Armed personnel from an American security contractor will man the checkpoint and will be responsible for inspecting vehicles entering northern Gaza. Palestinians returning to northern Gaza on foot will not be inspected, according to the terms of the ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Israeli forces are set to complete their withdrawal from the Netzarim Corridor in central Gaza on Saturday, which will allow displaced residents of northern Gaza to return to their homes – or what remains of them.

Named after the former Israeli settlement of Netzarim in Gaza, the corridor was constructed by Israeli forces to create a strategic, central road intersecting the strip.

Israeli media have reported that a security contractor named UG Solutions will deploy personnel to the checkpoint. Another American firm, Safe Reach Solutions, is reportedly involved in the planning and logistics for the checkpoint.

Neither firm has an extensive online footprint. On its website, Safe Reach Solutions says it provides “planning, logistics, and strategic expertise to organizations operating in the world’s most complex environments.”

Israel has long mulled various plans to deploy private American contractors to safeguard aid shipments in Gaza or to establish humanitarian zones that have been fully cleared of Hamas militants.

None of those plans has ever come to fruition, but the contractor-manned checkpoint could be a key test of the viability of deploying private contractors in Gaza.

Israel says it has received a list of four female hostages Hamas is due to release on Saturday as part of a ceasefire deal.

The Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said that the list was received through mediators and added that Israel’s response would be provided later.

This is a developing story and will be updated.

A rare “stay at home” warning has been issued for parts of the United Kingdom and Ireland as a severe storm lashes the region, bringing dangerous 100mph (160 kmh) winds and unleashing travel chaos.

Storm Éowyn, an extratropical “bomb” cyclone that has formed in the North Atlantic and intensified rapidly, has hit rail services, delayed flights and forced road closures.

The strongest winds and most significant impacts are expected in Northern Ireland and central and southwestern parts of Scotland, according to the UK’s Met Office. A red weather warning was established Friday morning local time in Northern Ireland and parts of Scotland.

A yellow warning for snow is also in force through Friday for northern and central areas of Scotland. While accumulations are possible over high ground, it’s likely to shift to sleet and rain at lower levels through the day, the Met Office said.

Currently more than 93,000 homes and businesses in Northern Ireland are without power, according to the Northern Ireland Electricity (NIE) Networks. “Restoration efforts will take significant time as crews cannot begin to work until it is safe to do so,” the supplier said.

Northern Ireland’s First Minister Michelle O’Neill has given a “stay at home” warning to residents, telling BBC Radio Ulster that they are now “in the eye of the storm.”

According to Met Éireann, Ireland’s Meteorological Service, a gust of 113 mph was recorded at Mace Head Co. Galway at 5 a.m. local time — provisionally the strongest gust speed ever recorded in the country.

All schools in Ireland and Northern Ireland were closed on Friday, while hundreds were also shuttered across Scotland, with Scotland’s First Minister John Swinney also warning against travel.

Public transport has been severely disrupted by the storm. Train operator ScotRail has suspended all services across Scotland on Friday, saying it “would not be safe to operate passenger services.”

Other rail services affected by the storm include Avanti West Coast, LNER, West Midlands Railway, Lumo, Transport for Wales and South Western Railway.

Many flights have been canceled in the region. More than 1,070 flights scheduled to operate from the UK and Ireland were called off on Friday, the UK’s PA Media reported.

Dublin Airport announced later Friday that flights had recommenced from its runways after winds had “eased somewhat,” however it could not rule out further cancellations throughout the day.

Meanwhile motorists in areas where red and amber weather warnings are in place have been advised against non-essential travel.

Social media platforms were awash with images of the damage caused by Storm Éowyn. Dublin Fire Brigade posted a photo of collapsed scaffolding in an inner city Dublin suburb, saying that the road is “completely blocked.”

Another image shared by the fire brigade showed supermarket shelves almost completely emptied of bread.

A photo taken in Durham county, in England’s north east, shows an overturned lorry after it ran into trouble in high winds on a major road.

In Ireland’s Galway harbour city, trees that had stood for over 60 years were uprooted by the storm, locals said.

“(I) got woken up before the red alert even started, the winds were crazy,” sports scientist Cathriona Heffernan, 25, from Galway, said.

“Those trees have been there 60 years and outdate the houses even. It’s sad seeing them down all the same but just glad no damage was caused by them.”

Éowyn is expected to move away from the UK on Saturday, although yellow wind warnings are in place in Scotland and Northern Ireland for Saturday morning and early afternoon.

Ambrogio Volonté, a senior research fellow at the University of Reading’s Department of Meteorology, warned Storm Éowyn could “rival the ferocity” of Storm Eunice in 2022 and Storm Ciarán in 2023, “both of which sadly claimed lives and left behind severe damage.”

