Von der Leyen: EU and UK to launch talks on future relationship ‘ASAP’

Johnson has vowed to outlaw any extension to the 11-month transition period.

LONDON — The U.K. and the EU will begin negotiations on their future trading relationship as soon as possible, according to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen.

Von der Leyen and Prime Minister Boris Johnson spoke by phone on Tuesday morning and the pair agreed to set the ball rolling on talks.

“We agreed to launch negotiations asap on future EU-U.K. partnership,” von der Leyen said on Twitter. “We will meet at the beginning of 2020. The U.K. will always be a friend, partner and ally.”

Downing Street said the pair agreed to work on reaching a deal by the current transition deadline of December 31, 2020. “The president congratulated the prime minister on his success in the election and they agreed to work together with great energy to agree a future partnership by December 2020,” a spokesman said.

Earlier on Tuesday, Johnson vowed to make an extension to negotiations at the end of the post-Brexit transition period illegal. The Withdrawal Agreement Bill, which is expected to come before the House of Commons on Friday, will include a clause banning any extension if a deal has not been reached.

That raises the possibility of a no-deal crash-out at the end of the post-Brexit transition period.

LONDON — Ursula von der Leyen is going back to school on Wednesday.

Von der Leyen is making her first official trip to London as European Commission president, meeting Boris Johnson at 10 Downing Street. But she’s no stranger to the U.K. capital, having spent a year studying at the London School of Economics and Political Science in the late 1970s, where she was fond of late nights and punk gigs (and kept forgetting to properly close the door to her flat).

Now she’s returning to her alma mater to give a lecture titled “Old Friends, New Beginnings: building another future for the EU-U.K. partnership.”

It was all very different back in 1977, when von der Leyen was an undergraduate at the University of Göttingen and her father, Ernst Albrecht, feared she was under threat from kidnappers.

Albrecht had been elected governor of the state of Lower Saxony the previous year and, with the families of German politicians being targeted by the Red Army Faction far-left terrorist group (also known as the Baader-Meinhof Gang), he decided to send his daughter to study in London.

Von der Leyen enrolled at the LSE in 1978 under the name Rose Ladson. Ladson was her American great-grandmother’s surname, and von der Leyen had been known as “Röschen” — “little rose” — as a child.

She rented a flat in Earl’s Court, at the time a relatively downmarket area of west London. The house was divided into four flats, with the ground floor occupied by the landlord, Jadwiga Rostowska, and her son, Jacek Rostowski — who would later become finance minister and deputy prime minister of Poland.

Von der Leyen lived on the floor above the Rostowskis with her maternal uncle, Erich Stromeyer, and the two families were close.

“She was having a good time and would come back fairly late,” recalled Rostowski, describing von der Leyen as “bouncy.”

“One of the problems was that she didn’t properly close the front door to the house. Which, given that the Baader-Meinhof Gang were out to kidnap her or possibly kill her, seemed rather — well — not terribly careful.”

Rostowski remembers attaching a string of “Greek cowbells” to the front door, in the hope that “she might remember to close the door at one o’clock in the morning.”

Another, unnamed contemporary of von der Leyen’s told the Times that she was “keen on going to punk concerts, fond of the Buzzcocks and more into the good life than the economics — even a bit slapdash.”

When she wasn’t painting the town red, von der Leyen studied economics.

As with many universities at that time, the student population at LSE was highly politically active. Liz Anderson, who studied history there and was a contemporary of von der Leyen’s said that in 1978, students attempted to occupy the office of LSE Director Ralf Dahrendorf as part of a sit-in protest.

“LSE has always had a tradition of being a little bit left-of-center politically, but it was also a very exciting place to be a student — so many great names were teaching and lecturing there at that time,” said Anderson. “I can see why von der Leyen would have wanted to be studying at the heart of things.”

Anderson doesn’t recall meeting von der Leyen but that may be because the future European Commission president freely admits to having spent much of her time in London having fun, rather than studying economics or getting involved in student politics.

“I lived much more than I studied,” she told German newspaper Die Zeit in an interview published just before the Brexit referendum of 2016, in which she spoke fondly of her time in London and expressed hope Britain would remain in the EU.

