Category World News

After it became clear that the online fashion store Shein was selling sex dolls with a disturbingly “childlike” appearance, the French authorities have warned them to restrict access to the Chinese retailer.

Shein, which claimed the dolls were being sold by third-party sellers on its website, plans to open its first brick-and-mortar store this week inside BHV, Paris’s most upscale department store.

The Directorate General for Competition, Consumer Affairs, and Fraud Control (DGCCRF), France’s consumer watchdog, announced last week that it had found the dolls on Shein’s website, noting that their descriptions “left no doubt about their “paedophilic nature.”

Shein received a 40 million euro fine from the watchdog for “deceptive” pricing practices and excessive environmental reporting.

The government has the right to request that access to the French market be prohibited, according to France’s economy minister Roland Lescure, who spoke to BFM TV on Monday.

The sale of the dolls on Shein’s platform was deemed inappropriate by Frederic Merlin, president of Societe des Grands Magasins, the company’s owner.

Shein has been criticized for its factory working conditions and the negative effects of cheap, “throwaway” fashion products, aside from the sex-doll scandal.

Describe Shein.

Shein, which was founded in China in 2012 and is now based in Singapore, is a privately held company led by its founder and CEO, Chris Xu, and has grown to be a global leader in “fast fashion,” a process that allows clothes to be produced at low prices and quickly adapt to new trends.

The online retailer, which has about 6, 000 clothing factories in China, primarily sells products via mobile apps and ships products to more than 150 nations. Shein’s global sales increased by 20% from the prior year to reach a record high of almost 38 billion Singapore dollars (US $29 billion).

Shein will debut its first permanent location&nbsp on Wednesday inside the BHV department store in the posh Marais neighborhood, despite having previously operated pop-up shops. However, more than 100 000 people have signed a French petition opposing the opening.

What are Shein’s main criticisms?

Shein has a shaky work and environmental record despite having a global business and having numerous investigations that have revealed troubling practices. A Shein factory worker was working up to 75 hours per week as of 2022, according to a Channel 4 investigation.

This was still the case two years later, according to a 2024 investigation by the advocacy group Public Eye in Switzerland.

Despite the anonymity of the report, Reuters reported that two suppliers of the company’s fashion chain were employing children under the age of 16, despite the fact that it didn’t disclose who the suppliers were or where they were based.

Shein violated fundamental standards for working conditions and human rights, according to another report released by the non-profit World Benchmarking Alliance for 2024.

Shein’s supply chain mapping (identifying factories along the supply chain) was incomplete, according to the report, which reduced Shein’s ability to disclose her working conditions.

Up to 35, 000 pieces of finished clothing are produced each day in Shein factories, which use a lot of synthetic fibers, high water and energy costs, and produce a lot of textile waste.

According to the environmental non-profit Changing Markets Foundation, the manufacturers use about the same amount of carbon dioxide as 180 coal-fired power plants due to their high use of virgin polyester, a synthetic fibre made from petroleum-based products.

The DGCCRF discovered that Shein had misled French customers about price reductions advertised on its website in May of this year, following a year-long investigation into Shein’s business practices between 2022 and 2023.

Shein accepted the fast-fashion giant’s 40 million euros ($46.9 million) fine from the French government.

How has Shein’s arrival in other French fashion houses affected other brands?

In protest, several French fashion houses have banned their merchandise from the BHV department store. There would be no sense being sold in the same store as Shein, co-founder of French footwear brand Odaje, Guillaume Alcan, Le Monde reported.

One week after Shein’s arrival was announced, on October 1, a French bank pulled out of negotiations to purchase the BHV building. Additionally, Paris City Hall blocked plans for a rugby stadium in Paris that would feature the BHV logo.

In another instance, Disneyland Paris halted plans to open a Christmas pop-up shop in BHV and stopped creating window displays for the holiday season, claiming that “conditions were no longer in place” to “calmly hold Christmas events” there.

Some BHV employees have also carried out strikes and protests on the streets recently.

What has Shein said in response to the “sex doll” controversy?

