NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — A police official says 28 people have been killed in clashes between farmers and herders in south-eastern Kenya.
Anthony Kamitu, who is leading police operations to prevent the attacks, said Friday that the Pokomo tribe of farmers raided a village of the Orma herding community, called Kipao, at dawn in the Tana River Delta.
The latest deaths in a tit-for-tat cycle of killings may be related to a redrawing of political boundaries and next year’s general elections, according to the U.N.
At least 110 people were killed in clashes between the Pokomo and Orma in September and October.
Animosity between the two communities over land and water resources has existed for decades.
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HELSINKI (AP) — Nokia Corp. and Canadian smartphone rival Research In Motion have agreed on a new patent licensing pact which will end all existing litigation between the two struggling companies, the Finnish firm said Friday.
The agreement includes a “one-time payment and on-going payments, all from RIM to Nokia,” Nokia said, but did not disclose “confidential” terms.
Last month, Nokia sued the Blackberry maker for breach of contract in Britain, the United States and Canada over cellular patents they agreed in 2003. RIM claimed the license — which covered patents on “standards-essential” technologies for mobile devices— should also have covered patents for non-essential parts, but the Arbitration Institute of Stockholm Chamber of Commerce ruled against RIM’s claims.
Major manufacturers of phones and wireless equipment are increasingly turning to patent litigation as they jockey for an edge to expand their share of the rapidly growing smartphone market.
Nokia is among leading patent holders in the wireless industry. It has already received a $ 565 million royalty payment from Apple Inc. to settle long-standing patent disputes and filed claims in the United States and Germany alleging that products from HTC Corp. and Viewsonic Corp. infringe a number of its patents.
The company says it has invested €45 billion ($ 60 billion) during the last 20 years in research and development and has one of the wireless industry’s largest IPR portfolios claiming some 10,000 patent families.
Nokia’s share price closed down 3.5 percent at €3.05 on the Helsinki Stock Exchange.
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LONDON (Reuters) – He has the most-watched video in Youtube history, become a pop sensation with a horse-riding dance craze that has swept the world and now Korean singer Psy may cement his place in popular culture with recognition from a British dictionary.
“Gangnam Style,” Psy’s signature song, has been chosen along with “fiscal cliff” and “Romneyshambles” as some of Collins Dictionary‘s words of the year.
“We were looking for words that told the story of the year,” said Ian Brookes, the dictionary‘s consultant editor.
“Some words are from events that have been and gone and so are not likely to stick around … but others are probably here to stay.”
Other headline entries centered on American politics.
“Fiscal cliff” has drawn a lot of attention as the deadline for Congress and President Obama to agree on government spending and tax plans draws nearer.
While the term “Romneyshambles” entered the British public’s consciousness after Mitt Romney‘s gaffe-ridden visit to London in July in which he questioned Britain’s readiness to host the Olympics.
The inclusion of “47 percent” on the list after a leaked video showed Romney telling donors that 47 percent of Americans would definitely vote for Obama because of their dependency on the government capped off a bad year for the losing presidential candidate.
Collins received over 7,000 submissions on its online database.
Twelve words of the year – one for each month – were then selected on the basis of the frequency with which they were spoken, how many places they appeared and their longevity in public discourse.
Appearing on the Collins words of the year list is no guarantee of insertion in the next dictionary.
But Gangnam Style stands a very good chance, Brookes said.
“It’s obviously a craze, so there’s the possibility it will go away. But it’s been heard by so many people that I think it’s probably earned the right to go into the dictionary.”
Other words of the year include “mummy porn” after the popularity of the “Fifty Shades of Grey” books, and “superstorm” after Superstorm Sandy wreaked havoc along the east coast of America in October.
(Reporting By Peter Schwartzstein, editing by Paul Casciato)
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ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) — U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius says Minnesota has reached a milestone in its effort to establish a health insurance exchange.
Sebelius notified Gov. Mark Dayton Thursday that the state has been granted conditional approval to operate its health insurance marketplace in 2014.
Nine other states and the District of Columbia have been given similar approval. Sebelius says the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services granted approval based on the state’s progress to date and its expected progress. The approval is contingent on the state’s ability to comply with regulations and meet the anticipated progress, among other things.
The health insurance marketplace will give more than a million state residents and small businesses an easy way to compare and buy private health insurance plans, using subsidies if they qualify.
