Joe Biden is set to raise pressure on Boris Johnson to not go back on the post-Brexit Northern Ireland treaty before the pair attend the G7 summit later this week in Cornwall.

Biden will meet with the Prime Minister at a one-on-one meeting in London on Thursday, before the G7 summit over the weekend, with the President expected to signal America’s support for the Northern Ireland Protocol.

The Times reports that Biden will say he sees the protocol as a key part of the Good Friday Peace Agreement, which the US acts as a guarantor for, and that a US-UK trade deal hinges on the protocol working.

It comes as Johnson’s UK-EU relations minister Lord David Frost wrote in the Financial Times yesterday that “time is running out” to reach a deal to revise the protocol, after six months of post-Brexit tensions in Northern Ireland.

The protocol sees Northern Ireland follow EU customs union and single market rules, while the rest of the UK does not, resulting in some checks on goods traveling between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.

The protocol has been met with fury by some parts of the unionist community for creating a so-called border in the Irish sea.

Biden will reportedly also tell Brussels that it needs to stop being so bureaucratic in the implementation of the protocol.

“The administration is now convinced that the protocol has to be made to work and is integral to the peace process,” a US diplomatic source told The Times.

Frost is locked in discussions with European Commission vice president Maros Sefcovic over how to apply the Northern Ireland Protocol, after Brussels launched legal action against the UK over its move to postpone border checks.

Full customs checks were supposed to be imposed on things like food, parcels, and medicines going from Great Britain to Northern Ireland from June, however, the UK moved earlier this year to unilaterally postpone these checks until October.

Brussels accused the UK of breaking the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement by doing this and launched legal action.

Frost yesterday accused the EU of being inflexible with the implementation of the protocol and called for Brussels to reduce extra bureaucracy and checks for Northern Ireland businesses where possible.

“In 2019 we agreed, as a huge compromise and for the greater good, to control certain goods movements within our own country and customs territory,” he wrote.

“If that situation is not to be totally unsustainable we need to be able to do so in ways which do not disrupt everyday life and which respect everyone’s identity and interests.”

João Vale de Almeida, the EU ambassador to the UK, told Times Radio: “What our British friends asked from us was pragmatism. And we have proven that we want to be pragmatic, but pragmatism requires trust.

“If you don’t have trust and if you create frustration then these are not the best conditions to find consensual solutions.”

Source: https://www.cityam.com/joe-biden-set-to-urge-boris-johnson-to-solve-post-brexit-northern-ireland-issues-at-g7/

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Police in riot gear walk through a cloud of smoke as they advance on protesters near Minneapolis. (Photo: AP)

Nations around the world have watched in horror at the civil unrest in the United States following the death of George Floyd, a black man who died after a white police officer pressed his knee on his neck until he stopped breathing.

Racism-tinged events no longer startle even America’s closest allies, though many have watched coverage of the often-violent protests with growing unease. Burning cars and riot police in the U.S. featured on newspaper front pages around the globe Sunday – bumping news of the COVID-19 pandemic to second-tier status in some places.

George Floyd’s death on May 25 in Minneapolis was the latest in a series of deaths of black men and women at the hands of police in the US.

Thousands gathered in central London on Sunday to offer support for American demonstrators. Chanting “No justice! No peace!” and waving placards with the words “How many more?” at Trafalgar Square, the protesters ignored the UK government rules banning crowds because of the pandemic. Police didn’t stop them.

Demonstrators then marched to the U.S. Embassy, where a long line of officers surrounded the building. Several hundred milled around in the street and waved placards.

Protesters in Denmark also converged on the U.S. Embassy on Sunday. Participants carried placards with messages such as “Stop Killing Black People.”

The U.S. Embassy in Berlin was the scene of protests on Saturday under the motto: “Justice for George Floyd.” Several hundred more people took to the streets Sunday in the capital’s Kreuzberg area, carrying signs with slogans like “Silence is Violence,” “Hold Cops Accountable,” and “Who Do You Call When Police Murder?” No incidents were reported.

Germany’s top-selling Bild newspaper on Sunday carried the sensational headline “This killer-cop set America ablaze” with an arrow pointing to a photo of now-fired police officer Derek Chauvin, who has been charged with third-degree murder in Floyd’s death, with his knee on Floyd’s neck. The newspaper’s story reported “scenes like out of a civil war.”

In Italy, the Corriere della Sera newspaper’s senior U.S. correspondent Massimo Gaggi wrote that the reaction to Floyd’s killing was “different” than previous cases of black Americans killed by police and the ensuing violence.

“There are exasperated black movements that no longer preach nonviolent resistance,” Gaggi wrote, noting the Minnesota governor’s warning that “anarchist and white supremacy groups are trying to fuel the chaos.?

