THE European Union has been warned the ongoing Covid vaccine fiasco is putting its very existence under threat as the bloc desperately tries to fight off yet another backlash.

The EU will launch legal action against the UK over its decision, on Wednesday, to unilaterally suspend parts of the Brexit agreement dealing with Northern Ireland customs, European Commission vice-president Maroš Šefčovič has said. "We are currently preparing it and it would be really something coming to our table very soon," he told the Financial Times newspaper on Thursday. The Birth move was a "very negative surprise", he added.

The United States has agreed to a four-month suspension of retaliatory tariffs imposed on British goods such as Scotch whisky over a long-running aircraft subsidy row, with both sides pledging to use the time to resolve the dispute, Reuters reports. Former president Donald Trump imposed tariffs on whisky and other European Union foods, wine, and spirits, in a dispute on subsidies for plane-makers Airbus and Boeing which predated Brexit.

Arlene Foster says the EU is ignoring unionist concerns, but Michelle O'Neill says Number 10 is acting in bad faith.

SWEXIT threats were issued to the European Union in the aftermath of the UK's historic vote for Brexit, with an expert warning further splits on how the bloc moves forward "could cripple" Brussels.

Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney says the EU is being driven towards legal action by the UK.

The Loyalist Communities Council, which represents Northern Ireland's unionist paramilitary groups, has "temporarily" withdrawn its backing for the 1998 'Good Friday' peace accord in order to pressure the UK and EU to change the Brexit deal, which left Northern Ireland in the EU customs' zone. It called for "peaceful and democratic" opposition. But its intervention showed the fragility of the security situation some two decades after sectarian fighting ended.

GERMANY'S health minister has admitted data suggests Britain was right to give the Oxford-AstraZeneca coronavirus vaccine to those aged over-65 and to have twelve-week gaps between doses.