Donald Trump under pressure to show more presidential side at debate

With a week to go until South Carolina`s Republican primary vote on Feb. 20, the 9 pm. EST debate comes at a time of high anxiety for Trump`s opponents.

Trump, who won New Hampshire handily on Tuesday after placing second in Iowa on Feb. 1, has a big lead in the polls in South Carolina. Unless he is slowed down, he could be in position to roll to his party`s presidential nomination for the Nov. 8 election.

That means it is in the interests of Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and former Florida Governor Jeb Bush to try to raise questions about the New York billionaire before it is too late.

Those three candidates, along with Ohio Governor John Kasich, are competing to emerge as the top alternative to Trump for mainstream Republicans.

"My sense is this is going to be a melee," said Republican strategist Doug Heye.

Attempts to knock down Trump at previous debates have rarely been successful, as the former reality TV star has been quick on his feet and mercilessly dismissive of rivals.

Trump`s use of vulgar language during the New Hampshire primary campaign, repeating a comment from someone at one of his rallies who said Cruz is a "pussy," may raise eyebrows in South Carolina, where evangelicals form an important voting bloc.

At a candidates` forum at evangelical Bob Jones University on Friday, Bush told the crowd: "Is anybody worried about the front-running candidate shouting out obscenities at children?"

Trump was not at the event, sending instead a surrogate to speak for him, Pastor Mark Burns. When Burns told the crowd that Trump is "pro-faith," someone shouted out from the audience "Trump is profane."

`EACH HAS SOME IMAGE ISSUE`

All Trump`s rivals have something to prove at the CBS-hosted, two-hour debate, particularly Rubio, who needs to show he can rebound from a disastrous debate performance a week ago in New Hampshire.

Kasich must try to generate more momentum after a second-place finish in New Hampshire, Cruz must solidify his position with evangelical voters and Bush needs upward movement anywhere he can get it.

Retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson, whose campaign has turned anemic, has to show he is still in the race.

"Each has got some image issue they need to fix," said David Yepsen, director of the Paul Simon Public Policy Institute at Southern Illinois University.

"Can Trump start acting more presidential without losing what makes him so appealing? Can Jeb continue the flicker of momentum he has coming out of New Hampshire? Have Rubio`s bruises healed? Can Carson show something that puts a spark back into his campaign? Has Kasich got more than his New Hampshire game?"

Heading into the debate, Trump was taking swipes at Cruz and Bush, who finished third and fourth in the New Hampshire primary.

Responding to an attack ad run by the Cruz campaign against him, Trump tweeted that he might sue Cruz to try to settle any remaining questions about whether the Texan can legally run for president since he was born in Canada.

Cruz and many legal experts say Cruz meets the constitutional requirements because he was born to an American mother and grew up in the United States.

But Trump, who famously questioned President Barack Obama`s citizenship, fired off a tweet against Cruz.

"If @TedCruz doesn`t clean up his act, stop cheating, & doing negative ads, I have standing to sue him for not being a natural born citizen," Trump said.

The Cruz campaign dismissed the blast with spokesman Rick Tyler saying Trump was demonstrating a "Trumper-tantrum."

World has slipped into new Cold War: Russian PM Dmitry Medvedev

With tensions high over the Ukraine conflict and Russia`s backing of the Syrian regime, Medvedev said: "All that`s left is an unfriendly policy of NATO against Russia".

"We can say it even more clearly: We have slid into a new period of Cold War," he said, speaking at the Munich Security Conference.

"Almost every day we are accused of making new horrible threats either against NATO as a whole, against Europe or against the US or other countries."

Medvedev criticised the expansion of NATO and EU influence deep into formerly Soviet-ruled eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War.

"European politicians thought that creating a so-called belt of friends at Europe`s side, on the outskirts of the EU, could be a guarantee of security, and what`s the result?" he said.

"Not a belt of friends but a belt of exclusion."

He added that "creating trust is hard ... but we have to start. Our positions differ, but they do not differ as much as 40 years ago when a wall was standing in Europe."

Donald Trump's wife once posed nude: 5 things to know about her

1. Citizenship.

Melania became a US citizen after marrying real estate tycoon Donald Trump in 2005. If Trump, a frontrunner of the presidential race, is voted into office, she would be the second first lady in the history of the US to not have been born within the nation, after John Quincy Adam's wife Louisa.

"I came here for my career, and I did so well, I moved here," mic.com quoted Melania Trump as saying. "It never crossed my mind to stay here without papers. That is just the person you are. You follow the rules. You follow the law. Every few months you need to fly back to Europe and stamp your visa. After a few visas, I applied for a green card and got it in 2001. After the green card, I applied for citizenship. And it was a long process," she said.

2. Successful entrepreneur

Melania has a widely successful jewelry line with the retail giant QVC. The line, titled Melania Timepieces & Fashion Jewelry, features diamond studded watches, decorative bracelets and "chic & cosmopolitan looks from Melania Trump."

