Trump to meet Queen Elizabeth on UK visit, says US ambassador

Residency rules for Europeans unveiled

LONDON, June 21, (Agencies): US President Donald Trump will meet Queen Elizabeth during a visit to Britain next month, the US ambassador in London told Sky News on Wednesday.

Trump is due in mid-July after months of back-and-forth over when he would visit the country that has traditionally been the United States’ closest ally, raising questions over the state of their relationship.

Asked if Trump would meet the queen during what has been described as a working visit, US Ambassador Woody Johnson said: “Yes. He has to see the British head of state,” adding that other details of the trip had not been finalised.

A spokeswoman for Buckingham declined to comment.

Prime Minister Theresa May invited Trump for a state visit when she met him in the United States shortly after his inauguration in January 2017.

But just hours after she left the White House, Trump announced a widely criticized ban on travel from some Muslim-majority countries, and her invitation prompted angry protests from Britons.

Trump has yet to visit Britain in any capacity since his election.

In January, he cancelled a planned trip to London to open the new US embassy, blaming his predecessor Barack Obama for what he called a bad deal on the embassy move, even though it was agreed in 2008, before Obama took office.

While May has praised the United States for backing Britain’s tough stance on Russia after the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal, relations between her and Trump have not always been smooth.

She rebuked him last year after he retweeted videos from a far-right group, and has also said he was wrong to criticise London mayor Sadiq Khan after the London Bridge attack last June.

A date for Trump’s trip, July 13, was finally fixed in April.

Although it is not a formal state visit, which would include pomp, pageantry and a banquet with the queen, Trump will still meet the monarch, Johnson said.

Trump

Residency rules unveiled:

Palace

Britain unveiled its planned residency rules for Europeans Union citizens living in the United Kingdom after Brexit on Thursday, promising an “easy” system that would work in the favour of those wanting to stay.

The issue of what would happen to the more than 3 million EU citizens currently living in Britain was one of the most contentious aspects of divorce talks before a withdrawal treaty was agreed in principle between London and Brussels in March.

Home Secretary (interior minister) Sajid Javid said the proposed EU Settlement Scheme would be a “simple and straightforward” process, designed to ensure that EU citizens could remain in the country indefinitely.

“Throughout, we will be looking to grant, not for reasons to refuse,” he added in a statement.

Under the scheme, EU citizens who have lived continuously in Britain for five years would be granted settled status, giving them the same rights to work, study and access benefits and services as they currently do.

The scheme would also apply to their close family members, such as spouses, children, parents and grandchildren.

Those living in the UK before Dec. 31, 2020, but who had not met the residency criteria, would be granted pre-settled status until they met the five-year test.

Home Office officials say the scheme, which will be phased in later this year and run until June 2021, was designed not to be burdensome.

Min quits ahead of vote:

A junior minister in British Prime Minister Theresa May’s government quit Thursday to vote against her plan to build a third runway at London’s Heathrow airport, which returns to parliament next week.

Greg Hands represents a constituency in London, where there is strong opposition to the expansion from residents who fear the extra noise and pollution caused by many more flights.

May is demanding that all her Conservative MPs back the plan when it finally comes before the House of Commons on Monday after years of debate.

Hands, a member of the international trade ministry, said he had written to the prime minister earlier in the week to explain that he must stand by an election pledge to vote against the plan.

“As the government will be whipping the vote on Monday, this means I am resigning from the government,” he said on Twitter.

Unjustified medication:More

than 450 patients died prematurely in a British hospital after they were given powerful painkillers with no medical justification, in what a damning report on Wednesday found was a “disregard for human life”.

Britain’s prosecution service said it would examine whether criminal charges could be brought following the deaths at Gosport War Memorial Hospital in southern England.

An independent panel found that between 1989 and 2000, there was an institutionalised regime of prescribing and administering dangerous doses of opioids at the hospital which were not clinically necessary.

“There was a disregard for human life and a culture of shortening the lives of a large number of patients,” the report said, adding that warnings from nurses had been ignored and there had been a failure by police and medical regulators to protect patients.

“The families, and indeed the nation as a whole, are entitled to ask how these events could have happened,” it added.

The 387-page report concluded that 456 patients were given opioids without justification and “probably at least another 200 patients similarly affected but whose clinical notes were not found”.

“The events at Gosport Memorial Hospital were tragic, they are deeply troubling, and they brought unimaginable heartache to the families concerned,” Prime Minister Theresa May said in parliament. “The findings are obviously distressing.”