AP News in Brief at 11:04 p.m. EST

Poor start: Leadoff Iowa Democratic caucus results delayed

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Iowa Democratic Party said Monday night that results from the state’s first-in-the-nation caucus were delayed due to “quality checks” and new reporting rules.

“The integrity of the results is paramount,” party spokesperson Mandy McClure said. “We have experienced a delay in the results due to quality checks and the fact that the IDP is reporting out three data sets for the first time.”

The statement came as Iowa voters packed caucus sites across the state as Democrats balanced a strong preference for fundamental change with an overwhelming desire to defeat President Donald Trump in the opening contest of the 2020 presidential primary season.

State party officials were counting votes amid reports of strong turnout in some precincts, with at least four leading candidates battling for the chance to take on Trump in November. Iowa’s first-in-the-nation caucuses have been expected to provide some clarity for what has been a muddled nomination fight for much of the last year.

Monday night’s vote totals were slow to be counted, and the reason was unclear. Des Moines County Democratic Chair Tom Courtney blamed technology issues in his county, relaying precinct reports that the app created for caucus organizers to report results was “a mess.”

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The Latest: Dems blame ‘quality checks’ on late Iowa results

DES MOINES, Iowa (AP) — The Latest on the first-in-the-nation Iowa caucuses (all times local):

9:50 p.m.

The Iowa Democratic Party says it is experiencing a delay in reporting results from the first-in-the nation caucuses because of unspecified “quality checks.”

Communications director Mandy McClure said in a statement Monday night that the delay is also the result of the party reporting three sets of data for the first time.

McClure says the party has data so far from “around 25%” of the state’s 1,765 precincts and “and early data indicates turnout is on pace for 2016.”

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AP VoteCast: Iowa Dems split on best challenger for Trump

WASHINGTON (AP) — Iowa Democrats are fiercely united by the goal of unseating President Donald Trump, but they were sharply divided Monday over which candidate was best equipped to do so, according to the AP VoteCast survey.

Iowa, which hosts the nation’s first presidential contest, has played a historic role in defining the field of Democratic frontrunners. But the results from AP VoteCast show how difficult it can be for any single contender to unite an increasingly diverse coalition of voters whose common cause rests mostly on their fury with the Republican president.

Fully 88% said electability was very important for the Democratic nominee, compared with the 66% who said having the best policy ideas is highly important. But not everyone at the start of the caucuses agreed on who was most electable. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders was backed by voters under 30, while former Vice-President Joe Biden’s base was largely older and Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren was drawing more support from women than men.

“Hey, everybody, if you want to beat Trump, come over to Biden’s camp,” yelled Jeff Erickson, a retired postal worker, as voters filed into Hoover High School in Des Moines.

Yet many of the Democratic presidential candidates have possible weaknesses when challenging Trump. Just over 4 in 10 Iowa voters said it would be harder for a woman to unseat the president. Almost 6 in 10 said a gay candidate would have more difficulty defeating Trump, a potential risk for former South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg. Roughly the same share said a nominee with “strongly liberal views” would also face a harder time, while close to half said a nominee older than 75 — Biden and Sanders — would have a tougher time versus Trump.

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China’s virus cases top 20K as Hong Kong reports 1st death

BEIJING (AP) — China said Tuesday the number of infections from a new virus surpassed 20,000 as medical workers and patients arrived at a new hospital and President Xi Jinping said “we have launched a people’s war of prevention of the epidemic.”

Xi presided over a special meeting of the top Communist Party body for the second time since the crisis started, telling the Politburo standing committee on Monday the country must race against time to curb the spread of the virus. He also said those who neglect their duties will be punished, state broadcaster CCTV reported.

Hong Kong on Tuesday reported its first death from the illness, a man who had travelled from the mainland city of Wuhan that has been the epicenter of the outbreak. The semi-autonomous territory shut almost all of its land and sea border crossings with the mainland at midnight after medical workers began a strike demanding the border be closed completely. More than 2,000 hospital workers went on strike Monday, and their union has threatened a bigger walkout Tuesday.

Hong Kong was hit hard by SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, in 2002-03, an illness from the same family of viruses as the current outbreak and which many believe was intensified by official Chinese secrecy and obfuscation.

The mainland’s latest figures of 425 deaths and 20,438 confirmed infections with the new coronavirus were up from 361 deaths and 17,205 cases the previous day. Outside mainland China, at least 180 cases have been confirmed, including two fatalities, in Hong Kong and the Philippines.

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Trump trial closing arguments aim at voters, history

WASHINGTON (AP) — Closing arguments Monday in President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial were directed more toward history than to sway the outcome, one final chance to influence public opinion and set the record ahead of his expected acquittal in the Republican-led Senate.

The House Democratic prosecutors drew on the Founding Fathers and common sense to urge senators — and Americans — to see that Trump’s actions are not isolated but a pattern of behaviour that, left unchecked, will allow him to “cheat”‘ in the 2020 election.

Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff implored those few Republican senators who have acknowledged Trump’s wrongdoing in the Ukraine matter to prevent a “runaway presidency” and stand up to say “enough.”

“For a man like Donald J. Trump, they gave you a remedy and meant for you to use it. They gave you an oath, and they meant for you to observe it,” Schiff said. “We have proven Donald Trump guilty. Now do impartial justice and convict him.”

