The UK's energy partner.

Learn more at equinore.

Good morning.

From the newsroom of the Financial Times.

Today is Monday, March 18th, and this is your FT news briefing.

Today, Prime Minister Theresa May is expected to table a third vote on her Brexit deal this week.

President Emmanuel McCrone is under renewed pressure

after Looters smashed scores of shops

and set fire to a restaurant in Paris.

An adverse weather and deadly bacteria cause Italian olive oil prices to surge.

Then the F.T.'s Olaf Storbeck explains the merger talks between Deutsche Bank and Commerce Bank and

and the hurdles that still remain before a deal can be made.

I'm Eric Krupky, and here's the news you need to start your day.

Prime Minister Theresa May is pinning her Brexit deal hopes on winning over the Democratic Unionist Party in last minute talks today.

Members of Northern Ireland's DUP have demanded legally binding changes to the withdrawal agreement.

The party's main sticking point is the Irish backstop.

Mrs May's allies believe that if she can get the DUP to back the deal, it would persuade

rebel Tory Eurosceptics to fall in line and allow her to go ahead with a third vote this week.

Downing Street confirmed that members of the government would continue to talk to the DUP today.

It said the government won't hold a new vote until they have a quote high degree of confidence in winning it.

In the Sunday Telegraph Mrs. May wrote that a failure to support the deal would mean quote we will not leave the EU for many months if ever.

On Thursday Mrs May is expected to go before the EU Council to ask for an extension to the exit process.

...