According to the police, thieves stole items estimated to be worth between 10 and 90 million euros ($11. 7 to 105.7 million), according to footage from the vault of the Sparkasse Bank in Gelsenkirchen, Germany. On Tuesday, angry customers gathered outside the bank and demanded answers.
Published On 30 Dec 2025
For breaking its new guidelines for aid organizations working in the Gaza Strip, Israel has announced that it will suspend more than 20 humanitarian organizations, including Doctors Without Borders.
According to Israeli authorities, organizations that were facing bans starting on Thursday didn’t comply with the new requirements for sharing information about their staff, funding, and operations.
list of 4 itemsend of list
The Norwegian Refugee Council, CARE International, the International Rescue Committee, and divisions of major charities like Oxfam and Caritas are other notable organizations that have been affected.
Israel claimed that Doctors Without Borders, which is known by its French name MSF, cooperated with Hamas and that it misrepresented the roles of some staff members.
“Humanitarian assistance is a welcome gift,” the message is clear. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli remarked that the humanitarian frameworks are not being used to fuel terrorism.
The health sector has been targeted and largely destroyed in Gaza, where MSF, one of the largest medical organizations, has said Israel’s decision will have a devastating impact on its work there, which accounts for about 20% of hospital beds and accounts for one-third of births. The organization also refuted Israel’s claims about its workforce.
According to the statement, “MSF would never knowingly employ people engaged in military activity.”
Israel’s rules, according to international organizations, are arbitrary. Israel claimed that 37 organizations that operate in Gaza were preventing renewal of their permits.
Aid organizations provide a range of social services, including education, healthcare, mental health and disability services, and food distribution.
The decision by Israel is a part of its ongoing efforts, according to Amjad Shawa of the Palestine NGOs Network.
In order to carry out their plan to expel the Palestinians and deport Gaza, the humanitarian operations in Gaza are limited. According to Shawa, one of the things Israel is doing continues to do is this.
At least 10 nations expressed “serious concerns” about the “renewed deterioration of the humanitarian situation” in Gaza, calling it “catastrophic.”
In a joint statement, the countries of Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Iceland, Japan, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland are dealing with “awkward conditions with heavy rainfall and temperatures falling as winter draws in.”
“1.3 million people still require urgent shelter,” according to the report. More than half of medical facilities are in need of expensive, necessary medical equipment and supplies, and they are only partially functional. 740, 000 people are vulnerable to toxic flooding as a result of the total collapse of sanitation infrastructure.
The nations called for the establishment of land crossings to increase the flow of humanitarian aid, and demanded that Israel make sure that international NGOs could operate in Gaza in a “sustained and predictable” manner.
The joint statement, according to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was “false but unsurprising” and “part of a recurring pattern of detached criticism and one-sided demands on Israel while purposefully disregarding Hamas’ most fundamental requirement of disarming it.”
More than 100 aid organizations contacted Israel four months ago to demand that it stop preventing life-saving aid from entering Gaza as it refused to allow aid trucks to enter the stricken Gaza Strip.
Since Israel started its genocidal war against Gaza in October 2023, there have been more than 71 000 Palestinian casualties. Due to a lack of medical supplies, hundreds of people have died from severe malnourishment, and thousands more have preventedable illnesses.
Humanitarian organizations dispute Israel’s claims and claim that more aid is urgently needed in the region of more than two million Palestinians. However, Israel claims it is upholding the aid commitments made in the most recent ceasefire.
In March, Israel changed its registration procedure, which required submitting a list of employees, including Palestinians in Gaza.
Some aid organizations alleged that Israel would target Palestinian employees by refusing to release a list of their employees.
“From a safety and legal standpoint. We saw the deaths of hundreds of aid workers in Gaza, according to Shaina Low, Norwegian Refugee Council’s communications officer.
Organizations won’t be able to send international staff or aid to Gaza because of the decision to not renew the licenses for aid organizations’ offices in Israel and occupied East Jerusalem.
Despite the ceasefire, “we and dozens of other organizations are and will continue to be prevented from bringing in essential lifesaving assistance,” Low said. “Despite the ceasefire, the needs in Gaza are enormous.” Because we can’t send staff there, our exhausted local staff is responsible for handling all the work.
The ministry says the aid organizations will need to leave by March 1 as a result of Israel’s decision, which will require them to do on Thursday.
Israel has tried to repress international humanitarian organizations before in this context. UNRWA, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, was accused throughout the conflict of being a target of Hamas and Hamas for abusing UNRWA’s facilities and obtaining its assistance. That has not been proven by the UN.
Israel must support UNRWA-led relief efforts in Gaza, including those that were recommended in an advisory opinion released in October, according to an advisory opinion from the International Court of Justice.
Israel’s claims against UNRWA, including that it was a part of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, were unsupported, according to the court.
The court added that Israel, as the occupying force, must provide the “basic needs” of the Palestinian population in Gaza with supplies that are “essential for survival,” such as food, water, shelter, fuel, and medicine.
Following Israel’s accusations, a number of nations halted UNRWA’s funding, putting in a risk to one of Gaza’s most desperately needed lifelines.
According to state media reports from Tuesday, authorities in Latakia detained 21 people allegedly connected to Bashar al-Assad’s ousted regime.
list of 4 itemsend of list
21 “former regime remnants who are engaged in criminal acts, sectarian incitement, and targeting internal security forces” have been detained by security forces in the coastal province.
According to the Ministry of Interior, the curfew began at 5 p.m. (14 p.m. GMT) on Tuesday and continued until 6 a.m. (03 p.m. GMT) on Wednesday.
Unidentified people attacked Latakia’s Alawite-majority neighbourhoods on Monday, causing damage to cars and vandalizing shops, according to the move.