Authorities are empowered by French law to remove illegal content from online platforms, including images of children being sexually abused. The government may impose a ban on access to internet addresses on service providers and search engines if websites don’t comply.

The DGCCRF, the consumer watchdog in France, issued a formal notice on November 1st instructing Shein to take urgent corrective steps to remove the sex-doll listings from its website or be completely outlawed from the French market.

Shein responded by releasing a statement in response, stating that as a precaution, Shein had temporarily removed the “adult products” category from its website and had temporarily removed all of its “adult products” categories. Additionally, it stated that an internal investigation had been launched into its product-screening practices.

Executive Chairman Donald Tang stated that Shein’s commitment to combating child exploitation is non-negotiable. He claimed that the listings were from “third-party sellers,” but he made no mention of which third parties or their locations. He did say, “I take this personally. Our foundation is based on trust, and we won’t tolerate any acts that go against it.

However, Shein’s actions were insufficient, according to the child-protection NGO Mouv ‘Enfants, which advocates for the end of child violence. It staged a protest on Monday in Paris’s BHV shopping complex.

The company will continue to work as a cofounder of Mouv ‘Enfants as long as these dolls are available anywhere in the world, according to Arnaud Gallais, who cofounded the company.

Are French protests against Shein also motivated by its “outsider” status?

Shein’s protests don’t just revolve around ethics. They are also tied to Parisian retailers’ worries about the economy, who are renowned for their devotion to the past and their craftsmanship.

Therefore, there is a concern that international competition, particularly “fast-fashion” retailers, may outperform domestic businesses that uphold these values.

To put an end to the war, Israel was agreed to a ceasefire, but that hasn’t stopped its attacks. Four people were killed in an air attack on Sunday. A motorcyclist was killed by another Israeli attack on Friday before that. Additionally, at least one person was killed by Israeli warplanes on October 17.

Israel has also carried out attacks in Gaza, many of which were much more deadly than those described above, in the few weeks since a ceasefire started on October 10.

Instead, Israel carried out the attacks in Lebanon, which occurred a year after Israel and Hezbollah established a ceasefire. Despite that ceasefire, Israel has continued to attack locations all over Lebanon frequently, much to the chagrin of the Lebanese people and government.

Even if a ceasefire is declared in place, Israel asserts that it has the right to carry out attacks in Lebanon until Hezbollah completely disarms.

According to analysts, Israel is “Lebanonizing” Gaza by officially ending the war with its far superior military might, which grants it the right to launch attacks whenever it wants for an indefinite period. The attacks in Gaza have so far caused at least 236 Palestinians to die and 600 others to hurt.

According to Rob Geist Pinfold, a King’s College London scholar of international security, “They [Israelis] don’t want to resolve the conflict.” The new norm is “war.”

Relatives to the post-October 7 attacks

Prior to Israel’s start of its war on Gaza on October 7, 2023, it was thought that organizations like Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon had some sort of deterrent against Israeli aggression.

According to Pinfold, “Before October 7 [2023], there was a belief that Israel could not have a long or protracted war.” Its society and economy made it a “country that couldn’t function”

Israel has launched a perpetual war, attacking various targets around the Middle East even after ceasefire agreements have been reached, but since the attacks on October 7 by Hamas and other Palestinian groups, which killed 1, 139 people in Israel and held more than 200 captive.

Lebanon is the most obvious example of a ceasefire that Israel repeatedly violated by continuing to attack in spite of it, which was signed on November 27, 2024.

If the Lebanese government didn’t do more to disarm Hezbollah, which had been severely weakened in the conflict with Israel, most notably losing its long-time leader Hassan Nasrallah, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu warned on Sunday that the Israeli military might launch further action.

According to a statement from Netanyahu’s office, “We will not allow Lebanon to become a renewed front against us, and we will act as necessary.”

Many in Lebanon are concerned about a return to the frequent attacks that occurred before the first anniversary of the ceasefire as a result of the threats. The ceasefire has never been properly implemented, though for many in the nation, especially those in the south, where air raids and other attacks have been persisted for the past year.

