Politico:  “Masked men hijacked and torched a bus in Northern Ireland early Monday in an attack linked to British unionists’ opposition to the post-Brexit trade protocol.  Unionist leaders condemned the attack as counterproductive. Democratic Unionist Party chief Jeffrey Donaldson said such threats and destruction would only ‘cement the protocol more firmly in place.’

“Police said two masked and armed men stopped the bus and ordered the driver off, before dousing the inside of the otherwise unoccupied vehicle with fuel and setting it on fire. Such roadside hijackings, particularly of buses, were common during the three decades of conflict over Northern Ireland known as the Troubles, but are a rarity today.  The attack in Newtownards, an overwhelmingly unionist town 10 miles east of Belfast, comes weeks after Donaldson warned he would withdraw his party from Northern Ireland’s cross-community government — triggering its collapse to be followed by new elections — unless Britain won fundamental concessions from the EU over enforcement of the trade protocol at Northern Ireland’s ports.

“Monday was widely viewed as Donaldson’s deadline for such action. But Donaldson suggested that his party’s withdrawal threat was unlikely to proceed this month because London’s own threats to trigger Article 16 of the protocol treaty had produced ‘fresh proposals’ from Brussels.  ‘Serious negotiations have reopened with the U.K. government. No reasonable person could deny that this represents significant and positive progress,’ Donaldson said. ‘That progress was secured through political action and not violence.'”