3. Her first date with Donald Trump

The real estate tycoon first asked her out while he was on another date. "He wanted my number, but he was with a date, so of course I didn't give it to him," she said. "I said, 'I am not giving you my number; you give me yours, and I will call you.' I wanted to see what kind of number he would give me — if it was a business number, what is this? I'm not doing business with you."

Trump reportedly gave her at least three phone numbers to choose from. The two evenually met a few days later and began dating in New York City. The rest, of course, is history.

4. Open about her sexuality

Melania Trump would be the first wife of a US President to ever pose nude for a publication, as the former model shed her clothes for British GQ in 2000.

5. She's not political in public

"I'm choosing not to go political in public because that is my husband's job," said. "I'm very political in private life, and between me and my husband I know everything that is going on. I follow from A to Z, but I chose not to be on the campaign. I made that choice. I have my own mind. I am my own person, and I think my husband likes that about me."

About her husband's campaign: "I give him my opinions, and sometimes he takes them in, and sometimes he does not. Do I agree with him all the time? No. I think it is good for a healthy relationship. I am not a 'yes' person. No matter who you are married to, you still need to lead your life. I don't want to change him. And he doesn't want to change me."

onald Trump in running for 2016 Nobel Peace Prize

Nominations for the award, won last year by four Tunisian groups that led the country's transition to democracy, must be posted to Norway by February 1 at the latest.

And as usual, the names of the nominees are a tightly-guarded secret -- or at least most of them are. Those who nominate candidates can reveal the name of the person they've proposed.

An online petition had on Monday picked up some 630,000 signatures calling for the Nobel to go the residents of Greek islands on the front line of Europe's migrant crisis, who have come to the aid of refugees turning up on their shores after perilous sea journeys from neighbouring Turkey.

The nomination, proposed by a group of university professors, faces a size problem: the prize can be shared by a maximum of three laureates.

Greek scientists have resolved the problem by putting three names forward: an octogenarian, a fisherman from Lesbos and the Hollywood actress-activist Susan Sarandon, who was the first high-profile celebrity to visit the island to raise awareness about the issue.

South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu, who won the 1984 Peace Prize, has backed three nominations, including one involving Greece's Good Samaritans called the Aegean Solidarity Movement.

"Just imagine 900,000 visitors in desperate need arriving at the door of your reasonably modest establishment. Hungry, exhausted and in a state of acute emotional distress... They don't speak the same language as you or ascribe to the same cultural or religious beliefs. What do you do? You open the door. Incredible!" Tutu wrote on his foundation's website.

The two other nominations receiving his blessing were the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation, and a trio that includes Pope Francis, hailed by the Anglican archbishop for "consciousness about the ecological necessity to curb human consumptiveness and greed."

Prize to a 'traitor'?

In an entirely different field, US Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump has also been nominated for the prize, according to Nobel watcher Kristian Berg Harpviken, the director of the Peace Research Institute of Oslo.

According to a copy of the nomination letter Harpviken said he had received, brash tycoon Trump -- who has attracted international condemnation by calling for a ban on Muslims entering the United States -- deserves the prize for "his vigorous peace through strength ideology, used as a threat weapon of deterrence against radical Islam, ISIS, nuclear Iran and Communist China".

Thousands of people around the world are allowed to make nominations for the Peace Prize, including members of parliament and government ministers, former laureates and some university professors.

The Nobel Institute accepts all valid nominations, so having one's name on the list is not to be taken as a sign of approval.

The five members of the panel that selects the laureate are also allowed to put forward their own nominations when they hold their first meeting on February 29.

Harpviken said he believed Edward Snowden, the American who exposed mass surveillance by the US National Security Agency, could be a winner this year.

"Snowden's leaks led to a good number of reforms in US practice and US legislation, which make it harder to still argue that he is a traitor to his country," Harpviken told AFP.

After a breakthrough on the Iran nuclear standoff, negotiators Ernest Moniz of the US and Ali Akbar Salehi of Iran are also among Harpviken's favourites, as well as Colombian peace negotiators President Juan Manuel Santos and rebel leader Timoleon Jimenez.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was one of the favourites last year when the prize went to Tunisia's National Dialogue Quartet, is also in the running again this year.

The same goes for Congolese gynaecologist Denis Mukwege, who has spent a quarter of a century treating thousands of women brutalised by rape and sexual violence in war-torn eastern Democratic Republic of Congo.

Nadia Murad, a Yazidi abducted by IS fighters in August 2014 from her village in Iraq and held for three months as a sex slave is also in the running.

Finally, 118 Italian MPs have nominated the Afghan Cycling Federation women's team, hailing the bicycle as environmental, economic and democratic.

The winner of the 2016 Nobel Peace Prize will be announced in early October.