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.

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.

The Israeli government is seeking to keep military positions in southern Lebanon past a Sunday withdrawal deadline, set in a November ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, the country’s ambassador to the US said on Thursday.

The Israeli military invaded southern Lebanon on October 1 – the culmination of a yearlong, low-level war with Hezbollah, which attacked Israeli-held territory on October 8, 2023, in solidarity with Hamas.

It is unclear whether the Trump administration has responded to the request or taken it to the Lebanese government. Former President Joe Biden’s envoy brokered the agreement between Israel and Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant group backed by Iran.

In a statement, a US Department of Defense official appeared to suggest that the timeline could be malleable.

Michael Herzog, Israel’s ambassador in Washington, told Israel’s Army Radio on Thursday that a 60-day deadline set out in a November ceasefire agreement “is not set in stone.”

“We are currently in discussions with the Trump administration in order to prolong the duration of time needed for the Lebanese army to deploy and fulfill its duties according to the agreement,” he said. “There is an understanding in the incoming administration about what our security needs are and what our position is, and I believe that we will reach an understanding in this issue as well.”

“The cessation of hostilities commitments that went into effect Nov. 27, 2024, state that IDF withdrawal from the Southern Litani area should be accomplished in 60 days,” the official said. “That timeline was set to try to generate speed of action and progress. And progress has been made.”

“The Lebanese Armed Forces have shown that they have the commitment, will, and capability to execute the arrangement,” the official added.

According to the November agreement, both Israeli and Hezbollah forces must withdraw from southern Lebanon by January 26, the end of that 60-day period.

An Israeli official who described Israel’s request to the US said Israel has requested a 30-day extension and has said it would re-assess the viability of withdrawing from southern Lebanon at the end of that extension. The official said all of the outposts Israel has asked to maintain are alongside the Israel-Lebanon border.

The Lebanese military and UN peacekeepers will be the only forces allowed in southern Lebanon. Hezbollah must pull its forces north of Lebanon’s Litani River – a frontier beyond which the militant group was not supposed to have advanced under a 2006 United Nations Security Council resolution.

“That is not yet the case,” Israeli government spokesperson David Mencer said of Hezbollah’s withdrawal and the Lebanese military’s deployment in a briefing Thursday. “There is movement, but it is not moving fast enough.”

In a statement on Thursday, Hezbollah said that were the Israeli military to remain in Lebanon past Sunday, it “would be considered a brazen breach of the agreement” that would require the Lebanese state “to deal with it by every means at its disposal afforded to it by international treaties in order to retrieve the land and snatch it from the clutches of occupation.”

US sees ‘a very positive path’

There has for some time been speculation in Israel that the government would seek to change the terms of its ceasefire with Hezbollah once Trump took office.

The exact situation in southern Lebanon is decidedly opaque. The Israeli military has spent these past months of the ceasefire feverishly destroying Hezbollah weapons and military infrastructure and leveling several Lebanese villages near the border. Hezbollah’s military posture is unclear.

The clearest picture has been painted by the US military, which together with the French government and the United Nations is monitoring the ceasefire.

US Major General Jasper Jeffers, who leads the American effort, said after a trip to southern Lebanon last week that Lebanese military “checkpoints and patrols operate effectively throughout south-west Lebanon.” He said that the belligerents were “on a very positive path to continue the withdrawal of the IDF as planned.”

Earlier this month, Lebanon’s parliament elected Joseph Aoun, supported by the US and formerly the military chief, as president. It ended more than two years of stalemate that had resulted in a presidential vacuum. The election was brought about by a robust Saudi effort to rally the necessary support for Aoun.

In his acceptance speech, viewed as a blueprint for a six-year tenure, Aoun vowed to monopolize weapons under the mandate of the state. It was an earth-shattering promise, marking a clear break with the decades-old unwritten policy to preserve Hezbollah’s militant wing which has been de facto been tasked with facing off against Israeli forces.

The American optimism over the ceasefire is not shared by many civilians from northern Israel, who have been slow to return to communities emptied by war. Residents of Kiryat Shmona are set to demonstrate against the Israeli withdrawal from Lebanon on Sunday.

“Most communities are still empty,” Sarit Zehavi, who runs the Alma Research and Education Center, which specializes in security issues in northern Israel. “People want to come back.”

There is a widespread fear in northern Israel, she said, that military withdrawal will give Hezbollah carte blanche to deploy close to Israel’s border, under the nose of the Lebanese military.

“The Lebanese army is far from disarming Hezbollah,” she said. “We are very worried what will happen if the IDF fully withdraws and the IDF enforcement will stop, because we don’t see the Lebanese army doing anything.”

