What will be the biggest
stories of the year ahead?
In 2019, surgeons get a new view of the body.
Japan welcomes the world.
Japan will be undergoing a huge change.
The European project falters.
My sense is that the Euro skeptic
cause in Europe will continue to rise.
And 50 years after Neil Armstrong made
his giant leap, new nations shoot for the moon.
2019 will bring a whole new reality for some
patients going under the knife as surgeons use
augmented reality headsets to help carry out operations.
The image that you see is quite incredible.
I remember going very quiet the first time I saw it
and I was very excited by the capabilities.
Doctors at Saint Mary's hospital in London
are pioneering the use of AR to improve skin graft surgery.
We're trying to see if augmented reality can help
identify the blood vessels that supply the piece of skin
that's required as part of the reconstructive tissue.
It's hoped this technology will
make surgery faster and safer for patients.
Multiple images from CT scans are combined
to make a 3D hologram which is superimposed
onto the surgeon's real world view.
We're hoping with this method that you would get
a much more accurate and quicker understanding of anatomy.
A piece of augmented reality gives so much more
information than I could ever put in my reports.
The AR headsets were developed from
the technology used in a Microsoft games console.
But they now have lifesaving applications.
In the Netherlands, surgeons will be using
the AR headsets to help identify brain tumors.
While in Germany AR will help spot diseased lymph nodes.
In 2019, we're looking to apply augmented reality
to lots of other specialties, orthopedic surgery,
neurosurgery, breast reconstructive surgery.
Penicillin was discovered here at Saint Mary's hospital.
It took 12 years from its discovery
to be used and save someone's life.
I'm hoping that augmented reality in surgery will be much
quicker and once we can demonstrate that benefit to
patients, then I think it should be routinely used.
In September, sports fans
will turn their eyes to Japan
as it hosts the rugby world cup.
But the tournament will be more than just
a warm up for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
It's central to a plan to transform the country's economy.
Prime Minister Abe has actually made tourism
a centerpiece of Japan's growth strategy.
The government hopes to boost
the number of tourists to 40 million a year by 2020.
25% more than in 2017.
Currently, around 85% of visitors to Japan are from Asia.
But it is now attracting more Western
visitors with far more spending power.
In preparation for this boom, a taxi company in Tokyo
has organized a competition to test driver's English.
The winner only started learning English four years ago
and he's seen a steady rise in foreign customers.
When I first became a driver, it would be twice
or three times in a week but now once or twice a day.
I'm convinced that 2019 will be
a great year for our business.
The Japanese government also wants
more foreigners to stay in the country.
With famously low immigration rates and almost
a third of citizens aged over 65,
Japan is suffering from a dire labor shortage.
But legislation has been passed that will allow
345,000 foreign workers in over the next seven years.
2019 will be the year that Japan will be
undergoing a huge change especially with what
is happening in terms of labor laws and welcoming
more migrant workers and so this may add to the flavor
of what it means to be Japanese in the 21st century.
But with the Japanese population
shrinking by nearly 400,000 a year, the country may need
to welcome even more people from the rest of the world.
Have a good one.
Thank you.
You are a rude, terrible person.
2019 is set to be US President
Donald Trump's most testing year yet.
That's enough, put down the mic.
When Democrats assume control of the House
of Representatives and he comes under more scrutiny.
They can look at us and then we can look at them.
I could see it being extremely good politically 'cause I
think I'm better at that game than they are actually.
Mr. Trump came to power promising to rid
Washington DC of corruption and vested interests.
We are going to drain the swamp.
But this could be the year the swamp
really makes the president sweat.
For Donald Trump, I think 2019 ought
to be pretty nerve wracking.
The amount of subpoenas that are gonna be arriving at the
White House will make life quite uncomfortable for him.
Top of the list for some Democrats
is publishing the president's tax returns.
Donald Trump is clearly hiding something
when it comes to his finances.
But it won't just be his
financial affairs under the spotlight.
The real pressure on Mr. Trump in 2019 could
come from the Mueller investigation into
Russian interference in the 2016 election.
