In Brief: Nation & World: 3-8-16

North Korea again threatens nuke strikes on US, South Korea

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea on Monday issued its latest belligerent threat, warning of an indiscriminate “pre-emptive nuclear strike of justice” on Washington and Seoul, this time in reaction to the start of huge U.S.-South Korean military drills.

Such threats have been a staple of young North Korean leader Kim Jong Un since he took power after his dictator father’s death in December 2011. But they spike especially when Washington and Seoul stage what they call annual defensive springtime war games. Pyongyang says the drills, which started Monday and run through the end of April, are invasion rehearsals.

The North’s powerful National Defense Commission threatened strikes against targets in the South, U.S. bases in the Pacific and the U.S. mainland, saying its enemies “are working with bloodshot eyes to infringe upon the dignity, sovereignty and vital rights” of North Korea.

“If we push the buttons to annihilate the enemies even right now, all bases of provocations will be reduced to seas in flames and ashes in a moment,” the North’s statement said.

Responding to the North’s threat, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang Gyun said Monday that North Korea must refrain from a “rash act that brings destruction upon itself.”

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Who’s an outsider? GOP establishment fears loss of standing

WASHINGTON — Republican leaders in Washington have spent years casting tea party allies and hardliners in Congress as merely a restive minority, a fringe element to be tolerated.

Now, with Donald Trump and Ted Cruz rising to the top of the 2016 GOP presidential primary, those party leaders are confronting the possibility that they may be the outliers.

One by one, Washington’s favored candidates have dropped out of the White House race. Those who are left — Marco Rubio and John Kasich — face long odds and sudden-death primaries in their home states next week. In private conversations and public newspaper editorials, talk of a historic splintering of the GOP centers on the prospect of the establishment, not the insurgents, dissolving or breaking away.

“Something important is ending. It is hard to believe what replaces it will be better,” Peggy Noonan, a speechwriter for Ronald Reagan, wrote in a Wall Street Journal column.

Republicans have long grappled with a divide between party leaders and grass-roots supporters. Recent presidential elections papered over the fissures rather than resolved them, with Republicans sending centrist candidates John McCain and Mitt Romney into the general election even as the GOP electorate became more conservative.

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Trump’s path to victory: Both parties’ working-class whites

DENVER — Should he win the Republican nomination, Donald Trump’s most plausible path to victory in the general election would be a GOP map unlike any in years. He’d be relying on working class, largely white voters in states that have long been Democratic bastions in presidential contests, from Maine to Pennsylvania to Michigan.

To make that work he’d have to thread a narrow needle — not only holding on to those core supporters but also softening rhetoric that has alienated black and Latino voters and calming those in the GOP who vow to never vote for him.

It could be tricky, but the past eight months have taught political professionals in both parties not to underestimate the man.

“He attracts a different kind of voter,” said GOP pollster Frank Luntz. “It’s a completely different equation.”

Trump has signaled he’s already thinking about the general election, bragging that “we’ve actually expanded the Republican Party” and slamming Hillary Clinton as part of the political establishment that’s to blame for the sour economy.

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Mexican president: Trump language like that of Hitler

MEXICO CITY — Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto compared the language of Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump to that of dictators Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini in an interview published Monday, and said it has hurt U.S.-Mexico relations.

Asked about Trump, Pena Nieto complained to the Excelsior newspaper about “these strident expressions that seek to propose very simple solutions” and said that sort of language has led to “very fateful scenes in the history of humanity.”

“That’s the way Mussolini arrived and the way Hitler arrived,” Pena Nieto said.

Pena Nieto until now had avoided direct comments on Trump, who has pledged to build a wall along the two countries’ borders and has said Mexican immigrants bring crime and drugs to the U.S. and are “rapists.”

But as the New York businessman has built a lead in the GOP primary, current and former Mexican officials have begun to publicly express alarm. Former Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon also have alluded to Hitler in describing Trump.

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Refugees stranded in Greece await news of their fate

IDOMENI, Greece — While European leaders struggled Monday for a unified approach to the refugee crisis, tens of thousands of people affected by their decisions were left stranded in Greece, with countries along the migrant trail gradually tightening border controls to staunch the northward flood.

The restrictions along what has become known as the western Balkan route has left about 13,000-14,000 people stuck on the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni, and more than 36,000 people in the financially stricken country.

The European Union held a summit meeting Monday with Turkey to try to halt the flow of thousands of refugees and migrants coming from the Turkish coast to nearby Greek islands, whose proximity has made the country the preferred route into Europe.

But while European leaders haggled in Brussels, a punishing thunderstorm turned much of the overcrowded Idomeni camp into a sea of mud. Conditions are deteriorating in the camp, which was set up only for about 2,000 people, and crews are struggling to maintain hygiene.

More people have arrived each day, and hundreds of small tents from aid organizations have sprung up in and around the camp, spilling into fields and onto nearby railway tracks and a train station platform, with nowhere to go.

