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Good morning from the newsroom of the Financial Times. Today is Thursday March 21st and this is your F.T. news briefing

Today the Federal Reserve signals it will hold rates steady all year as economic growth slows

Levi Strauss returns to the stock market with a 6.6 billion dollar valuation and retailer William Sonoma delivers a

rosy outlook for the year. But first... Two years on MPs have been unable to agree

on a way to implement the UK's withdrawal. That's Prime Minister Theresa May on Wednesday.

Earlier in the day the EU delivered an ultimatum to the UK.

Either pass Mrs May's Brexit deal,

or they won't grant an extension to the Brexit process.

As a result, we will now not leave on time with a deal on the 29th of March.

Now MPs have a choice, pass Mrs May's deal next week or crash out of the EU on March 29th with no deal.

Mrs. May will go before the European Council today in Brussels to formally discuss her

application for a short extension.

Now you want us to get on with it.

And that is what I am determined to do.

To explain what's going on, we're turning to the FT's Whitehall editor and writer of our Brexit briefing newsletter at James Blitz who called in from Westminster.

Well I think when most political correspondence woke up on Wednesday morning. They had a bit of a shock and that is because Theresa May

drastically changed the approach she was taking to the Brexit negotiations. Up until Wednesday, what she'd basically been saying was this.

If I get my Brexit deal through the House of Commons before March 29th, I will apply for a short

extension of the Article 50 process which basically leaves us in the EU

until around the end of June so we can tidy up all the things to do with our departure.

...