Hello Australia!! - Another US election where the popular vote doesn't decide? - Cockroaches on Christmas Island - A TV star discusses her battle with cancer - And more in your CareerSpot Global News Briefs:

The first test of America's Democracy in the 2020 election year didn't go too well, as flawed technology stopped the vote count in Monday's Iowa Caucuses - which differs from the usual American political primary election because party workers and grassroots choose their candidates.  Instead of using the system that worked for a hundred years or so, the Iowa Democratic Party went with a new smartphone app supplied by companies affiliated with Barack Obama's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns.  The app - which reportedly was neither tested nor cleared by the Department of Homeland Security - crashed.  The back-up telephone system for reporting vote totals also failed, and the count was delayed for a day.  The Nevada Democratic Party announced it was dumping the same app, which it had planned to use during its caucuses in a couple of weeks.

The only certainty was that former Vice President Joe Biden fared terribly, indicating that he didn't have anywhere near the support that some polling had indicated.  When the Iowa Democratic Party released numbers on Tuesday evening in the US, Joe Biden was a distant fourth behind Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.  But first and second places seemed to be murky:  With 62 percent of the vote counted, Bernie Sanders led the popular vote with 28,220 to Pete Buttigieg's 27,030.  But because of the Byzantine and esoteric method of allotting delegates who will vote for the candidates at the Democratic National Convention later this year, somehow Buttigieg was in front with 26.9 percent of the delegates to Bernie's 25.1 percent.  More votes will be released later, but it's going to be a long, sordid year for the Democrats.

Some of the Australians evacuated to Christmas Island because of the 2019-nCoV coronavirus in China say their accommodations are pretty gross.  Some complained to the ABC that the rooms had cockroaches, and the food was pretty bad.  The Federal Government insisted that the people evacuated from Wuhan City in Hubei province stay in quarantine on Christmas Island for two weeks, because that is the time patients are contagious because displaying symptoms of respiratory disease.  The death toll from 2019-nCoV is 427 lives lost, almost all in Hubei Province.  That number will certainly be ratcheted up later today.

China actions to battle the coronavirus at its apparent birthplace has given the world "a window of opportunity", according to the head of the US World Health Organization (WHO).  Criticizing Western nations for failing to share the data they are collecting on 2019-nCoV, Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said:  "Let's use this opportunity to prevent further spread and control it."  Earlier, China admitted that its early response to the outbreak was marked by "shortcomings and deficiencies", including a police crackdown on a doctor who had tried to sound the alarm in late December.

Iran claims that assassinated Quds Force General Qassem Soleimani was carrying a message expressing Tehran's desire to resolve tensions with Saudi Arabia and allied Gulf states when a US missile found him near the Baghdad Airport in Iraq last month.  "Tehran welcomes Iraq's role in trying to solve differences between Iran and Saudi," said Iran's Ambassador to Iraq Iraj Masjedi.  The US said Soleimani was the director of several terrorist attacks against Western interests that killed hundreds.

Prosecutors in the African nation of Lesotho plan to charge First Lady Maesaiah Thabane with murder for allegedly killing her husband's first wife.  Prime Minister Thomas Thabane has also been questioned about the killing, which took place three years ago in the midst of his messy and bitter divorce from first wife Lipolelo Thabane.  As the criminal investigation looked worse and worse for him, PM Thabane announced he'd resign but hasn't yet specified a date.

Actor Shannon Doherty of the American TV shows "Beverly Hills 90210" and "Charmed" revealed her breast cancer had returned and it is now stage four, which generally means it has metastasized.  The 48-year old has been candid about her cancer battles, but didn't talk about it during the recent attempted reboot of "90210" because she wanted to show Hollywood that "people with stage four can work too".  Almost a year ago, her co-star Luke Perry died of a stroke at age 52.