US Vice President Mike Pence said on Wednesday that the Trump administration was “determined to stand firm” in its push to secure more than $5bn in funding for a wall along the border with Mexico to end what he called a “humanitarian crisis”.
“President Trump and I, and our entire team, are determined to stand firm until the Democrats in Congress come to the table and work with us to secure the border, build a wall, end this humanitarian crisis and do what’s right for the American people,” Pence said in an interview with syndicated radio show host Rush Limbaugh.
The comments come on the 19th day of a partial government shutdown, which is centred on Trump’s demand for $5.7bn in funding for the wall. More than 800,000 federal workers have been furloughed or required to work without pay and services have been also disrupted for many other Americans.
On Tuesday, Trump gave a televised address in which he made the case for a border wall, saying the situation is a “humanitarian crisis – a crisis of the heart and a crisis of the soul”.
Top Democrats Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer responded, accusing Trump of appealing to “fear, not facts”.
Trump is meeting members of Congress on Wednesday to attempt to come to a deal to reopen the government.
Keep Republicans in line
Democrats oppose the border wall, calling it ineffective, expensive and immoral. After taking control of the House of Representatives last week, they passed a two-bill spending package that included more than $1.3bn for border security measures that do not include a wall.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Republican, has so far this year refused to bring any legislation Trump won’t sign to a vote.
McConnell faces increasing pressure from within his party, especially from vulnerable Republicans up for re-election in 2020, as several conservative senators urged action to reopen the government.
Part of the purpose of Trump’s trip to Capitol Hill is to reassure Republicans and try to hold them in line.
Ahead of his visit, Trump said he thought “we’re getting closer to a deal”, but presented no details on what that may be. Instead, he renewed his notice that he might declare a national emergency and try to authorise the wall on his own if Congress wouldn’t approve the $5.7bn he’s asking for.
“I think we might work a deal, and if we don’t we might go that route,” he said. If he moves forward with this threat, it will likely face challenges in the courts.
There’s growing concern about the toll the shutdown is taking on everyday Americans, including disruptions in payments to farmers and trouble for home buyers who are seeking government-backed mortgage loans – “serious stuff,” according to Republican Senator John Thune.
Republican Senator Lisa Murkowski urged colleagues to approve spending bills that would reopen various agencies, “so that whether it’s the Department of the Interior or it is the IRS, those folks can get back to work. I’d like to see that”.
Her colleague John Cornyn called the standoff “completely unnecessary and contrived. People expect their government to work … This obviously is not working.”
Growing proportion of Americans blame Trump: poll
As the shutdown stretched to the second-longest on record, a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday found that a growing proportion of Americans blame Trump for the shutdown, though Republicans mostly support his refusal to approve a budget without taxpayer dollars for a wall on the US-Mexico border.
The national opinion poll, which ran from January 1 to January 7, found that 51 percent of adults believe Trump “deserves most of the blame” for the shutdown. That is up four percentage points from a similar poll that ran from December 21 to 25.
Another 32 percent blame congressional Democrats for the shutdown and seven percent blame congressional Republicans, according to the poll. Those percentages are mostly unchanged from the previous poll.
President Donald Trump, pictured here with Vice President Mike Pence, has long described the project as a wall, though more recently he has said he could accept a slatted steel fence. | Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
The unusual move is the latest sign that Trump is seriously weighing a national emergency declaration to secure border wall funds.
President Donald Trump is set to visit the southern border in Texas on Thursday to make his case for building a border wall. And in the latest sign that he is considering extreme legal measures to secure funding for the project, he’ll be accompanied by an unusual guest: the White House’s top attorney.
As an expert in constitutional law, White House counsel Pat Cipollone is at the center of the administration’s internal debate over whether and how Trump can unilaterally direct billions of dollars in funding to the project, which has become the subject of a partial government shutdown now into its third week.
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With Democrats in Congress adamantly refusing to allocate budget dollars to a wall or steel fence along the entire U.S.-Mexico border, Trump has directed Cipollone to explore legal ways to find the money without them. Cipollone and other administration lawyers have been urging caution.
