News Headlines - 12 February 2019

▽France Pushed Nissan for a Renault Merger but Was Rebuffed - WSJ

The French government held talks with Nissan Motor Co. in early 2018 about the possibility of a full-blown merger with Renault SA, but the Japanese auto maker countered with proposals to strengthen its hand within their existing partnership, according to a person familiar with the deliberations.

▽Nissan Now Has More to Worry About Than Ghosn - The Washington Post

Nissan Motor Co.’s operating profit dropped around 14 percent in the first nine months, margins shrank and net income tanked 45 percent from a year earlier, the Japanese carmaker said Tuesday. The company also booked a 9.2 billion yen ($83 million) expense related to its former chairman’s compensation. Through all the recent twists and turns in the Ghosn drama, it’s now clear there have been problems for a while in the way the business was being run, not just in its corporate governance.

▽Theresa May Promises U.K. Lawmakers Brexit Vote by Feb. 27 | Time

U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May will this week ask Parliament to give her more time to renegotiate her Brexit deal with the European Union, promising lawmakers a further chance to take control of the process before the clock runs out, according to officials with knowledge of her plans.
With a vote due on Feb. 14, May will ask Parliament to reaffirm its desire to remove the contentious Irish backstop clause from the Withdrawal Agreement, according to an official, who asked not to be identified.
She’ll say that if she hasn’t brought them new deal by Feb. 27, there will then be another opportunity to vote, Communities Secretary James Brokenshire confirmed in an interview.

▽Turkey issues 1,100 arrest warrants for Gülenist coup suspects | The Guardian

Turkey has issued arrest warrants for a further 1,112 people with suspected connections to the outlawed Gülenist movement, as the impact of the 2016 failed military coup continues to reverberate around the country.
The operation announced on Tuesday by Turkey’s state-run news agency is one of the biggest to date targeting followers of cleric Fethullah Gülen, a former ally of president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan now living in self-imposed exile in the US, whom Ankara blames for the coup attempt... Since the failed 2016 coup at least 77,000 people have been arrested and around 130,000 others have been dismissed from state jobs in the police force, judiciary, academia and other public sector jobs as the Turkish government seeks to purge state institutions of what it says are Gülenist efforts to create a “parallel state”.

▽Japanese swimming star Rikako Ikee diagnosed with leukemia

Japanese swimming star Rikako Ikee has been diagnosed with leukemia less than 18 months before the Olympics in Tokyo.
The 18-year-old Ikee won six gold medals at the Asian Games in Jakarta last year and was tipped to be one of the faces of the 2020 Olympics in her home country.
She posted on her verified Twitter account Tuesday that her illness surfaced when she got tests after returning from a training trip to Australia.