Asked for more information about her London life, von der Leyen replied, “Please, no details. I’ll just say this: In 1978 I immersed myself for one year in this seething, international, colorful city. For me, coming from the rather monotonous, white Germany, that was fascinating.”

As for how much her time in London shaped her, von der Leyen said, “London for me then was the epitome of modernity: freedom, the joy of life, trying everything. It gave me an inner freedom that I’ve kept to this day. And I kept something else from that time — the knowledge that different cultures can live very well with each other.”

If Britain voted for Brexit, von der Leyen said, the biggest thing the EU would lose would be its balance.

“On European issues, the Germans tend toward rhapsodizing, the French toward great pathos. The Italians make an impression with the art of improvisation. The Brits ground all of this with their skepticism, their understatement and their great pragmatism. If the Brits leave the EU, the high-flying could dominate and the Union could lose its footing.”

Now the woman who got to know the U.K. as a 20-year-old student is charged with keeping the EU’s feet on the ground without the Brits.

Two European Commission departments are at war over how much action is needed to make the EU’s farming system more environmentally friendly.

Agriculture is one of the most fundamental components of the EU budget and receives about €59 billion of subsidies each year. Politically protected farmers, however, have long avoided tough, binding targets to go green, despite producing about 10 percent of Europe’s emissions.

That rural exceptionalism is now under threat. EU civil servants are busy preparing strategy papers for the flagship European Green Deal, which has promised “deeply transformative policies” on agriculture and food when it is presented in full in the spring.

But an internal document from the agriculture department, seen by POLITICO, strongly criticizes the environment department’s proposals to slash the use of pesticides and fertilizers, boost organic farming and dedicate more space to nature on farms.

Inside the Commission there is an “epic battle between those who want change and those who don’t,” said one EU official, who accused DG AGRI of using a “destructive wave of actions to block change.”

The paper, which gives the name of DG AGRI’s Strategy Director Tassos Haniotis in its metadata, argues that a pending reform of the Commission’s Common Agricultural Policy, which subsidizes farmers across the bloc, has all the tools necessary to make EU farming sustainable, without the need for numerical targets, as proposed by DG ENV. Haniotis declined to comment. 

It dismisses as “doubt and ex-ante criticism” concerns that the reform may not be ambitious enough to make EU agriculture sustainable. 

Though it is unclear whether it is an official policy position, much of the document appears to be a response to a draft of DG ENV’s biodiversity strategy, obtained by POLITICO earlier this month. That strategy called for a 2030 target to slash the use of pesticide and fertilizers by 30 percent.

But DG AGRI’s document suggests the EU should not set targets for reducing the use or risks of pesticides, and instead focus on “providing alternatives and enhancing the introduction of alternative pest management.” It says it would be “meaningless” from a public health perspective to reduce the “volume or value of a long set of very diverse substances.”

The EU has committed to measures to “significantly reduce” the risk and use of agricultural chemicals in the Green Deal.

The document also states that for fertilizers “a unified EU-wide quantitative target would fail to address the very different nutrient balance” across member countries. The document floats a different way of measuring excesses in fertilizer use, and says existing EU environmental laws should be more strictly enforced, and CAP measures used to halve the surplus by 2030.

The departments are also at loggerheads over the amount of farmland that should be left free for nature.

DG ENV’s strategy aims to curb biodiversity loss by allocating 10 percent of EU agricultural land to non-productive features such as trees and hedges but the DG AGRI document says that would be “excessive.”

The paper warns that “isolated (area based) targets” would knock out around 15 percent of the EU’s cereal production, potentially raise food prices and even risk destroying biodiversity outside the bloc due to increased reliance on food imports.

A DG ENV proposal to earmark 30 percent of EU agriculture for organic farming is “not just excessive but ignores the realities of a strong, demand-driven expansion in fruits and vegetables,” while other organic sectors grow more slowly, the document says.

Time ticking

With under two months until the College of Commissioners has penciled in the adoption of the Farm to Fork and Biodiversity strategies, this document suggests that the Commission is still severely divided on how to make farming greener.

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“We have a lot of trouble to talk about content because there [has been] prior resistance [from DG AGRI] regarding how to handle the Green Deal,” said an EU official.

A second EU official said: “How can you reach a compromise when you have completely different world views between the DGs?”