Lauren Izso, Eugenia Yosef, Charbel Mallo, Tamara Qiblawi and Max Saltman contributed to this report.

A Chinese man who carried out a knife attack in eastern China last June that wounded a Japanese woman and her child and killed a bus attendant trying to protect them has been sentenced to death, according to a Japanese official.

A court in the Chinese city of Suzhou ruled that the 52-year-old unemployed man, surnamed Zhou, stabbed the trio after he became indebted and lost interest in living, Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi said on Thursday.

Details of the ruling were not immediately available through Chinese official announcements or local news reports, but Hayashi said Japan’s Consul General to Shanghai attended the sentencing.

“The (Japanese) government considers the killing and wounding of three people, including a completely innocent child, to be unforgivable, and we take the verdict with the utmost seriousness,” Hayashi said.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Mao Ning stopped short of confirming the sentencing, saying only that “Chinese judicial authorities will handle (the case) in accordance with the law” at a daily press conference on Thursday.

The stabbing attack was the first of two on Japanese nationals last year that raised concerns about anti-Japanese sentiment in China and prompted Tokyo to demand Beijing ensure its citizens’ safety.

Knife attacks are not uncommon in China, where guns are tightly controlled.

The attacks relating to Japanese citizens have also occurred amid a surge of sudden episodes of violence targeting random members of the public in China, including at or near hospitals and schools.

The attack took place on June 24 when the Japanese mother was picking up her child at a bus stop near a Japanese school, Japanese officials previously said.

The mother and child suffered non-life-threatening injuries during the attack. But a Chinese bus attendant who tried to stop the attacker later died of her wounds.

On Thursday, Hayashi repeated calls for the Chinese government to protect Japanese nationals in China. The Suzhou court ruling stopped short of making any reference to Japan, he noted.

Nationalism, xenophobia and anti-Japanese sentiment have been on the rise in the country, often fanned by state media and manifested in discussions on China’s strictly censored social media platforms.

The sentiment is rooted in bitter memories of Japan’s invasion and brutal occupation in the 1930s and 1940s and fueled by present-day territorial disputes.

In September last year, a 10-year-old Japanese schoolboy was killed in a second knife attack near another Japanese school in the southern city of Shenzhen. The trial in that case was due to begin on Friday, Japanese broadcaster NHK reported.

The second attack took place on the anniversary of the “918” incident in 1931, when Japanese soldiers blew up a Japanese-owned railway in northeast China and blamed Chinese forces for the attack as a pretext to invade.

The two attacks raised alarm among Japanese living in China and prompted then Japanese Prime Minster Fumio Kishida to demand “such an incident must never be repeated.”

But China’s foreign ministry described the attacks as “isolated incidents,” and said it had taken steps to ensure foreign nationals’ safety in the country.

“China will continue to take measures to protect the safety of foreign citizens in China,” Mao said on Thursday.

Donald Trump’s second term in office is getting off to a good start for China.

The new US president has so far refrained from acting on his threat to slap hefty tariffs on China, told business and political leaders at an economic forum in Davos that the two countries could have a “very good relationship” and reportedly expressed interest in visiting the Chinese capital in the months ahead.

Trump even gave a 75-day reprieve to Chinese-owned app TikTok and signaled he would look to dilute a law requiring the company divest its American business or be banned.

All this adds up to a strong signal that the returning president is willing to talk – and cut deals – with China. At least for now.

That is welcome news for Beijing, which has been bracing for a tumultuous period in US-China relations as Trump stacked his cabinet with China hawks and campaigned on levying high tariffs on all Chinese imports to the US.

“China realizes that’s there an opportunity to negotiate with Trump,” said political scholar Liu Dongshu of the City University of Hong Kong. “And a better US-China relationship is more important to China than to United States … so China is eager” to engage.

Stakes are high for Beijing, as a tit-for-tat trade war like the one during Trump’s last administration would hit China’s ailing export-reliant economy at a bad time. And Chinese leaders have been keen to seize on the opportunity to soften Trump’s hard line.

Xi called for a “new starting point” in US-China ties during a call with Trump days ahead of the inauguration and dispatched Vice President Han Zheng to the US capital to attend the swearing-in ceremony, the seniormost Chinese official ever to attend such an event.

Meanwhile at the World Economic Forum in Davos this week, Vice Premier Ding Xuexiang said China wants to “promote balanced trade,” not “surplus” with the world – striking a note that appeals directly to Trump’s chief complaint about the relationship between the two largest economies.

