Aviation in 2017: Supersonic jets and premium economy

Carriers had to navigate the collapse in oil prices and multiple plane tragedies including EgyptAir in May and the Chapecoense crash in Colombia, as well as fire-prone Samsung phones.

However, it is worth noting that last year was actually one of the safest in modern aviation history.

So what does 2017 hold in store? Here are some trends to watch out for.

Supersonic passenger planes

Remember Concorde? It's been more than a decade since the plane was retired from service.

But British billionaire Sir Richard Branson is looking to usher in the age of the supersonic flight once again; and make it affordable to the masses.

His company Virgin Galactic is working with US start-up Boom to develop the XB-1, which is being plugged as the world's fastest civil aircraft ever made.

Boeing and Lockheed Martin are also developing supersonic passenger jets, but Sir Richard is hoping to beat them to the punch.

The prototype, nicknamed "Baby Boom," will see its first test flight take place later this year though the first commercial flight of its scaled-up successor is not expected until 2023.

It has a cruising speed 10% faster than the Concorde (which flew at more than twice the speed of sound) and is nearly three times the speed of a regular plane.

Boom's airliner is designed to carry 40 passengers at a time and fly between London and New York in just three hours and 15 minutes.

The price for a flight? A mere £2,500 each way.
Continuing profits

Oil prices are creeping back upward but airlines are set to remain profitable in 2017.

London Tube disruption warning as 24-hour strike gets underway

London Underground passengers are being warned of a "severely reduced" service after Tube staff began a 24-hour strike at 6pm on Sunday.

Transport for London said it was likely that most stations in Zone 1 would be closed for the entire period.

Key stations including Victoria, King's Cross, Waterloo, Paddington, Euston, Bank and London Bridge will have no Underground service.

Trains will run on the Piccadilly line between Hammersmith and Heathrow Terminals 1, 2 and 3 - but not Terminals 4 and 5.

The Victoria and Waterloo & City lines will have no service, while every line is expected to be severely affected.

May denies there is a 'humanitarian crisis' in the NHS

The Prime Minister has told Sky News she does not accept there is a "humanitarian crisis" in the NHS.

Theresa May told Sophy Ridge on Sunday that there are "huge pressures" in the health system but they are recognised.

It followed the head of emergency charity the Red Cross defending his earlier comments that the organisation was "on the front line, responding to the humanitarian crisis in our hospital and ambulance services across the country".

Mrs May told Sky's new politics programme: "I don't accept the description the Red Cross has made of this.

"Yes there are huge pressures on the NHS, but first of all we should thank all the dedicated professionals in the NHS who have been working so hard over what is always a difficult period in terms of the number of people using the NHS - the Christmas and New Year period."

She added: "Yes there are significant pressures, but we recognise those pressures.

"We asked the NHS a while back to set out what it needed over the next five years in terms of its plan for the future and the funding that it would need.

"They did that, we gave them that funding, in fact we gave them more funding than they required.

"So funding is now at record levels for the NHS, more money has been going in."

Jeremy Corbyn has demanded the PM comes to the Commons on Monday to set out how she plans to "fix her failure on the NHS".

Mr Corbyn said the situation in hospitals in England and Wales was "a national scandal" and the NHS "crisis" was "unprecedented".

He went on: "People are lying on trolleys in corridors waiting to be seen. Hospitals have had to close their doors, unable to admit patients.

Snow causes crashes and power cuts in the US

Snow and sleet have pounded large parts of the US, causing hundreds of crashes and leaving thousands of homes without power.

The snow began to fall heavily on Friday in parts of Georgia, North and South Carolina and Virginia, which were among the states worst-affected, lasting until Saturday afternoon.

Some of the heaviest snowfall was in Williamsburg, Virginia, which saw accumulations of about 30cm. In parts of northern Georgia, there was 15cm of snow.

By Saturday evening, there had been 3,657 flights delayed and a further 3,458 cancelled, according to flight tracking service FlightAware.com.

:: Multiple deaths and travel chaos as snow sweeps across Europe

Emergency services were kept busy with hundreds of road accidents.

