster from Destiny 2 that is available for purchase on Bungie’s online store. The following morning, @tofu_rabbit posted images comparing Nerf’s newest foam dart launcher to a piece of art they made in 2015 and posted on their DeviantArt page based on the same gun from the game.

Addition: Artists image (from link in article):

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon’s rare move to keep two Navy aircraft carriers in the Middle East over the past several weeks has now ended, as the USS Theodore Roosevelt is heading home, according to US officials.

US commanders in the Middle East have long argued that the presence of a US aircraft carrier and the warships accompanying it has been an effective deterrent in the region, particularly for Iran. Since the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip began last fall, there has been a persistent carrier presence in and around the region — and for short periods they have overlapped to have two of the carriers there at the same time.

The three bombs dropped by Israeli warplanes on displaced people’s tents in southern Gaza left three enormous craters and myriad questions about the use of such big munitions on such a densely populated space.

Twenty-two-year-old Tala Herzallah described to Al Jazeera she how and her family were asleep about 200 metres (220 yards) away and: “Suddenly, everything was turned upside down. “The huge damage the bombs caused made us realise that these were meant for the largest buildings and not for tents made of the weakest materials in the world.”

Al Jazeera’s verification agency Sanad concluded that US-made MK-84 bombs may have been used by Israel against the encampment of displaced families. It based this on analysing the size of craters and footage of bomb fragments from the camp.

The MK-84 is 2,000lb ordnance, and one of the heaviest pieces provided to Israel by the US.

Washington, DC – The United States has imposed new sanctions on Venezuelan judicial and election officials whom it accuses of helping President Nicolas Maduro certify his controversial election win earlier this year.

The penalties on Thursday targeted the leaders of the National Electoral Council (CNE) and the Supreme Tribunal of Justice (TSJ), as well as other Maduro allies who backed his claim to victory in the July 28 vote.

While the US Treasury Department described the measures as “decisive”, many of the Venezuelan officials sanctioned on Thursday were already under US penalties.

The sanctions, enforced by the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), freeze the individuals’ assets in the US and prohibit Americans from engaging in financial transitions with them.

A Washington Post investigation has found that Eygi was shot more than a half-hour after the height of confrontations in Beita, and some 20 minutes after protesters had moved down the main road — more than 200 yards away from Israeli forces. A Palestinian teenager, who witnesses say was standing about 20 yards from Eygi, was wounded by Israeli fire; the IDF would not say if he was a target.

A photograph taken at 1:21 p.m. shows at least four Israeli soldiers at the top of the hill. Video and photos from the next several minutes show soldiers taking up positions on higher ground — including on the rooftop of Beita resident Ali Maali’s home, and near a military vehicle.

A video filmed at 1:22 p.m. shows the road next to the olive grove. A shot rings out.

“They’re shooting with regular guns!” an activist says off-camera in Japanese. Steven Beck, an audio forensic expert who consulted for the FBI and reviewed the footage for The Post, said the pop heard on the video was consistent with a gunshot — a finding corroborated by a second audio expert, Rob Maher.

A video filmed at 1:29 p.m. shows people loitering at the bottom of the hill; a man stands with his hands on his hips.

“They haven’t shot any more live rounds, no more tear gas, yet,” Chabbott, the American volunteer, says in another video filmed around the same time. For nearly 20 minutes after that, the scene remained relatively calm, Palestinians and volunteers said.

“Gunshot!” an unseen woman can be heard screaming in the background. She pleads for an ambulance. In the olive grove, Helen saw Eygi drop facedown to the ground beside her. The older woman rolled her over. Blood was pouring from the left side of Eygi’s head, she said, and she was unresponsive.

But one of the soldiers on the roof was “training his gun in our direction,” recalled Pollak, who was standing next to a dumpster that had been moved into the middle of the road at the bottom of the hill. He and other activists said he was the closest person to Israeli troops at the time, just over 200 yards away; Eygi was around 30 yards farther.

The IDF’s initial inquiry into Eygi’s death “found that it is highly likely that she was hit indirectly and unintentionally by IDF fire which was not aimed at her, but aimed at the key instigator of the riot.”

Yet the shots fired toward the activists, including the one that claimed Eygi’s life, came some 20 minutes after they had retreated to the bottom of the hill — more than two football fields away from the nearest Israeli soldiers.