British Prime Minister Theresa May was fighting for survival on Saturday after a failed election gamble undermined her authority and plunged the country into a major political crisis days before talks to leave the European Union start.
As Mrs May struggled to contain the fallout her two closest aides, Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill, resigned following sustained criticism within the party of the campaign.
Some senior Tories had made the removal of Hill and Timothy a condition for continuing to support May, who has vowed to remain prime minister.
Under the informal agreement, known as "confidence and supply", the DUP's 10 MPs would vote with the government on key issues when parliament returns Monday, after Prime Minister Theresa May lost her majority in a general election Thursday. "The task of restoring orderly government in order to make sense of Brexit is now a national emergency, and it falls to them."The Telegraph newspaper said senior Conservatives including Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, interior minister Amber Rudd and Brexit minister David Davis were taking soundings over whether to seek to oust May".
The objective of calling elections, having assured that there would be no election before the schedule one in 2020, after she took over as the party leader previous year, Theresa May had hoped to strengthen her party's grip on power to be able to successfully negotiate Britain's exit from the EU.
Downing Street said May's new chief of staff would be Gavin Barwell, a Conservative lawmaker who lost his seat on Thursday and has experience working as a party enforcer in parliament.
Asked about the DUP's stance on LGBTI rights, Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said the Conservatives "do not share their views and we do not have to".
But her party is deeply divided over what it wants from Brexit, and the election result means British businesses still have no idea what trading rules they can expect in the coming years.
Death toll rises to eight in London Bridge attack
Italian authorities said Zaghba was stopped at the Bologna airport in March 2016 and questioned, but never charged with a crime. But while the bridge reopened fully on Wednesday, the Borough Market and a small surrounding area remain closed, police said.
"The DUP today (Saturday) held discussions with representatives of the Conservative Party in line with Arlene Foster's commitment to explore how we might bring stability to the nation at this time of great challenge", the party said.
The Conservatives won 318 seats, not enough for a majority in the Commons, but buoyed by the 10 DUP MPs. The Labor Party increased its representation from 232 to 261.
This type of deal is not a full coalition, as seen between the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats in 2010, but an agreement in which a smaller party supports the larger one in votes where it might lose.
May called the early election when her party was comfortably ahead in the polls, in the hope of increasing her majority and strengthening Britain's hand in exit talks with the EU. The tabloid Sun said succinctly: "She's had her chips". And I think pretty much everyone thinks it is only a matter of time before she either resigns or is forced out by her own party.
The identities of party donors are normally withheld in the Northern Ireland under legislation dating from the Troubles, three decades of nationalistic and sectarian conflict that ended in 1998, but the DUP yielded to growing pressure in February when it revealed that the donation came from CRC.
It comes after the DUP denied it had reached a "confidence and supply" deal with the Conservatives - despite Number 10 announcing an agreement had been clinched.
"It is not the outcome any of us would have wanted in the Conservative Party". May told German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Saturday she plans to start Brexit talks, as planned, in a couple of weeks.
Comments