There's not really any modern precedent for the scale,
scope, political importance of the Mueller investigation.
They got nothing, zero.
You know why?
'Cause there is nothing.
If the investigation supports serious
allegations against the president, then 2019 could be
the year that the Democrats begin impeachment proceedings.
But don't expect the Republican majority in the Senate
to convict him or any charges to even make a dent
in Mr. Trump's core support across the country.
If you look at President Trump's approval ratings,
they don't fluctuate a huge amount.
I don't see the Mueller investigation changing that.
Even if the outcome of it looks very bad for the president,
all the cliches will come out, fake news.
Fake news, folks, fake news.
It's a witch hunt.
It's a disgraceful situation.
It's a total witch hunt.
You know, the Democrat's fault.
We have Democrats that don't want to approve anything.
And I think that'll be good enough for a lot of people.
This is that moment in time for our country.
So, for Mr. Trump's political opponents,
the real focus in 2019 is likely to be on who they choose
to run against him at the next presidential election.
Our basic American values are under assault.
America's politics are even more divided
in 2019 than they were in 2018.
In some ways that feels appropriate.
Divided government for divided country.
It's one small step for man,
one giant leap for mankind.
On the 20th of July will remember the moment 50
years ago when Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon.
The many wonderful things that people saw in
the future at that moment, none of them was
the idea that people wouldn't go back.
At the 50th anniversary, it's going to be very clear that
people are going to go back in the fairly near future.
In 2019, there will be new entrants
in the race to return to the moon.
Israeli non-profit organization SpaceIL hopes
its lander will be the first lunar expedition
funded by private enterprise.
And other companies like Astrobotic in the US
are also planning to get in on the action soon.
There are two things that have changed since the 1960s.
One is that it's cheaper to send things into space
and cheaper to send things to the moon.
And the other thing is that you can do more
in space or on the moon with less.
It's a sort of the thing that can be done with
the right private money, a bit of government involvement
and a lot of enthusiasm and that's kind of exciting.
Not to be outdone, China's lunar
lander should also touch down in 2019 making it
the first craft to land on the far side of the moon.
But there is more than just prestige at stake.
We realize that at the poles there are resources
that could be quite useful for people.
There's frozen water maybe frozen methane or carbon dioxide.
And that in turn makes the idea of a permanent
settlement on the moon more likely.
And it will no longer just
be men taking giant leaps.
The American astronauts who went to the moon,
they all looked back on the earth with
the perspective of white, American, professional men.
No woman has ever seen the earth as a whole.
No one of color has ever done this.
That will all change in the next decade.
And that will mean that the world will be seeing itself
through a wider range of eyes and that cannot but be good.
The biggest story of 2019 won't be,
as some might think, the UK's protracted
divorce from the European Union.
In 2019, a bigger, broader upheaval is set to unfold across
the continent ahead of the European parliamentary elections.
The real focus next year will be the European
election when established parties that have run
Europe in one way or another for much of
the post war era are under unprecedented strain.
The stakes are very high because people
are gonna be making a statement that will tell
us a lot about whether populism has reached its peak
and is now in decline or whether it's carrying on building.
Populist parties have shaken
the traditional political order across the continent
and are hoping to win more power than ever in the 2019 vote.
So, the story will be about a fragmentation
of European politics and a new divide between
establishment and anti=establishment political forces.
At times in 2019, it might feel like
Europe is falling apart.
I find it hard to be optimistic at this point
about 2019 and what it brings because my sense is that
the Euro skeptic cause in Europe will continue to rise.
We may see the European parliament
actually be quite, quite divided.
It raises the multibillion Euro question.
What will all this mean for the EU's future?
The question isn't will Europe survive in
the short to medium term, we can be sure of that.
It's in what state will it survive?
Some of its supporters hope that
populist forces could ultimately push the EU into reforms
which will save it and the continent's prosperity.
In the 21st century, Europe's going to be
competing alongside the giants, America and China.
So, the underlying rationale for Europe has never
been stronger and it's gonna get stronger still.