Leach said Éowyn is an extratropical bomb cyclone that has formed in the North Atlantic and “intensified extremely rapidly.”

He said bomb cyclones are typically the most impactful winter storms in Northern Europe.

While Leach said the impacts of the climate crisis on extratropical cyclones remain uncertain, some studies suggest the most severe storms may be getting stronger with climate change.

Russian President Vladimir Putin claimed Friday that “the crisis in Ukraine” might have been prevented if Donald Trump was in power at the time, saying he was ready to talk with the new US president about the conflict.

Trump has long claimed that the war in Ukraine would not have happened under his watch, but Friday marked the first time Putin suggested the same thing – while also repeating Trump’s false claim that the 2020 US election was “stolen.”

“I can’t help but agree with (Trump) that if his victory had not been stolen in 2020, then maybe there would not have been the crisis in Ukraine that arose in 2022,” Putin told a Russian TV channel, presumably referring to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine which he himself had ordered in February 2022.

Trump has said in the past that he would end the war in Ukraine in one day, but then gave his special envoy for Ukraine and Russia Keith Kellogg 100 days to find a solution.

The new administration has so far not unveiled any concrete plan for how to achieve peace in Ukraine, but Trump said this week that Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky had told him he wants to make a deal and suggested Putin should also want to find a solution.

“So, I think Russia should want to make a deal. Maybe they want to make a deal. I think from what I hear, Putin would like to see me. We’ll meet as soon as we can. I’d meet immediately. Every day we don’t meet soldiers are being killed in a battlefield,” Trump told reporters on Thursday.

Putin seemed amenable to meeting Trump, saying Russia was “always open to this.”

“As for the issue related to negotiations – we have always said, and I will emphasize this once again, that we are ready for negotiations on the Ukrainian issue,” the Russian leader told the Russian TV channel. A day earlier the Kremlin said it was waiting on “signals” from Washington.

The statement from Putin came a day after Trump made a threat of new sanctions against Moscow while addressing the World Economic Forum in Davos.

However, Putin questioned that warning on Friday, saying such a move would hurt the American economy. “He is not only a smart person, he is a pragmatic person, and I can hardly imagine that decisions will be made that will harm the American economy itself,” Putin said.

Thirteen-year-old Zakariya Barbakh had spent most of his life shuffling between hospitals across Gaza, the occupied West Bank and Israel.

Born without a lung, he had struggled to breathe. Doctors had predicted he would need a transplant if he were to reach adulthood. But the last 15 months of war in Gaza had made that impossible.

When the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas went into effect on Sunday, Zakariya was ecstatic.

“Mom, now we can go look for my lungs!” his mother recalled him saying.

Less than 24 hours later, Zakariya was shot dead.

“He didn’t die from his disease; he ended up dying at the hands of the occupation. All he wanted was to have lungs to breathe, what did he do to deserve this? What did this child do?” his mother said, unable to hold back tears.

Zakariya is one of at least four Palestinians shot by the Israeli military since the ceasefire went into effect.

The Israeli military has withdrawn to buffer zones along Gaza’s border, but has warned Palestinians against approaching areas where its troops are still stationed. It has published a map of zones that are “very dangerous” to approach.

But where those zones begin and end is not always as clear on the ground.

“How would he know he would face occupation forces? How would he know he was in the wrong area? All he did was try to find something to eat. He got lost along the way. Can you not see the way this child looks? He looks sick and despairing,” his mother said.

The video shows a man trying to drag Zakariya’s lifeless body before he too is shot. The man survived

News that Israel and Hamas had reached a ceasefire deal triggered celebrations across the Strip last Wednesday. But in several areas those celebrations were soon drowned out by the sound of Israeli airstrikes.

In the four days between when the deal was announced and when it went into effect on Sunday morning, Israeli attacks killed at least 142 Palestinians, according to Gaza’s Civil Defense, including dozens of women and children.

Among them were members of 3-year-old As’ad Khalifa’s family.

Less than 24 hours after the ceasefire deal was announced, an Israeli airstrike targeted his home.

As’ad survived, but in an instant, he became an orphan. His parents and sister were killed in the strike.

Dallou knew the family as they had been displaced by the war at the same time. He went searching for them under the rubble with other neighbors. Using basic equipment and their bare hands, they were able to uncover and retrieve the dead bodies of the mother and father but the children remained missing.

Before they gave up, they heard the cries of a child and began frantically throwing aside blocks of cement until they reached the source.

After a grueling 30 minutes, they found a small hand reaching out amid the rubble and gripping the air. They were able to pull the child – As’ad – out, roughed up and covered in dust – but alive. His little sister was found dead next to him.