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OTTAWA (Reuters) – Canadaretail sales in October jumped by a stronger-than-expected 0.7 percent from September to hit a record, but analysts said the figures were less impressive than they seemed and would not do much to boost recent sluggish economic growth.
Statistics Canada said on Thursday that retail sales in October reached C$ 39.45 billion ($ 39.85 billion), the third consecutive all-time high. Sales have now grown for four straight months.
But analysts, who had expected a month-over-month increase of 0.2 percent, noted that in volume terms sales were only up by 0.3 percent.
This, they predicted, would not have a major effect on October gross domestic product data due out on Friday. The consensus forecast is for a 0.1 percent increase.
“It’s volume that matters to GDP such that while the (October) gain was positive, it will translate into GDP much less powerfully than the headline would suggest,” Scotiabank economists Derek Holt and Dov Zigler said in a note to clients.
Canada’s economy grew at a sluggish 0.6 percent pace, annualized, in the third quarter. Although the Bank of Canada is predicting fourth-quarter growth of 2.5 percent, annualized, that looks to be too optimistic given exporters’ problems with weak markets and the strong Canadian dollar.
The retail sales data helped push the Canadian dollar up to a session high of C$ 0.9875 versus the U.S. dollar, or $ 1.0127, compared with C$ 0.9890, or $ 1.0111, before the release. It later slipped back and at 10:05 a.m. (1505 GMT) was trading at C$ 0.9893, or $ 1.0111.
In October, gains were reported in eight of 11 subsectors, representing 92 percent of retail trade.
On annualized terms, fourth-quarter retail sales growth so far is an anemic 0.6 percent, compared with the 2.2 percent rise recorded in the third quarter.
Benjamin Reitzes, senior economist at BMO Capital Markets, also noted sales growth from October 2011 was just 1.7 percent, matching June’s figure and the second-lowest since Canada emerged from recession.
“Underlying sales continue to slow, which has been the story for much of the past year, as modest job growth, warnings about over-indebtedness and the allure of cross-border shopping weigh on retailers,” he said in a note to clients.
Sales at motor vehicles and parts dealers grew by 1.6 percent on the back of a 1.6 percent increase in sales by new car dealers, who posted a fifth consecutive monthly gain. Sales at gasoline stations also advanced by 1.6 percent.
Food and beverage store sales were up by 0.5 percent. Furniture and home furnishings store sales fell by 2.0 percent while electronics and appliance stores recorded a decline of 1.6 percent.
(Editing by Nick Zieminski)
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. State Department said on Wednesday its security chief had resigned from his post and three other officials had been relieved of their duties following a scathing official inquiry into the September 11 attack on the U.S. mission in Benghazi.
Eric Boswell has resigned effective immediately as assistant secretary of state for diplomatic security, State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said in a terse statement. A second official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Boswell had not left the department entirely and remained a career official.
Nuland said that Boswell, and the three other officials, had all been put on administrative leave “pending further action.”
An official panel that investigated the incident concluded that the Benghazi mission was completely unprepared to deal with the attack, which killed U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens and three other Americans.
The unclassified version of the report, which was released on Tuesday, cited “leadership and management” deficiencies, poor coordination among officials and “real confusion” in Washington and in the field over who had the authority to make decisions on policy and security concerns.
“The ARB identified the performance of four officials, three in the Bureau of the Diplomatic Security and one in the Bureau of (Near Eastern) Affairs,” Nuland said in her statement, referring to the panel known as an Accountability Review Board.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton accepted Boswell’s decision to resign effective immediately, the spokeswoman said.
Earlier, a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity said Boswell, one of his deputies, Charlene Lamb, and a third unnamed official has been asked to resign. The Associated Press first reported that three officials had resigned.
PANEL STOPS SHORT OF BLAMING CLINTON
The Benghazi incident appeared likely to tarnish Clinton’s four-year tenure as secretary of state but the report did not fault her specifically and the officials who led the review stopped short of blaming her.
“We did conclude that certain State Department bureau-level senior officials in critical positions of authority and responsibility in Washington demonstrated a lack of leadership and management ability appropriate for senior ranks,” retired Admiral Michael Mullen, one of the leaders of the inquiry, told reporters on Wednesday.
The panel’s chair, retired Ambassador Thomas Pickering, said it had determined that responsibility for security shortcomings in Benghazi belonged at levels lower than Clinton’s office.
“We fixed (responsibility) at the assistant secretary level, which is, in our view, the appropriate place to look for where the decision-making in fact takes place, where – if you like – the rubber hits the road,” Pickering said after closed-door meetings with congressional committees.
