In Brief: Nation & World: 2-8-16

After Rubio stumbles, rivals see opening in New Hampshire

BEDFORD, N.H. — Marco Rubio’s uneven debate performance just days before Tuesday’s New Hampshire primary has emboldened a trio of governors seeking to stem his rise in the Republican race for president. But if Rubio’s rivals can slow him in New Hampshire, they are likely to leave the GOP with a muddled mix of establishment contenders and no clear favorite to challenge Donald Trump and Ted Cruz.

At the heart of the battle between Rubio and Chris Christie, John Kasich and Jeb Bush is whether the freshman Florida senator has the experience and policy depth to serve as president — or whether he’s simply a well-spoken lightweight. Christie unleashed withering attacks against Rubio in Saturday’s debate, and the New Jersey governor tripped up Rubio by calling him out in real-time for his reliance on rehearsed talking points.

The morning after, Christie declared the Republican contest a changed race.

“There was a march amongst some in the chattering class to anoint Sen. Rubio,” Christie said on CNN’s State of the Union. “I think after last night, that’s over.”

Christie and his fellow governors need that to be the case, given that they’ve staked their White House hopes on New Hampshire. Without a strong showing, each will face enormous pressure to drop out from Republican Party leaders eager to rally around a single candidate who can challenge Cruz and Trump, the top-two finishers in the lead-off Iowa caucuses.

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UN condemns NKorea launch, pledges significant new sanctions

SEOUL, South Korea — The U.N. Security Council on Sunday strongly condemned North Korea’s launch of a long-range rocket that world leaders denounced as a banned test of dangerous ballistic missile technology and another “intolerable provocation.” The U.N.’s most powerful body pledged to quickly adopt a new resolution with “significant” new sanctions.

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un went ahead with the launch just two hours after an eight-day window opened early Sunday, and a month after the country’s fourth nuclear test. He ignored an appeal from China, its neighbor and important ally, not to proceed and in another slap to Beijing, he chose the eve of the Chinese New Year, the country’s most important holiday.

Since its Jan. 6 nuclear test, which the North claimed was a powerful hydrogen bomb but experts believe was not, China and the United States have been negotiating the text of a new Security Council sanctions resolution.

The U.S., backed by its Western allies, Japan and South Korea, wants tough sanctions reflecting Kim’s defiance of the Security Council. But diplomats say China, the North’s key protector in the council, is reluctant to impose economic measures that could cause North Korea’s economy to collapse.

The 15-member Security Council strongly condemned the launch and pledged to “expeditiously” adopt a new resolution with “further significant measures” — U.N. code for sanctions. The word “robust” referring to the measures was in an initial draft, but was dropped in the final statement.

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Christie, others hit final stretch in New Hampshire

HAMPTON, N.H. — It’s less than two days until New Hampshire voters go to the polls. But Hillary Clinton is in Michigan. And other candidates, even Jeb Bush, say their campaigns will go on no matter how they do on Tuesday. Donald Trump says he doesn’t need to win New Hampshire — but he’d like to.

From their movements and remarks on Sunday, you’d think New Hampshire is unimportant in the race for president. In fact, it’s the nation’s first primary and the next in a series of clues into what Americans want in their next president. But the field is still crowded, and the electorates that await the candidates in South Carolina and Nevada are markedly more diverse. So there are more tests to come for the candidates and the parties.

Republican hopeful Marco Rubio is downplaying his rough outing in Saturday night’s GOP debate, while touting his overall campaign momentum after his third-place finish in the Iowa caucuses, hoping to use that momentum to boost his chances in Tuesday’s contest.

Donald Trump, who finished second in Iowa, is pleased with his debate performance and place atop New Hampshire’s GOP polls, and he’s doubling down Sunday on his call for the U.S. to reinstitute waterboarding and even harsher treatment of foreign prisoners.

On the Democratic side, New Hampshire favorite Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton — who narrowly won Iowa — are avoiding predictions about Tuesday and looking beyond to South Carolina and Nevada, the next two states up in the nomination process.

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Divisive Polish party leader Kaczynski pulls the strings

WARSAW, Poland — When Hungary’s prime minister had a secret five-hour meeting in a secluded mountain resort with the most powerful person in Poland, he didn’t convene with his counterpart or the Polish president.

Instead he spoke with Jaroslaw Kaczynski, the leader of Poland’s ruling party, a man who has no official government position.

