Trump arrives in Switzerland for World Economic Forum - CBS News

January 24, 2018, 8:32 PM

Trump arrives in Switzerland for World Economic Forum

Last Updated Jan 25, 2018 4:31 AM EST

President Trump left for Davos, Switzerland, and the World Economic Forum Wednesday night, shortly after an impromptu press conference with reporters in which he said he is looking forward to being interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller, and is open to a pathway to citizenship for Dreamers.

Mr. Trump arrived in Zurich at 4:19 a.m. EST Thursday.

The impromptu remarks before he left the U.S. shed light on his thinking, as Mueller's probe intensifies and as Congress looks for a deal on immigration. Mr. Trump said Wednesday he would be willing to testify under oath, something he had declined to say as recently as two weeks ago. The president said he expects such an interview to happen in the next two or three weeks.

Meanwhile, his comments Wednesday were perhaps the most specific he has offered so far in terms of what he would be willing to offer, in exchange for border wall and border security funding. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, during the government shutdown over the weekend, said he wasn't entirely clear what Mr. Trump wanted out of an immigration deal.

Former Mexican President Vicente Fox: "We will never, never, never pay for that wall"

In Davos, Mr. Trump will be pushing his America first policies, along with a large team of his senior aides and Cabinet officials.

@realDonaldTrump

Will soon be heading to Davos, Switzerland, to tell the world how great America is and is doing. Our economy is now booming and with all I am doing, will only get better...Our country is finally WINNING again!

11:27 AM - Jan 25, 2018

The trip to Davos comes as Mr. Trump is under global scrutiny, for comments he made about "sh*thole countries" in a meeting on immigration with leaders in Congress, and for policies on trade and climate change that doesn't necessarily sit well with other world leaders.

Turkey Threatens Its Alliance With Russia After Charging Into Syria - TIME

25/1/2018

Turkey Threatens Its Alliance With Russia After Charging Into Syria

By IAN BREMMER 6:20 AM EST

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan isn’t happy with the West. He’s angry at the Trump Administration, because it refuses to extradite Fethullah Gulen, a former preacher now living in Pennsylvania whom Erdogan accuses of treachery and treason. He is also infuriated by the fact that the U.S. has chosen to partner with Syrian Kurds in the fight against ISIS, because he sees them as terrorists who support Kurdish separatists inside Turkey. He has demanded that the U.S. stop working with Syrian Kurds, but that won’t happen anytime soon. Erdogan also has a gripe with Europe, which has condemned his human-rights record and refused to advance Turkey’s bid to join the E.U.

All ambitious leaders need allies, and Erdogan has turned to Russian President Vladimir Putin, who is only too happy to help undermine NATO by courting one of its most strategically important members. In November, Erdogan thumbed his nose at Western critics by purchasing a Russian-made air-defense system while scolding NATO allies for not offering him a better deal.

Erdogan is not likely to find Russia a reliable friend. In 2013, after his repeated warnings that Russian planes should not violate Turkey’s airspace en route to Syria, Turkey shot down a Russian jet, killing a pilot. Putin responded by squeezing Turkey’s economy until Erdogan finally apologized. The pair now treat that episode as old history, but it shows what can happen when these two strong-willed leaders are at cross-purposes in Syria, the place where their interests are most clearly at odds. Erdogan wants Syria’s Bashar Assad out. Russia considers Assad its most important Middle East ally.

And now Turkey has launched a ground assault in Syria, one that’s intended to push Syrian Kurds from territory they hold near the Turkish border. The U.S. and Russia have both urged restraint and, for now, have pulled their forces from Turkey’s path. But both have worked with Syria’s Kurds and would prefer that Turkey back off. Erdogan insists he will not. Russian objections have been muted, but that may not last long.

Turkey will remain a member of NATO, because neither Turkey nor the alliance have good reason to cut ties. But Erdogan’s relations with Europe and the U.S. will worsen as Turkey moves toward probable early elections later this year and he turns to anti-Western rhetoric to shore up his base. He has already angered Iran, which also considers Assad a crucial ally, and the Saudis over his support for Islamist political movements in the Arab world.

That leaves Russia. But Erdogan needs Putin much more than Putin needs Erdogan–and he had better be careful.

This appears in the February 05, 2018 issue of TIME.

Veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to advise on the Rohingya crisis.- BBC News

25/1/2018

Rohingya crisis: US diplomat quits advisory panel

Ms Suu Kyi won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 "for her non-violent struggle for democracy and human rights"

Veteran US diplomat Bill Richardson has resigned from an international panel set up by Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi to advise on the Rohingya crisis.

He claimed the panel was a "whitewash" and accused Ms Suu Kyi of lacking "moral leadership" on the issue.

Mr Richardson, a long-time friend of Ms Suu Kyi, added she had been "furious" when he raised the case of two Reuters reporters on trial in Myanmar.

Myanmar has accused him of launching a "personal attack" on Ms Suu Kyi.

More than 650,000 Muslim Rohingya fled to neighbouring Bangladesh last year in the face of a military crackdown.

The military offensive that led to a mass exodus from Myanmar's northern Rakhine state has been described by the United Nations as a "textbook example of ethnic cleansing" - something Myanmar denies.

What you need to know about the Rohingya crisis

Could Aung San Suu Kyi face genocide charges?

Seeing through the official story in Myanmar

Mr Richardson, a former adviser to the Clinton administration, has known Ms Suu Kyi for decades, and visited the Nobel laureate while she was under house arrest in the 1990s.

He told Reuters he was resigning from the advisory board because it was a "whitewash" and he did not want to be part of a "cheerleading squad for the government".

Bill Richardson, a former governor of New Mexico, has sharply criticised Aung San Suu Kyi

He said he had got into an argument with Ms Su Kyi during a meeting on Monday after he raised the case of two Reuters reporters who are on trial for breaching the Official Secrets Act. The journalists were working on coverage of the Rohingya crisis at the time.

Ms Suu Kyi "exploded" at him when he mentioned the journalists, he told the New York Times.

"Her face was quivering, and if she had been a little closer to me, she might have hit me, she was so furious," Mr Richardson said.

Mr Richardson went on to say he had been "taken aback by the vigour" with which she had "disparaged" the media, the UN, human rights groups and the international community during three days of meetings.

And, on Ms Suu Kyi herself, he said: "She's not getting good advice from her team.

"I like her enormously and respect her. But she has not shown moral leadership on the Rakhine issue and the allegations made, and I regret that."

A Rohingya Muslim in Thankhali refugee camp in Bangladesh's Ukhia district on 24 January 2018Image copyrightAFP

Image caption

Thousands of Rohingya Muslims are currently in refugee camps in Bangladesh

A Myanmar government spokesman said Mr Richardson "should review himself over his personal attack against our State Counsellor".

Mr Richardson had raised the case of the reporters at an unrelated meeting about Rakhine, Zaw Htay said. "We feel sorry for his resignation due to the misunderstanding."

The Advisory Board for the Committee for Implementation of the Recommendations on Rakhine State was set up by Ms Suu Kyi's government last year.

Until Mr Richardson resigned, the board had 10 members, five of whom are from overseas.

One of those, former South African Defence Minister Roelof Meyer, travelled with the board's remaining members to Rakhine state on Wednesday.

He told Reuters the visit had been "very constructive", and said any suggestion the board was "just a rubber stamp or a voice on behalf of the government... would be completely untrue, unfair. We haven't done any recommendations so far."

An Initiative to Give Ex-Felons Voting Rights Could Remake Florida’s Politics in 2020 - Intelligencer ( New York Magazine )

January 23, 2018

An Initiative to Give Ex-Felons Voting Rights Could Remake Florida’s Politics in 2020

By

Ed Kilgore

Supporters of the Florida initiative think they have the signatures filed to get their constitutional amendment on the November ballot. Photo: Courtesy of Florida Rights Restoration Coalition

In the vast arsenal of methods used over the years to suppress minority voting, one of the oldest is disenfranchisement of people with criminal records long after they’ve paid their debt to society. In the South, permanent ex-felon disenfranchisement was common in the immediate wake of slavery’s demise, and was used in combination with Black Codes criminalizing any exercise of personal freedom to restore as much white supremacy as was possible.

That’s why permanent disenfranchisement of ex-felons entered Florida’s Constitution in 1868. Even as most other states in the South and elsewhere abandoned such policies, Florida has retained this vestige of Jim Crow, making it one of just three states (the others are Iowa, Kentucky, and Virginia) where acts of executive clemency are required to allow ex-felons to vote. And under current Republican governor Rick Scott, past broad exercises of such clemency have all but come to a halt, as the New York Times notes:

Gov. Rick Scott of Florida grants only 8 percent of the requests that come before the state’s clemency board, which he leads — for a total of only a few hundred people each year, even though there is a backlog of more than 10,000 petitions awaiting review.