The panel’s report and the comments by its two lead authors suggested that Clinton, who accepted responsibility for the incident in a television interview about a month after the Benghazi attack, would not be held personally culpable.
Pickering and Mullen spoke to the media after briefing members of the House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee and Senate Foreign Relations Committee behind closed doors on classified elements of their report.
Clinton had been expected to appear at an open hearing on Benghazi on Thursday, but is recuperating after suffering a concussion, dehydration and a stomach bug last week. She will instead be represented by her two top deputies.
Clinton, who intends to step down in January, said in a letter accompanying the review that she would adopt all of its recommendations, which include stepping up security staffing and requesting more money to fortify U.S. facilities.
The National Defense Authorization Act for 2013, which is expected to go to Congress for final approval this week, includes a measure directing the Pentagon to increase the Marine Corps presence at diplomatic facilities by up to 1,000 Marines.
Some Capitol Hill Republicans who had criticized the Obama administration’s handling of the Benghazi attacks said they were impressed by the report.
“It was very thorough,” said Senator Johnny Isakson. Senator John Barrasso said: “It was very, very critical of major failures at the State Department at very high levels.” Both spoke after the closed-door briefing.
Others, however, took a harsher line and called for Clinton to testify as soon as she is able.
“The report makes clear the massive failure of the State Department at all levels, including senior leadership, to take action to protect our government employees abroad,” Representative Mike Rogers, the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said in a statement.
Senator Bob Corker, who will be the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee when the new Congress is seated early next year, said Clinton should testify about Benghazi before her replacement is confirmed by the Senate.
Republicans have focused much of their firepower on U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice, who appeared on TV talk shows after the attack and suggested it was the result of a spontaneous protest rather than a premeditated attack.
The report concluded that there was no such protest.
Rice, widely seen as President Barack Obama’s top pick to succeed Clinton, withdrew her name from consideration last week.
(Additional reporting by Tabassum Zakaria and Susan Cornwell; Editing by Christopher Wilson)
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According to Japanese gaming bible Famitsu, Nintendo (NTDOY) 3DS sold 333,000 units in the week ending December 16, while Sony’s (SNE) PS Vita limped along at 13,000 units, the new Wii U did an okay 130,000 units and the PlayStation 3 managed to sell 46,000 units. The utter hardware domination of the 3DS is reshaping the Japanese software market. Franchises that were thought to be fading have been revitalized in their portable versions. The 3DS version of the ancient Animal Crossing series, famed for being the game where nothing happens, hit a staggering 1.7 million units last week in Japan. Inazuma Eleven sold 170,000 units in its launch week, up from 140,000 units its DS version managed in 2011.
[More from BGR: RIM, HTC and Nokia could all be headed the way of Palm]
Nintendo’s portable console 3DS had a muted start in its home market in the spring of 2011. Many thought that Sony would have a fair shot at competing with Nintendo once Playstation Vita launched at the end of 2011. But once Nintendo executed an aggressive price cut for 3DS in the summer of 2011 and then launched a large-screen version of the console in mid-2012, the gadget has grown into a Godzilla in Japan, demolishing both Sony Vita and aging tabletop console competition.
[More from BGR: BlackBerry 10 browser smokes iOS 6 and Windows Phone 8 in comparison test [video]]
3DS is doing well also in America, where its lifetime sales are moving close to the 6 million unit mark this holiday season. According to NPD, the 3DS sales in the United States topped 500,000 units in November. That’s a decent number, though far from the torrid volume the portable is racking up in its home market. The U.S. November video game software chart was dominated by massive home console juggernauts: new installments of Call of Duty, Halo and Assassin’s Creed franchises shifted more than 13 million units in retail. At the same time, the Japanese software chart remains in a ’90s time warp, dominated by Nintendo’s musty masterpieces: Super Mario Brothers, Pokemon, Animal Crossing, etc.
Japanese and American tastes have always been different. But what we are witnessing now is a particularly fascinating divergence. American consumers are spending more of their time and money on smartphone and tablet games, while console game spending is increasingly focusing on massive, graphically stunning blockbuster titles on Xbox360 and PS3. The casual gamers are shifting to mobile games, while hardcore gamers remain attracted to sprawling epics on home consoles. The overall video game spending in America keeps declining month after month, as casual titles and mid-list games slide. But the Triple A whales like the Call of Duty series are doing better than ever.
