– moves that have drawn widespread criticism.

Kathleen Farley, vice president of litigation for the Chamber of Progress, a group backed by Apple and Alphabet, said the Texas law is likely to face legal challenges on First Amendment grounds.“A big path for challenge is that it burdens adult speech in attempting to regulate children’s speech,” Farley told the Reuters news agency in an interview on Tuesday. “I would say there are arguments that this is a content-based regulation singling out digital communication.”

Child online safety groups that backed the Texas bill have also long argued for app store age verification, saying it is the only way to give parents effective control over children’s use of technology.“The problem is that self-regulation in the digital marketplace has failed, where app stores have just prioritised the profit over safety and rights of children and families,” Casey Stefanski, executive director for the Digital Childhood Alliance, told Reuters.Apple and Google opposed the Texas bill, saying it imposes blanket requirements to share age data with all apps, even when those apps are uncontroversial.

“If enacted, app marketplaces will be required to collect and keep sensitive personal identifying information for every Texan who wants to download an app, even if it’s an app that simply provides weather updates or sports scores,” Apple said in a statement.Google and Apple each have their own proposal that involves sharing age range data only with apps that require it, rather than all apps.

“We see a role for legislation here,” Kareem Ghanem, senior director of government affairs and public policy at Google, told Reuters.

“It’s just got to be done in the right way, and it’s got to hold the feet of [Meta CEO Mark] Zuckerberg and the social media companies to the fire because it’s the harm to kids and teens on those sites that’s really inspired people to take a closer look here and see how we can all do better.”“The humanitarian blockade is creating a situation that is untenable on the ground,” Macron said at a joint news conference alongside Singapore’s Prime Minister Lawrence Wong.

“If there is no response in the coming hours and days in line with the humanitarian situation, we will have to harden our collective position,” he added, suggesting that France may consider applying sanctions against Israeli settlers.Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs lashed out later in the day, saying, “The facts do not interest Macron.”

The ministry claimed that there was no humanitarian blockade on Gaza and that asserting the contrary was “a blatant lie”, despite UN top officials and international organisations having repeatedly stated that Israel has blockaded all entry of aid since March 2.Israel recently said it was bowing to international pressure and would allow “minimal” supplies of food and medicine into Gaza, on which it continues to wage an intense military assault.