The president’s defence countered the Democrats have been out to impeach Trump since the start of his presidency, nothing short of an effort to undo the 2016 election and to try to shape the next one, as early primary voting begins Monday in Iowa.

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Cross-examination drives key Weinstein accuser to tears

NEW YORK (AP) — A key accuser in the New York City rape trial of Harvey Weinstein broke down in tears on the witness stand on Monday during an exhaustive cross-examination over the nature of her relationship with the once-powerful movie mogul.

The drama, which prompted the judge to send the jury home about an hour earlier than usual, came as the defence sought to paint the 34-year-old woman as an opportunistic manipulator who took advantage of Weinstein while pursuing an acting career, even after he allegedly raped her.

The woman said she tried to make Weinstein “my pseudo father” after a rough upbringing. She said she sent him flattering emails and kept seeing him because “I wanted him to believe I wasn’t a threat.”

“I was afraid of his unpredictable anger,” the woman testified.

She became emotional while reading an email passage about being abused earlier in her life. It was part of a lengthy confessional email she sent to her then-boyfriend in May 2014 about her relationship with Weinstein. She was bawling as she left the courtroom, and her cries could be heard from a nearby witness room.

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Super Bowl halftime show draws praise, tears from US Latinos

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) — When the Super Bowl halftime show began, Yol-Itzma Aguirre and her relatives watched with anticipation. The El Paso, Texas, family was curious how Colombian-born Shakira and New York-raised Jennifer Lopez, two of the world’s most popular Latina artists, would seize the stage.

The performance Sunday was draped in Hollywood tropes of female sexuality. But it also contained subtle political messages about anxieties shared by many Latinos in the U.S. — children in cages, Puerto Rico in the aftermath of Hurricane Maria and the urge to be heard.

Aguirre, 39, had to watch the performance again. “My sister was tearing up. We saw more things,” Aguirre said. “We stopped caring about the game.”

Across the U.S., Latinos took to social media to praise and dissect the show.

Shakira paid homage to her Colombian roots by performing the mapalé — an Afro-Colombian style of dance from the country’s Caribbean coast. She also made a tongue-flicking cry called a zaghrouta, a way to express joy in Arab culture. Her father is of Lebanese descent.

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AP Exclusive: Border apprehensions drop 8 straight months

WASHINGTON (AP) — The number of border apprehensions has dropped for the eighth straight month, following crackdowns by the Trump administration that include forcing asylum seekers back over the U.S.-Mexico border to wait out their claims, a Homeland Security official said Monday.

The official said the number of encounters with border officials over the past four months was 165,000. A year earlier during the same time it was about 242,000. The official spoke to The Associated Press on condition of anonymity because the official results have not been released.

The tally for the month of January was about 36,000, including apprehensions of people crossing illegally and migrants who were declared inadmissible by border officers at a port of entry . It was a 10 per cent decline from December.

The steep decline will almost certainly figure heavily into President Donald Trump’s State of the Union address Tuesday. Trump has made cracking down on immigration — legal and illegal — a signature issue. He has railed against asylum seekers and other border crossers as con artists who “scam” the system, and derided immigrants from Mexico as “bad hombres. ”

Trump uses the monthly border tallies as a benchmark to determine how his policies are working, railing against Homeland Security officials when the numbers are up. The number of people crossing the border traditionally declines when it’s hot outside — but the winter months often see creeping increases.

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Online misinformation fuels doubt as 2020 vote kicks off

Well before Iowans cast the first ballots of the 2020 presidential race, an insidious campaign to seed distrust in the election process was already underway.

Conservative and liberal activists took to social media to push outright false or unproven claims to their online followers. Suspicions even reached President Donald Trump, who questioned the Democratic primary’s fairness to his tens of millions of Twitter followers.

Misleading social media complaints — some go as far as alleging a vast conspiracy will determine the next president — were likely to intensify over the course of the presidential race.

The falsehoods could so erode faith in the election that a losing candidate’s supporters may refuse to accept the results, either for the nomination or the White House, warned David Becker, founder and director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research.

“The thing that keeps me up at night,” Becker said, is that even if the 2020 election is fair and well-managed, “the losing party’s supporters won’t accept that democracy worked.”

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Brazil’s government blasts Oscar-nominated documentary-maker

SAO PAULO (AP) — Brazil’s government criticized Oscar-nominated filmmaker Petra Costa on Monday after she once more labeled far-right President Jair Bolsonaro a risk to the country’s democracy.

Costa’s documentary about the 2016 impeachment of former President Dilma Rousseff, “The Edge of Democracy,” has been praised by leftists and loathed by conservatives in the politically divided nation.

Ahead of the competition for the best documentary Oscar on Feb. 9, Costa spoke on PBS and once more accused Bolsonaro of stimulating “farmers and loggers to invade indigenous reserves, burn and deforest the Amazon, which is already at a tipping point in which it could become a savanna.”

She also repeated her accusation that the Brazilian president has attacked the rights of minorities. Costa made similar statements before she was nominated, but this time Brazil’s government chose to answer through an official social media channel.

“Filmmaker Petra Costa played the role of an anti-Brazil activist and tarnished the country’s image abroad with a series of fake news in an interview on American television,” the communication secretariat for Brazil’s presidency said in a string of posts on Twitter, in both English and in Portuguese.