International
Boulos, the housing activist who wants to reconquer São Paulo for the left
Guilherme Boulos, an activist in favor of the right to housing who has advocated occupying abandoned land, will seek this Sunday to become mayor of São Paulo and reconquer the largest city in South America for a left harassed by Bolsonaro.
It is the final stretch of the campaign for the most important municipal election in Brazil and the 42-year-old candidate has just climbed on a podium in front of the imposing City Hall building, in the center.
He wears a neat beard, which gives Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva an air as a young man, and a white shirt in a suit but without a tie, which makes him look like an office worker. An image of boring normality with which he tries to compensate for his past as an activist.
“Many are frightened by my career in social movements. I ask you here for a vote of confidence,” Boulos begins, to the applause of a handful of followers.
Boulos, after São Paulo
The candidate, supported by President Lula, is behind in the polls against the current mayor, Ricardo Nunes, supported by former far-right president Jair Bolsonaro.
He has been the victim of a campaign of hoaxes by the right that accused him, among other things, of snifing cocaine and wanting to invade private property.
Faced with that, he repeats over and over again that he is not a drug addict and that the movement he led only occupied abandoned land of large owners.
His program includes the promise of building 50,000 social housing units in a city whose homeless population has skyrocketed since the pandemic and exceeds 60,000 people.
It also promises to create support points so that app drivers can rest and expand the network of health posts to end the waiting lines.
“How can such a rich city have hungry people? We have neighborhoods with the quality of life of Sweden and others with that of the poorest countries in the world,” he exclaims.
Beginnings in activism
Son of doctors and private school student, Boulos did not seem destined to become the promise of the Brazilian left.
In his teens, however, he asked his parents to move him to a public school, where he set up a student union.
At the age of 19, when he was already studying Philosophy at university, he left home to live in a building occupied by the Homeless Workers Movement, of which he later became a leader.
“When he entered the social movements, it was realized,” Marcos Boulos, father of the candidate and renowned infectious disease specialist, recently told the newspaper Folha de São Paulo.
In politics
From activism he jumped to politics with the Socialism and Freedom Party, with which he tried unsuccessfully to win the Mayor’s Office of São Paulo in 2020. In 2022, he was elected a federal deputy with the second highest vote in the country.
Two years later, the lack of names with traction in the Workers’ Party led Lula to choose him as a candidate for elections that are a warm-up for the 2026 presidential elections.
Cíntia Martins, a 45-year-old volunteer who is on the spot in front of the City Hall, hopes that she will be elected.
“I’ve been following him since before entering politics and I like how he treats the most humble… We know that he is from the real neighborhood, even if he is the son of doctors,” he tells EFE, while waving a campaign flag.
At the end of his speech, Boulos raises his fist, says “until victory, God willing,” and gets into the van with which he will travel the suburbs until the day of the election.
“I’ve already backpacked and I’ll only go home on the weekend,” he says, before closing the door.
International
French Parliament Moves to Approve Social Media Age Limit for Minors
France’s Parliament is expected to approve legislation on Tuesday banning children under the age of 15 from accessing social media platforms, following an agreement reached Monday between lawmakers on the mechanism to enforce the measure.
The initiative is part of President Emmanuel Macron’s broader effort to strengthen online protections for minors and regulate children’s screen time before the end of his second presidential term in May 2027.
“Tomorrow, France will become the first country in Europe to establish a digital age of majority to better protect our children online,” Digital Affairs Minister Anne Le Hénanff said Monday in a post on X.
If approved, the government plans to implement the restriction in September, when students return to school after the summer holidays.
The United Kingdom has already passed similar legislation restricting social media access for users under the age of 16, although that measure is scheduled to take effect in early 2027.
Both the National Assembly, France’s lower house of Parliament, and the Senate are expected to hold final votes on the legislation Tuesday after a joint committee of seven senators and seven lawmakers reached an agreement on the bill’s final wording.
