BREXIT

Portugal's border agency SEF has faced criticism for delays in issuing post-Brexit ID cards to thousands of British nationals in the country, putting the spotlight on a structural problem that has affected various other migrant communities for years.

In central England, birthplace of the industrial revolution, factories are buzzing anew, hammering out parts for cars, planes and medical machines that used to be made in Asia.

Outgoing Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government last month unveiled legislation to unilaterally change trading terms for the politically-fraught British province.

British financial regulators will have to promote the global competitiveness of the country's financial sector, though a plan for more government oversight of their work has been put on hold for now, finance minister Nadhim Zahawi said on Tuesday.

Britain is set to have the lowest economic growth of any Group of Seven country, projections show.

The European Union on Tuesday signed up to a new international treaty for recognising and enforcing civil and commercial court rulings among its signatories to reduce costly cross-border litigation.

While the European Commission publicly dodged commenting about the political upheaval in the UK, others in Brussels' orbit let loose.

The accord was the first free trade deal to be signed since Britain's formal departure from the European Union at the start of 2021.

British manufacturing firm Corbetts the Galvanizers used to rely on a stream of workers from Poland and Romania to fill its shop floor, where steel is dipped into a long vat of molten zinc at temperatures of around 450?C (842?F).

The European Commission is willing to negotiate trading arrangements for Northern Ireland with Britain, but only if talks are constructive and do not resume with an outcome already set by London, a top EU official said on Wednesday.

Irwin Armstrong, a former chair of Boris Johnson's Conservative Party in Northern Ireland, has a simple message for the British Prime Minister when it comes to the province's unique post-Brexit trade rules: Don't ruin a good thing.

After clashing last year over sausages and submarines, France's Emmanuel Macron and Britain's Boris Johnson were all smiles at a G7 summit on Sunday, with disputes over Brexit not even coming up at bilateral talks focused mainly on Ukraine.

Unionist parties and the UK government argue the protocol is threatening the 1998 Good Friday Agreement that ended three decades of violence over British rule in Northern Ireland.

Dashed hopes, so far at least, that Brexit would tilt Britain's economy towards growth driven by trade and investment are threatening another of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's flagship policies: "levelling up" the regions outside of London.

Britain is becoming a more closed economy due to Brexit, with damaging long-term implications for productivity and wages which will leave the average worker 470 pounds ($577) a year poorer by the end of the decade, a study forecast on Wednesday.

On Monday, the British government introduced legislation to rip up post-Brexit trading rules for Northern Ireland, in an attempt to override the EU withdrawal treaty that it had signed.

The CEO of Europe's biggest airline also dismissed threats of summer strike action by what he called "Mickey Mouse" unions in Belgium and Spain covering some Ryanair workers.

English-language students swerve UK post Brexit

Britain set out sweeping reforms of big company audits on Tuesday after high-profile collapses at builder Carillion and retailer BHS in recent years hit thousands of jobs and raised questions about accounting quality.

The UK said it would look at the proposals "seriously and constructively"

After the UK chose to leave the single market and customs union, it was unable to prevent reams of new red tape for British businesses trading with Europe.