Ireland, Britain, and France faced travel chaos on Saturday, and one person died as a winter storm battered northwest Europe with strong winds, heavy rain, snow, and ice.

Hampshire Police in southern England said a man died after a tree fell onto a car on a major road near Winchester early in the day.

Police in West Yorkshire said they were probing whether a second death from a traffic accident was linked to the storm. It is understood the road was not icy at the time of the incident.

Storm Bert left at least 60,000 properties in Ireland without power and closed roads and some ferry and train routes on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Channel ports and airports in Britain were badly affected, while in France, tens of thousands remained without power after Storm Caetano on Thursday. Hundreds of passengers were stranded when trains were halted by power cuts.

Media footage showed flooding in the west of Ireland, which also caused rail closures in Northern Ireland. Snow impacted travel across Britain.

The heaviest snow hit Scotland and parts of northern and central England, with dozens of flood alerts in place.

The UK Met Office issued snow and ice warnings for those regions, saying there was a “good chance some rural communities could be cut off.”

Scottish hills could see up to 40 centimetres (16 inches) of snow, while winds approaching 113 kilometres (70 miles) per hour were recorded in Britain.

Ferry operator DFDS cancelled services on some routes until Monday, with sailings from Newhaven and Dover in southern England to Dieppe and Calais in France severely affected.

Flights were disrupted at Newcastle Airport due to heavy snow, with some flights diverted to Belfast and Edinburgh.

– Blackouts –

Avanti West Coast, which runs rail services between England and Scotland, advised customers not to attempt travel beyond the northern English city of Preston, as it cancelled numerous trains.

National Highways also issued a “severe weather alert,” warning of “blizzard conditions” affecting Yorkshire and northeast England, with a number of road closures announced.

Met Eireann, the Irish National Meteorological Service, also issued a warning for “very strong winds and heavy rain.”

The worst affected areas for power outages in Ireland were in western and northwestern counties, according to ESB Networks, which runs the country’s electricity system.

“Crews and contractors are deployed and restoring power in impacted areas where it is safe to do so,” it said.

In Britain, the National Grid operator said power had been restored to “many homes and businesses,” but more than 4,000 properties across the country were still without electricity on Saturday—the majority in southwest England.

Some 47,000 homes remained without power in northern France on Saturday, two days after the country was battered by Storm Caetano, power company Enedis said.

Up to 270,000 people had been cut off due to the storm, but Enedis said it had 2,000 technicians working to reconnect electricity lines torn down by winds of up to 130 kph.

Several hundred passengers were stranded on two trains in western France halted by power cuts.

Some 200 people on a train going from Hendaye to Bordeaux and 400 on a high-speed TGV going from Hendaye to Paris spent up to nine hours in the carriages.

Junior transport minister Francois Dourovray told RTL radio that up to 1,000 passengers on different trains were affected by the power cut.

AFP

The International Criminal Court, ICC has issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant, accusing them of war crimes over the war in Gaza.

The court said it had “reasonable grounds” to believe Netanyahu bears criminal responsibility for war crimes including “starvation as a method of warfare” and “the crimes against humanity of murder, persecution, and other inhumane acts.”

Netanyahu’s office said Israel “utterly rejects the absurd and false actions and accusations.” The move compels ICC members to arrest him but key powers, including Israel’s major ally the US, are not signatories.

The ICC announcement came as the Palestinian death toll from Israel’s war in Gaza rose to more than 44,000 people, according to the health ministry there.

CNN.

Former Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz has withdrawn his name from consideration to become attorney general after days of debate over whether to release a congressional report on sexual misconduct allegations against him.

On X, formerly Twitter, the 42-year-old said that the controversy over his potential nomination “was unfairly becoming a distraction” to the work of the incoming Trump administration.

The report included the findings of a probe sparked by allegations of sexual misconduct and illicit drug use.

Gaetz has denied the claims but said that he hoped to avoid a “needlessly protracted Washington scuffle.”

The withdrawal of Gaetz – who Donald Trump selected to be the top US law enforcement officer – represents a setback for the president-elect.

