MONEY

Police searches come as aviation authorities are probing the cause of the deadliest air disaster on South Korean soil.

Police in South Korea have raided Muan international airport, the offices of Jeju Air and a regional aviation body amid investigations into the deadliest-ever air disaster on South Korean soil.

The Jeonnam Provincial Police Agency carried out the “search and seizure operation” at the three locations on Thursday morning, officials said.

The raids come as aviation authorities, including officials from the United States, are probing the cause of the deadly crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 on Sunday, which killed 179 of 181 people on board.

South Korean authorities said on Wednesday that they extracted the initial data from one of the Boeing 737-800’s two black boxes, with the other to be sent to the United States for analysis due to damage it suffered in the crash.

South Korean officials have launched an inspection of all Boeing 737-800 aircraft in operation as well as a wider probe of the country’s entire airline operations.

South Korean acting president, Choi Sang-mok, said on Thursday that immediate action must be taken if the inspections revealed any problems with the aircraft model.

“As there’s great public concern about the same aircraft model involved in the accident, the transport ministry and relevant organisations must conduct a thorough inspection of operation maintenance, education, and training,” Choi said.

Aviation experts have raised a series of possible causes and contributing factors in the disaster, including a collision with birds, mechanical failure, and the presence of a hardened embankment less than 300 metres (328 yards) from the end of the runway.

The Boeing 737-800 belly-landed on the runway, without its landing gear deployed, shortly after the pilot reported a bird strike to air traffic control, before skidding into a concrete embankment and exploding into flames.

The crash was the deadliest accident involving a South Korean airline since a Korean Air Boeing 747 crashed into a Guam hillside in 1997, killing 228 people.

Here are the key developments on the 1,043rd day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Here is the situation on Thursday, January 2:

Fighting

• Russia launched an early morning New Year’s Day drone strike on the Ukrainian capital Kyiv that killed two people, wounded at least six others and damaged buildings in two districts.
• Two floors of a residential building in central Kyiv were partially destroyed in the strike, according to the State Emergency Service.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that as the New Year started, all Moscow could think about was hurting Ukraine: “Even on New Year’s Eve, Russia was only concerned about how to hurt Ukraine.”

• The Ukrainian military said it shot down 63 out of 111 drones launched by Russia overnight on Wednesday, while 46 had been downed by electronic jamming.
• According to local authorities, several residential buildings in Ukraine’s southern city of Zaporizhzhia caught fire overnight following attacks and one woman was rescued.
• Ukraine’s Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskii visited Ukrainian forces in the Russian border region of Kursk and said that the Russian army had lost more than 34,000 soldiers, either dead or wounded, in their attempts to drive Ukrainian soldiers out of Russian territory.
• Over the previous five months, approximately 700 Russian prisoners of war have been captured, which Ukraine could exchange for its own people held in Russian captivity, Syrskii said.

Economy

• The transit of Russian gas through Ukraine to Europe has been suspended, Russian and Ukrainian authorities said.
• Russia’s Gazprom said it had no legal or technical means to pump gas through Ukraine after Kyiv allowed a contract for gas transit to expire.
• President Zelenskyy said the decision to halt the transit of Russian gas through Ukraine was “one of Moscow’s biggest defeats”.

• Ukrainian Energy Minister Herman Halushchenko called the halt to the transit a “historic event” and was a decision taken “in the interest of national security”.
• Poland also hailed the end of Russian gas transit via Ukraine with Polish Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski saying the cutoff marked “a new victory after NATO enlargement to Finland and Sweden”.

Putin spent billions building Nordstream to circumvent Ukraine and blackmail Eastern Europe with the threat of cutting off gas supplies. Today Ukraine cut off his ability to export gas direct to the EU.
Another victory after the enlargement of NATO by Finland and Sweden.

— Radek Sikorski (@radeksikorski) January 1, 2025

• Russia’s Gazprom has suspended gas supplies to Slovakia following the end of a transit deal to carry gas through Ukraine.
• Slovak gas importer SPP said it had prepared for such a situation and would supply all its customers through alternative routes, mainly by pipelines from Germany and Hungary, but it would face additional costs in transit fees.
• The Slovak government castigated Ukraine’s decision, with the country’s pro-Russian Prime Minister Robert Fico threatening in turn to stop electricity supplies from Slovakia to Ukraine.
• The severing of the gas flow was felt immediately in the breakaway Moldovan region of Transdniestria, which was forced to cut heating and hot water supplies to households. The mainly Russian-speaking territory of about 450,000 people split from Moldova in the early 1990s as the Soviet Union collapsed and still has about 1,500 troops stationed there.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his government and the country’s biggest bank, Sberbank, to build cooperation with China in artificial intelligence. Putin’s instructions were published on the Kremlin’s website, three weeks after he announced that Russia would team up with BRICS partners and other countries to develop AI.