Scott also instituted a waiting period of five years after a felon has completed his or her sentence before obtaining the right to petition the governor for a rare restoration of voting rights.

The impact of these policies has been enormous, particularly for Florida’s African-American population:

The ACLU and other groups believe that now some 1.5 million Floridians—about 10 percent of the adult citizen population—are voteless, some because they are still serving sentences, but most because of felony convictions in their past. Among African-American men in the state, the number is north of 20 percent.

That could change this year. Today the Florida Rights Restoration Initiative succeeded in securing the 766,000 certified signatures necessary to place a constitutional amendment on the November 2018 ballot automatically restoring voting rights for people who have served their sentences (with the exception of murderers and sex offenders).

A 60 percent “yes” vote will be needed to enact this proposal. Though there’s no publicly available Florida polling on ex-felon re-enfranchisement, a national Rasmussen survey in 2014 found that likely voters favored restoration of voting rights for felons who had completed their sentences by a robust 65–28 margin. Earlier national polling shows consistent majority support for re-enfranchisement, particularly when those who have committed heinous crimes are exempted (as is the case in Florida’s initiative).

The biggest threat to passage of FRRI is probably partisan polarization. Some prominent national Republicans have supported a general policy of ex-felon re-enfranchisement over the years, including Rick Santorum, Rand Paul, John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Orrin Hatch, and George W. Bush, who have signed onto a coalition supporting restoration of voting rights. Indeed, Bush is significant insofar as he is one of the more notable beneficiaries of Florida’s ban on ex-felony voting; had even a small fraction of the estimated 600,000 disenfranchised voters — disproportionately African-Americans; according to one estimate black males are seven times more likely than their white counterparts to be incarcerated for a felony — been able to participate in the 2000 election, it would not have gone to overtime, much less to the U.S. Supreme Court.

It would not be surprising if Florida Republicans decided that ex-felon voting is an existential threat to their political power in the state, particularly when combined with this year’s enormous influx of Puerto Ricans who can immediately vote and who lean heavily Democratic. So the ballot initiative could become a bloody partisan issue in Florida this year along with red-hot gubernatorial and Senate races. If it passes, though, Florida and its 29 electoral votes will probably be a ripe target for whoever runs for president as a Democrat in 2020.

Exclusive: China's state-owned firms to face more mergers, bankruptcies - Reuters

JANUARY 24, 2018 / 7:36 PM /

Exclusive: China's state-owned firms to face more mergers, bankruptcies

Soyoung Kim, Paritosh Bansal

DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - China’s state-owned enterprises will face more mergers and bankruptcies as the government overhauls the lumbering state sector, the head of the country’s state asset regulator told Reuters.

In a rare interview with a foreign news outlet, Xiao Yaqing, chairman of the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC), stressed Beijing’s commitment to streamline its bloated and debt-ridden state-owned sector and create conglomerates capable of competing globally.

China embarked on a revamp of its state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in 2015 to tackle rising corporate debt and also to make them more profitable and responsive to market forces.

It has claimed progress in its SOE restructuring through mergers, reductions in excess capacity, the relocation of workers, closure of “zombie” firms, and implementing a controversial scheme under which debt is converted into equity.

“Our wish is for them to be bigger, stronger and more efficient. And this is what they’re about to be in the future,” Xiao told Reuters on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum in Davos on Tuesday.

He said the focus would be to strictly separate government functions from the SOEs’ business operations, though it was vital for the ruling Communist Party to retain control of the state sector during the process.

The number of enterprises administered by the central government has been reduced to 98 from 117 in 2012.

The merger of China’s top coal miner, Shenhua Group Corp SHGRP.UL, and China Guodian Group Corp CNGUO.UL, among the country’s top five state power producers, created the world’s largest power utility worth $278 billion.

When asked about further SOE consolidation, Xiao said the number of central government-owned companies would continue to decrease through mergers in “a voluntary process”, though the SASAC did not have a target for this reduction.

Xiao also pointed out the importance of the relocation of workers during the reforms, saying that SOEs, with the help from local governments, ought to create programs to absorb laid-off workers after consultation with them.

“We do not want them to be laid off or just fired in this process,” he said. “We need them to be allocated into new positions.”

PROFIT RECOVERY, CUTTING DEBT

Enterprises owned by China’s central government reported robust growth in 2017, with total profit up 15.2 percent, the fastest in five years.

