60% in NI don't believe London-Brussels reset has improved NI's relationship with EU, poll finds
Six in 10 people in Northern Ireland don't believe that the London-Brussels reset in relations has improved Northern Ireland's relationship with the EU, according to a new poll.
The European Movement survey also indicated that more than two-thirds of people here (67%) say they would support a united Ireland within the EU, compared to 62% in favour in the Republic.
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Telegraph
42 minutes ago
- Telegraph
‘Hamas operative' based in London behind Greta Thunberg's Gaza flotilla
A man accused of being 'a Hamas operative' based in London is a key figure behind Greta Thunberg's Gaza-bound aid boat, it emerged on Monday. Zaher Birawi, who was described in Parliament as a person with links to Hamas, describes himself as a 'founding member' of the Freedom Flotilla International Coalition, which arranged the voyage by the aid boat Madleen. Israeli forces boarded and seized the boat on Sunday – detaining the 12 pro-Palestinian activists it was carrying, including Ms Thunberg – as it attempted to bring a 'symbolic' amount of aid to Gaza in defiance of an Israeli naval blockade. Mr Birawi, a Palestinian-British journalist at an Arabic-language satellite TV channel in London, was at the launch of the Madleen a week ago, livestreaming it from its dock in Sicily. Ms Thunberg gave a speech before the boat set sail for Gaza. In 2013, Mr Birawi was designated by Israel as a Hamas operative in Europe and is the head of the Europal Forum, which Israel designated as a terrorist organisation in 2021. The Europal Forum strongly denied any terror links, and in 2021 Mr Birwani received compensation after taking legal action against a financial database, which he said had wrongly placed him on a terrorism watch list. He denied ever being involved in any illegal acts within the scope of terrorism crimes. Speaking in the Commons in October 2023, Christian Wakeford, the Labour MP for Bury South, used parliamentary privilege to name 63-year-old Mr Birawi as a Hamas operative living in Barnet, north London. 'He is listed as a trustee of a UK-registered charity, Education Aid for Palestinians, and publicly available video shows him hosting a 2019 event in London titled Understanding Hamas,' Mr Wakeford told MPs. 'Two weeks ago, Hamas launched the deadliest terror attack [the Oct 7 attack on Israel] the world has seen since 9/11. 'It is therefore a serious national security risk for Hamas operatives to be living here in London, especially where at least one appears to have done so through the use of fake documents in obtaining British citizenship.' There is no suggestion that Mr Birwani was involved in the Oct 7 attack. Hamas has been proscribed as a terror group in the UK under the Terrorism Act 2000 since 2021. Mr Birawi was photographed in 2012 with Ismail Haniyeh, the former Hamas leader who was assassinated last year by an explosive device suspected to have been placed by Israeli agents in his guest house in Tehran. Mr Birawi is a high-profile British-Palestinian activist linked to several charities and organisations and helped organise protests against Israel in London since the outbreak of the Gaza war. He is a trustee of UK-registered charity, Education Aid for Palestinians, which has spent more than £2 million on activities since 2019. In a Facebook post following the Israeli operation on Sunday, Mr Birawi wrote: 'In a piracy operation in international waters and 150 nautical miles from Palestinian waters, the Israeli navy took control of the ship Madleen and abducted the allies on board. 'The Freedom Flag Alliance demands international intervention to ensure their safety and release.' Writing about the Madleen mission earlier this month, Mr Birawi wrote: 'It carries a message of solidarity with Gaza, a message of defiance and determination to continue popular efforts to break the Israeli blockade of the Gaza Strip.' He added that it was 'an affirmation of the Palestinians' fundamental right to communicate with the world by sea and their right to establish a humanitarian corridor to bring in aid and relief supplies during the war of extermination waged by the Israeli occupation state against Gaza.' As the chairman of EuroPal Forum, Mr Birawi delivered a letter in Whitehall to the Cabinet condemning Israel. 'What we are witnessing is not a war – it is a genocide and the systematic erasure of a people,' he said. 'The Israeli leadership is not hiding its objectives; it is openly pursuing ethnic cleansing while the world watches. The UK must rise above platitudes and take concrete action to halt complicity in these crimes.' He also met Jeremy Corbyn in Parliament six months before the politician became Labour leader in 2015. Mr Birawi took legal action against a financial database after NatWest closed his account. He claimed the database had 'wrongly and without justification or evidence classified him on a terrorism list'. 'My legal team relied primarily on the fact that there has never been any legal sentence passed against me by any official authority in any state anywhere in the world, and that never have I been found to have been involved in any illegal acts which could be deemed within the scope of terrorism crimes,' Mr Birawi was quoted as saying at the time. He claimed the database had relied on lists prepared by Israel and inaccurate news websites 'likely driven by political motives and agendas not based on objective evidence which caused hurt and damage to me'. The company behind the database denied it had a terror list but gathered information in the public domain. If it was 'incorrect or updated', that was reflected in the database. Mr Birawi has been approached for comment. Drones surrounded the Madleen yacht and dropped a 'white irritant substance' before soldiers boarded around 2am BST, according to the group behind her mission. Ms Thunberg and 11 other passengers from the Madleen are being taken to the Israeli port of Ashdod, where the IDF has been ordered to show them a video of Hamas's October 7 attack. Then, they will be deported. The activists had set out to protest Israel's ongoing military campaign in the Gaza Strip, and its restrictions on the entry of humanitarian aid. The Freedom Flotilla Coalition, which had organised the voyage, said the activists were 'kidnapped by Israeli forces' while trying to deliver desperately needed aid to the territory. 'The ship was unlawfully boarded, its unarmed civilian crew abducted, and its life-saving cargo—including baby formula, food and medical supplies—confiscated,' it said in a statement. Israel's foreign ministry portrayed the voyage as a public relations stunt, saying in a post on X that 'the 'selfie yacht' of the 'celebrities' is safely making its way to the shores of Israel.' 'The show is over,' it added. Footage shows Israeli military personnel handing out sandwiches and water to the activists, who were wearing orange life vests. Ms Thunberg, 22, a prominent climate campaigner, was joined by other pro-Gaza activists, including Game of Thrones actor Liam Cunningham, and European parliamentarian Rima Hassan. Israel's foreign ministry said their aid would be delivered to Gaza 'through real humanitarian channels.'