That official was adamant that the DG AGRI document is the wrong approach. “With biodiversity you need to strike at the root causes, you need a systematic change. You need to decrease pesticides, you need to decrease systematic fertilizers, you have to take some land out of the production.”

DG AGRI’s Haniotis is a veteran farm policymaker in the Commission, who has previously advocated a gradualist strategy to reducing unsustainable agricultural practices.

In one LinkedIn post about emissions from Europe’s livestock sector, he wrote that “reversing the path towards the abyss will firstly require a slowdown, before the reversal of current trends — there is simply no other way, and the sooner this is publicly acknowledged the better.” 

A spokesperson for the European Commission said it is policy not to comment on leaks.

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Poland’s Supreme Court slams PiS’s judicial changes

The country’s justice ministry has already fired back, saying it would not respect the court’s decision.

Poland’s judiciary crisis deepened on Thursday as the country’s Supreme Court fought back against the government’s judicial reforms, ruling against the body that appoints judges and members of a controversial new disciplinary chamber.

The court ruled overwhelmingly that judges appointed by the new body are not judges under either Polish or EU law — although verdicts that such judges may have issued will remain valid if they were made before Thursday.

The country’s justice ministry quickly fired back, saying it would not respect the ruling, which it said had been issued “in gross violation of the law.”

That sets up Poland’s nationalist Law and Justice (PiS) government for a clash with the European Commission, which is increasingly worried about the country’s slide into legal chaos thanks to the judicial changes wrought by PiS.

The Supreme Court decision came in response to a top EU court ruling in November, which said the new disciplinary body could undermine judicial independence, but threw the case back to the Polish courts to make a final determination.

The Court of Justice of the EU said Polish courts could test the chamber by checking whether the National Council of the Judiciary (NCJ) — the body that appoints the chamber’s members, as well as all court judges — is under political influence.

A major component of PiS’s judicial reforms was to change the way people are selected to join the NCJ, and also replace all of its members with the input of the parliament, which is dominated by the ruling party. The government argues that the changes are needed to root out the remnants of the communist system — which ended in Poland in 1989.

Critics of the reforms argued this process undermined the independence of the judiciary, because it made the NCJ dependent on the executive and legislative branches of government.

The government has made it clear it wants obedient judges.

“We have nominated judges who, in our view, would be ready to cooperate in reforming the judicial system,” Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said last week.

The government tried to block lower court inquiries into the validity of the new NCJ, but Thursday’s ruling makes it clear that the country’s top court has taken a hard line against the chamber.

However, the ruling party has cast the ability of the Supreme Court to rule on the matter into doubt.

Elżbieta Witek, the PiS speaker of the Sejm, the lower chamber of parliament, said on Wednesday that it’s unclear if the Supreme Court is the right institution to make decisions about the judiciary system. Witek referred the case to the Constitutional Tribunal, which is controlled by PiS appointees, saying it was the more appropriate body to regulate any conflicts between the courts and the legislature

The tribunal tried to suspend the Supreme Court’s hearing, but Małgorzata Gersdorf, the court’s chief justice, rejected the tribunal’s reasoning.

The European Commission — which has also launched an Article 7 procedure against Poland over concerns that it is violating the EU’s democratic standards — has referred its own case over the disciplinary chamber to the EU court.

Meanwhile, PiS lawmakers in the Sejm on Thursday voted in favor of a bill dubbed the “muzzle law” by critics, which penalizes judges who question the legitimacy of the government’s legal changes — overturning a decision by the upper house senate, which had rejected the bill.

The bill, which was rushed through the Sejm for the first time in December, is a direct response to the EU court ruling, as in practice it means judges could be disciplined for raising doubts about the legality of the NCJ. The law now awaits the signature of President Andrzej Duda, who has already signaled his support.

The bill has been criticized by the European Commission, the Council of Europe and, most recently, by two U.S. Congressional members.

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The Brazil defender spent three successful years at San Siro before moving to Paris Saint-Germain in 2012

Thiago Silva could return to AC Milan at some point in the future, according to the defender’s agent.

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The 35-year-old spent three seasons at San Siro before moving to Paris Saint-Germain in 2012, and was part of the last Milan side to win Serie A in 2010-11.

With his contract at PSG coming to its end, it isn’t clear where Silva’s immediate future lies – and agent Paulo Tonietto isn’t ruling anything out.