In Japan, Nintendo has been able to battle back iPhone and Android game invasion with a nostalgic series of portable games that basically recycle the biggest hits of ’80s and early ’90s. Mario, Pokemons and other portable heroes are slowly losing their grip on U.S. and European consumers. But in Japan, some form of national nostalgia is keeping Nintendo on track.
The problem here is that the Japanese success of the 3DS may now be convincing Nintendo that it does not have to reconsider its business strategy. The smartphone and tablet game spending continues growing explosively across the world. Unlike console games, mobile game sales in China are legal. The global gaming spending is shifting towards new hardware platforms even as console mammoths like Halo still reign in America. At this critical juncture, Nintendo has managed to cocoon its home market in a web of nostalgia, turning the 3DS console and its Eighties left-over franchises into epic bestsellers yet again.
This means that there is no sense of urgency to push Nintendo into rethinking its long-term plans. The company may continue simply ignoring the smartphone and tablet challenge, designing new portable consoles and the 28th Mario game to support it. Twenty years ago, Japan’s insularity doomed its chances to succeed in the mobile phone business. And now the idiosyncratic nature of Japan may be leading its biggest entertainment industry success astray.
This article was originally published by BGR
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NEW YORK (Reuters) – Jessica Chastain carries the weight of starring in one of the year’s most anticipated films, “Zero Dark Thirty,” about the decade-long hunt and eventual killing of Osama bin Laden.
Critics say Chastain pulls it off seamlessly as “Maya,” based on a real-life CIA agent who played a major role in tracking down bin Laden at his hideout in Pakistan.
As the film opens in limited U.S. release on Wednesday, Chastain, who is tipped as a likely best actress Oscar nominee for the role, talked to Reuters about playing a character she could not meet and why the film is an important look at America’s role in a dark war.
Q. What did you think when you saw this film finished?
A. “It is a tough one for me to watch, because there is so much responsibility with playing this woman. I find her to be incredible. And I didn’t want to change her story or make her a Hollywood version, with a lot of makeup. I didn’t want to trivialize what she did … I want her to like it, but I don’t know if she will ever see it.”
Q. How did you play someone you had never met?
A. “There was three months of working with (screenplay writer) Mark Boal, doing research, reading lists and talking to people. And then anything I could not solve through research, like what is her favorite candy – ’cause when we are all overseas we have something we do when we are homesick – I had to answer that question myself.”
Q. Boal hasn’t gone into too much detail about her?
A. “We have to protect her because she is an undercover CIA operative, still working.”
Q. What else did you know about her?
A. “When we finished the movie, when the Navy Seal book ‘No Easy Day’ came out. I raced to go read it, because I was like, ‘I need to know if my character is in the book!’ And they talk about Jen, the young CIA girl. Well, everything matched up. She was the only one that said 100 percent ‘he is there.’… They talked about how she had been on it close to a decade and they were only on it for 40 minutes. They said she was crying on the airplane afterwards.”
Q. During filming, were you ever worried about your safety, that the film might be misconstrued?
A. “As an actor you always worry about that. Because you think, maybe someone will see a film and they won’t understand the difference between acting and reality. The good thing is, what (director Kathryn Bigelow) and Mark have done, is that they have not made a propaganda film. They tried to make it as authentic as possible and respectful of the actual historical event as they could. That includes showing the intense interrogation techniques that were used. The end of the film – it’s not a lot of fist pumping and saying, ‘Here is our journey over 10 years and it was so difficult and we finally did it.’ It ends actually on a very different note.”
Q. Can you elaborate on that?
A. “Well, for me the whole thing is about the arc of this woman. She shows up in the beginning and she is wearing her best suit. She thinks she knows what she is in for, and she is completely out of her element. But over the 10 years, this woman, who has been trained to be unemotional and analytically precise … we see her struggling to keep it contained for 10 years and as she descends down the rabbit hole of the world she is in.
“So finally at the end when she is asked, ‘Where do you want to go?’ there is no way to answer that question. … She has no idea where she belongs, now that this is done. But not only does it speak in terms of that, but the movie ends with that question – where do you want to go? Where do we go now as a country? Where do we go as a society? It is not a movie that ends with an answer, and I find that powerful.”
Q. How did you cope with filming the torture scenes?
A. “We filmed in a real Jordanian prison, in the middle of nowhere. The environment wasn’t great, especially as a woman.
“They had a lot of trust between the actors, nothing was dangerous or unsafe. There was a lot of discussion to make sure that we weren’t doing something that was going to be salacious. They just wanted it to be accurate.
