Portal:Current events/2025 December 18

Armed conflicts and attacks

• 2025 Cambodia–Thailand conflict
  • Cambodia accuses Thailand of bombing Poipet on the border and denies the truce previously announced by United States president Donald Trump. (Al Jazeera)

Disasters and accidents

• 2025 North Carolina Cessna Citation II crash
  • Seven people, including stock car racer Greg Biffle and his family, are killed after Biffle's Cessna Citation II jet crashes while landing at Statesville Regional Airport in Statesville, North Carolina, United States. (ABC News)

International relations

• Taiwan–United States relations
  • The United States approves a $11.1 billion arms sale to Taiwan, including medium-range ballistic missiles, drones, and howitzers, as the largest arms deal in the history of bilateral relations between the two countries. (DW)
• The United Nations General Assembly elects former Iraqi president Barham Salih as the next High Commissioner for Refugees, succeeding Filippo Grandi, whose term ends December 31. (Reuters)

Law and crime

• Mass shootings in the United States
  • 2025 Brown University shooting
    • A 48-year-old suspect of the mass shooting at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, United States, is found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside of a storage unit in Salem, New Hampshire. Authorities are investigating whether the murder of Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Nuno Loureiro is connected. (NBC News)
• Besançon poisonings
  • Frédéric Péchier, an anesthesiologist who was found guilty of poisoning 30 patients and killing twelve with anesthetic infusion bags in Besançon, Doubs, France, is sentenced to life in prison. (BBC News)
• Crime in Peru
  • Councilwoman Elena Rojas is assassinated and several others are injured, including at least four children, in a targeted mass shooting at a Christmas event in Chicama, Department of La Libertad, Peru. (BNO News)
• 2025 Mannheim car attack
  • The Mannheim Regional Court convicts Alexander Scheuermann, the perpetrator of a car attack in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany on March 3, of two counts of murder and six counts of attempted murder, and sentences him to life imprisonment at a psychiatric facility. (The Straits Times)
• Terrorism in Russia
  • A Russian military court sentences a Belarusian national to 22 years in prison for terrorism after convicting him of planting explosives on two freight trains in Buryatia in 2023, causing major damage and rail disruptions. (Reuters)