In countries with authoritarian governments, state-controlled media have been highlighting the chaos and violence of the U.S. demonstrations, in part to undermine American officials’ criticism of their own nations.

In China, the protests are being viewed through the prism of U.S. government criticism of China’s crackdown on anti-government protests in Hong Kong.

Hu Xijin, the editor of the state-owned Global Times newspaper, tweeted that U.S. officials can now see protests out their own windows: “I want to ask Speaker Pelosi and Secretary Pompeo: Should Beijing support protests in the U.S., like you glorified rioters in Hong Kong?”

Hua Chunying, a Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, pointed out America’s racial unrest by tweeting “I can’t breathe,” which Floyd said before his death.

In Iran, which has violently put down nationwide demonstrations by killing hundreds, arresting thousands, and disrupting internet access to the outside world, state television has repeatedly aired images of the U.S. unrest. One TV anchor discussed “a horrible scene from New York, where police attacked protesters.” Another state TV message accused U.S. police agencies in Washington of “setting fire to cars and attacking protesters,” without offering any evidence.

Russia accused the United States of “systemic problems in the human rights sphere.? It denounced Floyd’s death as the latest in a series of police violence cases against African Americans.

“This incident is far from the first in a series of lawless conduct and unjustified violence from U.S. law enforcement,” the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. “American police commit such high-profile crimes all too often.”

There also have been expressions of solidarity with the demonstrators.

In Brazil, hundreds of people gathered in front of the Rio de Janeiro state government palace to protest crimes committed by the police against black people in Rio’s working-class neighborhoods, known as favelas.

The protest, called “Black lives matter,” was interrupted when police used tear gas to disperse people. “I can’t breathe”, said some of the demonstrators, alluding to George Floyd´s death. Protesters called for an end to police operations inside favelas.

In Canada, an anti-racism protest degenerated into clashes between Montreal police and some demonstrators. About three hours after a march that snaked its way through downtown Montreal had ended, police declared the gathering illegal after they say projectiles were thrown at officers who responded with pepper spray and tear gas. Some windows were smashed and some fires were set.

Over the weekend, Lebanese anti-government protesters flooded social media with tweets sympathetic to U.S. protesters, using the hashtag #Americarevolts. That’s a play on the slogan for Lebanon’s protest movement – Lebanon revolts – which erupted on Oct. 17 last year. Within 24 hours, the hashtag #Americanrevolts became the No. 1 trending tag in Lebanon.

In another expression of solidarity with American protesters, about 150 people marched through central Jerusalem on Saturday to protest the shooting death by Israeli police of an unarmed, autistic Palestinian man earlier in the day. Israeli police mistakenly suspected that the man, Iyad Halak, was carrying a weapon. When he failed to obey orders to stop, officers opened fire.

Source: https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/george-floyd-death-world-alarmed-by-violence-in-us-thousands-march-in-london-1684163-2020-06-01

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Relations between the UK and the US are going to be “sensational” now Boris Johnson is in Downing Street, America’s ambassador to the UK has said.

Woody Johnson told the BBC the two had a lot in common in their leadership style and desire to “get things done”.

He played down the PM’s criticism of Mr. Trump when he was London mayor when he called him “stupefyingly ignorant”.

And he said a no-deal Brexit would not affect the UK’s ability to strike a trade deal with the US.

The US president has welcomed Mr. Johnson’s rise to power, saying he would do a “great job” and even suggesting he was “Britain Trump”.

A supporter of Brexit, Mr. Trump was critical of former Prime Minister Theresa May’s negotiations with the EU.

There have also been tensions over climate change and the US president’s views on race and immigration, while a recent row over the leaking of British diplomatic cables led to the resignation of Sir Kim Darroch, the UK’s ambassador in Washington.

• Six foreign policy issues the UK’s new PM will face
• Trump: Johnson ‘will do a great job as PM’

Woody Johnson told Radio 4’s Today his job was to focus on the “things we agree on”.

“We’re going to have bumps in the road, no question, but we are two great countries,” he said.

“If we look forward optimistically between our two countries, we’re going to lift all the people in this country – to independence and all the things you voted for in the referendum.”

“I think that’s what the president wants and what your new prime minister wants too,” he added.

Woody Johnson said the UK would be “front of the line” for a trade deal with the US – Reuters

In 2015, Boris Johnson, as London Mayor, said Mr. Trump’s claim that parts of the city were “no-go areas” showed “quite stupefying ignorance” and made him unfit to be president.

But Woody Johnson suggested Mr. Trump was not bothered by the comments.

“The new relationship between your new prime minister and our president… it’s going to be sensational,” he said. “Their leadership has a lot in common. Both have their own style but similarities – a clear vision of what they want to accomplish.”