Suspected gunman in shooting rampage in town of Cetinje shoots himself in the head after being surrounded by police.

Two children were among at least 10 people killed in a mass shooting that started at a restaurant in the small town of Cetinje in Montenegro and continued at three different locations, authorities said.

A local man suspected of carrying out the shootings, identified by police as Aleksandar Martinovic, 45, was confirmed to have died early on Thursday morning after turning the gun on himself and dying from his injuries while being transported to hospital.

Police had surrounded the suspect near his home in Cetinje. When police commanded him “to lay down his weapon, he shot himself in the head”, the country’s police chief, Lazar Scepanovic, told reporters.

“An attempt was made to transport him to a clinical centre, but he succumbed to his injuries in the meantime,” he said.

In a post on social media confirming that the suspected gunman had died, Montenegrin Prime Minister Milojko Spajic said the mass killing had “shrouded our country in black”.

“This senseless act has caused immeasurable sadness and bitterness in each of us. There are no words of comfort,” Spajic said.

Montenegro’s national security council will now consider “all options” in the aftermath of the attack, including a complete ban on the possession of weapons, the prime minister said, adding the country will observe three days of national mourning.

Interior Minister Danilo Saranovic told journalists that the two minors killed in the attacks, which started on Wednesday night, were children of the owner of the restaurant where the shooting spree began. The owner was also killed, he said.

The shooter had “killed members of his own family”, the minister said, adding that the suspect was thought to have been drinking heavily before the rampage.

Four people seriously wounded in the attack were reported to be fighting for their lives in a hospital in the Montenegrin capital Podgorica.

The suspect, who media reports said had a history of illegal weapons possession and received a suspended sentence in 2005 for violent behaviour, had fled after the shootings and was at large in Cetinje, a small valley town surrounded by rugged hills some 38km (23.6 miles) west of Podgorica.

All the roads in and out of the town had been blocked as police swarmed the streets before surrounding the suspect near his home.

The mass shooting was the second gun rampage over the past three years in Cetinje, Montenegro’s historic capital. An attacker also killed 10 people, including two children, in August 2022 before he was shot and killed by a passerby, The Associated Press news agency reports.

Montenegro, which has a population of just over 620,000 people, is known for its gun culture and many people traditionally have weapons.

Organised crime and corruption are two major issues also plaguing Montenegro, which authorities have pledged to tackle under pressure from the European Union that the tiny nation aspires to join.

Authorities say they are investigating the incident, in which seven people sustained minor injuries.

One person has been killed and seven injured after a Tesla Cybertruck caught fire and exploded outside of a Las Vegas hotel partly owned by United States President-elect Donald Trump.

The fire began on Wednesday at about 8:40am local time (14:40 GMT) in the valet area of the Trump International Hotel Las Vegas, according to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department and Clark County officials.

“We were told that a 2024 Cybertruck pulled up to the front of the hotel. And in fact, I can tell you, it pulled right up to the glass entrance doors to the hotel,” Sheriff Kevin McMahill said at a news conference. “We saw that smoke start showing from the vehicle, and then a large explosion from the truck occurs.”

Details are still emerging, and the cause of the explosion has yet to be confirmed by officials.

“I know you have a lot of questions,” Jeremy Schwartz, the acting special agent in charge of the Las Vegas office for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), told reporters. “We don’t have a lot of answers.”

Authorities said that the truck appeared to have been carrying fireworks, and a person was found dead inside the vehicle. Several people in the vicinity of the explosion were treated for minor injuries.

One witness, Ana Bruce, told The Associated Press news agency that she heard three explosions resulting from the fire.

“The first one [happened] where we saw the fire,” Bruce said. “The second one, I guess, was the battery or something like that, and the third was the big one that smoked the entire area and was the moment when everyone was told to evacuate and stay away.”

The incident occurred hours after a car-ramming attack in the Louisiana city of New Orleans that killed at least 10 people, in what authorities are investigating as a possible terrorist act.

The suspect in that case is believed to have been carrying improvised explosive devices, or IEDs, in his truck at the time of the car-ramming.

Sheriff McMahill acknowledged that his officers were “very well aware of what happened in New Orleans” and that the incident may inform their investigation. But he stopped short of linking the two.

“As you can imagine, with an explosion here on iconic Las Vegas Boulevard, we are taking all the precautions that we need to take to keep our community safe. We’re looking for secondary devices,” McMahill said at the news conference, adding that there did not appear to be any further threat to the community.

The Cybertruck explosion comes as Trump prepares to take office for a second term on January 20.

Part of his incoming administration includes close advisers, like tech billionaire and Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whom Trump has tapped to co-lead a yet-to-be-founded, nongovernmental body called the Department of Government Efficiency.

Trump has pitched the new entity as an advisory panel to help streamline the federal government.

In a social media post, Musk said that Tesla, the electric vehicle company he founded, was looking into Wednesday’s incident.