“I know I am playing a character who has trained to be unemotional. But I have spent my entire life allowing myself to be emotional, and allowing myself to feel everything. … There was actually one day that we were doing a scene, and I said, ‘I am sorry’ and I just had to walk away, and I just started crying … it was a very intense experience.”
Q. You are a top chance for Oscar nomination. Would that be more or less rewarding for this role?
A. “Because she is still an active member of the CIA and undercover, she can’t take credit for what she’s done. … And by making this film, it is my idea as a way of thanking her. It would be very emotional because of that.”
Q. You compare your character to getting lost down a CIA rabbit hole. What about your own dizzying rise as an actress?
A. “That’s a good question. I do think that next year I need to go somewhere for a month and be in a room by myself and be like, ‘Ok, what now Jessica?’ But I am nowhere near where she was at the end of this mission.”
(Reporting By Christine Kearney, editing by Jill Serjeant and Doina Chiacu)
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A lot of kids must sit on Santa’s lap before he can hop in his sleigh on Christmas Eve, but Santa has to be extra careful during flu season if he wants to stay healthy into the New Year.
John Sullivan, a professional Santa Claus in Chicago, said he never turns down a child, even if the child’s nose is runny.
“I’ll see him. I’ll talk to him,” Sullivan said. “That’s just a risk that frankly comes with the job … Santa can’t go around wearing a surgical mask!”
Since children actually exhale more flu virus than adults because their immune systems are immature, Santa and other people who work with children are at greater risk for coming down with the flu, said Dr. William Schaffner, chairman of preventative medicine at Vanderbilt University in Tennessee.
“Of course, Santa is leaning over the child and listening carefully. He’s in the breathing zone of all these children,” Schaffner said. “They come into very close contact with a myriad of children, and children are the great distributor of respiratory viruses.”
Not only do children exhale more of the virus in each breath than adults do, but they also exhale it longer: 24 hours before they start feeling sick until after they feel better.
“It is likely because children are experiencing these viruses probably for the first time, and that their immune systems are not trained to combat the viruses and shut down the virus production mechanism quickly,” Schaffner said.
Schaffner said it’s important for professional Santa performers like Sullivan to get their flu shots, keep up their fluids and get enough sleep and exercise during the holiday season so that their bodies can fight the flu if they come in contact with it.
Sullivan has been Santa Claus every holiday season for more than two decades, and he never misses a flu shot, he said. He started in malls and now does private events at homes, offices and daycares.
“A lot of times when you pick up a baby, you can feel in their lungs that there’s congestion,” he said. “I’ll tell the parent the baby has cold … Frankly, if I’m Santa, I never reject a child.”
He said he’s gotten mild colds, but nothing serious, and he’s always mindful to avoid getting other people sick if he’s not feeling well.
Near Orlando, Greg Thompson runs The Santa Company, which has seven Santas, including Thompson himself, who has been dressing as Santa since he was 14. (“I’d discovered Santa’s secret, so I decided I wanted to be him.”) That first year, Thompson was 129 lbs., so his grandmother helped him stuff a pillow under his puffy jacket to complete the costume.
Although Thompson’s size may have been a problem, the flu wasn’t, he said. In fact, The Santa Company hasn’t had anyone call out sick since it was founded in 1999.
“We have not had it happen yet – knock on wood – but if someone were to come in and say, ‘Greg, I’m just sick and I can’t come in,’ we’d make sure to have a Santa for him,” Thompson said. “We’re more concerned about people bringing their kids to us. If a kid is obviously sick, you can look at him and tell, sometimes.”
Of the 80 appearances The Santa Company does each year, Thompson does about a quarter of them. When a child approaches Thompson-as-Santa with a runny nose and red eyes, Thompson said he will ask the child to sit down in front of him instead of on his lap.
“I’ll be happy to speak with him,” he said.
Thompson added that his Santas always wear clean gloves as part of the classic red suit with white trim, and they cough only into their elbows.
But Schaffner said gloves can quickly become contaminated, and probably don’t offer much protection against the virus as Santa touches a child and strokes his beard or touches his nose. Even surgeons are taught to wash their hands after they remove gloves, he said.
“They are at risk. There’s no doubt about it,” Schaffner said. “But maybe Santa’s beard and mustache can act like a filter and keep the virus out,” he joked with a laugh.
