Robot artist stars in music video for The 1975

Ai-Da, an ultra-realistic robot that made news for being the first artistic robot, has now starred in a music video released by The 1975.

Latest Stories

  • Trump was convinced he was going to win on election night in a repeat of 2016, and was 'shouting at everyone' when Fox News called Arizona for Biden

    Trump reacted with disbelief and rage when his chances of holding on to power began to slip away, according to the Washington Post.

  • In El Salvador, arrested gang members paraded for the cameras

    Hundreds of handcuffed Salvadoran gang members were displayed before assembled reporters on Saturday, a vivid show of President Nayib Bukele's policy of confronting them and the violent crime they are accused of committing. In April, Bukele provoked the ire of rights groups when he published on social media jarring pictures of hundreds of semi-naked jailed gang members, pressed tightly together in rows, despite the raging pandemic. Security Minister Rogelio Rivas called the majority of the newly-detained "terrorists" in remarks after they were assembled in an open-air plaza by heavily-armed soldiers, nearly all the detainees wearing masks and with their faces, many tattooed, looking down.

  • Travel agents in Mideast, Africa say UAE is blocking visas

    Travel agencies in countries across the Middle East and Africa say the United Arab Emirates has temporarily halted issuing new visas to their citizens, a so-far unexplained ban on visitors amid both the coronavirus pandemic and the UAE's normalization deal with Israel. Confusion over the UAE visa ban targeting 11 Muslim-majority nations, in addition to Lebanon and Kenya, swirled after a leaked document from Dubai’s state-owned airport free zone surfaced this week, declaring restrictions against a range of nationalities. Emirati authorities have not acknowledged the suspension that comes as the UAE welcomes Israeli tourists for the first time in history, the coronavirus pandemic surges across the region and those searching for work in the federation of seven sheikhdoms increasingly overstay their tourist visas amid a cascade of business shutdowns and lay-offs.

  • MBS reportedly backed out of Saudi-Israel agreement because he wants to wait for Biden

    Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu reportedly flew to Saudi Arabia last week for a secret meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Saudi Crown prince Mohammed bin Salman in the hopes of striking a deal that would normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel. But he came home empty handed after Prince Mohammed backed out, The Wall Street Journal reports.His reasoning, Saudi advisers and U.S. officials told the Journal, was President-elect Joe Biden's victory over President Trump in the U.S. general election. Although the Trump administration was a factor in the recent so-called Abraham Accords, which normalized relations between Israel and both the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain, Prince Mohammed reportedly wants to build ties with Biden and was reluctant about following suit while Trump is still in office, although the chances of that happening reportedly aren't impossible.Negotiating normalization agreements between Israel and other Arab nations is one Trump policy Biden seems likely to keep pursuing, but the president-elect has taken a tougher stance on Saudi Arabia than Trump, especially after the killing of Jamal Khashoggi, the Journal notes, so reviving talks with the new administration may be Prince Mohammed's best chance "to repair its image in Washington," a U.S. official said. Read more at The Wall Street Journal.More stories from theweek.com 5 witheringly funny cartoons about Trump's sort-of concession Is Mnuchin trying to sabotage the economy? Vanderbilt's Fuller becomes 1st woman to play in Power 5 football game after 2nd half kickoff

  • A Few of Our Favorite Small Businesses Running Sales This Weekend

    It's #smallbusinesssaturday, and you know what that meansOriginally Appeared on Architectural Digest

  • Iran health ministry reports slowing of virus infections

    "I thank our dear people for taking the appropriate precautions and tolerating the restrictions," deputy health minister Alireza Raisi said on state TV, adding that public adherence was 90 percent. A health ministry spokeswoman reported 13,402 new coronavirus cases on Saturday, pushing the national tally to 935,799 in the Middle East’s worst-hit country. Sima Sadat Lari told state TV that the death toll had risen by 391 in the past 24 hours to 7,486.

  • Britain urged to probe wealth of Russian family whose son had 'world’s most expensive wedding'

    It was perhaps the world’s most expensive wedding; an extravaganza costing tens of millions of pounds with performances by Jennifer Lopez, Sting and Enrique Iglesias, a fleet of Rolls Royces to ferry the guests and a 20-year-old bride wearing a $1m dress and a $5m crown. The groom, Said Gutseriev, had grown up in London and been educated at Harrow School and at Oxford, and his father - one of Russia’s wealthiest oligarchs - could not have been prouder.

  • The Supreme Court refused to get involved in the case of a Louisiana pastor who ignored the governor's order banning large gatherings

    Louisiana Pastor Tony Spell openly violated the governor's order prohibiting gatherings larger than 10 people, hosting services that totaled 1,000.

  • Clashes with cleric's supporters kill 5 in southern Iraq

    Supporters of a firebrand Iraqi cleric shot dead five people on Saturday, according to medical officials, in overnight clashes with anti-government protesters in southern Iraq. Followers of the populist cleric also wounded 40 others in the clashes, according to two medical officials. The anti-government protesters were camped out at a main square in the city of Nasiriya, which has been an epicenter of the youth-led protest movement that has sought to sweep aside Iraq's ruling sectarian elite.

  • Russia lodges official protest with U.S. over naval incident

    Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday that it had lodged an official protest with the United States over a naval incident in the Sea of Japan, which it said was a provocation designed to disturb the peace. Russia had said on Tuesday that one of its warships had caught and chased off a U.S. destroyer operating illegally in its territorial waters in the Sea of Japan. The U.S. Navy denied wrongdoing and accused Moscow of making excessive maritime claims.