The options include using Trump’s extraordinary power to declare a “national emergency” that would give him access to billions in military budget funds, although critics say the move would quickly facechallenges in court.
It is Cipollone’s first major testin his new job, which he started just over a month ago, replacing former White House counsel Don McGahn. His travel to Texas with Trump was confirmed by two sources familiar with the planning of the trip, who said he was going along to advise on legal strategy.
“The border visit was initially conceived as more of a public relations play, but if Trump gets a briefing that can confirm, or add to the sense of the crisis, then it can be part of that legal and policy record the administration will end up using in court,” said one Republican close to the White House.
At the border, Trump is expected to receive a briefing and meet with men and women who work on the ground, said one White House official. Both Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn of Texas are expected to travel with him, the official added.
Trump is not expected to give another speech like his Tuesday primetime television address but will almost surely deliver unscripted remarks to reporters. But the visit is part of the White House’s broader strategy to lay the foundation for Trump to potentially take some kind of executive action that will allow him to unlock the $5.7 billion he seeks to build that wall without Congress’s help.
Trump will visit a day before federal workers — many of whom are still required to report to work — will miss their first paychecks.
Tuesday’s primetime address from the Oval Office was meant to kick off a new phase of Trump’s public messaging strategy, say close Trump advisers, even as the White House internally fine-tunes the legal argument for unilateral action. Thursday’s border visit will aim to make vivid Trump’s argument that illegal immigration has reached a crisis level warranting extreme action without Congress, which typically controls government spending.
Trump has long described the project as a wall, though more recently he has said he could accept a slatted steel fence.
“The president is taking his giant megaphone down to the border and that is a really effective way to communicate to Americans the visual problem of border security. He described the problem in a very cerebral way from the Oval Office, and now he’s going to show the problem from the border,” said veteran Republican strategist Ron Bonjean.
Trump lawyers and Office of Management and Budget officials are currently exploring three options to find the additional money. One is through the declaration of a national emergency. Some Trump advisers had urged him to mention that possibility during Tuesday night’s address, but he did not.
“I think we might work a deal, and if we don’t we might go that [emergency] route,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday, adding that he has the “absolute right” to declare an emergency if no deal materializes.
The other two options include invoking a legal statutethat allows the Department of Defense to respond to law enforcement agencies seeking help; or utilizing disaster relief funds managed by the Army Corps of Engineers.
“There are several different tools in the tool box — though no decisions have been made yet,” said a second Republican close to the White House. The Republican indicated that Trump will likely take unilateral action later this week if meetings he is holding with congressional leaders on Wednesday fail to make progress towards a deal.
Trump is slated to attend a lunch on Wednesday with Republican senators on Capitol Hill and then meet later in the afternoon with congressional leaders.
He will travel to the border to McAllen, Texas, on Thursday afternoon,along with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen, acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney, and senior adviser Jared Kushner.
McAllen does not currently have a border wall, only some fenced areas along the Rio Grande River, which acts as a natural barrier. Last fall the federal government awarded a contract to a Texas company to build a six-mile-long concrete wall in the Rio Grande Valley, similar to the wall along the border in California.
Some immigration hardliners such as Mark Krikorian of the Center for Immigration Studies have argued that the area really needs camera towers and better paved roads that run parallel to the river, less sexy items he has said than an actual wall.
Not all local officials are sold on Trump’s theory of a crisis at the border.
“There’s a misconception that the wall will solve the major problem of what is conceived as a crisis on the border. And that’s the hundreds of people a day that are coming across seeking asylum,” McAllen Mayor Jim Darling said during a CNN interview on Wednesday. “What really caused the crisis in 2014 has continued to be a crisis at least from a political standpoint has been asylum seekers. That’s why I’m saying that I don’t think a wall necessarily solves that particular problem.”
Some House members who represent Texas border towns are not expected to join Trump, including Rep. Will Hurd (R-Texas), whose spokesman said he will instead support Democratic measures to re-open the parts of the federal government that have closed.
“He has a job to do here. He has votes. That’s what the voters of the Texas 23rd district sent him here to do,” said Katie Thompson, a spokesperson for Hurd. “He’s definitely going to vote for individual appropriations bills.”
