INTERVIEW – ALEXANDRA PHILLIPS is a member of the European Parliament and a rising star of Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party. She is a former Nigel Farage’s chief of staff for more than a decade and is a former BBC journalist. Twitter @BrexitAlex

• • What next as UK and EU seek last-minute Brexit deal. LONDON (AP) — Britain is due to leave the European Union in just over three weeks, but still no one knows the terms of the divorce — or even whether the country will really meet that Oct. 31 deadline. With both the U.K. and the EU saying this is a make-or-break week in the long-running Brexit drama, a look at what could happen next.
  • TODAY: UK’s Johnson tells Merkel a Brexit deal is ‘essentially’ impossible: report. Boris Johnson, the embattled British prime minister, told Germany’s Angela Merkel that as long as the European Union insists Northern Ireland stays in the EU’s customs union, a Brexit deal is “essentially impossible,” Bloomberg reported early Tuesday. Last week, Johnson’s government delivered a new proposal to the EU, focused on maintaining an open border between the U.K.’s Northern Ireland and EU member Ireland — the key sticking point to a Brexit deal. The U.K. proposes to do that by keeping Northern Ireland closely aligned to EU rules for trade in goods, possibly for an extended period. Johnson made the comment in a phone call with Merkel, Bloomberg reported.