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
US and China are holding trade talks in London after Trump's phone call with Xi
High-level delegations from the United States and China are meeting in London on Monday to try and shore up a fragile truce in a trade dispute that has roiled the global economy, A Chinese delegation led by Vice Premier He Lifeng was due to hold talks with U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Trade Representative Jamieson Greer at a U.K. government building. The talks, which are expected to last at least a day, follow negotiations in Geneva last month that brought a temporary respite in the trade war. The two countries announced May 12 they had agreed to a 90-day suspension of most of the 100%-plus tariffs they had imposed on each other in an escalating trade war that had sparked fears of recession. The U.S. and China are the world's biggest and second-biggest economies. Chinese trade data shows that exports to the United States fell 35% in May from a year earlier. Since the Geneva talks, the U.S. and China have exchanged angry words over advanced semiconductors that power artificial intelligence, ' rare earths ' that are vital to carmakers and other industries, and visas for Chinese students at American universities. President Donald Trump spoke at length with Chinese leader Xi Jinping by phone last Thursday in an attempt to put relations back on track. Trump announced on social media the following day that the trade talks would resume in London. The U.K. government says it is providing the venue and logistics but is not involved in the talks, though British Treasury chief Rachel Reeves met with both Bessent and He on Sunday. 'We are a nation that champions free trade and have always been clear that a trade war is in nobody's interests, so we welcome these talks,' the British government said in a statement.
The Independent
an hour ago
- The Independent
Why are the British courts handing a propaganda win to the Myanmar junta?
The case hardly registered in the UK media. The ousted Myanmar ambassador to London, Kyaw Zwar Minn, was summoned to Westminster Magistrates' Court on 30 May to face charges of trespassing in the ambassadorial residence. It was initiated by representatives in London of the junta that overthrew Myanmar's democratic government in February 2021. Following the coup, Mr Minn came out in support of the democracy movement. He was then locked out of the embassy by diplomats supportive of the junta. Since then they have waged a campaign of threats and intimidation against him and his family in an attempt to drive him from the diplomatic residence, Myanmar House, in Hampstead. But he remains there, a custodian of the house for Myanmar's democrats. The Attorney General, Lord Hermer, had the power not to authorise the case in the 'public interest'. He could have done so quietly before it came to court. He decided instead to authorise the prosecution and to allow a military cabal that has killed thousands of unarmed civilians to use the English courts to seek to expel from his house an ambassador hand-picked by the government led by the imprisoned democracy leader, Aung San Suu Kyi. This is a U-turn for which the Labour government must be held to account. The UK's policy has been consistently to condemn the coup and in UN resolutions, including at the Security Council where the UK is the influential 'penholder', the UK government has repeatedly demanded respect for democracy and human rights. It has been the UK's policy, along with our major allies, to impose sanctions on the coup leaders and their cronies. It has been Britain's policy to speak out in support of a democratic transition. Lord Hermer's decision is upending this, undermining Britain's decades-long policy of supporting Burma's courageous democracy movement. This dates back to the 1988 student-led revolution that propelled Aung San Suu Kyi onto Burma's political stage and into the international spotlight. It is a betrayal of her and the people of Myanmar, along with their unshakable aspirations to live in a democratic state. Given Britain's responsibilities as a former colonial power, Lord Hermer's decision is shamefully ahistoric. Moreover, it is hard to comprehend how he imagines that it is in Britain's national interest to give the Myanmar junta a free pass into the English courts, particularly at a time when the UK's legal system, like all of Britain's public sector, is cash-strapped and overwhelmed. I urge parliamentarians on both sides of the house to raise questions about why the government is allowing an international pariah to use up precious public resources. Outside the confines of UK politics, Lord Hermer's decision sends deeply unhelpful messages to key audiences. The diplomatic community has so far refused to accept the credentials of the junta at the UN General Assembly, whose credentials committee has moved instead to allow the democratic ambassador to remain in his General Assembly seat. If Mr Minn is forced to leave Myanmar House, the junta will undoubtedly make hay with the decision, using it to bolster its battered public reputation. To those promoting international justice – such as the Office of the Prosecutor at the International Criminal Court, which has demanded an arrest warrant for the Burmese dictator, Min Aung Hlaing – the optics are outrageous: a democratic ambassador in the docks of an English court when it should be the junta that's on trial. Last but not least, it sends a signal to the people of Myanmar that Britain is an unreliable friend in this hour of unprecedented suffering. The UN estimates that 20 million people, a third of the country, are in urgent need of humanitarian aid. An additional two million have been profoundly impacted by the earthquakes at the end of March. Myanmar is facing a crisis of accountability. The junta is launching repeated indiscriminate and disproportionate air strikes in non-junta areas, including on civilian survivors of the earthquakes: atrocity crimes committed with complete impunity. We all have a responsibility to end this and close Myanmar's yawning accountability gap, in whichever way we can. The UK government and the Attorney General in particular have an opportunity to do the right thing and send a powerful signal that they stand by justice and accountability: and more important, that they stand by the embattled people of Myanmar.