“The whole Tesla senior team is investigating this matter right now,” Musk wrote, adding: “We’ve never seen anything like this.”

PA accuses network of broadcasting ‘inciting material’ and ‘stirring strife’ in the country.

The Palestinian Authority (PA) has suspended the work of Al Jazeera temporarily in the occupied West Bank over “inciting material,” Palestinian official news agency Wafa has reported.

A ministerial committee that includes the culture, interior and communications ministries decided to suspend the broadcaster’s operations for what they described as broadcasting “inciting material and reports that were deceiving and stirring strife” in the country, Wafa reported on Wednesday.

There was no immediate comment from Al Jazeera Media Network.

The decision comes after Fatah, the Palestinian faction which dominates the PA, banned Al Jazeera from reporting from the governorate of Jenin in the northern occupied West Bank, citing its coverage of clashes between the Palestinian security forces and Palestinian armed groups in the area.

Fatah on December 24 had accused the broadcaster of sowing division in “our Arab homeland in general and in Palestine in particular” and encouraged Palestinians not to cooperate with the network.

In response, the network slammed Fatah, saying it had launched an “incitement campaign” against the network and its journalists in the occupied West Bank for its coverage of the clashes.

Al Jazeera’s Hamdah Salhut, reporting from the Jordanian capital Amman, said Palestinian security forces’ raids in Jenin were unpopular among the Palestinians in the West Bank.

“The PA has been conducting its own raids that are separate from Israeli forces … the PA has stepped up those raids in the last four weeks,” Salhut said. “These crackdowns in places like Jenin have killed several Palestinians,” she said.

‘A big mistake’

Mustafa Barghouti, the secretary-general of the Palestinian National Initiative, said Palestinians would be “astonished at this decision” to suspend Al Jazeera broadcasts.

“I think it’s a big mistake and this decision should be reversed as soon as possible,” Barghouti told Al Jazeera from Ramallah.

“If the PA has an issue with Al Jazeera, it should discuss it,” he said, especially since Al Jazeera has been “exposing the crimes against the Palestinian people … and [has been] promoting the Palestinian cause in general”.

“But more than that, it is an issue of freedom of … the press,” Barghouti said.

Israeli forces in September issued Al Jazeera with a military order to shut down operations after they raided the outlet’s bureau in the West Bank city of Ramallah – where the PA is based.

Meanwhile, the PA, which engages in security coordination with Israel, has continued its crackdown in Jenin – a stronghold for armed groups opposing Israel’s occupation.

Several civilians, PA soldiers and armed fighters have been killed since the start of “Operation Protect the Homeland”, including Jenin Brigades commander Yazid Ja’ayseh.

The fighting has focused Palestinian criticism on the PA, with the Popular Resistance Committees umbrella group accusing the organisation of operating “in line with the Zionist agenda”.

Sarah Kassim celebrated a New Year “full of freedom” with thousands of other Syrians in Damascus, marking the first time in 50 years the Assad regime has not been in power for the event.

A new United States Congress convenes in Washington, DC, on January 3. But for the first time in 18 years, a key Republican leader will no longer be at the helm: Senator Mitch McConnell.

Since 2007, McConnell has served as head of the Republican Party in the Senate, steering members of his caucus through four different presidencies and countless legislative hurdles.

Experts say his tenure as the Senate’s longest-serving party leader will ultimately be remembered as an inflexion point for Republicans and Congress as a whole.

Under McConnell, US politics moved away from the back-slappers and consensus-builders of earlier eras. Instead, McConnell helped to usher in a period of norm-breaking, hyper-partisan politics that paved the way for figures like incoming President Donald Trump, the leader of the Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement.

“First and foremost, he extended a trend in minority obstruction in the Senate,” Steven S Smith, professor emeritus of political science at Washington University in St Louis, told Al Jazeera.

Smith pointed out that McConnell led a Republican majority for only six of his 18 years as Senate leader. The rest of his tenure has been spent mobilising a minority in the 100-seat Senate to disrupt the agenda of the rival Democratic Party.

“Second, he will be known for deepening partisan polarisation in the Senate,” Smith said. “While McConnell is not a conservative or MAGA extremist by today’s standards, he was a deeply partisan leader.”

Despite his commitment to the Republican Party, some see McConnell as a potential bulwark to figures like Trump, with whom he has clashed in the past.

Though he is stepping down as party leader, McConnell intends to remain in the Senate for the remainder of his six-year term. But the extent to which McConnell will act as a check on Trump’s ambitious second-term agenda remains to be seen.

“I’d be very surprised to see him be provocative in a public way. His influence is going underground,” Al Cross, a veteran reporter and columnist who covered McConnell’s tenure, told Al Jazeera.

‘I usually play the villain’

McConnell has led a long and storied career in the Senate. In 1984, he made his first bid for a seat in the chamber, ousting an incumbent Democrat.