In the interview, Xiao attributed the rebound of SOEs’ profitability to China’s stable economic growth, rising commodity prices and ongoing state-sector reforms.

“We reduced a lot of ‘zombie enterprises’. Now the management efficiency of the companies is significantly improved,” he said.

The Communist Party’s People’s Daily reported this month that central government-owned SOEs had met their target of shutting 1,200 zombie enterprises by the end of last year.

Moreover, state-owned enterprises will target coal capacity cuts of 12.65 million tonnes in 2018, and will also aim to reduce excess capacity in coal-fired power, non-ferrous metals, shipbuilding and construction materials.

Xiao said SOEs’ leverage is at “healthy levels”, and bankruptcies and liquidation have only happened at second-tier companies, not at the holding group level.

SASAC has pledged to further lower debt ratios of central government-owned firms by another 2 percentage points by the end of 2020.

Xiao expects market-driven SOE bankruptcies to continue.

“As long as you’re market player, you have your good times and you have your bad times, and sometimes you just go bankrupt,” Xiao said.

STRENGTHENING PARTY CONTROL

As SOEs spearhead investment in infrastructure projects overseas under Beijing’s Belt and Road initiative, the strengthened leadership of the Communist Party at SOEs is raising concerns that political factors will be prioritized.

The value of overseas assets held by China’s centrally owned enterprises has exceeded 6 trillion yuan ($940 billion), with investments in more than 185 countries and regions.

While saying the government will slowly move to play a less direct role in the business operations of state firms, Xiao defended the Communist Party’s control of the state sector.

Imposing party discipline on state firms remains a key part in choosing top management and in fighting graft at SOEs, he said, adding that he did not see any conflict of interest between state political goals and commercial interests of SOEs.

“SOEs are owned by the general public, which means everyone in this country is a shareholder. Then we need a representative, which is the Chinese communist party, to supervise and play a scrutiny role for the companies,” Xiao said.

Xiao said that during his meetings with CEOs in Davos, business leaders had expressed strong interest in China, in working with its SOEs and in the future of SOE reforms.

“I can’t tell you what the SOE sector will be in 10 or 20 years, but we do hope that SOEs could be exactly like other companies: they will have higher liquidity of their assets and respond more efficiently to market changes,” Xiao said.

($1 = 6.3925 Chinese yuan renminbi)

Reporting By Soyoung Kim and Paritosh Bansal in DAVOS, Switzerland; Writing by Shu Zhang in BEIJING; Editing by Mark Bendeich

Carillion bosses in firing line as MPs launch inquiry into collapse - Independent

24/1/2018

Carillion bosses in firing line as MPs launch inquiry into collapse

Richard Howson, who headed the company from 2012 until July 2017, pocketed £1.5m in 2016

Ravender Sembhy

Thousands of workers remain in limbo over the future of their jobs AFP

A string of top bosses at collapsed construction giant Carillion are to be grilled by MPs next month as the political fallout from the debacle rages on.

Parliament's Pensions and Business Committees on Wednesday launched a joint inquiry into the group's demise, which has cast doubt over the future of thousands of workers on jobs ranging from hospital construction to school meals and cleaning.

Carillion's liquidation left in its wake a £900m debt pile, a £590m pension deficit and hundreds of millions of pounds in unfinished public contracts.

Labour vows tougher rules to strip 'rogue suppliers' of contracts

The committees confirmed that they will call several Carillon bosses as witnesses to evidence sessions on February 6.

They include former chief executive Richard Howson, chairman Phillip Green, interim boss Keith Cochrane and ex-finance chiefs Richard Adam, Zafar Khan and Emma Mercer.

It comes after anger over Mr Howson's bumper pay packet during and after his tenure, as well as that of Mr Khan and Mr Cochrane.

Mr Howson, who headed the company from 2012 until July 2017, pocketed £1.5m in 2016, which included a £122,612 cash bonus and £231,000 in pension contributions.

As part of his departure deal, Carillion had agreed to continue paying him a £660,000 salary and £28,000 in benefits until October 2018.

A similar deal was struck for Mr Khan, who left Carillion in September but was set to receive £425,000 in base salary for the following 12 months.

Interim chief executive Mr Cochrane was in line to be paid his £750,000 salary until July.

