News Headlines - 07 July 2018
▽Theresa May gains backing for ‘soft Brexit’ plan | Financial Times
Theresa May won approval at an all-day Chequers summit for a pro-business plan to keep Britain intimately bound to the EU single market and customs union, beating back Eurosceptic cabinet opposition to her new “soft Brexit” strategy.
Mrs May challenged critics including Boris Johnson, foreign secretary, to back the plan for a “UK-EU free trade area” in a confrontation seen by senior Tories as a decisive moment in the tortuous Brexit process.
Mr Johnson and five other cabinet ministers met on Thursday night at the Foreign Office to plan a counter-attack to try to preserve a clean Brexit, but they eventually concluded they could not stop Mrs May’s plan.
▽Ahead of NATO and Putin summits, Trump’s unorthodox diplomacy rattles allies - The Washington Post
This report is based on interviews with U.S. and European officials who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal deliberations and Trump’s interactions with world leaders. The core of Trump’s freewheeling approach has been in place since his earliest days in the White House. Shortly after he took office, Trump began passing out his personal cellphone number to a handful of foreign leaders, and in April 2017, White House aides were startled when officials in Canada issued a standard summary of a conversation between Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Trump... No one at the White House was aware the call had taken place. “We had no idea what happened,” a senior U.S. official said... In this instance, U.S. officials had to rely on Trump’s memory. A terse public readout described “a very amicable call.”
North Korea accused the Trump administration on Saturday of pushing a “unilateral and gangster-like demand for denuclearization” and called it “deeply regrettable,” hours after Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said his two days of talks in the North Korean capital were “productive.”
Despite the criticism, North Korea’s Foreign Ministry said the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, still wanted to build on the “friendly relationship and trust” forged with President Trump during their summit meeting in Singapore on June 12. The ministry said Mr. Kim had written a personal letter to Mr. Trump, reiterating that trust.
▽Under pressure from US, Japan′s Shinzo Abe ′cancels Iran trip′ | DW
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe has reportedly canceled a trip to Iran. He would have been the first Japanese leader to visit Tehran in 40 years, but he chooses the US security umbrella over the need to secure oil supplies.
▽TASS: England through to FIFA World Cup semifinal after hammering Sweden 2-0
The national team England has defeated Sweden 2-0 in a quarterfinal of the 2018 FIFA World Cup in Samara on Saturday.
The score was opened in the first half of the match (in the 30th minute) with Harry Maguire’s bullet header. In the 59th minute, Dele Alli’s second header carried England past Sweden into the soccer World Cup semifinals, for the first time since 1990... England will now take on the survivor in the Russia vs Croatia quarterfinal, scheduled for 21:00 Moscow time on Saturday in Sochi. The semi-final takes place at Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium.