He has remained undefeated ever since. In 2020, he won his seventh straight term.

His ascent to the top of the Senate came without significant opposition. The 2007 retirement of the previous Senate Republican leader, Bill Frist, left the position vacant.

But even from his first days as a Senate leader, McConnell cultivated a reputation as a hardliner and obstructionist.

During his first year as Republican leader, The New York Times described him as operating with “near-robotic efficiency” to smack down Democratic policies, despite leading a minority in the Senate.

“Mr McConnell and his fellow Republicans are playing such tight defense, blocking nearly every bill proposed by the slim Democratic majority that they are increasingly able to dictate what they want,” reporter David Herszenhorn wrote.

McConnell quickly embraced his visibility as a partisan warrior, a self-described “grim reaper” for progressive proposals.

One editorial column nicknamed him “Senator No” for his refusal to work across the aisle. McConnell himself greeted reporters once by saying, “Darth Vader has arrived.”

“Over the three decades I have been a US Senator, I’ve been the subject of many profiles,” McConnell wrote in the opening lines of his 2016 memoir. “I usually play the villain.”

Smith, the Washington University professor, described McConnell as sparking a “transformation” in the Senate as a result of his hardline approach.

Before McConnell’s leadership, Smith said the Senate only saw “occasional minority obstruction”. But afterwards, the chamber became known in political circles as the “60-vote Senate”.

That nickname is a reference to the 60 votes required to overcome a minority obstruction, otherwise known as a filibuster.

Under McConnell, Smith explained, “acting on legislation of any importance would face minority obstruction and require 60 votes for cloture”.

Bending norms

One of McConnell’s most divisive moments came in 2016, with the death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia.

Normally, when a justice dies, the sitting president is entitled to nominate a replacement. But Scalia’s death came 11 months before a pivotal presidential election. And the president at the time, Democrat Barack Obama, was nearing the end of his final term.

McConnell made a stunning — and swift — political gamble. Within hours of Scalia’s death, the Republican leader announced he would refuse to call a vote to confirm Obama’s chosen replacement.

“The American people should have a voice in the selection of their next Supreme Court Justice. Therefore, this vacancy should not be filled until we have a new president,” McConnell said in a statement.

Left-leaning publications like The Nation decried McConnell’s decision as an assault on the US Constitution. “This refusal exploded norms,” journalist Alec MacGillis wrote in the publication ProPublica.

But McConnell’s gambit shifted the balance of power on the court for generations to come.

That November, US voters elected Trump — a political newcomer — to his first term in the White House, setting the stage for more shifts in Washington norms.

Trump ultimately nominated three right-wing justices to the Supreme Court, including one to replace Scalia. That cemented a conservative super-majority on the bench, anticipated to mould US law for generations to come.

Trump later credited McConnell as his “ace in the hole” and “partner”.

“Mitch recognized, as did I, that since judges enjoy life tenure, the impact of judicial nominations can be felt for thirty years or more,” Trump wrote in a forward to McConnell’s memoir. “Transforming the federal judiciary is the ultimate long game!”

A Trump rivalry

But in the lead-up to a new and emboldened Trump administration in 2025, McConnell has increasingly spoken out against the president-elect and his isolationist “America First” platform.

The two Republican leaders have repeatedly butted heads, and their relationship is notably frosty.

Trump has openly called McConnell an “old crow” and vilified his “China-loving wife” Elaine Chao, a slap at her Asian heritage.

McConnell, meanwhile, has countered with his own fighting words, implying parallels between Trump and isolationism in the 1930s.

“We’re in a very, very dangerous world right now, reminiscent of before World War II,” McConnell told the Financial Times in December. “Even the slogan is the same. ‘America First.’ That was what they said in the ’30s.”

Upon vacating his leadership post in January, McConnell is expected to take on the role of chairman of the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense.

In his new position, he is likely to advocate for strengthening the US military to counter threats from adversaries like Russia, Iran and China.

Yet at age 82, with health challenges including a recent fall, experts say McConnell is unlikely to offer much resistance to the incoming Trump administration.

“Since Senator McConnell is out of his leadership position and given his physical frailty, I am not expecting much in the way of sustained opposition from him,” Harvard University political scientist Daniel Ziblatt told Al Jazeera.

“It is possible he may cast a dissenting vote here or there that might make a difference. But his track record doesn’t leave me holding my breath.”

No greater institutionalist

Still, Herbert Weisberg, a professor of political science at The Ohio State University, anticipates that McConnell may act as an occasional dissenting voice, particularly as the Senate weighs some of Trump’s controversial nominees for high-level government posts.

“He’d normally want to defer to a Republican president on appointees, but he’ll be cautious on the unusual Trump nominees. He might be willing to vote against a few, but not all of them,” Weisberg told Al Jazeera.

