News Headlines - 04 February 2020
▽Delays Mar Iowa Caucuses as Democrats Start Nominating Process - The New York Times
A night that was supposed to bring clarity to the Democratic presidential contest turned into a long ordeal of confusion and delays on Monday, as the Iowa Democratic Party failed to report results from more than a handful of precincts for hours after the state’s famed caucuses began.
Struggling to adopt a new byzantine process of tabulating results, Iowa Democrats offered little explanation for the problem for hours after the caucuses began. Eventually, in a 1 a.m. conference call with reporters, Troy Price, the Iowa Democratic Party chairman, said results would not begin to be released until sometime on Tuesday. He said the problem was a reporting issue and stressed it was not a hack.
▽Nissan drafts plan to double down on UK under hard Brexit | Financial Times
Nissan has drawn up a plan to pull out of mainland Europe if Brexit leads to tariffs on car exports - but to double down on the UK, where the Japanese company believes it could sell one in five cars... Under the scenario, the Sunderland plant in the UK would be maintained as part of an audacious attempt to steal market share from other carmakers.
If carmakers that import to Britain such as Ford and Volkswagen face tariffs that make their cars more expensive, Nissan’s UK-made models would have a competitive edge, allowing the company to grow from 4 per cent of the market currently to as high as 20 per cent, according to the two people.
▽‘Thanks, goodbye and good riddance’ - EU’s parting words to UK | Financial Times
The EU’s final words to the UK as it departed the union after nearly half a century were “thank you, goodbye, and good riddance”.
The misspoken farewell, spoken by the Croatian ambassador to her UK counterpart Tim Barrow last week, perhaps sums up 47 years of the Britons being lost in translation in Brussels.
Irena Andrassy, the Croatian ambassador, was chairing the UK’s final meeting of EU envoys as a member state because her country holds the six-month EU presidency. She assumed “good riddance” was akin to “good luck”, said diplomats present in the room.
Despite some feelings running high towards the UK over Brexit, the goodbye was not a barb in disguise, they insisted.
▽Coronavirus: Hong Kong hospital staff strike to demand closure of China border - BBC News
Hundreds of hospital workers in Hong Kong have gone on strike, demanding the border with mainland China be completely closed to reduce the risk of the coronavirus spreading.
Hong Kong has suspended cross-border rail and ferry services, but health workers want a total border closure.
Authorities say closing the border completely would go against advice from the World Health Organization.
In a rare admission of fault, China recognized “shortcomings and deficiencies” in its response to the coronavirus outbreak that is ravaging China and spreading around the world... The admission came from the Politburo Standing Committee, the most powerful body of the Chinese Communist Party which rules the country.
An account of the meeting, published by the official Xinhua news agency, said that the epidemic had exposed problems in China’s emergency management, which it pledged to address.
