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Aid trucks sent by the United Nations under Israeli attacks enter the Zakim border crossing under the protection of Palestinians and reached the warehouses in the north of in Gaza City, Gaza, on June 25, 2025. [Ahmed Jihad Ibrahim Al-arini – Anadolu Agency]
Germany on Monday called for the United Nations to take the lead in coordinating aid distribution in Gaza, as concerns mount over civilian deaths at food distribution points, Anadolu reports.
“There is an established and functioning humanitarian aid system, supported by major aid organizations, NGOs and the United Nations. It works. In our view, it must be able to deliver the necessary aid to the people,” said Foreign Ministry spokesperson Kathrin Deschauer at a press conference.
The remarks follow reports that Israeli forces have killed more than 400 Palestinians gathering at US-backed food distribution centers in recent weeks.
“It is shocking and unacceptable that the distribution of aid to people in need is resulting in deaths and also many injuries,” Deschauer added, calling for an investigation into the reports.
Many civilians seeking help and food are being “put in danger,” she said, expressing deep concern about the “dramatic humanitarian situation in Gaza.”
On June 27, the head of the UN agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) issued a scathing condemnation of the current aid distribution system in Gaza.
“The new aid distribution system has become a killing field,” UNRWA Commissioner-General Philippe Lazzarini wrote in a post on X. “Over 400 starving people reported killed since it started operating just a month ago. They were shot at while trying to access food for themselves and their families.”
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Maxar satellite imagery of the Greek-flagged crude oil tanker Sounion that was recently attacked by Yemen’s Houthis [Satellite image (c) 2024 Maxar Technologies]
Yemen’s Houthi group claimed responsibility on Monday for an attack on the bulk carrier Magic Seas in the Red Sea, which has left the vessel taking on water and is expected to sink, Anadolu reports.
In a televised statement, Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the vessel was hit by “two unmanned boats, five ballistic and cruise missiles, and three drones” on Sunday.
“The operation directly hit the ship, leading to water ingress. It is now exposed to sink,” Saree said. “Our forces allowed the crew to safely evacuate.”
The Houthi spokesman said the Magic Seas and its affiliated company violated what the group called a “ban on entering occupied Palestinian ports,” in reference to Israeli ports. He did not name the vessel’s owner or operator.
Saree added that the attack followed several warnings sent to the ship, which he said were ignored by the crew.
The Houthis have intensified missile and drone strikes on Israel since the Israeli military resumed attacks on Gaza in March after two months of a shaky ceasefire.
Since November 2023, the group has also targeted commercial shipping in the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea in support of Palestinians in Gaza, where more than 57,500 people have been killed in an Israeli onslaught.
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French Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot gives a speech in Paris, France on February 13, 2025. [Ümit Dönmez – Anadolu Agency]
French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot on Monday called for an “immediate” ceasefire in Gaza, stressing that they can “no longer wait”, Anadolu reports.
“I believe we can no longer wait, and it seems to me that the conditions are now in place to finally achieve an immediate ceasefire,” Barrot said during a brief press interaction.
He called for the “unhindered” release of all hostages and the “large-scale” access to humanitarian aid in Gaza, “where the Palestinian civilian population is suffering.”
As the EU accelerates its efforts to strike a transatlantic trade deal with the US, Barrot said: “We support the negotiations being led by the European Commission. We want a balanced agreement.”
“We do not want an asymmetrical agreement that would place us in a position of vassalage.”
He further voiced “hope” for reaching an agreement that “safeguards the interests of all parties,” stressing neither the US nor Europe wants a trade war.
Barrot further reassured that the French Embassy in Tehran is “fully aware” and “mobilized” over the disappearance of an 18-year-old French citizen in Iran.
Lennart Monterlos, who was cycling to Japan, has been reportedly missing since June 16, according to the broadcaster BFM TV.
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Keir Starmer objects to criticism of the IDF. He asks how could anyone obect to them starving people to death, forced marches like the Nazis did, bombing Gaza’s hospitals and universities,mass-murdering journalists, healthworkers and starving people queuing for food, killing and raping prisoners and murdering children. He calls for people to stop obstructing his genocide for Israel.
A healthcare worker turns on an operating light in the emergency operation room in the labor and delivery unit at the medical complex in Hondo, Texas on February 26, 2025. (Photo: Kaylee Greenlee for The Washington Post via Getty Images)
“When thousands more people die from not getting care, we know who to blame,” said Sen. Elizabeth Warren.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren said Monday that the American public “needs to know” that the blame will lie squarely at the feet of President Donald Trump and Republican lawmakers if and when hospitals across the country are forced to shut their doors due to the unprecedented Medicaid cuts included in the new budget law.
“Every single American needs to know what Donald Trump and Republicans did in the ‘Big Beautiful Bill,'” Warren (D-Mass.) wrote on social media, referring to the budget reconciliation package that the president signed late last week.
“When hospitals close their doors, we know who to blame,” Warren continued. “When thousands more people die from not getting care, we know who to blame. When kids go hungry, we know who to blame.”
The nation’s rural hospitals, which rely heavily on Medicaid reimbursements, are expected to bear the brunt of the pain from the Republican law, which includes more than $1 trillion in Medicaid cuts as well as destructive changes to federal nutrition assistance and other programs. Nursing homes, community health centers, Planned Parenthood clinics, and other facilities are also at risk, and states are now scrambling to prevent catastrophe.