Already, McConnell — a childhood polio survivor — issued a public warning to incoming administration officials to “steer clear of” efforts “to undermine public confidence” in “proven cures”, lest they scuttle their Senate confirmation hearings.

The statement came immediately after Trump health nominee Robert F Kennedy Jr was linked to an effort to revoke approval for the polio vaccine in The New York Times.

But a single Republican is unlikely to stall a nomination or piece of legislation, as Steven Okun, an analyst on US politics, government and trade, pointed out.

Republicans hold a 53-person majority in the incoming Senate. And many in the party are firmly behind Trump’s leadership.

Assuming a united Democratic opposition, “four Republican senators would be needed to stop anything a future President Trump puts forth to the Senate,” Okun explained.

McConnell, Okun added, is unlikely to take on the role of dissenter — “only when Donald Trump pursues the most aggressive actions which would run counter to the US national interest”.

After all, party loyalty has been a key tenet of McConnell’s leadership. And experts like Cross, the journalist, believe McConnell won’t want to miss an opportunity to use the power of the Senate to shape presidential policy.

“I can’t think of any greater institutionalist than Mitch McConnell,” Cross said. “He loves the Senate, it’s what he’s aspired to. He doesn’t want to give up its role in advice and consent.”

When I started studying nursing at Al Azhar University, I knew I wanted to work at al-Shifa Hospital. It was my dream.

It was the biggest, most prestigious hospital in the Gaza Strip. Some of the best doctors and nurses in Palestine worked there. Various foreign medical missions would come and provide training and care there as well.

Many people from the north to the south of the Gaza Strip sought medical help at al-Shifa. The name of the hospital means “healing” in Arabic and indeed, it was a place of healing for the Palestinians of Gaza.

In 2020, I graduated from nursing school and tried to find a job in the private sector. After several short-term jobs, I got into al-Shifa as a volunteer nurse.

I loved my job at the emergency department very much. I went to work with passion and positive energy every day. I would meet patients with a wide smile, hoping to relieve some of their pain. I always loved to hear patients’ prayers for me in gratitude.

In the emergency department, we were 80 nurses in total – both women and men – and we were all friends. In fact, some of my closest friends were colleagues at the hospital. Alaa was one of them. We did shifts together and went out for coffee outside of work. She was a beautiful girl who was very kind and loved by everyone.

It was such friendships and the comradery among the staff that helped me pull through when the war started.

From the very first day, the hospital became overwhelmed with casualties. After my first shift ended that day, I stayed in the nurses’ room crying for an hour over everything we had been through and all the injured people I had seen suffering.

Within days there were more than a thousand wounded and martyrs in the hospital. The more people were brought in, the harder we worked, trying to save lives.

I never expected that this horror would last for more than a month. But it did.

Soon, the Israeli army called my family and told us that we needed to leave our home in Gaza City. I faced a difficult choice: to be with my family in this horrific time or to be with the patients who needed me the most. I decided to stay.

I bid farewell to my family who fled south to Rafah and I stayed behind in al-Shifa Hospital, which became my second home. Alaa stayed behind as well. We supported and comforted each other.

In early November, the Israeli army told us to evacuate the hospital and laid a siege to it. Our medical supplies started to dwindle. We were quickly running out of fuel for our electricity generators that were keeping life-saving equipment going.

Perhaps the most heartbreaking moment was when we ran out of fuel and oxygen and we could no longer keep the premature babies we had in our care in the incubators. We had to relocate them to an operating room where we tried to keep them warm. They were struggling to breathe and we had no oxygen to help them. We lost eight innocent babies. I remember sitting and crying for a long time that day for those innocent souls.

Then on November 15, Israeli soldiers stormed the complex. The attack came as a shock. As a medical facility, it was supposed to be protected under international law, but that clearly did not stop the Israeli army.

Just before the raid, our administration told us that they had received a call that the Israelis were about to storm the medical complex. We quickly closed the gate of the emergency department and gathered inside around the nursing desk in the middle of it, not knowing what to do. The next day, we saw Israeli soldiers surrounding the building. We could not leave and we were running out of medical supplies. We struggled to provide treatment to the patients we had with us.

We had no food or water left. I remember feeling dizzy and almost fainting. I had not eaten anything for three days. We lost some patients because of the siege and the Israeli raid.

On November 18, Dr Mohammad Abu Salmiya, al-Shifa’s director, came to tell us that the Israelis had ordered the whole medical complex to be evacuated. If I had a choice, I would have stayed, but the Israeli army did not leave me one.

Hundreds of us, doctors and nurses, were forced to leave, along with many patients. Only about two dozen staff stayed behind with bed-ridden patients who could not be moved. Dr Abu Salmiya also stayed behind and was arrested several days later. He disappeared for the next seven months.