He said the UK would be at the “front of the line” for a trade deal once Brexit had happened and it was “not imperative” for the UK to leave the EU with an agreement to make progress.

“The president is going to try and move the ball forwards – the UK is our most important ally in security and prosperity. He knows that.”

Irish border

Most experts believe a free trade deal with the US will take years to complete and could be beset by difficulties over issues like food standards, environmental regulations and access to healthcare services for each other’s companies.

And one of the most powerful politicians in the US has said its Congress would not support any trade agreement which undermined the peace settlement in Northern Ireland.

Angela Merkel has invited Boris Johnson to Berlin – Getty Images

Nancy Pelosi, Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, told the Irish Times there could be no return to physical border checks between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, something Dublin has said would be inevitable if the UK left without a deal.

“We made it clear in our conversations with senior members of the Conservative Party earlier this year that there should be no return to a hard border on the island,” she said.

“That position has not changed. Any trade deal between the US and Great Britain would have to be cognizant of that.”

The new prime minister has not yet revealed when he will hold his first face-to-face leaders’ meeting with Mr. Trump.

No 10 confirmed that Mr. Johnson had spoken to the French President Emmanuel Macron over the phone on Thursday and they had discussed Brexit.

A German government spokesperson also said the PM had discussed Brexit with Chancellor Angela Merkel during a phone call on Friday.

“The chancellor has invited the prime minister to visit Berlin for an early first visit,” they added.

Source: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-49125925

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Trump, who arrived in London on Monday for the start of a weeklong visit, launched another attack on CNN on Twitter.

“Just arrived in the United Kingdom. The only problem is that @CNN is the primary source of news available from the U.S. After watching it for a short while, I turned it off. All negative & so much Fake News, very bad for U.S. Big ratings drop. Why doesn’t owner @ATT do something?” he tweeted.

“I believe that if people stoped using or subscribing to @ATT, they would be forced to make big changes at @CNN, which is dying in the ratings anyway. It is so unfair with such bad, Fake News! Why wouldn’t they act. When the World watches @CNN, it gets a false picture of USA. Sad!”

TRUMP BEGINS UK VISIT MEETING QUEEN, SPARRING WITH LONDON MAYOR

The anti-CNN tweets capped off a busy social media morning for the president, who had earlier taken aim at London Mayor Sadiq Khan.

“.@SadiqKhan, who by all accounts has done a terrible job as Mayor of London, has been foolishly “nasty” to the visiting President of the United States, by far the most important ally of the United Kingdom. He is a stone cold loser who should focus on crime in London, not me……,” Trump tweeted.

The post Trump attacks CNN moments after arriving in London for state visit first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Boris Johnson was born in New York City to British parents, but renounced his U.S. citizenship in 2016 amid a taxes crackdown by the Internal Revenue Service on the global earnings of dual nationals. He last lived in the United States as a five-year-old.

“Boris Johnson is a friend of mine. He has been very, very nice to me, very supportive,” President Donald Trump said in July last year after Johnson resigned as May’s foreign secretary over her handling of Britain’s attempt to leave the European Union – Brexit.

Like Trump, Johnson appears to enjoy the limelight and attracts controversy wherever he goes. He was once forced into an apology to the nation of Papua New Guinea for comparing infighting in his Conservative Party to “Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing.” He was fired as a journalist for making up a quote.

May’s fraught three-year tenure in office will officially end on June 7, she announced Friday. The 62-year-old Conservative Party leader was forced from power for similar reasons. She will remain as a caretaker prime minister until Conservative Party lawmakers and members vote to elect a successor. In Britain, the public elects a party, not a candidate, meaning the government stays the same for now, until there is an election. The process is expected to take about six weeks. First, Conservative Party lawmakers hold a series of votes to whittle the field down to two candidates. Then, those two candidates are voted on by party members across the country.

Theresa May: Britain’s embattled leader resigns premiership amid Brexit deadlock

Experts say that whoever ends up as Britain’s next leader won’t dramatically rewrite one of the closest diplomatic, economic and military alliances in history: The “special relationship” between the U.S. and Britain, a phrase and diplomatic modus operandi coined by former British Prime Minister Winston Churchill in 1946.

British-American goodwill has accrued through two world wars, the Cold War, several conflicts in the Middle East and close cooperation in fighting international terrorism. Often, it’s said, the two nations are only divided by a common language.

Trump has described his relationship with May as the “highest level of special,” but the two leaders did clash on the substance of policy – his Muslim travel ban, in particular –and the new partnership is not expected to be all plain sailing and photo ops, either.

“The special relationship hasn’t been so special recently,” said Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary, University of London.