Under the proposed law, children under 15 years old would be prohibited from accessing online social media services, with limited exceptions for certain platforms, including online encyclopedias.
The legislation would make France the first member of the European Union to introduce a nationwide minimum digital age for access to social media platforms, reflecting a growing international movement to strengthen online safeguards for children and teenagers.
International
WHO to Hold New Round of Talks After Slow Progress on Pandemic Accord
Member states of the World Health Organization (WHO) made limited progress during the seventh session of the Intergovernmental Working Group (IGWG) tasked with finalizing a key annex to the global pandemic agreement, prompting negotiators to schedule another round of talks in September.
The session, which opened on July 6 and concluded last week at WHO headquarters in Geneva, focused on drafting and negotiating the annex covering the Pathogen Access and Benefit-Sharing (PABS) System, a central component of the pandemic accord.
Without the completion of the PABS annex, the global pandemic agreement cannot enter into force.
The annex had originally been expected to be finalized before May 2026, but negotiations have progressed more slowly than anticipated.
In a statement, the WHO said member states “advanced negotiations” on the PABS system while acknowledging that additional discussions are required to complete a framework capable of supporting a faster, more effective and more equitable response to future pandemics.
The organization announced that an eighth round of negotiations will take place on September 14.
Despite the limited progress, delegates succeeded in streamlining the draft text and concentrating discussions on several technical issues.
According to the WHO, negotiators focused on the contractual arrangements underpinning the PABS mechanism, the laboratory networks responsible for handling and sharing pathogens and their genetic sequence data, as well as the framework for distributing the benefits generated through the sharing of those pathogens.
The PABS system is considered one of the most important elements of the future pandemic agreement, as it aims to ensure timely access to pathogens for scientific research while establishing fair mechanisms for sharing the benefits derived from vaccines, diagnostics and other medical countermeasures developed during future global health emergencies.
International
Iran Says It Is in “Full-Scale War” as U.S. Launches Ninth Consecutive Night of Airstrikes
Iran declared on Monday that it is facing a “full-scale war” against the United States after Washington carried out another wave of overnight airstrikes, including attacks near a city that hosts one of the country’s nuclear facilities.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said the country must prepare for the consequences of the ongoing conflict, describing the situation as a broad military confrontation.
“The reality is that today the Islamic Republic of Iran is engaged in a full-scale war,” Pezeshkian said in a statement released by the presidency. “We must be realistic and accept the natural consequences of this resistance.”
The latest U.S. strikes marked the ninth consecutive night of military operations, according to the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), which announced the attacks on X.
Since hostilities resumed on July 7, U.S. air operations have expanded well beyond southern Iran, reaching central and northwestern regions of the country, according to local sources.
Local authorities reported that one person was killed and several others injured in Tabriz, in northwestern Iran, more than 1,000 kilometers from the Persian Gulf.
Additional casualties were reported in the nearby city of Urmia, where several people were wounded during separate strikes.
Washington said the attacks targeted military installations. However, Iranian officials accused the United States of striking populated areas, including Bushehr, home to Iran’s only operational nuclear power plant.
Iran also reported that the Darkhovin nuclear facility, which is still under construction, was among the sites hit during the latest attacks.
U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the renewed military campaign was carried out in honor of American service members killed in recent days.
Two U.S. soldiers died on Friday during attacks on a military base in Jordan, while another service member was killed on Sunday during the controlled disposal of unexploded munitions from an Iranian drone in northern Iraq.
According to U.S. figures, 17 American troops have been killed since the conflict began on February 28.
On the Iranian side, the latest official figures released on Friday reported 50 deaths and more than 500 injuries since fighting resumed earlier this month.
A memorandum of understanding signed by Iran and the United States on June 17, which had been intended to pave the way for peace negotiations, collapsed after hostilities resumed over the strategic control of the Strait of Hormuz, one of the world’s most important energy shipping routes.
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