I, along with dozens of colleagues head south per Israeli orders. Alaa and a few others defied these orders and headed north to their families. We walked for many kilometres and passed Israeli checkpoints, where we were made to wait for hours, until we were able to find a donkey cart that could transport us some of the way.

When we finally arrived in Rafah, I was beyond happy to see my family. There was a lot of crying and relief. But the happiness of being with my family was soon overshadowed by shocking news.

Alaa was able to return to her family in Beit Lahiya, who had been displaced in a school shelter. But when she and her brother went to their abandoned house to retrieve some belongings, an Israeli missile hit the building and they were martyred.

The news of her death came as an enormous shock. A year later, I still live with the pain of losing my close friend – one of the sweetest people I had ever known who loved to help others and who was always there to comfort me in difficult moments.

In March, Israeli soldiers returned to al-Shifa. For two weeks, they rampaged through the hospital, leaving behind death and devastation. Not a building was left in the medical complex that was not damaged or burned down. From a place of healing, al-Shifa was transformed into a graveyard.

I do not know how I will feel when I see the hospital again. How will I feel knowing that the place of my best professional achievements and dearest moments shared with colleagues also became a place of death, forced disappearances and displacement?

Today, more than a year after I lost my workplace, I live in a tent and care for the ill in a makeshift clinic. My future, our future is uncertain. But in the new year, I have a dream: to see al-Shifa as it used to be – grand and beautiful.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

While Israeli revelers partied in Tel Aviv, Palestinians in Gaza spent New Year’s Eve fleeing Israeli bombardment, mourning the loss of loved ones, and salvaging what they could from their flooded tents.

The next round of talks with European powers will take place one week before Trump’s return to the White House.

The next round of nuclear talks between Iran and France, the United Kingdom and Germany will take place in Geneva in January, Iran’s semi-official ISNA news agency reports, citing the country’s Deputy Foreign Minister Kazem Gharibabadi.

“The new round of talks between Iran and three European countries will be held in Geneva on January 13,” Gharibabadi said on Wednesday.

Iran held talks with the three European powers about its disputed nuclear programme in November. Those discussions, the first since the presidential election in the United States, came after Tehran was angered by a Europe-backed resolution that accused Iran of poor cooperation with the United Nations nuclear watchdog.

Tehran reacted to the resolution by informing the IAEA watchdog that it plans to install more uranium-enriching centrifuges at its enrichment plants.

On December 17, the three European countries accused Iran of growing its stockpile of high-enriched uranium to “unprecedented levels” without “any credible civilian justification”. They have also raised the possibility of restoring sanctions against Iran to keep it from developing its nuclear programme.

IAEA chief Rafael Grossi told Reuters news agency in December that Iran is “dramatically” accelerating its enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, closer to the roughly 90 percent level that is weapons grade.

Tehran insists on its right to nuclear energy for peaceful purposes and has consistently denied any ambition of developing nuclear weapons capability.

In 2015, Iran reached an agreement with world powers, including the US, to curb its nuclear programme due to concerns about the country potentially developing nuclear weapons.

But in 2018, the then administration of Donald Trump exited Iran’s 2015 nuclear pact with six major powers and reimposed harsh sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to violate the pact’s nuclear limits, with moves such as rebuilding stockpiles of enriched uranium, refining it to higher fissile purity and installing advanced centrifuges to speed up output.

Indirect talks between US President Joe Biden’s administration and Tehran to try to revive the pact have failed, but Trump said during his election campaign in September: “We have to make a deal, because the consequences are impossible. We have to make a deal.”

The January 13 talks will take place one week before Trump’s return to the White House.

Ivory Coast has become the latest African country to expel France’s military from its nation. In a televised address, President Alassane Ouattara announced the ‘organised withdrawal’ of French troops would begin almost immediately.

Identification checks at Bulgaria and Romania’s land borders have ceased, opening free travel to the rest of the European Union.

Romania and Bulgaria have become full members of the Schengen zone, expanding the borderless area to 29 members and ending a 13-year wait for the two Eastern European countries.

The expansion, made possible when Austria and other members dropped their objections to the former communist countries joining, officially took place at midnight (22:00 GMT) on Wednesday, marked by ceremonies at various border posts.

Identification checks at the land borders between Bulgaria and Romania and their neighbouring European Union member countries officially ceased at midnight, providing travellers free access to the rest of the 27-member bloc.

The two Balkan countries partially joined the Schengen Area in March, but open travel was restricted to those arriving only by air or sea.

Late on Tuesday, the interior ministers of Bulgaria and Romania met at the Ruse-Giurgiu border crossing between the two countries to mark the opening of the frontier. Another short ceremony was held at a border crossing between Hungary and Romania with a meeting between Hungary’s national chief of police and the chief inspector of Romania’s border police.

Romania and Bulgaria joined the EU in 2007, but were not integrated into the borderless zone until March, when border checks were lifted from maritime and air travel. Land border checks remained in place due to opposition, chiefly from Austria, over concerns that the two countries were not doing enough to prevent migrants from entering without authorisation.

