Joe Biden greets Rishi Sunak in Northern Ireland on Good Friday Agreement’s historic 25th anniversary
US President Joe Biden has shaken hands with Rishi Sunak on the runway in Belfast after landing in Northern Ireland to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement.
The policing operation around Mr Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland will be the biggest in nearly a decade, at an estimated cost of around £7m.
Around 300 officers from other parts of the UK will travel to the area to help police a series of events to mark the anniversary.
Mr Biden is on a four-day visit to the island of Ireland where he said he wants underscore “the US commitment to preserving peace”.
Live: Joe Biden lands in Northern Ireland for historic visit
Mr Biden and Mr Sunak will hold a bilateral meeting on Wednesday, after which the president will deliver remarks commemorating the Good Friday Agreement at Ulster University.
And asked what his top priority was for the trip as he was about to board Air Force One, the president said: “Make sure the Irish accords and the Windsor agreement stay in place; keep the peace. That’s the main thing.”
He will spend Wednesday attending events with Mr Sunak in Belfast before travelling to Ireland where he is expected to visit Dublin, Co Mayo and Co Louth.
The visit comes at an uncertain time for Northern Ireland, where power sharing in Stormont is still on hold and the terror threat has been raised to severe – meaning an attack is highly likely.
There were some disturbances on Easter Monday when petrol bombs were thrown at an armoured police Land Rover in Creggan, Londonderry, during what police described as an “unnotified” march by dissident republicans.
Police in Northern Ireland condemned the incident as “senseless and reckless” and said its officers will review footage of the incident as part of an investigation into potential terrorism offences.
It came as the world marked the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement, also known as the Belfast Agreement, which has been credited with bringing peace to the region after decades of sectarian conflict.
It is also the day that dissident republicans traditionally mark the anniversary of the Easter Rising rebellion against British rule in 1916.
Elsewhere, Mr Sunak yesterday issued a renewed call to get Stormont back up and running after a year of stalemate, saying: “We must get on with the business of governance”.
His meeting with Mr Biden comes just weeks after his Windsor Framework passed through parliament.
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Sky’s David Blevins explains everything you need to know about the Good Friday Agreement on its 25th anniversary.
UK and EU officials have since signed off on the new Brexit deal, despite opposition from the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), which is preventing the return of the Northern Ireland Assembly.
It was the DUP’s objection to the previous Northern Ireland Protocol, which the Windsor Framework replaces, that resulted in Stormont’s collapse.
Elon Musk could be on track for a $1trn pay packet.
Tesla shareholders have approved the whopping financial package for the CEO – who’s already worth an estimated $491bn – if he hits a series of ambitious targets over the next 10 years.
But that $1trn figure (or £761,910,000,000) – which is both one thousand billion and one million million – is almost impossible to imagine for most people.
Even so, we have drilled down into the numbers and examined what you can do with a trillion US dollars – and it turns out, quite a lot.
Show me the money
Laid end to end, a trillion one-dollar bills would cover a distance of approximately 156 billion metres.
That could wrap around the equator 3,890 times, easily reach the sun from Earth (around 149.6 million km) or loop from Earth to the moon 405 times.
That many one-dollar notes could cover a massive area (roughly 10,339 km squared), meaning you could blanket nearly all of Lebanon or Jamaica in bills.
Spend it on sport
You could splash out on virtually all of the world’s major sporting leagues.
The clubs which make up the Premier League are relatively cheap ($30bn), and even when snapping up the UEFA Champions League clubs and the big five top divisions of Spain, Italy, Germany, and France, there’s still $858bn left in the kitty.
The four major US sports leagues for ice hockey, baseball, basketball, and American football (NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL) have a rough valuation of $544bn, according to Sportico.
But then add the IPL cricket league ($120bn) and F1 ($23.1bn) and Musk still has change from an estimated total spend of $829.7bn.
Elon Musk is in the money if he hits targets set by Tesla’s shareholders. File pic: AP
Take over Tesla’s rivals
He could buy up the top 15 largest publicly traded automakers (excluding Tesla) by market capitalisation.
They would include firms like Japan’s Toyota ($275bn), Chinese automaker BYD ($120bn), and luxury brands like Ferrari ($81bn) and Mercedes-Benz ($62bn), as well as BMW ($52bn), Volkswagen ($50bn) and Ford ($48bn).
But there would still be a little change left over; the total bill would be an eye-watering $992bn.
Buy up San Diego
He could buy up every single residential property in San Diego County – valued at a total of $1trn. Seattle is just slightly out of reach at $1.1trn, according to recent data from real estate firm Zillow.
But if he wanted to buy big – there is always Tennessee. The total value of homes in the US state is estimated at $957bn. Or there is Maryland, which at $1.01trn could be bought if he can find a little more cash behind the sofa.
Sadly, he would struggle to scoop up London’s entire housing stock, which in February was valued at just under £2trn ($2.53trn), according to agents Savills.
Cities like New York ($4.6trn) and Los Angeles ($3.9trn) are also not within his budget, hosting America’s most expensive residential markets.
Do something charitable?
There is always the possibility Musk could follow in the footsteps of Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who intends to give away 99% of his vast fortune over the next 20 years.
He could give every single man, woman, and child in the US a share of his cash pile. They would receive approximately $2,917.32 (£2,223.29), based on a population estimate of 342.7 million.
Although it would be roughly $14,348.79 (£10,935.20) for every person (roughly 69.6 million) in the UK.
If he wanted to give the entire globe an early Christmas present, then based on the rough world population estimate of 8.2 billion, everyone would receive $121.80 (£92.87).
Pay off the credit card
With $1trn, he could instantly rewrite history and erase debt interest payments and the government debt from dozens of the world’s sovereign nations.
Or Musk could wipe out the debts of Singapore ($1trn) or South Korea ($0.99trn) in one go, according to figures from the International Monetary Fund’s latest World Economic Outlook (Oct 2025).
But when it comes to the biggest debt-laden countries, $1trn would not even touch the sides.
The US has $38.3trn of government debt (just over one third of the total global debt pile) while the UK has a modest $4.1trn.
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