Abbas Fakih, a journalist from Nabatieh in southern Lebanon, told Al Jazeera, “This war is always here.”

You can’t visit [it] because you will be targeted, if you’re from a border village. Anybody can be targeted at any time.

Gaza’s “Libertization” is described as “landmarking.”

With the current status quo, Israel can almost certainly strike almost anywhere in the region. Israel has been accused of attacking Tunisia without any legal action after hitting Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, and Yemen. A red line appeared to have been crossed when Israel struck Qatar, with the US obliging Netanyahu to apologize.

Israel’s attacks in particular have been ongoing for a year, with little international condemnation, with those statements typically only coming out when Israel attacked the UN peacekeepers. Despite its commitments under the original agreement, Israel has also failed to withdraw its troops from at least five locations inside Lebanon. Some analysts in Gaza think that this pattern may be occurring because Israel appears to be placing its troops farther away from the Strip than originally anticipated.

However, despite the occasional condemnation, neither the US nor the rest of the world have made an effort to hold Israel accountable for violating the ceasefire with Lebanon.

Hezbollah only responded to one attack in the past year when Israel attacked. In response to numerous ceasefire violations, Hezbollah launched an attack on an Israeli military base in December. Israel did not cause any casualties in Lebanon, but it did kill 11 people, including a state security officer, with force.

According to some analysts, Israel now wants to rekindle the situation in Gaza, where it unilaterally dictates what constitutes a ceasefire violation. In this situation, Israel has the freedom to launch an attack on Gaza at will, and any Hamas or other Palestinian organization response will lead to an Israeli uprising.

In an interview with the Arab Center Washington DC on October 29, Mustafa Barghouti, the Palestinian National Initiative’s secretary-general, said, “Netanyahu knows very well that there is no excuse for his air strikes today. However, it is clear he is trying to create a new situation in Gaza where there is no war and no peace.” No full-fledged war, but just constant Israeli military assaults, as he does in Lebanon.

Although the comparison to Lebanon is recent, according to Chris Osieck, a freelance researcher who has worked on investigations for Forensic Architecture and Bellingcat on Palestine and Israel, there are similarities.

According to Osieck, who spoke to Al Jazeera, “What they’ve been doing historically in al-Khalil and Dawaymeh, as well as Jerusalem,” is what they’ve done in Gaza since the establishment of the state of Israel in 1948.

He claimed that while continuing the genocide against Gaza, the country is “gradually” preventing both the south of the country from rebuilding and the continuation of airstrikes.

This is the new status quo, claim Israeli officials who are close to the Netanyahu administration.

Amit Segal, an Israeli media figure with a strong connection to Netanyahu’s government, stated in an interview with the Ezra Klein podcast that “the]pre-war Lebanonization means your enemy is one inch from your border with their commando division and you trust the legitimacy or international border being sacred. You have military installations a distance from your international border, according to the new Lebanonization, and you can attack when necessary.

You must be where there is danger, according to Segal, the new perspective of Israelis. The main lesson of October 7 is this.

Can we accept the new status quo?

Israel is exercising its military might in its new role as the regional hegemon. Some analysts believe that it has a plan to prevent any kind of economic or military conflict by keeping its neighbors fragile and fracturing.

However, the key is whether this constant war strategy will work.

In a recent article for Foreign Affairs, Marc Lynch, a professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University, wrote that Israel cannot bomb the Middle East to create a stable new order. More than just military prerogatives are required for regional leadership. Other regional powers must also give their consent and cooperation.

The new strategy appears to be to remain deep in the Strip with the military ready to strike in Gaza. Of course, that leaves more land for Palestinian factions to monitor as well as more land for resistance. And everyone involved could lose out on that.

The world is awash with “Gen Z” protests spearheaded by youth. We want hospitals, not stadiums, was a common slogan during the recent protests in Morocco, demonstrating how underfunded programs like health and education are being cut short. The government was ousted in Madagascar as a result of the power and water outages. These protests are rooted in generational frustration, high levels of inequality, and public service deficits, and reflect the social contract being forged between young people and governments.