Trump has visited the U.S.-Mexico border several times already. During his campaign in July 2015, Trump’s 757 landed in Laredo, Texas where he met with a local chapter of the National Border Patrol Council and walked around the town in a white “Make America Great Again” baseball cap — “despite the great danger” it presented to him, as he claimed at the time.
In August 2017, Trump visited a U.S. Marine Corps base that doubles as a major hub for U.S. Customs and Border Protection in Yuma, Arizona. It was at a rally in Phoenix that evening that Trump first suggested he might pardon the controversial former Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt linked to his treatment of undocumented immigrants.
Trump last visited the border in March 2018, when he toured more than a half-dozen wall prototypes in the California desert near Tijuana. It was his first presidential visit to the solid blue state since taking office, and his third time meeting with U.S. Customs and Border Protection personnel on their turf.
His visit to the Texas border comes just weeks after U.S. troops left the area, where they had temporarily been deployed to assist with an approaching migrant caravan. The deployment caused angst among city officials who were never consulted beforehand, and who felt that stationing troops there contributed to the misperception that towns like McAllen are “dangerous and lawless,” Darling said at the time.
Those same border towns are now dealing with the impact of the government shutdown and grappling with the potential economic consequences of a closed border.
As one result of the shutdown, the primary spokesperson for Border Patrol’s McAllen station could not be reached ahead of Trump’s visit. “We are currently out of the office due to the federal funding hiatus. I will not be able to access or return… messages at this time,” her voicemail stated Tuesday afternoon.
Daniel Lippman and Rebecca Morin contributed reporting.
South Korea may seem like an unlikely answer for the question, “Which country’s people have been the most enthusiastic viewers of Bohemian Rhapsody?” Yet Korea is a place that surprises: Recent industry data reveals the film sold more than 9.4 million tickets with a total box office haul of $72 million, making the country the top non-U.S. market for the Queen biopic that just won two Golden Globes. (Yes, that means the movie about Queen was more popular in South Korea than it was in the United Kingdom, where the band is from.) The popularity is even more staggering when considered on a per capita basis: U.S. revenue for Bohemian Rhapsody was slightly less than three times that of South Korea’s, but the U.S. has a population more than six times greater than Korea.
Yet the numbers alone do not do justice to how popular the movie is in Korea. Multiplex theaters in Korea offer “sing along” screenings, in which the audience can sing, clap, and stomp their feet to the band’s seminal hits “We Will Rock You” and “We Are The Champions.” Across the country, it was not uncommon to see year-end parties in which attendants dressed up (or down, actually) in Freddie Mercury’s iconic white sleeveless shirts, with the whole party singing “Bohemian Rhapsody.” International fans of Korean pop culture became perplexed as their favorite singers suddenly started covering Queen’s discography on music programs and variety shows.
How did a biopic about Queen come to be so popular in an East Asian country? As it is the case with all viral hits, the reason for the movie’s popularity in Korea is not reducible to a single factor. It helps that, on a per capita basis, South Korea is the world’s highest-attending film territory, and also a country that runs 24 hours a day, where it is common for filmgoers to return to the theater three, four, or five times to re-watch the movie they liked. (At Megabox COEX, a multiplex located in Seoul, the first screening typically begins at 8 a.m., and the last screening begins at 2 a.m. the next day.) In other words, when a movie goes viral in South Korea, it really goes viral. Also, music-themed movies tend to punch above their weight in Korea, a country with a highly-developed taste for pop music and karaoke. Further, it is obviously a factor that Queen was quite popular in South Korea during the band’s heyday — just as much as ABBA’s lingering popularity in South Korea propelled the 2008 Mamma Mia! movie into a viral hit, launching the trend for sing-along screenings.
But these explanations all fall short of answering the core questions: Why Queen, and why Bohemian Rhapsody? For it is not the case that every music-themed movie succeeds in Korea. The N.W.A. biopic, Straight Outta Compton, is the second-most successful music biopic ever (trailing Bohemian Rhapsody), and earned far more critical praise in the U.S., depicting a group that is no less iconic than Queen. Yet it did merely fine in Korea, never reaching the same level of virality, despite being released just three years earlier than Bohemian Rhapsody. And while Queen was indeed popular in Korea in the late 1980s and early 1990s, it does not explain the movie’s appeal to the young Koreans who were too young or too not-yet-born to see the band in action.