“Partly because the president couldn’t stop himself criticizing the way May had gone about Brexit, and partly because she and other British politicians have been a little wary about associating themselves too closely with a guy who most Brits (rightly or wrongly) treat as either downright dangerous or a laughingstock, or both. Whoever takes over won’t be looking for a full-on (b)romance.”

Richard Whitman, a professor of politics at the University of Kent, said the “chemistry between May and Trump was awkward.” But he said Johnson-Trump would be different, calling it a “clash for the title of the greatest showman.”

Meet the main contenders

Boris Johnson

Johnson, 54, is the bookmakers’ favorite to succeed May. He is a direct descendant of King George II — his full name is Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson — and he has passed through many hallowed corridors of the British establishment. There was Eton College and the University of Oxford, where he was in the same classes as former British Prime Minister David Cameron. In addition to foreign secretary, Johnson has been London’s mayor. He also was a journalist, editing The Spectator, a longstanding political magazine. Johnson is a leading supporter of Brexit. He has spoken of his admiration for Trump on several occasions, although when mayor he also said the U.S. president was “clearly out of his mind.” Johnson is well-known in Britain for his tussled blonde hair and frequent classical allusions in speeches. One in four Britons think he would make a good prime minister, according to a survey by YouGov, a research firm.

Michael Gove

Another prominent supporter of Britain leaving the EU, Gove, 51, is currently minister for the environment. He had a cabinet-level role in Cameron’s government and he is viewed as a seasoned operator with extremely good debating skills. (While at Oxford, Gove was president of the debating society.) Like Johnson, Gove is also a former journalist and he made headlines in Britain when he secured the first interview with Trump for a British publication after his election in 2016. Gove boasted in that interview for the Times of London that he spent an hour with the president-elect in his “glitzy, golden man cave” in Trump Tower, in New York City. Trump told Gove that Britain was “smart to leave the EU.” Gove predicted Trump would resign or lose the 2020 election. If he ends up as Trump’s new British counterpart some of his comments out of the interview may come back to haunt him: “He is someone who is clearly narcissistic or egotistical enough to want to be seen as a success,” Gove said of Trump.

Sajid Javid

Javid, 49, has held various cabinet-level positions in Conservative Party governments, most recently as home secretary, or interior minister. He is the son of a former bus driver from Pakistan and represents the relatively new face of British conservatism. Javid voted to stay in the EU in the referendum but has since campaigned aggressively for Britain to abide by the vote’s outcome, and leave. He is known for taking a hard line on immigration and has been a fiercely vocal opponent of letting the wives and children of former Islamic State group fighters return to Britain. In one example, that of Shamima Begun, who fled to Syria’s battlefields at 15, Javid is trying to revoke her citizenship in a case that mirrors that of New Jersey-born Hoda Muthana. The Trump administration is trying to block Muthana’s return in a Washington court.

Andrea Leadsom

Leadsom, 56, was the last candidate standing against May in the 2016 race to succeed Cameron. She resigned Wednesday as leader of the House of Commons – a job responsible for arranging the order of government business in Britain’s Parliament –in protest at May’s then-refusal to step aside over Brexit. Leadsom is an ardent backer of Brexit but she stumbled during the leadership contest with May three years ago after she implied in an interview with a British newspaper that she thought she would make a better prime minister than May because being a mother gave her an “advantage” over the childless May. “I have children who are going to have children who will directly be part of what happens next,” Leadsom said in the BBC interview.Leadsom also appeared to inflate her experience working in financial services.

Dominic Raab

Raab, 45, worked for an international law firm that litigated against war criminals before joining Britain’s foreign diplomatic corp as an advisor in 2000. He has a black belt in karate and boxes regularly. Raab resigned earas Brexit secretary in May’s government so that he could vote against her EU withdrawal deal. He only served five months in the role. In interviews with the British press, Raab has spoken of wanting to get a “fairer deal for working Britain.” He would do this, he said, by cutting taxes.

Who else could become Britain’s next prime minister?

• Penny Mordaunt, 46, Britain’s first female defense secretary
• Amber Rudd, 55, powerful former interior minister
• Jeremy Hunt, 52, replaced Boris Johnson as foreign secretary
• Kit Malthouse, 52, former deputy London mayor
• David Davis, former Brexit secretary
• James Cleverly, 49, junior Brexit minister
• Graham Brady, 51, chair of the 1992 Committee that helped oust May
• Liz Truss, 43, a treasury official
• Justine Greening, 50, former education minister
• Matt Hancock, 40, ex-economist at the Bank of England, Britain’s central bank
• Rory Stewart, 46, international development secretary
• Esther McVey, 51, former work and pensions minister
  

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  Source: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2019/05/24/trump-friend-boris-johnson-leading-race-replace-theresa-may/1202769001/

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