Santa is magical, after all.
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Nissan says it is investing £250m in Sunderland to make a small luxury car, creating “hundreds of jobs” in the UK.
“The Sunderland factory is very competitive,” said Nissan’s chief performance officer Colin Dodge.
The Infiniti model was penned by Nissan’s design team in London and engineered at its technical centre in Bedfordshire.
Their brief was to appeal to buyers in Europe, where the marque’s sales are weak.
Business Secretary Vince Cable visited the Sunderland plant on Wednesday for the investment announcement.
“Today’s news is a strong endorsement of the quality of Britain’s car industry, which is creating jobs, taking on apprentices and contributing to building a stronger economy,” he said.
“The auto sector is living up to being one of the great success stories of our industrial strategy and a testimony to government and private sector working together in close partnership.”
‘Pivotal car’
Business Secretary Vince Cable: “It’s a tremendous vote of confidence in the British car industry”
Mr Dodge said it was too early to be specific about how many jobs would be created as a result of the fresh investment.
It was suggested, however, that it could be about 280 directly at the factory, with a further 700 or so created with suppliers.
However, to make space for the Infiniti, a previously announced investment of £127m to build a hatchback, involving some 125 jobs, will now be moved from Sunderland to another Nissan factory in Europe, for instance in Spain or Russia, an Infiniti spokesman said.
The Infiniti investment will be made during the next two years and the new Infiniti will start rolling off the assembly line in 2015, Mr Dodge said.
Nissan said it would produce up to 60,000 Infiniti cars per year.
The new car has not yet been named, beyond an announcement that it will be called something starting with Q followed by a digit and ending with 0, but it will be based on the Ethera concept vehicle that was displayed at the Geneva motor show in 2011.
“It is a pivotal car for Europe,” Mr Dodge said.
Ambitious target
Infiniti has made little headway since it was first launched in Europe in 2008 with a series of large, thirsty cars with powerful V6 and V8 petrol engines.
“The Infiniti brand has been very American-centric for years,” Mr Dodge said, “but the new, smaller model is the size of car for Europe rather than for the US.”
Infiniti has set itself an ambitious sales target in Europe of 100,000 cars by 2016, compared with 16,700 cars sold in 2011.
Between a third and half the sales of the new Infiniti are expected to come in Europe, said Mr Dodge.
The car will be the first Infiniti to be offered with a diesel engine, an option seen as crucial to win over European drivers, Mr Dodge said, though he declined to reveal further details about the engine options for the car.
The Ethera concept was a petrol-electric hybrid with a 2.5-litre four-cylinder engine. Nissan is developing engines jointly with Mercedes-owner Daimler, it works closely with alliance partner Renault, and in March this year it unveiled a high performance petrol-electric hybrid model, the Emergenc-e, that will use a three-cylinder petrol engine made by Hethel, Norfolk-based Lotus.
Efficient factory
Sunderland was awarded the model thanks to its reputation for efficiency, both in terms of quality and cost as well as ability to deliver, said Mr Dodge, who worked at the plant from 1984 until 2007 before he was promoted and moved to the Nissan headquarters in Japan.
Nissan used to claim that its Sunderland plant, which currently employs more than 6,000 people, was the most efficient car factory in Europe, though these days it tends not to mention this.
“But it is,” said Mr Dodge. “We just don’t keep chest-beating about it year in, year out.”
Nissan said Sunderland is on schedule to become the first car factory in the UK to have produced more than 500,000 cars in one calendar year. “Even during British Leyland times, they didn’t do that,” said Mr Bolt.
Global production
The decision to produce the new Infiniti outside Japan was based on a number of factors.
“Historically, we’ve made Infiniti in Japan,” said Mr Dodge, though in recent years, he explained, the yen has been very strong, thus making it difficult to make money from cars exported from Japan.
In response, the carmaker is shifting production to the UK, the US and China.
It is “heartbreaking” for Nissan’s Japanese staff to see production moved out of the country, Mr Dodge said.
“They can make cars as well as anybody,” he said, “but they’re at a significant disadvantage when compared with rivals selling cars in dollars, euros or pounds.”
But the strong yen is not the only reason why Nissan makes ever more cars abroad.
Investment and production in growth markets around the world would probably continue even if the yen was to fall in value, as it is expected to do under the country’s next prime minister, Shinzo Abe.
“If you’ve got a manufacturing base and a supply base set up, it is best to produce and sell in one currency,” said Mr Dodge.
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