On his own Truth Social social media platform, the former and soon-to-be president said he appreciated Gaetz’s effort to become attorney general.

“He was doing very well, but at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the administration, for which he has much respect,” Trump added.

In his post on X, formerly Twitter, Gaetz said that Trump’s justice department “must be in place and ready” on the first day of his administration in January.

“I remain fully committed to see that Donald J Trump is the most successful president in history,” he wrote.

“I will forever be honoured that President Trump nominated me to lead the Department of Justice and I’m certain he will save America,” Gaetz added.

The shadow cast by the long-running investigation by a congressional ethics panel into a number of claims involving drugs, bribes and sex meant that Gaetz was likely to face an uphill battle when it came time to be confirmed by the US Senate.

Lawmakers – including some fellow Senate Republicans – had expressed concern about his nomination, reportedly prompting a significant closed-door effort by him and Trump to secure the necessary support.

The day before his withdrawal, the House Ethics Committee – which compiled the report – met behind closed doors to debate whether or not it should release the report into Gaetz.

The committee’s ranking Democrat, Susan Wild, said that the group had not been able to come to an agreement and was evenly divided, 5-5, on party lines.

Its chairman, Michael Guest, told reporters on Thursday that his withdrawal “should end the discussion of whether or not the ethics committee should move forward in his matter.”

“He is no longer a member of Congress, and so I think that this settles any involvement that the ethics committee should have in any matters involving Mr Gaetz,” he said.

Gaetz resigned from his House seat last week after Trump nominated him to become attorney general.

It is unclear whom Trump will nominate in his place.

The allegations stem, in part, from a woman’s claims that she attended a 2017 party with him and witnessed the then-congressman having sex with a minor.

The woman’s lawyer later said that the woman, as well as another witness, were paid by Gaetz to have sex with him.

A separate three-year federal sex trafficking investigation into Gaetz ended with no charges brought against him.

Will Matt Gaetz return to Congress?

It is unclear what will come next for Gaetz, who provided no detail on his future plans in his announcement.

President-Elect Trump said only that he has a “wonderful future” and will do “great things”.

Experts have suggested that it is unlikely that Gaetz would try to return to the House – where he was re-elected to his seat in the November election – as it would mean that the Ethics Committee report could be made public.

Senior Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have used his resignation as justification to avoid publishing the committee’s findings.

But he could return to the Capitol in the upper chamber. Florida’s Governor, Ron DeSantis, could appoint him to a vacant seat that is likely to be left by Senator Marco Rubio, whom Trump has nominated as his secretary of state.

Gaetz could also lobby for another position in the administration that does not require a Senate confirmation.

Who could replace him as Attorney General nominee?

Moving forward, Trump is likely to pick another attorney general nominee to carry out his agenda at the justice department – which he has described as ending “weaponised government”, protecting US borders, dismantling criminal organisations and restoring Americans’ “badly-shattered faith and confidence” in the department.

On Monday, some of Trump’s congressional allies said they were ready to begin assessing other contenders.

“This provides the president an opportunity to look at other very qualified individuals who can help to revamp the justice department,” South Dakota Senator Mike Rounds was quoted as saying by Politico.

“Probably a number of them would be very acceptable to members of the Senate, who really do want to see the president’s agenda move forward,” he added.

Rounds added that he believes that there was “some information out there that the president was not aware of when he made the original recommendation”.

Among the names so far put forward as possibilities are:

Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton
Former Chairperson of the Securities and Exchange Commission Jay Clayton
Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey
Utah Senator Mike Lee
Former Office of Management and Budget general counsel Mark Paoletta

Carl Tobias, a law professor at the University of Richmond, told the BBC that “an obvious candidate” would be Todd Blanche, who represented Trump in his New York criminal trial and has already been nominated to serve as deputy attorney general.

Other possibilities include Virginia Attorney General Jason Miyares or senior Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee, including Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton or Josh Hawley.

The latter two have suggested that they would prefer to stay in the Senate.