The Qatar World Summit for Social Development will take place this week. The world’s attention is being drawn to the urgent need to provide all people with access to health, education, social protection, and other essential services at this summit for the first time in 30 years. The most powerful and proven method for creating more equal, fairer societies is through these public services. The summit provides a crucial opportunity to fundamentally alter how public service is delivered, which is at the heart of the reconstruction of a new social contract between angry citizens and their governments.

Unfortunately, the trend is completely incorrect. Oxfam noted that 84 percent of nations have cut funding for education, health, and social protection in 2024. Nine out of ten nations have reacted in one or more areas. All of these areas fall far behind the Sustainable Development Goals of the UN. The Global South is also suffering more as a result of rich country aid cuts. By 2030, cuts to US foreign aid alone could add more than 14 million deaths.

However, the world has a lot of wealth: it is the largest overall. The majority of wealth is held by wealthy people, who hardly ever pay taxes. Since 1995, the global private wealth has increased by $ 34 trillion, or eight times as much as the global public wealth. The justification for taxing this wealth to pay for education, healthcare, and other public services is overwhelming, and Spain and Brazil’s leadership has given it a long-overdue boost.

In what has been called an “inheritance,” $70 trillion will be passed down from the wealthy to their children over the course of ten years, cementing inequality into the next generation. Meanwhile, those with sufficient funds are increasingly confined to good education and health. This wastes a generation’s talent. How many future climate scientists and engineers are never even able to graduate from high school? Children from wealthy families are hundreds of times more likely than those from less fortunate to get into college in many nations. The chances are even lower for girls from less fortunate families. This spreads into resentment and anger, so why is it inevitable?

In response to an ideological commitment to austerity and a shrinking state, the idea of a welfare state is fading away in front of us. Given the abundant evidence that robust welfare systems are essential for reducing inequality, addressing social disadvantage, and rebuilding trust, this is tragic. In contrast, failing to provide these risks causes unrest. While poor or corrupt service delivery lowers trust, improvements in the quality of service delivery increase public trust and satisfaction.

The generation that will no longer patiently wait for traditional party politics to address these issues has demonstrated in the Gen Z protests. They are digitally organizing and acting outside of established institutional channels. If governments don’t act on inequality and improve public services, they run the risk of provoking more protests and uprisings. In this regard, inequality and public service deficits are at their root within the Gen Z uprisings.

The good news is that all of this won’t be unavoidable. There are numerous instances of nations who have reversed the trend. Take Thailand as an example, which has a world-class public healthcare system that is accessible to all citizens. or the free education that has been provided for hundreds of millions of children across Africa. Every government has the power to provide good public services.

Governments should concentrate on promoting public wealth, not private wealth, in order to achieve this. They should reject the “private finance first” policies promoted as a panacea privatization, commercialization, and financialization of essential public services, such as healthcare, education, water, care, and social protection. This is a dangerous “dead end.”

In the fields of pharmaceuticals and healthcare, 49 new billionaires have been born over the past year. Despite this, 1.3 billion people are currently being left homeless by out-of-pocket health expenses, and half of the world’s population is still not covered by essential health services. The richest people, at a high cost, are the only ones who profit from privatized healthcare.

Governments ignore the provision of public services at their own risk, as the Gen Z movements do. They must use classrooms and clinics instead of batons and bullets.

Who: Barcelona vs. Club Brugge
What: Champions League group stage
Where: Jan Breydel Stadium, Brugge, Belgium
When: Wednesday at 9pm (20:00 GMT)
How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 17:00 GMT in advance of our live text commentary stream.

Barcelona are unbeaten at home this season, winning six and drawing one of their seven games at Jan Breydel Stadium, despite being firmly in the mix against Club Brugge.

Although they lost to Atalanta and Bayern Munich, the Belgians still managed to win 4-1 over Monaco earlier in the group stage.

Club Brugge are currently second in the Belgian Pro League, three points clear of league leaders Union Saint-Gilloise, and they won 2-1 at home over Denders over the weekend.

Barcelona have won six Champions League games this season, winning either way against Olympiacos or Newcastle United, to lose 2-1 to Paris Saint-Germain, who are also in the Champions League.