The expansion of the Schengen Area came after months of efforts to integrate Bulgaria and Romania into the zone by Hungary’s government as it held the six-month rotating presidency of the EU.

Some one million ethnic Hungarians live in the Transylvania region of Romania, a legacy of the partition of Hungary following World War I. Relations have been historically rocky between the two countries, but opening the border will ease travel and strengthen links between the regions.

Schengen, one of the main achievements of the European project, was established in 1985 as an intergovernmental project between five EU countries – France, Germany, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg. It has gradually expanded to become the largest free travel area in the world.

However, several Schengen member countries, including the Netherlands, Austria and Germany, this year reinstated some land border checks over concerns ranging from migration to security. Some EU officials warned the reimposed checks could undermine the scheme’s goals.

Before Bulgaria and Romania’s partial admission, Schengen was comprised of 23 of the 27 EU member countries, along with Switzerland, Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. About 3.5 million people cross an internal border daily, and more than 420 million people live within the Schengen Area.

Here are the key developments on the 1,042nd day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Here is the situation on Wednesday, January 1:

Fighting

• Russia launched a drone attack on the Ukrainian capital, causing damage in at least two districts, city officials said. Kyiv Mayor Vitalii Klitschko said air defences were repelling the attack, and that debris had sparked fires in private buildings.
• Ukrainian military intelligence said on Tuesday one of its naval drones – the Magura V5 maritime drone – destroyed a Russian Mi-8 helicopter and damaged another one in the Black Sea.
• The Ukrainian military said on Tuesday its forces hit a Russian oil depot in the Smolensk region.

Diplomacy

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said late on Tuesday that no one would give peace to his country as a gift, but he believed the United States would stand alongside Kyiv as it fights to stop Russia’s 34-month invasion.
• Russia’s once-dominant gas supply to Europe via Ukraine, which flowed for decades, has ended with the collapse of a contract between the two warring countries that paid out billions to Moscow in gas revenue and to Kyiv in transit fees.
• Slovakia has said it will not risk a gas shortage with Ukraine stopping the transit of Russian supplies via its territory, but it will have to pay an extra 177 million euros ($184m) in fees for alternative routes, according to the country’s Ministry of Economy.

Officials say all 179 victims from deadliest crash on South Korean soil have been identified.

Investigators probing the deadly crash of Jeju Air Flight 2216 in South Korea have retrieved the initial data from one of the aircraft’s black boxes, officials have said.

Joo Jong-wan, deputy minister for civil aviation, said on Wednesday that the “initial extraction” of data from the cockpit voice recorder had been completed.

“Based on this preliminary data, we plan to start converting it into audio format,” he said.

Joo said the plane’s second black box, the flight data recorder, would be sent to the United States for analysis as local investigators were unable to recover the information it contained due to damage it suffered in the crash.

Flight 2216 crashed at Muan International Airport, about 290km (180 miles) southwest of Seoul, on Sunday morning, killing 179 of 181 people on board.

The crash was the worst-ever air disaster on South Korean soil and the deadliest accident involving a South Korean airline since a Korean Air Boeing 747 crashed into a Guam hillside in 1997, killing 228 people.

Aviation experts have raised a series of possible causes and contributing factors in Sunday’s disaster, including a collision with birds, mechanical failure, pilot error and the presence of a hardened embankment less than 300 metres (328 yards) from the end of the runway.

The Boeing 737-800 belly-landed on the runway, without its landing gear deployed, shortly after the pilot reported a bird strike to air traffic control, then skidded into a concrete embankment and exploded into flames.

South Korean authorities, aided by investigators from Boeing and the US National Transportation Safety Board, have focused their initial inquiries on the embankment, which some aviation experts have said should have been placed further from the runway or constructed from softer materials.

South Korean officials on Wednesday also announced that they had confirmed the identities of all 179 victims amid complaints from grieving families about the timeframe for identifying and releasing the bodies.

Authorities have said identifying the remains has been a slow and difficult process due to the damage done to the bodies in the crash.

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There are a number of different reasons why people don’t invest their money.

Perhaps you think you’re not wealthy enough, you’re worried about the risk, or you simply lack the confidence to get going.

Although embarking on an investment journey can feel overwhelming, it’s an important step to securing your financial future, and it’s perfectly fine to start small.

Yes, investing may sound – and can be – risky, but you should also remember that it can also serve as a shield against inflation. This is because, unlike savings, investments can grow alongside rising prices.

Bonds

The finance world is full of jargon, which can be off-putting if you’re a newbie.

To start at the beginning, it’s useful to go through key types of investments, the first being bonds.

We can think of bonds as an “I owe you” message because they are essentially a loan to a company or a government.

When you take out a bond, you should look at the timeframe within which that money has to be paid back to you, and you should also look at the coupon rate.

