Welcome back from the weekend! Here's what people will be taking about on Monday.
1. Israel maintains that its forces were not responsible for 16 Palestinians who were killed last Thursday when a United Nations school in Gaza came under fire. An Israeli military spokesman "acknowledged that an errant mortar round fired by Israeli troops had exploded in the school’s courtyard that afternoon,"The New York Times reports, "but said the yard had been empty at the time."
2. Cease-fire talks have stalled as fighting between Israel and Hamas enters its fourth week. A poll by an Israeli television news station found that 87% of respondents wanted "Israel to continue the operation until Hamas was toppled,"Reuters reports. A separate poll from "The Jerusalem Post" found that more than 85% of Israel's majority Jews are against calling a truce.
3. Boko Haram, the militant group that abducted 200 Nigerian schoolgirls in April, has kidnapped the wife of Cameroon's vice prime minister. Three others were also killed in the attack on Kolofata, a northern town in Cameroon.
4. Argentina is heading for a default on Wednesday unless it can make a $539 million interest payment to bondholders. This would mark the country's second default in three years, The Wall Street Journal reports.
5. International efforts to investigate the crash site in eastern Ukraine where a Malaysian airliner was shot down have been hampered as fighting between Ukrainian troops and pro-Russian rebels near the region reaches new levels. Australian and Dutch police will try to gain access on Monday, Reuters says.
6. Two American doctors died from Ebola on Sunday. Both contracted the deadly virus while working to combat one of the largest ever outbreaks in West Africa.
7. China criticized the U.S. on Monday for applying new tariffs on Chinese solar products following allegations that panels and cells were being sold too cheaply to the American consumer. The unconfirmed move places anti-dumping duties as high as 165.05% on solar products from China.
8. The wrecked Costa Concordia will be broken up into scrap after returning on Sunday to the Italian Port of Genoa, the same port where the the cruise ship launched nine years ago. It took officials nearly two years to refloat and remove the liner after it smashed into rocks off the coast of Giglio
9. McDonald's restaurants in China are facing a Big Mac and Chicken McNugget shortage after the company said it would suspend sales of all processed foods from its Shanghai supplier, which was shut down over allegations of improper meat handling. Employees at one Beijing location could only offer pies, hash browns, fries, drinks, and ice cream, CNN Money reports.
10. One person was killed and at least seven other injured when lightning struck Venice beach in Los Angeles. “It went down my whole side of my right body, and my calves sort of locked up, and I fell over,” a beach-goer told the The Washington Post. “I looked up and everybody else was, you know, falling over.
A finally...
Oregon police say an unsupervised 3-year-old boy climbed into a Jeep, knocking it out of gear and into the side of a house down the street, the Associated Press reports. After the accident, police found the boy back at his home watching cartoons.