20th Century Fox
From left to right: Gwilym Lee (Brian May), Rami Malek (Freddie Mercury), and Joe Mazzello (John Deacon) star as Queen in Bohemian Rhapsody
Ultimately, the answer is simple: the movie is popular in Korea because Queen’s music and performance resonate with the major themes in Korean pop music. For a comparable example, consider PSY’s “Gangnam Style.” Although PSY was a complete cipher to the U.S. audience in 2012, “Gangnam Style” took America by storm. Of course, PSY’s humorous looks, his signature horsey dance, and absurdist music video are all a part of the reasons why “Gangnam Style” became a viral hit. But “Gangnam Style” also presented something familiar: an EDM tune reminiscent of LMFAO, the mainstream U.S. sound at the time. Americans liked “Gangnam Style” because it was a twist on something familiar. The same is true with Koreans and the Queen biopic: Koreans like Bohemian Rhapsody because it presents something familiar, because there is something about Queen that reminds them of Korean pop music.
And Queen presents something familiar to Koreans because a significant part of Korean pop music was shaped after Queen’s music and frontman Freddie Mercury’s stage presence.
The foundation of today’s K-pop was laid in the late 1980s, which opened an era that came to be known as the “golden age” of Korean pop music. In many ways, this era serves as the wellspring of inspiration for today’s K-pop idol groups as this era’s tunes are the ones in which they grew up, and the ones their producers had been making. South Korea’s democratization in 1987, followed by the Seoul Olympics in 1988, opened the field for all types of pop music to flourish. A hugely diverse array of genres, ranging from pop, ballad (soft rock), hip-hop, trot, and adult contemporary, all had a meaningful presence in the mainstream. For the Korean pop musicians of the late 1980s and 90s who considered themselves rockers, the contemporary U.K. progressive rock musicians such as Pink Floyd and Queen were the gold standard to emulate. Deulgukhwa, for example, is considered one of the most iconic rock bands in Korean pop music history, and it is impossible to listen to their “Oh You are a Beautiful Woman” [“오 그대는 아름다운 여인”] without being reminded of Queen’s “Love of My Life.”
Queen’s music found popularity in Korea as it collected an eclectic genre of music and presented through the format of pop-rock. This methodology behind Queen’s music is the same as the one behind modern K-pop’s inclination toward genre-bending music. Queen’s influence was particularly pronounced in Shin Hae-chul, one of the most important figures in Korean pop music history. Having debuted in 1988 as a member of a college band, Shin led an illustrious 26-year career as musician and producer, primarily in rock music. Shin’s emulation of Queen goes beyond his band N.EX.T’s album jacket art or one of the albums being titled “Space Rock Opera.” Shin’s innovative use of synthesizers is directly traceable to Queen, and in turn influenced the K-pop artists and producers who followed his path.
But arguably, Queen’s stage performance exerted an even greater influence on K-pop’s development. The glam rock trend led by David Bowie, in which music is presented not only through sound but also through stage design, choreography, costume, hair, etc., has significantly influenced Korean pop music, leading to the modern K-pop trend that focuses on the visual presentation as much as the aural. Freddie Mercury’s charismatic stage presence — an apotheosis of the glam rock trend — left a deep impression on Korean pop musicians in the early 1990s, as they were beginning to put on arena shows of their own. Shin constantly sought to emulate Queen’s stage for his own concerts. PSY has said Freddie Mercury was his inspiration.
This trend has traveled down in the development of Korean pop music, and can be seen today in modern K-pop as well. Unlike their counterparts in, say, Japanese pop music, the idol groups in K-pop tend to focus on daring visual presentation. In particular, K-pop idol groups from SM Entertainment such as EXO and SHINee have been the faithful followers of the glam rock tradition — with gender-bending makeup and costumes, all while emanating charisma throughout a large arena. The same is true with BTS, who also make effective use of the baroque and mythical visuals that Mercury often favored. In fact, these idol groups’ lush visual presentation has been a major factor in modern K-pop’s international success.