Dallou and his sister Mawada have since taken him in.

“The IDF took intelligence measures to mitigate harm to uninvolved individuals,” the statement added.

Dallou has children of similar age to As’ad, which has helped to integrate him into their family. But he is concerned about how As’ad will grow up.

“I know from my experience with my little daughter that this child is going through a difficult psychological state. They are petrified from any sound now …They start crying for their mother,” he said.

Mawada said that because she knew As’ad’s mother, she would do everything she can to embrace him.

“We will try, but we will not be able to replace his mother or bring her back.”

US President Donald Trump’s policy on Ukraine is a little scattered and meandering, and at times misinformed. But be in no doubt that it exists and seems an unanticipated priority.

Trump’s policy on Ukraine distinguishes itself in two ways in the first week of his administration.

The first is his persistent criticism of the economic damage the Kremlin head is doing to Russia. Trump is making a business case for a peace deal, telling Russian President Vladimir Putin he needs to make a pact for financial reasons.

This may misread Putin’s apparent pathological commitment to victory, and the broad existential nature of the conflict for Moscow in the eyes of its propagandists. They see this as a war against the entirety of NATO that they must win. The propaganda taps of Russian state media can be turned off as well as on. But Russia’s mindset is radicalized where the West’s is not. It’s not a business case of quarterly profit and loss for the Kremlin, but one of survival.

The second is how regularly Trump talks of the war after excluding it — and any mention of Ukraine and Russia — from his inauguration speech on Monday. He correctly suggested Thursday a lower oil price could impede Russia’s ability to wage war. Russia sells oil to China and India to keep its war machine going, despite sanctions aimed at reducing its revenue.

Trump said he would talk to North Korea’s Kim Jong Un, whose troops are fighting for Moscow now in Kursk. He also correctly suggested Beijing has great influence over Moscow and could force a peace deal upon them.

Again, Trump is approaching the conflict from his comfort zone: one where everyone is seeking a smooth deal that makes them richer. China may seek calm, and perhaps ultimately wish the Ukraine conflict had never begun. But that is not the reality of now, and instead Xi Jinping is treading a delicate path: watching his ally Moscow degrade their military and economy to the extent they become Beijing’s junior partner, while also realising Russia cannot lose the fight without a knock-on impact to China’s global ambitions.

The calculations made now by America’s adversaries concern the world order over the coming decade, not the immediate telephone call sheet of the White House, or how fast slick interpersonal dealings might wrap up the biggest land conflict in Europe since the 1940s.

Trump’s repeated call for NATO’s European members to pay more for defense – an unlikely demand of 2% of GDP rising to 5% – has even been echoed by Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky.

It is correct to state this is Europe’s war. If Kyiv loses, Poland, the Baltics, Romania and Moldova will feel the heat, not Florida or California. Even NATO’s head, Mark Rutte, has suggested Europe might buy arms for Ukraine from the United States. Trump was always going to challenge the cost of the war to Washington, and speedily Europe is being backed into a corner to step up.

It is also intriguing to see Trump talk of the damage the war has done. He said incorrectly Thursday millions had died on both sides. Kyiv has said 43,000 Ukrainian troops have died. The UN says about 12,000 Ukrainian civilians have died.

Western officials say regularly Russia’s losses amount to 700,000 dead and injured, and independent media have tracked nearly 100,000 public records that suggest Russian military deaths on the battlefield.

Yet Trump’s incorrect, emotional reference to millions may be aimed at evoking the urgency and horror of the war in the minds of an American audience for whom it is a side issue rarely discussed.

Trump said he could bring peace to Ukraine in 24 hours, which was always a wild rhetorical exaggeration. Even the six months now evoked is optimistic. But he has taken office seized with a wobbly yet vivid grasp of the war’s issues. That may falter, as he slowly realizes a deal is not low hanging fruit and his adversaries – because that is what Putin is, however “great” Trump says they get along – are more patient, enduring and conniving than he is.

But his opening week has done much to dispel the greater fear from Ukraine and its allies that Trump preferred coziness with Putin to NATO’s unity. Or that his wild and unrealistic promises of diplomacy from the campaign trail would evaporate – along with funding for the war – the moment he came to office. This may all still happen, and the road ahead for Trump is deeply complex and fraught with rivals who have years more experience in the job, and much more to lose or gain.

But Trump is seized of the issue, has an emotional albeit shaky grasp of the war’s horrors, and is critical of, not fawning towards, Putin. It’s yet another unforeseen turn in a conflict ruled by the unexpected.

Hours after Donald Trump’s chilly inauguration in Washington, Taiwan’s parliament voted to freeze billions of dollars in defense spending, in a move some worry could frustrate the famously transactional president, who has already demanded Taipei pay “more” for US protection.

