Day: January 31, 2020

The breakup is official: On January 31, 2020, at 11 pm local time (6 pm ET), the United Kingdom left the European Union.

UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson gave a brief address ahead of big moment, where he struck an optimistic note about Britain’s future outside of the UK.

The most important thing to say tonight is that this is not an end, but a beginning,” the prime minister said. “This is the moment when the dawn breaks and the curtain goes up on a new act in our great national drama.”

A countdown clock projected onto his residence …

A countdown clock, projected onto the prime minister’s residence at 10 Downing Street, marked the final minutes of the United Kingdom’s membership in the European Union on January 31, 2020. As the clock ticked toward 11 pm, one half of the country celebrated. The other half mourned.

Ilyas Tayfun Salci/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images

Alastair Grant/AP

The story of Britain’s breakup with the European Union began long before 52 percent of voters on a June 2016 referendum decided to leave the …

In the past week, there’s been a lot of speculation — and anticipation — about how Senate Republicans would vote, when it came to calling more witnesses for the Senate impeachment trial. The hype obscured just how predetermined the outcome really was.

Of course, the recent attention was in some ways warranted, given the bombshell from former National Security Adviser John Bolton, who said that President Donald Trump had explicitly told him about a quid pro quo between military aid to Ukraine and political investigations, according to his book manuscript. Trump’s defense lawyers, up to this point, have repeatedly pointed …

The Black List — a list of producers’ favorite unproduced screenplays — started with an idea so obvious that producer and Black List founder Franklin Leonard couldn’t believe it didn’t already exist. He just asked producers he knew what their favorite screenplays were, then created a list.

“I was terrified that I had violated some unwritten rule of Hollywood and that surely other people had had this idea, hadn’t done it for a reason, but I was too dumb to realize that,” Leonard told Kara Swisher on Recode Decode.

In fact, he had identified an incredibly valuable opportunity: an …

The struggle for Palestinian freedom was denigrated, yet again, this week when the leaders of the US and Israel stood side by side at the White House and unveiled the Trump administration’s new “peace plan.”

The plan was met with a range of anger and skepticism from many corners. Top Democrats including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, and Amy Klobuchar decried it as “one-sided” and said it “violates the Palestinians’ right to self-determination.”

One former Israeli negotiator called it “an act of aggression dripping with the coarse syntax of racism. A hate plan, not a peace plan.”

Much of the …

Sen. Lamar Alexander (R-TN), a closely watched swing vote on the question of whether to call witnesses in the Senate impeachment trial, has made up his mind.

After some deliberation, Alexander announced Thursday that he would vote against calling witnesses, dealing a major blow to Democrats who have pushed for additional testimony from individuals with direct knowledge about the White House’s handling of aid to Ukraine.

Alexander elaborated on his decision in a 15-tweet statement. “There is no need for more evidence to prove something that has already been proven and that does not meet the US Constitution’s high …