North Carolina's governor Roy Cooper said his state had seen more than 700 accidents since the snow fell - although no fatalities - and Virginia State Police said they had dealt with 500.

The terrible weather conditions are also being blamed for a 20-vehicle crash on a major road in Middletown, Connecticut, on Saturday afternoon although police have said there were no serious injuries.

Deadly attack as truck rams into soldiers in Jerusalem

At least four Israeli soldiers have been killed and several more wounded after a truck rammed into the troops in Jerusalem with authorities calling it a deliberate attack.

Al Jazeera's Bernard Smith, reporting from Jerusalem, said the driver of the attacking vehicle was shot dead following the incident on Sunday.

"Disturbing CCTV shootage shows the truck coming down the street, clearly the driver spotted the soldiers when he hit them," Smith said.

At least 10 soldiers were trapped under the truck but later rescued with three in critical condition, he quoted a medical official as saying.

Leah Schreiber, a witness, told reporters: "He drove backward to crush more people. That was really clear."

An image posted on social media showed a white lorry with several bullet holes through its windscreen.

Israeli police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said the victims were disembarking from a bus when suddenly the lorry driver "ran his vehicle into them".

A police spokeswoman said on Israel Radio it was "a terrorist attack, a ramming attack", adding bodies were "strewn on the street".

Police said the dead, three women and one man, were all in their 20s, without identifying them further. Soldiers' deaths are announced in Israel only after families are notified.

The attack comes amid a more than year-long wave of Palestinian shooting, stabbing, and vehicular attacks against Israelis that has slowed of late. Sunday's incident marks the first Israeli casualties in three months.

'Smog police' in China to clampdown on pollution choking Beijing

A new squad of environmental police has been set up to battle the heavy smog polluting the Chinese capital, Beijing.

Acting mayor Cai Qi said it will target illegal burning, including open-air barbecues and rubbish fires, according to the state-run Xinhua News Agency.

Mr Cai also wants to cut coal consumption by 30% this year, shutting down 500 higher-polluting factories and upgrading 2,500 others.

And from next month, around 300,000 high-pollution vehicles will be restricted from entering the city.

Mein Kampf is a best-seller after decades of being restricted

A year after it returned to Germany, Adolf Hitler's autobiography has become a best-seller.

Mein Kampf, the Nazi manifesto, had not been published in Germany since the Second World War as the copyright was held by the state of Bavaria until the end of 2015.

In January 2016, a new edition was published by the Institute of Contemporary History of Munich.

Since then, 85,000 copies have been sold and the book is now in its sixth print run.

The original Mein Kampf - which means "My Struggle" - was written during Hitler's time in prison and contains autobiographical information and explains the hate-filled anti-Semitic and extremist views that led to the deaths of millions of people.

It was published in two volumes in 1925-26 but, after the war, the Bavarian state refused to allow the book to be reprinted out of respect for the victims of the Nazis and to prevent the incitement of further hatred.

Readers of the new edition, which features thousands of annotations, corrections, footnotes and critical commentaries designed to rebut Hitler's original ramblings, said the book has fostered debate about today's rise of far-right political views.

One Berlin resident said: "I think there's value in that because you've got a resurgence of right-wing politics, especially like in the UK and people don't seem to realise it."

Another said: "I think it's super important given that the fear propaganda is being used so much in America right now, which is very prominent.

"I think that if we really dissected some historical events, it would go a really long way."

:: October 2016 - Austria to demolish the house where Hitler was born

Historians generally agree, with Ardent Bauerkamper, a historian at the Free University of Berlin, saying that, while Hitler was important for German socialism, he "would have been a nobody in a different context".

"Hitler would be a nobody today. Hitler needed certain conditions in order to found his National Socialist movement," he said.

Mr Bauerkamper added that he did not think the new edition would encourage the rise of white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

"This is a critical edition. I mean, there are a lot of annotations, a lot of corrections, a lot of footnotes, remarks, critical commentaries. So I don't think this edited edition of Mein Kampf is really a danger," he said.