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Turkey demands more money to help EU tackle migrant crisis

BRUSSELS (AP) — European Union leaders tussled with Turkey over how to control the flow of asylum-seekers from the Middle East in a diplomatic tug-of-war Monday that left the fate of thousands of refugees seeking a way to safety people fleeing war hanging in the balance.

Daylong negotiations between the 28-nation bloc and Turkey edged toward midnight with both sides seeking more as part of any new agreement. Turkey, home to 2.75 million refugees chiefly from neighboring Syria, surprised EU counterparts by demanding a doubling of funding beyond the 3 billion euros ($3.3 billion) already pledged.

Turkey insisted that any agreement would require Europe to advance Turkey’s long-delayed hope of joining the bloc. As an additional step, Turkey said it expects EU nations to ease its visa restrictions on Turkish citizens within months.

“Turkey is ready to work with the EU, and Turkey is ready to be a member of the EU as well,” Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davatoglu told reporters in Brussels.

“Our objective is to rescue the lives of the refugees (and) to fight against human smugglers,” he said.

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From calm to chaos: A reporter’s escorted visit to Syria

LATAKIA, Syria — At first glance, the Mediterranean port of Latakia doesn’t look like a city at war. Its streets are jammed with traffic, stylish women chat under palm trees, and idyllic orange groves stretch for miles.

But the signs become apparent on closer inspection: a man in camouflage shopping with a Kalashnikov slung on his shoulder, the occasional military checkpoint, and rows of unfinished cottages and apartment buildings whose construction was interrupted by Syria’s 5-year-old civil war.

For a group of international reporters on a five-day trip to Syria organized by the Russian Foreign and Defense ministries, the contrasts were stark.

From our military-escorted bus, we rode through a relaxed and sun-splashed Latakia, located in the heart of President Bashar Assad’s Alawite homeland.

We passed burned-out tanks, armored personnel carriers and a shattered bus in areas of recent battles.

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Peyton Manning jokes, chokes up during retirement remarks

ENGLEWOOD, Colo. — His voice cracking with emotion, Peyton Manning said good bye to the game he loved at a news conference packed with friends, family and laughter.

He threw in some Scripture, some fond memories and even a dig at Super Bowl 50 MVP Von Miller, whom he thanked for taking a break “from your celebrity tour to be here today.”

He ended it with his signature “Omaha!” and then posed for pictures with more than a dozen of his former teammates with the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos, each of whom he helped win a Super Bowl.

Manning, who turns 40 this month, said the timing was simply right to call an end to his 18-year NFL career.

“I thought about it a lot, prayed about it a lot … it was just the right time,” Manning said. “I don’t throw as good as I used to, don’t run as good as I used to, but I have always have had good timing.”

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AP Investigation: American company bungled Ebola response

WASHINGTON — An American company that bills itself as a pioneer in tracking emerging epidemics made a series of costly mistakes during the 2014 Ebola outbreak that swept across West Africa — with employees feuding with fellow responders, contributing to misdiagnosed Ebola cases and repeatedly misreading the trajectory of the virus, an Associated Press investigation has found.

San Francisco-based Metabiota Inc. was tapped by the Sierra Leonean government and the World Health Organization to help monitor the spread of the virus and support the response after Ebola was discovered circulating in neighboring Guinea in March 2014. But emails obtained by AP and interviews with aid workers on the ground show that some of the company’s actions made an already chaotic situation worse.

WHO outbreak expert Dr. Eric Bertherat wrote to colleagues in a July 17, 2014, email about misdiagnoses and “total confusion” at the Sierra Leone government lab Metabiota shared with Tulane University in the city of Kenema. He said there was “no tracking of the samples” and “absolutely no control on what is being done.”

“This is a situation that WHO can no longer endorse,” he wrote.

Metabiota chief executive officer and founder Nathan Wolfe said there was no evidence his company was responsible for the lab blunders, that the reported squabbles were overblown and that any predictions made by his employees didn’t reflect the company’s position. He said Metabiota doesn’t specialize in outbreak response and that his employees stepped in to help and performed admirably amid the carnage of the world’s biggest-ever Ebola outbreak.

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Class action suit filed by residents over Flint water crisis

FLINT, Mich. — A lawsuit stemming from Flint’s lead-contaminated water was filed Monday on behalf of the city’s residents against Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder as well as other current and former government officials and corporations.

The federal lawsuit — which is seeking class-action status — alleges that tens of thousands of residents have suffered physical and economic injuries and damages. It argues officials failed to take action over “dangerous levels of lead” in drinking water and “downplayed the severity of the contamination” in the financially struggling city.

Snyder’s spokesman Ari Adler said the administration doesn’t comment on pending litigation, but is “staying focused on solutions for the people of Flint.”

Numerous lawsuits have been filed on behalf of Flint residents since a public health emergency was declared last year. The latest lawsuit, which seeks a jury trial and unspecified damages, was filed on behalf of seven residents.

Two recall petitions targeting Snyder over the water crisis have been approved. The latest was filed by a Flint activist and approved Monday by the Board of State Canvassers, the Detroit Free Press reported. The other recall petition, filed by a Detroit pastor, was approved last month.