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“In football everything is possible, but we have to wait to see what will happen because of the pandemic,” Tonietto told MilanNews.

“He has a great admiration for Milan, the years he spent there marked his career. He knows about the great affection the fans have for him.”

Whether Silva will leave PSG or renew his deal with the French champions remains to be seen.

Back in November, he said he was keen to extend his terms with the club.

“I hope so. We will discuss it soon,” he told France Football.

“The idea is to stay at PSG and continue to grow the club. The eight years I have already spent can weigh in the balance. I think I have played a part in the development of the club.

“Today, after eight years here, with the passport in my pocket, I feel French. I’m proud of it.

“Paris is a part of my life. Paris is in my story. Nobody can take it away. I feel French, beyond the passport.

“Today, I’m Brazilian, born in Rio de Janeiro, but my second home is Paris. Nobody can change that. I’ll be Parisian for life.”

However, two months after that, agent Tonietto confirmed that no contract offer had yet been made by PSG.

“No, at the moment there are no negotiations with Paris Saint-Germain,” he told GloboEsporte.

“He has already received offers [from outside the club], but I will not talk about other clubs because Thiago’s priority is to stay at PSG.

“Football is very dynamic. But at the moment the priority is PSG. We will wait for PSG.

“If they don’t approach us with an offer, though, it’s clear that we will listen to proposals [from other teams].”

After nearly two years of shadow-boxing, EU leaders are ready to rumble.

Fights over the bloc’s long-term budget are always brutal. But a special summit on the next spending plan, beginning Thursday in Brussels, looks certain to be particularly acrimonious as leaders struggle to adjust to a smaller union.

The exit of the U.K. leaves a gap of some €75 billion over seven years in the EU’s finances. But member countries want to do more than ever with EU money — to continue spending big on farm subsidies and regional development while also devoting more to new priorities such as research and innovation, the European Green Deal and defense industry cooperation.

Countries have been sparring ever since the European Commission put forward a €1.135 trillion blueprint in May 2018. Now leaders will enter the ring for a showdown that is expected to involve at least one all-night session and could drag on for days. A final deal needs the support of all EU members and must also be approved by the European Parliament.

Before the big fight over the 2021-2027 budget is over — and it could take more than one summit to get there — a series of interlinked battles will also need to be settled.

Here’s a guide to those battles and how they’re shaping up.

1. Size of the pie

How big should the budget be? That’s the biggest question for leaders at the summit.

The Commission’s proposal amounts to 1.11 percent of the EU’s gross national income (GNI) and has the backing of many eastern and southern countries. But a coalition of self-declared “frugal” members — Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands and Sweden — argues that figure is too high. They have pushed for keeping the budget at 1.0 percent of GNI.

European Council President Charles Michel has put forward a compromise equivalent to 1.074 percent of GNI, meaning the bloc would commit to spending €1.095 trillion over seven years (in 2018 prices).

The frugal members — and Germany, which closely identifies with their approach but is expected to be more flexible — maintain that their contributions would already be much bigger this time around, even if capped at 1.0 percent of GNI. Economic growth since the last budget was agreed means this percentage is worth a lot more in cash terms now.

While debating the right way to calculate these increases has become a major point of contention in the budget debate, everyone agrees that the burden on wealthier member countries will be heavier in a post-Brexit EU. According to the Commission’s estimates, if its own budget plan is implemented, Germany’s average yearly contribution would rise from €25.5 billion per year in the current budget to €32.8 billion between 2021 and 2027. The Dutch contribution would increase from an annual average of around €5 billion to €6.9 billion.

2. How to slice it

The other overarching question is how to divide up spending between the three main components of the budget. Those are agriculture, regional development money known as cohesion funding, and priorities described by EU officials as more modern — including research and innovation, defense, migration and student exchanges.

Generally speaking, the “frugal” faction wants less money for traditional programs and more for new priorities. Those governments can afford to take a hard line as they are less directly dependent on EU funding. Expect their most outspoken leader, Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte, to be a key player at the summit.

On the other side are southern and eastern countries that want to safeguard agricultural spending and regional development funds.

Michel’s plan proposes cuts to cohesion funding of 12 percent and a reduction of nearly 14 percent in agriculture spending, compared to levels in the current budget. Governments in the poorer parts of the bloc say such cuts would be deeply painful.