An analysis published by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform prior to passage of the GOP legislation estimated that more than 700 rural hospitals across the U.S. are at risk of closing due to “serious financial problems.”
“Republicans will try to ignore the devastation their disastrous reconciliation bill will cause. We won’t.”
The health policy organization KFF notes that federal Medicaid spending in rural areas is projected to fall by $155 billion under the GOP law over the next decade—an amount that far exceeds the $50 billion that Republicans allocated to a “Rural Health Transformation Program” over the next five years.
Alan Morgan, CEO of the National Rural Health Association, warned in a statement following the Senate’s passage of the legislation earlier this month that the bill would “limit access to care for all rural patients by ending healthcare coverage for rural residents nationwide and putting financial strain on rural facilities who care for them.”
Already, as Common Dreamsreported last week, a healthcare clinic in rural Nebraska has announced it is shutting its doors in part due to the expected impacts of the GOP Medicaid cuts. The closure is predicted to be the first of many.
A recent analysis by the Cecil G. Sheps Center for Health Services Research at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill warned that more than 330 rural hospitals are at risk of closing or reducing services due to the Trump-GOP assault on Medicaid.
Over the weekend, Trump administration officials defended the budget law in talk show appearances by attempting to downplay its impact on Medicaid and other healthcare programs.
Kevin Hassett, director of the White House National Economic Council, said Sunday that he believes “nobody is gonna lose their insurance”—a claim that dramatically conflicts with the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office’s estimate that around 17 million people will lose health coverage under the Trump-GOP law.
“He is only off by 17,000,000,” quipped Rep. Brendan Boyle (D-Pa.) in response to Hassett’s comments.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) wrote over the weekend that “Republicans will try to ignore the devastation their disastrous reconciliation bill will cause.”
“We won’t,” Sanders added. “We’re going to make them explain what happens when 16 million lose their healthcare and nursing homes and hospitals are forced to shut down or limit services.”
Private jets were seen on the tarmac at Friedman Memorial Airport ahead of a business conference on July 5, 2022 in Sun Valley, Idaho. (Photo: Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
A provision of the budget law that President Donald Trump signed last week will leave taxpayers to “pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers.”
The Republican budget measure that U.S. President Donald Trump signed into law late last week contains a provision that analysts say will allow private jet owners to write off the full cost of their aircraft in the first year of purchase, a boon to the ultra-rich that comes as millions of people are set to lose healthcare under the same legislation.
FlyUSA, a private aviation provider, gushed in a blog post that with final passage of the unpopular budget reconciliation package, “business jet ownership has never looked more fiscally attractive or more fun to explain to your accountant.”
The law, crafted by congressional Republicans and approved with only GOP support, permanently restores a major corporate tax break known as 100% bonus depreciation, which allows businesses to deduct the costs of certain assets in the first year of purchase rather than writing them off over time.
Forbesnoted that the bonus depreciation policy “applies to a slew of qualified, physical business expenses which depreciate over time, such as machinery and company cars, but the policy is often associated with big-ticket luxury items, such as private aircraft, and its institution last decade led to a boom in jet sales.”
“Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class.”
Chuck Collins, director of the Program on Inequality at the Institute for Policy Studies, called bonus depreciation “a massive tax break for billionaires and centi-millionaires that use the most polluting form of transportation on the planet.”
“A corporation purchasing a $50 million private jet could potentially deduct the entire $50 million from their taxes in the year of the purchase, rather than spreading the deduction over many years,” Collins wrote. “This amounts to a massive taxpayer subsidy, as ordinary taxpayers pick up the tab for the private jet industry and billionaire high flyers.”
“Subsidizing more private jets on a warming planet is reckless and indefensible,” he added.
The National Business Aviation Association, a lobbying group for the private aviation industry, celebrated passage of the Republican legislation, specifically welcoming the bonus depreciation policy as “effective for incentivizing aircraft purchase.” (The Institute for Taxation and Economic Policy argues that “depreciation tax breaks have never been shown to encourage more capital investment.”)
Meanwhile, communities across the United States are bracing for the law’s deep cuts to Medicaid and federal nutrition assistance, which are expected to impose damaging strains on state budgets and strip food benefits and health coverage from millions of low-income Americans.
“Trump and congressional Republicans have certainly delivered for the billionaire class,” said Robert Weissman, co-president of Public Citizen. “This is certainly one of the cruelest bills in American history, backtracking on the country’s painfully slow history of expanding healthcare coverage and, equally remarkably, taking food away from the hungry.”
“That’s a lot of needless suffering just to make the richest Americans richer,” he added.
Donald Trump urges you to be a Climate Science denier like him. He says that he makes millions and millions for destroying the planet, Burn, Baby, Burn and Flood, Baby, Flood.Nigel Farage urges you to ignore facts and reality and be a climate science denier like him. He says that Reform UK has received millions and millions from the fossil fuel industry to promote climate denial and destroy the planet.Orcas discuss Donald Trump and the killer apes’ concept of democracy. Front Orca warns that Trump is crashing his country’s economy and that everything he does he does for the fantastically wealthy.