Following deadly protests by Alawite minority members the day before, the violence came. At least three people were killed in a bombing that occurred in the central city of Homs as Syrian security forces attempted to disperse the crowds.
One of the dead was a member of Syria’s security forces.
The government of President Ahmed al-Sharaa, which has been trying to stabilise the nation and rekindle international ties after 14 years of civil war, faces yet another setback.
After a coalition of opposition forces took control of Damascus in December 2024, the new president of Syria took office, bringing an end to more than 50 years of al-Assad family rule.
Since then, his government has had to reaffirm authority and restore security in a divided nation.
The Ministry of Defense announced on Sunday that Syrian government troops would be stationed in Latakia and Tartous, according to a statement from the ministry.
Authorities in Latakia reported on Monday that security forces “reinforced their deployment in a number of neighbourhoods” to “monitor the situation on the ground, enhance security and stability, and ensure the safety of citizens and property.”
Latakia, which is a coastal region in Syria, has a mix of communities, including those with Sunni and Alawite populations.
Since the al-Assad government’s fall in December 2024, alawite communities have become increasingly targeted.
One of the most deadly instances of violence since the end of the civil war, hundreds of Alawite were killed in coastal areas in March. Some minority groups claim their future is uncertain despite repeated assurances from Damascus that all of Syria’s communities will be protected.
The trouble with prosecutorial independence, however, is that it has not been codified in US law.
Instead, it is a norm that has developed over more than a century, stretching back to the earliest days of the Justice Department.
While the role of the attorney general dates back to 1789, the Justice Department itself is a more recent creation. It was established in 1870, during the Reconstruction period following the US Civil War.
That period was marked by an increasing rejection of political patronage: the system of rewarding political allies with favours and jobs.
Reformers argued that, rather than having law enforcement officers scattered across various government agencies, consolidating them in one department would make them less susceptible to political influence.
That premise, however, has been tested over the subsequent decades, most notably in the early 1970s under then-President Richard Nixon.
Nixon courted scandal by appearing to wield the threat of prosecutions against his political rivals — while dropping cases that harmed his allies.
In one instance, he allegedly ordered the Justice Department to drop its antitrust case against the company International Telephone and Telegraph (ITT) in exchange for financial backing at the Republican National Convention.
Key Justice Department officials were also implicated in the Watergate scandal, which involved an attempted break-in at Democratic Party headquarters.
But Sklansky, the Stanford Law professor, noted that Nixon tended to operate through back channels. He avoided any public calls to prosecute his rivals.
“He believed that, if he called for that openly, he would’ve been pilloried not just by Democrats but by Republicans”, Sklansky said. “And that was undoubtedly true at the time”.
But Sklansky believes the second Trump administration has abandoned such discretion in favour of a public display of power over the Justice Department.
Washington, DC – The United States has issued sanctions against a Venezuelan company over accusations that it helped acquire Iranian-designed drones as Washington’s tensions with both Tehran and Caracas escalate.
The penalties on Tuesday targeted Empresa Aeronautica Nacional SA (EANSA), a Venezuelan firm that the US Department of the Treasury said “maintains and oversees the assembly of” drones from Iran’s Qods Aviation Industries, which is already under sanctions by Washington.
list of 3 itemsend of list
The department also sanctioned the company’s chairman, Jose Jesus Urdaneta Gonzalez, accusing him of coordinating “with members and representatives of the Venezuelan and Iranian armed forces on the production of UAVs [unmanned aerial vehicles] in Venezuela”.
“Treasury is holding Iran and Venezuela accountable for their aggressive and reckless proliferation of deadly weapons around the world,” Treasury official John Hurley said in a statement.
“We will continue to take swift action to deprive those who enable Iran’s military-industrial complex access to the US financial system,” he said. The sanctions freeze any assets of the targeted firms and individuals in the US and make it generally illegal for American citizens to engage in financial transactions with them.
In its statement, the US alleged Tehran and Caracas have coordinated the “provision” of drones to Venezuela since 2006.
Iran’s Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics (MODAFL) has been under US sanctions since 2020 for what Washington said is its role in both selling and procuring weapons. The US is by far the largest weapons exporter in the world.
On Tuesday, the US Treasury Department also imposed new sanctions against several Iranians it accused of links to Iran’s arms industry.
The actions came a day after President Donald Trump threatened more strikes against Iran if the country rebuilds its missile capabilities or nuclear programme.
The US had joined Israel in its attacks against Iran in June and bombed the country’s three main nuclear sites before a ceasefire ended a 12-day escalation.
“Now I hear that Iran is trying to build up again, and if they are, we’re going to have to knock them down,” Trump said on Monday during a joint news conference with visiting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We’ll knock them down. We’ll knock the hell out of them. But hopefully, that’s not happening.”
Iran was quick to respond to Trump’s threats.
“The response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to any oppressive aggression will be harsh and regrettable,” President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote in a social media post.
The Trump administration has also taken a confrontational approach towards Venezuela.
The US president announced this week that the US “hit” a dock in the Latin American country that he said was used to load drug boats. Details of the nature of the strike remain unclear.
Trump and some of his top aides have falsely suggested that Venezuela’s oil belongs to the US. Washington has also accused Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, without evidence, of leading a drug trafficking organisation.
The Trump administration has simultaneously been carrying out strikes against what it says are drug-running vessels in the Caribbean Sea and eastern Pacific Ocean, a campaign that many legal experts said violates US and international law and is tantamount to extrajudicial killings.
Over the past month, the US also has seized at least two oil tankers off the coast of Venezuela after Trump announced a naval blockade against the country.