Not frequently appreciated, however, is how the K-pop idols are finding success as heirs of Freddie Mercury.
But for just the second time, a team of astronomers detected a flash of repeating of radio waves emanating from beyond our Milky Way galaxy. Using a new, sprawling Canadian telescope dubbed CHIME — which is the size of six hockey rinks — scientists identified the short, repeating burst in the summer of 2018 and published their results Wednesday in the journal Nature.
The source of these super distant signals, from some 1.5 billion light years away, is still largely a mystery. What’s agreed upon is that for these radio waves to travel millions of light years and arrive at Earth as strong signals, they must have a profoundly potent origin — perhaps a powerful explosion in a another galaxy.
“We don’t know what can cause an emission that is that powerful,” Shriharsh Tendulkar, an astrophysicist at McGill University and study coauthor, said in an interview.
“We really don’t know what they are,” added Marc Kamionkowski, a professor of physics and astronomy at Johns Hopkins University who had no involvement in the study, in an interview. “There is good evidence they’re coming from outside the Milky Way.”
Radio waves are a form of light — though they’re not visible.
Image: nasa
While scientists have detected more than 60 instances of fast radio bursts — which last just milliseconds — this is just the second known signal coming from the same location.
Lots of things in space produce radio waves, and many of these signals hit Earth. “There are all sorts of radio waves arriving at all times,” said Tendulkar. The sun is constantly sending radio waves through the solar system. And there’s a number of powerful phenomena in the deep universe that blast radio waves into the cosmos — like black holes.
“There is a lot of speculation in the astrophysical transient community about the origin of these events and a number of theories have been put forward to explain how they are formed,” Kate Maguire, a researcher at the Astrophysics Research Center at Queen’s University Belfast who had no involvement in the study, said over email.
A leading theory, however, is that the leftover cores of exploded massive stars, known as neutron stars, may be releasing the short, powerful signals, said Maguire.
“Most people forced to bet would say they have something to do with neutron stars,” noted Kamionkowski.
Tendulkar agrees: “Neutron stars are our best bet.”
When some old, massive stars collapse, they’re believed to squish down into a mass the size of a city, forming a neutron star. Consequently, neutron stars are believed to be the densest known objects in the universe. And presumably, they can release a lot of energy.
An artist’s conception of a type of neutron star called a magnetar.
Image: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/S. Wiessinger
One type of neutron star, called a magnetar, is suspected to have a magnetic field trillions of times stronger than Earth’s. So when that ultra-dense object changes or ruptures, an extraordinary amount of energy might be unleashed into space.
“It has to be powerful,” said Tendulkar.
What’s more, these repeating radio waves show signs of “scattering” — which suggests that the waves traveled through a turbulent patch of space filled with interstellar gases. That means the signals likely came from a place where there’s a denser clump of stuff, like the remnants of an exploded star (called a supernova), University of Toronto astronomer and study coauthor Cherry Ng said in a statement.
Although there are only hypotheses for how these potent radio waves form, natural cosmic phenomena are the exceedingly likely answer — as opposed to smart aliens.
“I can understand the public’s imagination would go that way [aliens], but there are a lot of simpler explanations than extraterrestrial intelligence,” said Tendulkar.
Astronomers and astrophysicists are eager for the new telescope, CHIME, to pick up more signals and gather more evidence. Or as Tendulkar put it, to “paint a broader picture” of what might be happening out there, in the depths of intergalactic space.
Alabama’s Jalen Hurts is reportedly in the transfer portal, according to Barton Simmons of CBS Sports, a strong indication that the quarterback will transfer from the Crimson Tide this offseason.
The news doesn’t come as a major surprise, as Hurts saw his starting position usurped by Heisman runner-up Tua Tagovailoa ahead of the 2018 season.
Tagovailoa thrived as the starter, throwing for 3,966 yards, 43 scores and six interceptions and leading Alabama to the College Football Playoff title game, where the Crimson Tide were blown out by Clemson.
Hurts played his part, though, most notably entering the SEC Championship Game against Georgia in the fourth quarter after an injury forced Tagovailoa out of action with the Crimson Tide trailing by a touchdown.
