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Arrests. Classified documents. And suspected leaks that may have harmed efforts to free hostages held by Hamas in order, critics say, to give Benjamin Netanyahu public cover for failing to agree to a cease-fire deal. The Israeli prime minister was engulfed in scandal Monday over a case involving one of his aides that has sent shockwaves across the country.

The firestorm — brought into public view when an Israeli court loosened a gag order Sunday night — has enraged Netanyahu's political opponents and hostage families. Netanyahu has denied any wrongdoing and distanced himself from the case, but critics have alleged that the Israeli leader put hostages' lives and national security at risk to buttress his hardline position in stalled cease-fire talks by leaking Gaza documents to friendly media outlets.

Israel has tightened its siege of northern Gaza in the face of warnings from the UN and other aid agencies that hundreds of thousands of Palestinian lives at are risk, raising questions over whether the Netanyahu government’s ultimate war aims include territorial expansion.

The IDF says it is hunting Hamas militants but suspicions are growing that Israel is putting into practice a blueprint it had officially distanced itself from, known as the “generals’ plan”.

The plan, named after the retired senior officers promoting it, was intended to depopulate northern Gaza by giving the Palestinians trapped there an opportunity to evacuate and then treating those that stayed as combatants, laying total siege.

The United States imposed sanctions on October 30 against almost 400 entities and individuals in more than a dozen countries that Washington says have been supplying Russia with advanced technology used in its full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

The sanctions and other restrictions were announced simultaneously in statements released by the U.S. Treasury, State, and Commerce departments. The Treasury Department imposed sanctions on 274 targets, while the State Department designated more than 120 and the Commerce Department added 40 companies and research institutions to a trade restriction list.

South Korean media claimed on Monday that Seoul could send military and intelligence personnel to Ukraine after the North dispatched troops to support Russia in the war.

A report said the government and military of South Korea "are reviewing a plan to send an appropriate number of personnel, including intelligence officers [specialized in North Korea] and experts in enemy tactics," to Ukraine, citing a South Korean intelligence official.

South Korean personnel in Ukraine would interrogate or provide interpretation services if North Korean soldiers were captured by Ukrainian forces, the report said. They would also provide Kyiv with information about the North's military tactics, doctrine, and operations.

Oxfam condemns in the strongest terms the killing in Gaza today of four water engineers and workers from the Khuzaa municipality who were working with our strategic partner the Coastal Municipalities Water Utility (CMWU).

The four men were killed on their way to conduct repairs to water infrastructure in Khuzaa, east of Khan Younis. Despite prior coordination with Israeli authorities their clearly-marked vehicle was bombed. Oxfam stands in solidarity with the CMWU, their partners and the families of the victims. 

Their deaths deepen the catastrophic humanitarian crisis in Gaza where access to clean water is already severely compromised.

Dozens of engineers, civil servants and humanitarian workers have been killed in Israeli airstrikes throughout this war. They were all working on essential services to keep Gaza's fragile infrastructure running. Despite their movements being coordinated with the Israeli authorities by the CMWU and the Palestinian Water Authority, to ensure their safety, they were still targeted.

Counter-terrorism police are investigating whether Russian spies planted an incendiary device on a plane to Britain that later caught fire at a DHL warehouse in Birmingham, the Guardian can reveal.

Nobody was reported injured in the fire on 22 July at a warehouse in the suburb of Minworth that handles parcels for delivery, and the blaze was dealt with by the local fire brigade and by staff.

The parcel is believed to have arrived at the DHL warehouse by air, though it is not known if it was a cargo or passenger aircraft, nor where it was destined for. There could have been serious consequences if it had ignited during the flight.

A similar incident occurred in Germany, also in late July, when a suspect package bound for a flight caught fire at another DHL facility in Leipzig, and investigators are looking at links between the two. German authorities warned this week that had the parcel caught fire mid-air it could have downed the plane.

Prosecutors in the Netherlands are considering a request to open a criminal case against senior Israeli intelligence officials for allegedly interfering with an investigation by the international criminal court (ICC).

The request was filed last week by a group of 20 complainants, most of whom are Palestinian, asking the Dutch prosecution service to examine allegations Israel tried to derail the ICC’s inquiry into alleged crimes in the occupied Palestinian territories.

According to lawyers for the group, the criminal complaint was filed in response to an investigation by the Guardian revealing how Israeli intelligence attempted over a nine-year period to undermine, influence and allegedly intimidate the ICC chief prosecutor’s office.

The joint investigation with the Israeli-Palestinian publication +972 Magazine and the Hebrew-language outlet Local Call prompted the Dutch government to raise concerns earlier this year with Israel’s ambassador to the Netherlands.

As the host state of the ICC, which is in The Hague, the Netherlands is obliged under an agreement with the court to protect the safety and security of ICC staff, and must ensure it is “free from interference of any kind”.

President Vladimir Putin ordered his armed forces to cleanse Russia of every single invading soldier no later than the end of September, but that didn’t happen and by some measures, the situation in Russia’s Kursk region is getting worse.

Multiple Ukrainian combat brigades were on Tuesday, as the timeline for that presidential decree ran out, still deployed in force in Russia, 45 days into Kyiv’s incursion into Russian territory, in two small enclaves and a single Luxembourg-sized salient.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) is to cut cooperation with 500 scientists affiliated with Russian institutions from November 30. Around 100 have joined non-Russian institutes in order to continue their physics research work with Europe’s particle-physics laboratory.

The launch of a major humanitarian appeal for Gaza by the Disasters Emergency Committee (DEC) is being delayed by the BBC, it has emerged.

The corporation said the appeal did not meet all the established criteria for a national appeal, but the possibility of broadcasting an appeal was “under review”. Other channels have agreed to broadcast an appeal.

Insiders at the DEC, the BBC and aid agencies said they were dismayed at the delay. Some have accused the BBC of “blocking” the appeal because the corporation fears a backlash from supporters of Israel in its war with Hamas. One senior NGO figure said that staff were “furious” at the BBC’s position.

On Sunday, the Israeli military said there was a “high probability” that three hostages found dead months ago were killed in an Israeli airstrike.

The army announced the conclusions of its investigation into the deaths of Cpl. Nik Beizer, Sgt. Ron Sherman and Elia Toledano. It said investigations had determined that the three were likely killed in a November airstrike that also killed a senior Hamas militant, Ahmed Ghandour.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) will send staff to Moscow next week to review the Russian economy for the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, in a move that has prompted anger and dismay across European capitals.

Officials of the Washington-based organisation will travel to the Russian capital and meet “stakeholders” before publishing an assessment of the economy and providing recommendations about how the Kremlin might improve its economic handling and tackle issues such as the climate crisis.

The IMF said it was a “mutual obligation” to carry out an article IV review of a member country and the process was only suspended because of the volatility of economic data. The situation in Russia was now “more settled”.

On Friday, nine European countries protested against the IMF’s plans, saying it would damage the reputation of the Washington-based fund to resume dialogue with a country that had invaded another.