  • Former US election security chief says Trump team's fraud allegations are 'farcical'

    The top US cybersecurity official fired by Republican President Donald Trump for saying the November 3 election was the most secure in American history said on Friday that voter fraud allegations made by Mr Trump and his allies are "farcical". Chris Krebs, the former director of the Department of Homeland Security's Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, told the CBS 60 Minutes program that allegations of US voting machines being manipulated by foreign countries were baseless. Sidney Powell, a Trump attorney cut loose by the Trump legal team this week, had put forward a conspiracy theory that election systems created in Venezuela at the behest of the late Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez helped tip the US election to Democratic President-elect Joe Biden. She and others have also alleged that voting machines had flipped votes from Mr Trump to Mr Biden and some US voting information was stored on servers in Germany.

  • Alleged police beating of Black man angers French

    French authorities have suspended police officers accused of assaulting and racially abusing a Black man in Paris, after CCTV footage of the incident was released and caused an outcry. The music producer, who has identified himself as Michel, was beaten at the entrance to his studio. French President Emmanuel Macron was quoted by France's BFM TV as being "very shocked" by the CCTV and mobile phone images, which were obtained by the LoopSider news outlet and made headline news on French channels. The officers involved were suspended pending investigation at the interior minister's request. Michel told reporters he'd been walking in the street without a face mask, against French COVID-19 rules. When he saw a police car he went into his studio to avoid getting a fine. But the police followed him inside and arrested him, violently. The video purports to show them kicking and beating him, and he says they hurled racial abuse at him too. They then leave, and throw a tear gas canister into the studio. As anger grew, French soccer stars added to the chorus of condemnation. Kylian Mbappe tweeted that the video was "intolerable" and his fellow Les Bleus striker, Antoine Griezmann wrote: "My France is hurting." The alleged attack on Michel risks inflaming racial tension, and fuelling criticism of a draft law that would limit journalists' ability to show images of French police officers at work. The prime minister's office said on Thursday (November 26) it would set up an independent commission to propose a new draft of the legislation. Some "BlackLivesMatter" protests broke out in Paris in June, a month after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in the United States. The movement resonates in France, in particular in deprived city suburbs, where rights groups say accusations of police brutality, often against people with immigrant backgrounds, remain largely unaddressed. And Paris police were already under fire this week after social media photos and videos showed officers hitting protesters as they cleared out an illegal migrants campsite in a central Paris square.

  • Tigray crisis: Ethiopian soldiers accused of blocking border with Sudan

    Families fleeing the conflict in Tigray tell the BBC they have been cut off from relatives.

  • Uzbekistan to repatriate more citizens from crowded Syrian camps, source says

    Uzbekistan plans to repatriate another group of its citizens, mostly women and children, from Syria where they are staying at crowded camps with other families of Islamic State fighters, an Uzbek government source told Reuters on Friday. A government delegation from Tashkent has visited the Al-Hol and Roj camps in the Kurdish-controlled part of Syria and met over 100 Uzbeks staying there to discuss their return home, the source said. Most of those people are women and children under three years of age who "live in deplorable conditions and have difficulties with access to drinking water, food and medical care", according to the source.

  • A man fatally shot a Black teenager in a hotel parking lot after confronting him over his loud music, Oregon police say

    Local activists criticized police comments saying that Ellison was killed because of his music and said they believe his death was race-related.

  • Trump attorneys described Giuliani as 'deranged' and likened the team pushing election fraud claims to a 'clown car,' report says

    The Washington Post reported that a rift developed in Trump's legal team over Rudy Giuliani's behavior.

  • Dire warnings as Rome's iconic umbrella pines at risk of being wiped out by alien bug

    They are as distinctive a feature of Rome as buzzing Vespas and ruined temples. But the city’s iconic umbrella pines, which cast welcome pools of shade across cobbled streets in summer and provide a stage for the metallic rasping of countless cicadas, are in mortal peril. An estimated one million umbrella pines – so named for their flat-topped crowns – are under threat from a voracious species of bug. The insect, known as the pine tortoise scale (Latin name Toumeyella parvicornis) arrived in Italy from North America in 2014, possibly in a consignment of timber. Since then it has ravaged umbrella pines in Naples and the surrounding region of Campania and has now moved north to Rome. More than 30 environmental organisations raised the alarm this week, writing an open letter to the agriculture and environment ministries calling for urgent action to be taken to combat the insidious invader. The associations called for “immediate intervention” to try to halt the march of the insect, which feeds off the trees’ sap, slowly turning its canopy from a healthy green to a deathly black. They warned that “the landscape of the capital risks being changed irreparably in just a few months” as a result of the bugs’ relentless progress.

  • Montenegro declares Serbia's ambassador persona non grata

    Montenegro on Saturday declared Serbia's ambassador persona non grata for interfering with the country's internal affairs, the ministry of interior said in a statement. Following the announcement, Serbia declared persona non grata the Montenegrin ambassador to Serbia and gave him 72 hours to leave the country. In the statement, Montenegro's ministry said that despite written and verbal warning not to interfere into internal affairs, the Serbian ambassador said that the 1918 session of the parliament in which Montenegro's sovereignty was abolished was "liberating."

  • The fire that led to the death of former Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh occurred over a week before he succumbed to injuries

    The former Zappos CEO died late Friday as a result of injuries he sustained from a November 18 fire in New London, Connecticut.

  • Biden's win means some Guantanamo prisoners may be released

    The oldest prisoner at the Guantanamo Bay detention center went to his latest review board hearing with a degree of hope, something that has been scarce during his 16 years locked up without charges at the U.S. base in Cuba. Saifullah Paracha, a 73-year-old Pakistani with diabetes and a heart condition, had two things going for him that he didn't have at previous hearings: a favorable legal development and the election of Joe Biden. President Donald Trump had effectively ended the Obama administration's practice of reviewing the cases of men held at Guantanamo and releasing them if imprisonment was no longer deemed necessary.