But China’s policymakers are also under few illusions about how quickly the tenor of US-China relationship could change – and are likely carefully calculating how to use the current breathing room to negotiate with the “art of the deal” president in the months ahead.

Containing the tariff threat?

Looming over this period of tone-setting is a “phase one” trade deal brokered during the last Trump administration.

The 2020 deal marked a truce in a tit-for-tat trade war that saw Trump heighten or impose tariffs on hundreds of billions of Chinese imports to the US – an act he claimed would level the playing field with China and that has largely stayed in place since.

Now that deal, which analysts say Beijing never fully implemented, is part of a larger probe of US-China economic and trade relations that Trump called for in an executive order on his first day in office.

The review will guide whether the White House imposes duties on China but is expected to take months. Also unclear is whether Trump will deepen export controls on sensitive technologies implemented by former President Joe Biden. That gives Beijing time to build a relationship with Trump, entertain him in Beijing or push for a pre-emptive deal to avert more severe economic penalties.

“China has realized Trump can be negotiated with, but he is a different, new Trump – what we committed to last time may not satisfy his new desires,” said Shanghai-based foreign affairs analyst Shen Dingli. This time, instead of being “coerced” into a tit-for-tat trade war by Trump, Beijing may do better to “smile, stay calm, and start talking with him,” Shen said.

Tariffs on 10% of Chinese imports into the US could still come as early as next month in retaliation for what Trump described as the role played by Chinese suppliers in America’s fentanyl drug crisis.

But those are a far cry from the 60% duties he campaigned on – and observers of China’s foreign policy say Beijing is likely looking at those threats as levers it could pull to mollify Trump.

For example, Chinese officials could move to implement more of the existing “phase one” deal and further open China’s huge market to foreign firms. They also could take additional actions to stem the export of precursor chemicals used to make the fentanyl.

In China’s domestic debates about foreign policy, many pundits too are advocating dialogue and cooperation on the economy rather than hard lines.

Jia Qingguo, a former dean of Peking University’s prestigious School of International Studies, expressed as much in a recent interview with state-linked financial publication Yicai.

“Rather than adopting a blanket veto of all US proposals,” China should “analyze which issues require opposition and which can be cooperated on based on our own interests,” he said.

If Trump does visit Beijing in the coming months, a trip sources close to the president have suggested he is eyeing, that will also give Beijing a key opportunity to woo the US leader.

‘Must not let our guard down’

But there are also very real limits to how much China can bend toward Trump’s demands – and skepticism within China about how possible it will be to cooperate with his administration. Xi pointed to those in his call with Trump a week ago.

“The important thing is to respect each other’s core interests,” the Chinese leader said, name-checking Taiwan, the self-ruling democracy Beijing claims and has vowed to take control of, as an issue the US needs to treat with “prudence.” On the other hand, there is a “broad space of cooperation” available on other areas, like economic ties, he intimated.

Within China there’s also debate about how the Chinese government should respond if the US president does begin to raise hefty tariffs against Chinese goods – and signs Beijing is preparing for a potential fight.

The country revamped its export control regulations late last year, sharpening its ability to restrict so-called dual-use goods. It’s also already limited the export of certain critical minerals and related technologies that countries rely on to fabricate products from military goods to semiconductors – another kind of leverage Beijing could use to fight tariffs.

Meanwhile, any deal-making between Beijing and Washington will not exist in a vacuum. Rather it will sit amid myriad tensions between the two sides on issues including China’s human rights record, a competition for technological and military dominance, and the balance of power in Asia.

China is unlikely to tamp down on behaviors enflaming those tensions – like its drive to modernize and expand its military and its ramped-up aggression pressing its territorial claims in the South China Sea and over Taiwan. And many US lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, unlike Trump, have given no sign they are willing to work with the country they see as the principal threat to America’s sole superpower status.

On Thursday, for example, lawmakers introduced a bipartisan bill that would revoke China’s preferential trade status with the United States, phase in steep tariffs and end a duty exemption for low-value Chinese imports.

Chinese leaders, too, need to ensure that they look strong in their dealings with the US, both for their domestic audience and countries across the Global South, where Beijing aims to project leadership.

So even as Chinese officials are welcoming overtures from a less combative Trump in week one of his presidency, there’s skepticism within China that those warmer-than-expected signals will last.

“This does not mean that the China-US relationship is any easier; it’s just that the US approach has changed,” Jin Canrong, deputy director of the China-US Research Center at Renmin University in Beijing, said in a video posted on his account on the social media platform Weibo. “We must not let our guard down … the US still views China as a strategic rival.”