Hurts promptly led two touchdown drives, earning an SEC title for Alabama and sending the team back to the College Football Playoff.
The junior served as Alabama’s starter in his first two years at the program, throwing for 4,861 yards, 40 touchdowns and 10 interceptions in those campaigns while adding 1,809 yards and 21 touchdowns on the ground.
He took the Crimson Tide to the national championship game in his freshman season, losing to Clemson. However, his hold on the starting gig at quarterback came undone the next season in the national title game against Georgia. Tagovailoa replaced a struggling Hurts in the second half as Alabama trailed 13-0 and sparked a comeback win and national title for the Tide.
Tagovailoa hasn’t let go of the starting gig since, leaving Hurts two options: Serve as a backup at Alabama for his senior season or head to another program as a graduate transfer and compete for a starting job in 2019.
Hurts, who should be eager to start, is reportedly poised to take the latter option.
British legislators have slashed the time Prime Minister Theresa May’s government will have to formulate a plan B if her widely criticised Brexit deal is rejected in a crucial parliamentary vote next week.
Members of Parliament (MPs) in the UK’s lower chamber House of Commons voted 308 to 297 on Wednesday to back a motion demanding the government puts forward a revised plan within three days should May lose the vote on January 15.
MPs will have the right to amend any second plan brought forward by May, potentially opening the way for several different outcomes, ranging from a so-called “managed no-deal” exit to another referendum.
May, who is struggling to win approval for her Brexit plan, previously had 21 days to report back to the Commons in the event of a defeat next Tuesday.
She pulled a scheduled parliamentary vote on the brokered withdrawal agreement last month, admitting it lacked the required support.
The deal, between the government of the United Kingdom and the European Union, had been struck in November after more than a year of back-and-forth negotiations between London and Brussels.
Parliament ramps up pressure on May
Wednesday’s decision came as MPs began five days of debate on May’s deal and is the latest example of legislators seeking to tie the government’s hands over Brexit, with less than three months to go before the UK leaves the European Union on March 29.
On Tuesday, legislators backed a motion prohibiting ministers from spending on preparations to leave the EU without a deal unless authorised by parliament.
A potentially damaging no-deal exit is the default scenario if May’s deal is rejected, with the UK’s central bank warning that Britain’s gross domestic product (GDP) could shrink by up to eight percent in such a scenario.
The prospect of the UK leaving the bloc with no agreement on the terms of its withdrawal or future trading relations has raised fears over possible supply chain disruptions and blocked ports, prompting companies and the government to ramp up their contingency planning in recent weeks.
Addressing the Commons on Wednesday, May urged MPs to back the withdrawal agreement she negotiated with European counterparts, warning it was the only way to avoid a no-deal departure.
“We’ve put a good deal on the table that protects job and security,” May said, adding that there would be no general election in the event that her plan is rebuffed.
Responding to May’s comments, the leader of the main opposition Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn called on May to “do the right thing” and call a public vote if she fails to get her divorce deal through parliament.
“The Prime Minister has spent the last week begging for warm words from EU leaders and achieved nothing … She’s already squandered millions of pounds of public money on last-minute half-baked planning for a no-deal that was rejected last night,” Corbyn said.
“So if her deal is defeated next week, as I hope and expect it will, will the Prime Minister do the right thing and let the people have a real say and call a general election?” he added.
Simon Usherwood, a reader in politics at the University of Surrey and deputy director of the UK in a Changing Europe group, told Al Jazeera that Wednesday’s events demonstrated the “degree to which the government is not in control of the Commons”.
“The government doesn’t have a reliable majority to push its agenda through and suggests this vote next week is going to be even harder than we already knew it was going to be,” he said.
“It seems clear that May will lose the vote, the only real question is how much does she lose by,” Usherwood added.
Controversial Irish ‘backstop’ clause
Opposition to May’s deal is spread across the political spectrum, including sections of her own ruling Conservative Party and the 10 Northern Irish Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MPs her government relies on to command a majority in parliament.