The US is the main ally and arms supplier of Taiwan, a democratically ruled island and semiconductor powerhouse, which China’s Communist Party views as part of its territory –despite never having controlled it – and has vowed to take one day, by force if necessary.

The opposition-led vote to freeze defense spending highlights the domestic challenges facing Taiwan President Lai Ching-te even as China ramps up its diplomatic and military efforts to isolate and intimidate the island.

Lai’s party lacks a majority in Taiwan’s rough and tumble parliament, throwing doubt on his ability to pass legislation that will shore up US support – and the approval of a mercurial commander in chief in the White House.

“If there is not enough budget to consistently improve Taiwan’s defense reforms and capabilities, the international community will doubt Taiwan’s determination to defend ourselves,” Lai said Tuesday in a Facebook post.

Lai’s administration also slammed the opposition-backed budget freeze, which covers locally designed submarines and an indigenous drone program.

The move was “suicidal,” Taiwan Premier Cho Jung-tai told reporters on Thursday, while Defense Minister Wellington Koo said it sent “the wrong signal to the United States.”

Navigating Trump 2.0

Trump’s return to power – and his “America First” agenda – has created some anxiety in Taiwan about Washington’s commitment to the island in the event of a Chinese invasion.

For decades, the US has maintained a close security partnership with Taipei, despite lacking formal diplomatic relations. Under the Taiwan Relations Act, the US is legally obligated to provide Taiwan with the means to defend itself. However, Washington has remained deliberately vague on how it would respond to an invasion – a policy known as “strategic ambiguity.”

Last year, US intelligence assessments suggested that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had ordered his military to be ready for an invasion by 2027, though assessments stressed that doesn’t mean an invasion will occur in 2027.

Days before Trump took office, Taiwan’s defense ministry made a rare acknowledgement that Washington had signed a two-year agreement to train Taiwanese soldiers at a naval base on the island. While Taiwan has previously confirmed the presence of US military trainers, it was unusual for the military to release details of such exchanges.

But Trump has been a less vocal supporter of Taiwan than his predecessor Joe Biden. Last year, he wrongly accused Taiwan of stealing “almost 100%” of America’s semiconductor industry. He also indicated that Taiwan should pay more for US protection, while suggesting the US would have difficulty defending the island because of its distance.

“I hope that Taiwan’s legislature doesn’t embarrass itself and lose face to foreign countries,” said Wang Cheng-yi, a postgraduate student at National Taiwan University. “This might make people feel that while Taiwan is good at certain things, politically it is quite unstable.”

For Ms. Hsu, a 75-year-old Taipei resident who only gave her surname, the key to fostering political unity is simple.

“Everybody should sit down and talk,” she said. “Taiwan must balance relations with both the US and China. We are small. We cannot afford to make either big brother unhappy. It’s a delicate situation.”

Military readiness

While Taipei is heavily armed with US weaponry, it is significantly outmatched by Beijing, which has the world’s largest standing army and spends about 11 times more on defense than Taiwan.

There are also concerns among defense experts about the effectiveness of Taiwan’s reservist training and the military’s slow progress in transitioning to asymmetric warfare – a strategy that focuses on smaller, harder-to-detect weapons like drones and portable missiles. While Taipei has accelerated military reforms in recent years, some observers – including the Council on Foreign Affairs – say it needs to do far more.

And it’s not just Taiwan’s military facing budget challenges.

Earlier this week, undersea cables connecting Taiwan to the outlying Matsu islands were severed due to “natural deterioration,” according to the island’s digital affairs ministry. The islands – controlled by Taipei but located just a few miles off the Chinese coast – previously experienced internet outages after the same cables were damaged in 2023.

The ministry warned that new budget cuts – which covered everything from health care to foreign affairs – would undermine its ability to repair critical infrastructure, highlighting concerns about vulnerabilities that could be exploited by Beijing.

Alexander Huang, head of international affairs for the main opposition Kuomintang party, defended the freeze on defense spending and questioned the effectiveness of investing heavily in a submarine program before the first vessel had even completed sea trials.

But Wei-Ting Yen, an assistant research fellow at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica, said it was “extra bad” that Taiwan’s domestic political bickering had hindered the island from presenting a united message to the Trump team that it was serious about its defense and worthy of continued American support.

“With or without Trump’s inauguration, with China’s increasing aggression over Taiwan, it is indeed Taiwan’s top priority to continue to increase its self-defense budget,” Yen said. “That’s definitely not a good signal.”

Yeh Hsin-wei, a student in Taipei, said Taiwan’s vast semiconductor industry that supplies many of the chips powering the global AI revolution was a better deterrent against Beijing.