The coupon rate means the level of interest that the bond issuer promises to pay you, typically once or twice a year.

Another phrase you will come across when dealing with bonds is the yield. The yield, also expressed as a percentage, looks at both the coupon rate (the interest) and the hypothetical amount of money you would receive if you were to sell the bond in the current market. It is therefore a reflection of how profitable the bond is.

Another thing you should think about before buying bonds is the reliability of the issuer, and you can do this by checking their credit rating.

Higher-rated bonds are generally considered safer investments, as it is more likely the issuer will pay you back.

Stocks and shares

Shares, also referred to as equities, represent a different type of investment.

When you buy a share, you’re paying money to buy a small slice of a company, meaning that you become a partial owner.

If a firm is doing well, the share price tends to go up, and if a company is performing poorly, the price is likely to go down.

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The value of a share also depends on economic conditions.

If an economy is going through a rough period, people will generally be less keen to invest, translating into lower prices.

“Investing truly is something that needs to be medium to long term in nature because prices fluctuate,” said Jason Hollands, investment expert at Evelyn Partners.

“The last thing you want to do is put your money in and, along comes a difficult year, and suddenly you lose 20% of your money at the very point you need to use it,” he added.

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“If you have a very long time horizon then you should be prepared to tolerate the downs as well as the ups.”

So, let’s say you’ve decided on your timescale, and bought your shares. One important question remains: where is your income coming from?

The primary way to make a profit on shares is to sell them for more than you bought them for, but you can also make money on shares through dividends.

A dividend is given out by firms to shareholders, and they usually come in the form of cash or more company shares.

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Pooled funds

One investing tip you may have received is to “diversify your portfolio”, which essentially translates to: “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.

By investing in different types of assets, the logic is that you won’t lose everything if a certain company goes bust.

If you don’t have a lot of money, it might seem harder to spread your investments efficiently but, in these cases, pooled funds can be useful.

A pooled fund, as you might have guessed, involves investing with other people.

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Instead of buying your own individual assets, your money is put into a big pot with others’ funds, and this is then used to buy a mix of products such as bonds or stocks.

The personal return you will get from this pooled investment depends on how much you put in.

Common types of pooled investments you may come across include mutual funds and ETFs (exchange traded funds).

Although they’re somewhat similar, one difference between these two products is that mutual funds are generally managed by an expert who will choose which assets to buy – a process called active management.

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ETFs, on the other hand, are more likely to be passively managed, which means that they use algorithms to track a specific index.

Indexes, such as the S&P 500, are like scoreboards which show how well companies in a particular market are doing.

For example, if a fund tracks the S&P 500, this therefore means it invests in stocks included in the S&P “leaderboard”.

“We believe in the merits of passive investing,” said Colm Moore, managing director of Moore Wealth Management.

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“Taking trading and transaction costs out of the equation can have a big impact on what your return is going to be.”

Whilst some investors prefer to pay someone to manage their portfolio, active management is more expensive, and there are none of these funds that consistently outperform index-tracking investments.

Other types of investments

As well as investing in stocks and bonds, alternative assets include gold, oil, real estate, or even cryptocurrencies.

Putting your money towards these assets may seem expensive, but, as explained earlier, pooled funds can be a way to get around this.

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Before choosing where to put your money, you should think about the pros and cons of each asset.

For instance, gold doesn’t offer dividend income, but it is often considered a safe haven asset because it holds its value in times of uncertainty.

You should also think about the liquidity of what you are buying, which means how easy it is to buy and sell the asset.

Property investments, for example, are relatively illiquid.

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Some final tips

Now you hopefully have a clearer idea of the investment process, we asked financial experts to outline some common errors made by beginners.

“One really big mistake a lot of beginners make is that they read about a particular area, it’s exciting … and they can very quickly race down the route of buying a fund before thinking about whether it is sensible for them,” said Jason Hollands of Evelyn Partners.

He told Euronews Business that just because a stock is causing a buzz, it doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good fit for your portfolio.

Colm Moore, managing director at Moore Wealth Management, explained that his first tip for those looking to invest is to pay off existing high interest loans, and to make sure that they have an available cushion of funds to cover a three to six-month period with no income.

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Once invested, he says that individuals shouldn’t let themselves be spooked when the value of their stock falls, because it is likely to go up again in time.

“The biggest mistake that people make is that they panic when markets are down and they say: ‘I have to get my money out of the market and into the perceived safety of cash’.”

“The best days always follow the worst days,” Moore added.

“So if you take your money out, you’re missing the inevitable bounce back in prices. It is always about time in the market rather than timing the market.”

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A reminder, the information in this article does not constitute financial advice, always do your own research on top to ensure it’s right for your specific circumstances. Also remember, we are a journalistic website and aim to provide the best guides, tips and advice from experts. If you rely on the information on this page then you do so entirely at your own risk.