The mysterious meeting recently in a guest house on Poland’s southern border enhanced the perception that Kaczynski, rather than Prime Minister Beata Szydlo or President Andrzej Duda, is the main decision-maker in Poland today, and that, like Hungarian leader Viktor Orban, he might steer his nation down an anti-democratic path.

The 67-year-old Law and Justice party leader, whose identical twin brother Polish President Lech Kaczynski died in a 2010 plane crash in Russia, has been in the Polish public eye since childhood. He and Lech first won fame as child actors in the 1960s. During the 1980s, they embarked on their political careers by joining Nobel Peace Prize laureate Lech Walesa’s anti-communist Solidarity movement.

But observers say Jaroslaw Kaczynski changed dramatically after the death of his twin.

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Clinton calls Flint water crisis ‘immoral’ in break from NH

FLINT, Mich. — Taking a detour from New Hampshire’s campaign trail, Hillary Clinton said Sunday that a water crisis in a Michigan city was “immoral” and demanded that Congress approve $200 million in emergency aid to address the community’s battle with lead-contaminated water.

The Democratic presidential hopeful made a quick visit to Flint, an unusual stop for a candidate trailing in polls against rival Bernie Sanders in the first primary state. Clinton hopes to use a narrower-than-expected loss in Tuesday’s primary as a springboard into contests later this month in Nevada and South Carolina.

Clinton said she was making a “personal commitment” to help Flint in a message delivered not only to the congregants at a local Baptist church but also a more heavily-minority electorate in Southern contests that could help her build a foundation for a delegate-by-delegate drive toward the nomination.

“This is not merely unacceptable or wrong, though it is both. What happened in Flint is immoral,” Clinton said at the House of Prayer Missionary Baptist Church. She added: “I will fight for you in Flint no matter how long it takes.”

Aides said Clinton was invited by Flint Mayor Karen Weaver to address the crisis of lead-poisoned water, a case that she has cited in Iowa and New Hampshire as an example of racial and economic injustice. It is an issue that resonates among Democrats, particularly African-American voters who play a major role in later contests in South Carolina and a swath of “Super Tuesday” states on March 1; Michigan’s primary is March 8.

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Sanders campaign plans clash with political realities

PORTSMOUTH, N.H. — Bernie Sanders promises voters a “political revolution” that will fundamentally remake the American economy and its education and health care systems.

“That’s what our campaign is about. It is thinking big,” Sanders said during a debate last month in Charleston, South Carolina. “We are going to have a government that works for all of us, and not just big campaign contributors.”

Often left unsaid by Sanders, but increasingly at the center of Hillary Clinton’s arguments against her rival for the Democratic presidential nomination, is that the political reality of achieving such goals is likely to be a whole lot more complicated.

It would require Sanders not only to win the White House, but to sweep a wave of Democratic lawmakers into office along with him. While Democrats may be able to gain the four or five seats necessary to win back control of the Senate in November, they need 30 seats to recapture power in the House.

But even with majorities in both houses of Congress, Sanders would face challenges. Clinton’s advisers often point out how difficult it was for President Barack Obama to convince a Democratic-led Congress to support the Affordable Care Act in 2010. Sanders’ plan — called “Medicare for All” — would go significantly further by establishing a national health care system run entirely by the government.

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Storms may brew, but in N. Korea pride over new satellite

PYONGYANG, North Korea — Hours after the rest of the world already knew, North Korea’s state media triumphantly announced in a special news bulletin to the nation Sunday it had successfully launched a satellite into orbit, calling it a major milestone in the nation’s history and the “greatest gift of loyalty” to the country’s young leader, Kim Jong Un.

In a possible hint of what might lie ahead, however, North Korea’s state media implored the nation on the eve of the launch to be prepared for whatever “violent storm” may be coming.

They may need to: the U.S., South Korea and Japan have strongly condemned the launch, and potential new sanctions over both the launch and the North’s purported hydrogen bomb test just one month ago are now being discussed in the U.N. Security Council.

North Korea’s most famous and venerated TV newscaster, dressed in a traditional pink gown, proudly announced on the TV bulletin — reserved for extremely important events — that the Earth observation satellite Kwangmyongsong-4 had been successfully put into orbit early Sunday morning. She called it an “epochal” moment.

The satellite’s name means Shining Star.