For whatever reason, the pilots found themselves short of fuel.
They made the executive decision to land below minima (we think without all the facts); He may have found a 'suckers gap' and became visual - it happens.
The crew and passengers walked away safely - Job done, and nicely in my opinion.
ATC may not have been aware of the severity of the problem -they can only work on what they know.
The Captain gets paid a lot of money for quite often doing not too much. This and other emergency situations show exactly why they get paid. To act and think calmly and rationally in testing circumstances. The 'manual' can never cover such events.
If everything was done by the book, there would be a hell of a lot more incidents out there. In ATC, one of the first paragraphs in the manual is that nothing contained within it should stop us doing whatever we feel necessary to ensure a flight stays safe. I am sure that professional pilots all over the world have the same ethos.
From my military flying days - aviate, navigate, communicate. In military terms, to enable you to continue to fight the aircraft. In civil terms, to get safely on the ground, without further incident.
Incidents like the above show why there will be human beings in the cockpit for a long long time to come yet - a computer is not intelligent enough to think through the scenario 'I am running out of fuel but the weather is below my minima' and come up with a safe solution.