Meanwhile France, one of the biggest payers into the budget, is facing a dilemma. Traditionally a strong supporter of agricultural subsidies, it is fighting hard to soften cuts for farmers. But fiscal constraints at home make it hard for President Emmanuel Macron to finance a budget that would preserve traditional programs at current levels and boost new priorities.

3. The Thatcher factor

Britain may have left the EU but the ghost of Margaret Thatcher still haunts the budget talks in the form of rebates for some member countries. Thatcher won a reduction for the U.K. in 1984, after making the case that Britain paid disproportionately more into the budget than it got back. Several other countries made the same argument and their rebates remain.

Some countries, such as France, have argued that Brexit should mean an end to the whole rebates system. But Austria, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands and Sweden are pushing hard to keep their reductions.

These governments contend that they’re already being asked to stump up even more due to Britain’s departure and, despite being among the biggest payers into the EU budget, they benefit much less from EU budget programs than other countries.

For example, EU cohesion funds flowing to Hungary were the equivalent of about 2.75 percent of the country’s gross national income in 2014-2020, according to European Commission data. But for the Netherlands, cohesion funding allocations represent merely 0.03 percent of GNI. Common Agricultural Policy funds spent in France were the equivalent of 0.41 percent of French GNI during that time, while such funding represented only 0.12 of the Dutch GNI.

Michel has put forward a plan for “lump-sum corrections” to reduce the contributions of Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria and Sweden. But these reductions would decrease over time, according to his proposal.

One possible compromise is that the pro-rebate countries will get permanent reductions to their contributions but, in exchange, agree to a budget that is higher than 1.0 percent of the bloc’s GNI.

4. Laying down the law

Several western and northern EU governments have indicated that they will not approve a new budget without a system for linking the disbursement of EU funds to respect for the rule of law.

The Commission proposed such a measure, which could mean the EU cutting off funds to a member country if rule-of-law problems affect the bloc’s financial interests. But it has faced a host of legal and political hurdles. Countries like Poland and Hungary are fighting to ensure that the measure is as weak as possible even if it is adopted.

Michel has put forward a compromise that is widely seen as much weaker and more difficult to trigger than plans favored by many western capitals and the Commission.

Under Michel’s plan, which appears to enjoy the support of France, a Commission proposal to curtail funds would have to be approved by a qualified majority of EU member countries.

That is a much higher bar than in the Commission’s plan, under which a qualified majority would be required to block such a measure, rather than approve it.

The Polish government cautiously welcomed Michel’s approach. “We especially appreciate [the] decision to leave the only acceptable voting method — the method based on QMV [qualified majority voting],” Konrad Szymański, Poland’s Europe minister, told POLITICO. He added that Warsaw expects “more detailed provisions on the criteria of assessment” for cutting funds and will take a final view based on a legal analysis.

But proponents of a strong rule-of-law mechanism have not given up, and the matter will likely come up at the summit. A mechanism with teeth is “still on the table,” said one senior government official.

This article is part of POLITICO’s coverage of the EU budget, tracking the development of the seven-year Multiannual Financial Framework. For a complimentary trial, email [email protected] mentioning Budget.

Jamie Carragher has hailed former Liverpool centre-back Conor Coady, and compared the Wolves star to Virgil van Dijk.

Liverpool let Coady leave Anfield in 2014, when he signed for Huddersfield Town for under £1million, before joining Wolves a year later.

The 27-year-old has played a key role in Wolves’ success in the Premier League, and Carragher believes his passing range is as good as Van Dijk’s.

FEATURE: The ten greatest player rivalries in Premier League history (featuring Carra x 2)

He told Sky Sports: “Conor Coady has also done brilliantly for Wolves; he has not missed a minute this season and is probably as good as anyone alongside Van Dijk in terms of passing from the back.”

Coady has led Wolves in another successful campaign this year, both in the Premier League and Europa League.

 

 

They also still have genuine hopes of making it into the Champions League next season, if and when the season is completed.

Coady is now proving he did have the talent to succeed had he remained at Anfield, and the Reds may be regretting letting him leave for such a small fee.

But probably not as they are the best team in England and that is reflected in Carragher’s team of the season.