The main source of contention is the plan’s safety net “backstop” measure – which would guarantee no hard border is reintroduced on the island of Ireland in the event that post-Brexit trade negotiations between the UK and the bloc prove unsuccessful.
Critics of the backstop argue it could tie the UK into the EU’s orbit indefinitely.
In an effort to assuage MPs concerns, May has lobbied her European counterparts and officials in Brussels to make concessions on the clause.
But EU leaders have refused to budge, insisting that the withdrawal agreement cannot be renegotiated.
They have also made clear the backstop is meant only as a temporary measure of last resort, however.
Agata Gostynska-Jakubowska, a senior research fellow at the Centre for European Reform, said Wednesday’s parliamentary vote would do little to change the mood in Brussels regarding Brexit.
“They [EU leaders] have been pretty clear that negotiations have come to an end,” Gostynska-Jakubowska told Al Jazeera.
“No one on the continent wants a no-deal scenario …but preparations for a possible no-deal Brexit are ongoing on the EU side. The idea is to hope for the best and prepare for the worst,” she added.
Shortly before the end of the year, Zayn dropped an immense 90-minute second LP called Icarus Falls, featuring 27 new showcases of the singer’s penchant for hazy, romantic, lite R&B cuts. On Wednesday (January 9), Zayn gave us more: a stunning visual for his Jeff Buckley-channeling “Satisfaction.”
In the clip, directed by Bouha Kazmi (who also helmed his debut single, “Pillowtalk“), a shorn Zayn himself takes a backseat to a compelling love story between two characters ultimately separated by violence. It’s heavy and beautiful.
The clip begins with English text on the screen that reads, “Until the flower of this love has blossomed / This heart won’t be at peace,” above the same writing in Urdu text. That concept returns at the end of the vid, too; it also harkens back to Zayn’s “Intermission: Flower” track from his 2016 debut album, Mind of Mine, which featured him singing the words in Urdu over a softly plucked acoustic guitar.
Zayn didn’t tour behind his first album, and he really hasn’t performed much since his days with One Direction. But it’s coming up on four years since he left the group, and with another solo album under his belt, it seems like the time is right for him to hit the stage on his own. At least, that’s what he’s saying he’s excited about.
Watch Zayn’s graceful, heartbreaking video for “Satisfaction” above.
Day 2 of CES was Google day. The search giant announced a number of cool upgrades involving its voice-activated Google Assistant.
But, first, we need to talk about the company’s weird Google Assistant CES ride. Yes, a literal ride. At CES, Google went … Disney.
The tech company turned a lot outside the Las Vegas Convention Center into a theme park with an “It’s a Small World”-esque attraction. CES visitors are seated in a car and follow a track that takes them through different scenes, complete with animatronic characters and theme music.
Google Assistant probably isn’t going to integrate with Space Mountain anytime soon, but it is coming to Google Maps. The company announced at CES that users will be able to ask Google for directions while driving, completely hands-free. Drivers will also be able to ask Google to find a location, such as a gas station, and the assistant will add a stop on your route.
After Google Assistant helps your arrive at your destination, it will also become your interpreter thanks to its new “Interpreter Mode” on Google Home Hub. The feature turns Home Hub into a real-time translator. Your conversations show up on the screen, and both parties can view translations into one of 27 different languages.
Words, pictures, and video don’t seem to do LG’s “Massive Curve of Nature” display justice. It’s an experience. Made up of more than 250 curved LG OLED TVs, LG’s enormous curvy waterfall of a display is breathtaking. Sure, consumers won’t be able to purchase this giant screen, but we’re still glad LG decided to show it off.
Google isn’t the only company with a voice assistant. Amazon’s Alexa is ready to go for a ride, too.
The tiny Echo Auto will bring Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant to your vehicle.
Image: BRIDGET BENNETT / MASHABLE
The Echo Auto is ready to launch later this year. In fact, a small group of lucky users have already received the device. The Echo Auto connects to your smartphone and brings Alexa to your vehicle for only $49.99. Users can control Amazon Music, Google Maps, and even their smart appliances at home from their car.
With all the autonomous vehicles at this year’s CES, perhaps Alexa and Google Assistant will bring some personality to these inanimate objects next year.
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