News Headlines - 16 January 2020

▽Labour leadership: Five candidates through as nominations close - BBC News

Emily Thornberry will join four others in the next round of the contest to become Labour leader, after winning the support of enough MPs and MEPs.
The shadow foreign secretary passed the threshold of 22 backers less than 10 minutes before nominations closed.
She was helped by Clive Lewis quitting the race - with several of his backers switching to back her candidacy.

▽Musharraf: Death penalty for ex-Pakistan president thrown out - BBC News

A court in Pakistan has overturned the death sentence handed down to former president Pervez Musharraf by declaring the legal process unconstitutional.
Gen Musharraf had challenged the formation of special court which found him guilty of treason last December.
On Monday, the Lahore High Court sided with the exiled general, who seized power in a 1999 coup and was president from 2001 to 2008.
The decision meant Gen Musharraf was "a free man", one prosecutor said.

▽China's car sales fell 8% in 2019 and the slump is entering its third year - CNN

China's car sales are stuck in a major slump that shows little sign of ending as the country's massive economy slows.
The country's car market shrank for the second year in a row last year, according to data released by the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers on Monday.
The national auto industry body said total car sales fell 8.2% to just under 25.8 million in 2019, after having slid nearly 3% in 2018 in the first contraction since the 1990s. December car sales in China dipped 0.1%, according to the data, marking 18 straight months of declines.

▽Japan and Thailand Confirm New Cases of Chinese Coronavirus - The New York Times

Thailand and Japan each reported new cases of a coronavirus that has left two people dead and at least 40 sick in China, adding to concerns about the spread of the virus beyond Chinese borders ahead of a major holiday.
Health officials in Thailand on Friday said they had found a second case of the mysterious pneumonialike coronavirus in that country, in a 74-year-old Chinese woman... On Thursday, Japan’s Health Ministry said that a Chinese man in his 30s tested positive for the coronavirus. The man, a resident of Kanagawa Prefecture, just south of Tokyo, returned to Japan on Jan. 6 after traveling to Wuhan.

▽Huge Eruption of Philippines Volcano Seen from Space | Live Science

Forty-three years after its last eruption, the Taal Volcano awoke on Jan. 12, sending a plume of steam and sulfur skyward and forcing the evacuation of thousands of people on the island of Luzon, Philippines.
This eruption was captured in images by Japan’s Himawari-8 satellite. An animation of the satellite data, released by NASA's Earth Observatory, shows the volcanic plume as it spread over the course of Jan. 12 and 13.