 

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Virgil van Dijk is desperate to be remembered as a “Liverpool legend” and claims the Reds “don’t lack anything” in their pursuit of further success.

The centre-back arrived at Anfield in January 2018 for £76million and has proved to be one of the great signings in Premier League history.

Having won the Champions League last season, a first Premier League title is just two wins away.

 

 

And Van Dijk is already thinking about how he would like to be remembered by the club and the supporters.

Van Dijk told Spanish newspaper Sport: “As a Liverpool legend. I want to achieve incredible things here.

“I would like to be one of those players that return to Anfield after retiring. I see club legends at games and I feel part of a really big family.

“We have a fantastic team, we don’t lack anything, we have all the tools necessary to go on winning.

“A coach we identify with, a versatile squad, a style of play that breeds victories, a stadium and supporters that play their part.”

 

Rangers manager Steven Gerrard has spoken of his pride after a “unanimous” decision among his coaches and players to defer wages in order to protect non-football staff’s income.

Rangers earlier revealed the first-team squad had volunteered to temporarily forego a portion of their wages for three months.

The Ibrox club will also make use of the Government’s job retention scheme to ensure other employees receive their full wages.

The players and coaching staff are reported to be taking only half of their salaries for three months but will be reimbursed once football resumes following the suspension amid the coronavirus pandemic.

Gerrard told his club’s Twitter account: “The players and the directors and staff have shown good leadership and responsibility to defer the wages. I think it was a no-brainer and the right thing to do.

“It’s important that you show respect to all the people at the club whatever your role is and I think we have shown real good togetherness by doing this.

 

 

“I’m very proud of the efforts and the support of everyone at the club. It was unanimous that everyone wanted to do this.

“It’s important during these hard times that no-one suffers from financial hardship. It does make me really proud as a manager that everyone was really keen to make sure that everyone was looked after.”

 

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BALTIMORE, MD — Former Baltimore Ravens fullback Le’Ron McClain took to Twitter over the weekend to plead for help dealing with head injury problems that he linked to his time in the National Football League. “My head is messed up,” McClain wrote in multiple tweets, some of which were in reaction to a player evaluated for a concussion in a Washington Redskins game.

The lingering damage suffered by athletes also drew fresh attention when Colts quarterback Andrew Luck’s announced on Aug. 24 that he has retired from pro football after seven seasons because of injuries. He said the past four years had been an “unceasing and unrelenting” cycle of injury, pain and rehab.

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During his seven NFL seasons, McClain played four years for the Ravens, McClain played for the Ravens, plus time with the Kansas City Chiefs and San Diego Chargers. His tweets seemed to begin Thursday in a reply about Washington Redskins player Jordan Reed being checked for a concussion. McClain at one point said that quarterbacks are treated with more care than players at other positions, and he criticized the slow pace and paperwork of the NFL process to pay out damages from the league’s $1 billion concussion settlement.

“I have to get my head checked,” McClain posted on Aug. 24. “Playing fullback since high school. Its takes too f—— much to do anything. My brain is f—— tired…. @NFL i need some help with this shyt. Dark times and its showing. F—— help me please!! They dont care I had to get lawyers man!”

In May a federal judge overseeing the NFL concussion settlement fired three of four lawyers serving as class counsel. The court also ordered players to be seen by medical expert within 150 miles of their home, which critics say will prevent athletes from receiving quality care and expert advice, ESPN reports.

The players’ lawsuits claim the NFL ignored the neurological risks of playing after concussions. During the first two years of the fund $500 million has been paid out, while another $160 million in awards is pending. ESPN says the plan offers retired players baseline testing and compensation of up to $5 million for illnesses including Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and deaths involving chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or CTE.

McClain condemned the slow pace of payments in a tweet on Aug. 24.

“Watch how fast they come to aid if I was som3 QB or anything but no I was f—ing fullback that did it all,” he wrote. “@NFL I need help and i need the process to speed the f— up Im about to crash out and its paperwork I dont wanna hear it. … Im out.”

As Twitter voiced concern for McClain, he replied: “Man had a moment but just know Imma fight this thing and block it like im blocking 60 Pwr on the goaline. We gonna score!!!! I got this.”

Later Sunday night he said his anxiety level had climbed. “Please just Pray for me,” McClean tweeted.