Labour MP Rachel Reeves, chairwoman of the Business Committee, said: "In the wake of the BHS scandal, Carillion has the hallmarks of another corporate governance failure, with directors asleep at the wheel while the business went off a cliff, in this case leaving jobs, pensions and public services under threat and a host of suppliers out of pocket.

"As a committee, we will also want to explore the executive pay arrangements at Carillion, the potential cost to the taxpayer of the insolvency, and the role of both directors and non-executive directors in the company's collapse."

Carillion introduced the "clawback" provision as part of its pay policy in 2014 which would allow the company to demand executives return cash and share bonuses for up to two years after payment - a move it said brought the business in line with the updated UK Corporate Governance Code.

However, those terms were relaxed by 2016 when Carillion's remuneration committee added stipulations that the clawback provision could only be triggered if the firm's results were mis-stated or the executive was "guilty of gross misconduct".

The committees will also probe the role of Carillion's auditor, KPMG, which signed off the group's 2016 accounts.

The Insolvency Service, which last week ceased payments to Carillion executives, and the Financial Reporting Council will also be called at an earlier hearing next week as questions remain over the strength of corporate governance at the company.

Robin Ellison, chairman of trustees of Carillion's pension scheme, will also be grilled.

Pensions Committee chairman Frank Field said: "Another day, another company goes bust hot on the heels of a clean bill of health from a Big Four financial services firm.

"The particularly nasty twist in this now grimly familiar tale is the mountain of debt and giant pension deficit this public services contractor leaves in the wreckage of its collapse- with an accompanying massive hit to the public purse.

"It must also be time now for the auditors who cosily signed off this disaster-in-the-making as a 'going concern' less than a year ago to begin to account for themselves."

Inside the Dysfunctional Relationship of Donald Trump and Theresa May - Bloomberg

Inside the Dysfunctional Relationship of Donald Trump and Theresa May

Forget closer transatlantic ties and a state visit to London, it’s been a year of public clashes.

By Tim Ross and Margaret Talev

January 24, 2018, 9:34 PM GMT+11

When Theresa May returned to the grandeur of the British Embassy on Washington’s Massachusetts Avenue in January last year, her aides had no idea how spectacularly awry her visit to Donald Trump’s White House had gone.

Debriefing her advisers, the U.K. prime minister remembered something: “Oh, yes,” she said. “He did hold my hand at one point.” Already fearful of the political fallout at home from getting too close to Trump, the astonished officials asked if the incident had been captured on camera. “Yes, I think so,” May replied, according to people present.

Theresa May and Donald Trump at the White House.

Photographer: Christopher Furlong via Getty Images

The resulting image, splashed on British front pages, came to define her visit, the first by a foreign leader after Trump’s inauguration. What May’s entourage couldn’t have predicted is that the gaffe would also turn out to be the high point in the first year of the latest incarnation of the “special relationship” between the U.S. and the U.K.

Just under 12 months later, the two are due to meet in Davos at the World Economic Forum on Thursday, and there’s unlikely to be any hand-holding. In that time, the alliance first coined by Winston Churchill and famously nurtured by Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s has become increasingly dysfunctional and at its least cordial in decades.

The transatlantic ties are critical to May’s administration, while just convenient for Trump. The U.K. needs to forge new trade partnerships after leaving the European Union. The U.S. wants to reconfigure some of its relationships to protect American companies.

Rather than a tighter bond, a promised state visit and a future trade deal, Trump and May have clashed repeatedly in public—over intelligence leaks after a terrorist attack in Manchester, the Iran nuclear deal, and most dramatically after the president tweeted a message from a British far-right anti-Muslim campaigner.

@realDonaldTrump

.@Theresa_May, don’t focus on me, focus on the destructive Radical Islamic Terrorism that is taking place within the United Kingdom. We are doing just fine!

12:02 PM - Nov 30, 2017

“As the U.K. negotiates its departure from the EU it wants to be able to emphasize its Atlantic relationship,” said Heather Conley, director of the Europe Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “The problem is the Trump administration is not providing the U.K. with that balance.”

Many of the current and former officials interviewed for this article asked for anonymity to speak candidly about the uneasy political aspect of the alliance, which is a sensitive matter on both sides of the Atlantic.

When Trump upended the world order by winning the presidency in November 2016, few leaders felt the vibrations as much as May. The soon-to-be U.S. president had supported Brexit and suggested making his supporter and her political rival, anti-EU campaigner Nigel Farage, the new British ambassador to Washington.