Lamine Yamal also scored early as Barcelona bounced back from their Clasico defeat on Sunday, beating Elche 3-1 at home to reclaim second place in the Spanish league.

Barcelona retaliate

Barcelona lost 2-1 to Real Madrid in the first Clasico of the season to lose, and Ferran Torres and Marcus Rashford both scored against Elche.

After the win over Elche, where Barca were dominant but looked vulnerable, coach Hansi Flick said, “I saw many things we did well, but I also saw some things we didn’t do well.”

The three points were earned because it was a difficult match. We must constantly improve. With this victory, we have greater confidence. We must continue, though, because it is another step. We must consider the upcoming games with optimism, and I’m happy.

Flick wants Rashford to exhibit more clinical behavior.

Flick believes the England international should have scored even more goals despite Rashford having already scored six goals in all competitions since joining Barcelona on loan from Manchester United in July.

One or two goals more will be beneficial for him, Flick told reporters, “when you see the chances he has.”

“I’m happy he shows this level of skill, and I’m confident in his ability.” He is a very significant player for both the fans and the club, as well as the teammates.

Rashford acknowledged that his decision-making could be improved.

“On the pitch, I just make sure to do the right thing.” I could have had more assists or goals even today. After Elche defeated the team, the 28-year-old said to Spanish media that “sometimes the decision to shoot or pass was wrong”.

Hayen contends that Brugge can’t afford to give Barca the ball.

Nicky Hayen, a 45-year-old coach at Club Brugge, took over as interim manager in the 2023-2024 season. He has since won three titles, including the Belgian Super Cup in 2025 and the Belgian Cup last year.

Last year, Brugge also advanced to the Champions League’s last 16 after being aggregately defeated 6-1 by Aston Villa.

Hayen praised his team’s “ideas and intentions” following the weekend victory over Denders, but claimed that “the quality was not always top-notch.” The Belgian side will need to significantly improve their game in order to defeat Barcelona.

By scoring that third goal, we could have made things easier on ourselves. Additionally, he said, “We gave away some balls, which you should never try to avoid at all costs when you play Barcelona on Wednesday.”

Head-to-head

Only two times have Barca and Club Brugge faced off. Both of Barcelona’s matches, which were in the Champions League group stage, were won.

The last time the two teams met, Barcelona won 1-0 away in Bruges thanks to Juan Riquelme’s goal.

In the previous game at Camp Nou, Barca had won by a score of 3-2.

Team news from Club Brugge

Due to a groin injury, former Sunderland and ex-Liverpool keeper Simon Mignolet will miss out, and Ludovit Reis will also miss because of a shoulder issue.

Raphael Onyedika, a midfielder from Nigeria, came off the bench against Denders over the weekend after five weeks of unfitness.

The main attacking trio at Club Brugge, Christos Tzolis, Nicolo Tresoldi, and Carlos Forbs, may have some problems for Barca. Tzolis, a young Greek international winger, has eight goals and eight assists this season, while Tresoldi, a young Greek international, has six goals and three assists to his name.

Before facing Barca, Tresoldi stated that he was anticipating facing one of his heroes.

One of my idols is [Veteran striker Robert] Lewandowski. He stated, “I’m looking forward to playing against him.”

news from the Barcelona team

Important midfielder Pedri is expected to be unavailable until after the November international break due to a muscular issue, while winger Raphinha is still out with a hamstring issue.

Although injury-prone Marc-Andre ter Stegen and Joan Garcia are also sidelined, Barca are fortunate to have the reliable Wojciech Szczesny between the sticks.

Due to a calf issue, center back Andreas Christensen will likely miss Wednesday night and not play for the past two games.

As they recover from injuries and are likely to start as substitutes against Brugge, Lewandowski and playmaker Dani Olmo started some minutes off the bench against Elche.

Starting lineup for Club Brugge was anticipated

Jackers, Sabbe, Ordonez, Meijer, Stankovic, Forbs, Audoor, Vanaken, Tzolis, Tresoldi, and others.

Barcelona’s starting lineup is anticipated