Her officials dismissed it. Matters worsened when it emerged that Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, May’s co-chiefs of staff, had publicly ridiculed Trump as “a chump” on Twitter before they entered government and urged their colleagues to shun his team. The pair set off on a secret trip to the U.S. to rescue the alliance. Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson followed and soon after May arranged to visit the U.S.

Trump was clearly pleased with the idea. “She’ll be my Maggie,” he reportedly told his aides, referring to Reagan and Thatcher.

In London, Hill was especially keen to keep Trump close. She argued that a strong alliance with America was just what Britain needed in order to make a success of Brexit. The prospect of accelerating a trade agreement with the U.S. was a major goal for the U.K.

Ronald Reagan welcomes Margaret Thatcher at the White House during her official visit to the U.S. in 1983.

Photographer: Jean-Louis Atlan/Sygma via Getty Images

Hill and Timothy planned May’s trip to the White House and took up the idea of offering the president a state visit in return, the highest honor that Britain can give a foreign leader. It would involve the president and first lady staying with Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace and attending a state banquet in his honor. May's team believed such treatment would appeal to Trump's vanity.

Senior diplomats and the U.K. security services had other ideas, according to some accounts. They wanted May to keep her distance from Trump until he had been office for longer, two people familiar with the matter said. However, one person involved doesn’t recall much internal disagreement.

“It was clear to me and others at the time that an offer of a state visit to President Trump was over the top and unnecessary,” said Katie Perrior, who served as May’s communications director until last June’s U.K. election was called. “Senior diplomats and civil servants both in the U.K. and U.S. raised their concerns through formal and informal routes, warning against rushing into it—and were ignored.”

Ultimately the offer was made. Shortly before May was due to leave the embassy for the White House, an urgent message arrived from from the palace. It said that the Queen had agreed to invite Trump and his wife. May’s officials hastily re-wrote her impending statement moments before her motorcade left for the White House to include the invitation.

Over a meal of blue cheese salad and beef ribs in the White House banqueting room, Trump held forth on a wide range of topics. “The president had strong views on all of them,” recalls Chris Wilkins, then May’s strategy director, who was among the aides around the table. “He said Brexit’s going to be the making of us. It’s going to be a brilliant thing.”

Trump turned to May and told her he believed there were parts of London that were effectively “no-go areas” due to the number of Islamic extremists. May chose to speak up to “correct him,” Wilkins said.

Trump also discussed his British golf courses and his hopes that the relationship with May would be stronger than the Thatcher-Reagan alliance. “It was an hour of the president holding court and the PM being very diplomatic and not many other people saying anything,” Wilkins said.

It shows the contrast in personalities that make for an unusual relationship, albeit one still underpinned by enduring strategic military cooperation and cultural links. As one British official observed, Trump is a larger than life character and May is almost the complete opposite.

During formal phone calls between the two leaders, May finds it almost impossible to make headway and get her points across, one person familiar with the matter said. Trump totally dominates the discussion, leaving the prime minister with five or ten seconds to speak before he interrupts and launches into another monologue.

In one phone conversation during 2017, Trump complained to May over the criticism he’d been getting in British newspapers. Amid warnings that Trump would face protests in the streets when he arrived, he told the prime minister he would not be coming to the U.K. until she could promise him a warm welcome.

May responded to say such treatment was simply the way the British press operate, and there wasn’t much she could do. In the secure bunker underneath the prime minister’s office, her advisers listened in to the call in astonishment at Trump’s demand.

British officials suspect Trump’s displeasure still lingers. The president canceled a planned trip to London next month for the official opening of the new U.S. embassy building. He claimed he disapproved of a deal to sell the old U.S. diplomatic headquarters. Some in May’s team now regret their “nightmare” decision to offer Trump a state visit.

While the offer of a state visit still stands, British officials don’t expect him to take it up any time soon, or perhaps ever.

“The relationship has taken some knocks,” said Peter Westmacott, a former British ambassador to the U.S. “But there is so much substance to the relationship—commercial, defense, intelligence, foreign policy, cyber, culture, language and shared values—that we all have an interest in ensuring that it remains strong.”

Even if May and Trump patch things up on the slopes of Davos, there’s a cloud on the horizon: another royal invitation.

This time it’s to the wedding of the Queen’s grandson, Prince Harry, and American actor Meghan Markle. None has been forthcoming. But if Trump does make it, at least he might know some of the possible guests: Prince Harry’s famous friends include Barack and Michelle Obama.