Sept. 25 Photo Brief: South Koreans in the air, Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands dispute gets wet, nostalgic floppy dreams for nerds
Models get photographed for the next year’s “Nerd Dreams Calendar,” South Korean singer Psy’s fame helps his father’s software firm, South Korean soldiers hold special warfare demonstrations on the eve of Armed Forces Day, the Japanese and Taiwanese Coastguards engage in a water cannon duel near the Senkaku/Diaoyu Islands and more in today’s daily brief.
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- Model Laura poses with a historic computer during a photo shoot for the ‘Nerd Dreams Calendar 2013’, in Frankfurt September 24, 2012. Harking back to the days of floppy disks, the Nerd Dreams calendar project showcases long-outdated but fondly-remembered computers such as the C64, the Atari ST and Mac SE. The Germany-based team behind this homage to the frontrunners of today’s smartphones and tablets PCs are making use of new crowd-funding sites to get financial backing for the project. (Ralph Orlowski/Reuters)
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- South Korean singer Psy (front R) arrives from the U.S., at the Incheon International Airport in Incheon, west of Seoul. The pop star whose song “Gangnam Style” became the first Korean hit to top Apple’s music download charts has also worked his magic on his father’s software firm, helping it double in value since singer and dancer Psy burst onto the global scene in July. Psy’s father, Park Won-ho, is the chairman and controlling shareholder of South Korean semiconductor company D I Corp and its market capitalization has surged to 113.5 billion won ($101.29 million) on the main Seoul bourse, making it as of Tuesday the 459th most valuable stock measured by size. (Kim Young-Wook/Newsis/Reuters)
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- South Korean singer Psy dances after a news conference at a hotel in Seoul, South Korea. (Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)
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- Soldiers of the special warfare command give a demonstration on the eve of the Armed Forces Day anniversary at the Gyeryong military headquarters in Gyeryong, about 140 km (87 miles) south of Seoul, South Korea. (Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)
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- South Korean Special Army soldiers perform martial arts during a ceremony to mark the 64th Korea Armed Forces Day at the military headquarters in Gyeryong, about 140 km south of Seoul. The two Koreas remain technically at war since the Korean conflict was concluded with a truce rather than a peace treaty, and small border incidents in the past have been known to escalate swiftly. (Jung Yeon-Je/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Soldiers of the special warfare command give a demonstration on the eve of the Armed Forces Day anniversary at the Gyeryong military headquarters in Gyeryong, about 140 km (87 miles) south of Seoul, South Korea. (Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)
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- Female soldiers of the special warfare command parachute to the ground during a demonstration on the eve of the Armed Forces Day anniversary at the Gyeryong military headquarters in Gyeryong, about 140 km (87 miles) south of Seoul, South Korea. (Lee Jae-Won/Reuters)
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- Ten-year-old Lucas Amorim, who has phocomelia, affecting the growth of his arms, swims during a training session in Manaus, Amazonas State, September 19, 2012. Lucas, who was motivated to become a swimmer two years ago by a cousin who is also handicapped and swims competitively, recently won the Amazonas State championship in the S5 category of 50m freestyle for his age group. Apart from his dreams of representing Brazil in a future Paralympics, Lucas wants to be a civil engineer some day. (Bruno Kelly/Reuters)
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- A Japan Coast Guard vessel (R) sprays water against Taiwanese fishing boats, while a Taiwanese coast guard ship (L) also sprays water in the East China Sea near Senkaku islands as known in Japanese or Diaoyu Islands in Chinese. Coastguard vessels from Japan and Taiwan dueled with water cannon after dozens of Taiwanese boats escorted by patrol ships sailed into waters around the Tokyo-controlled islands. (Yomiuri Shimbun/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Chinese visitors walk amongst statues of Chinese leaders and soldiers at a memorial for the 1931-1945 war against Japan at the Jianchuan Museum in Chengdu. Thousands of anti-Japanese demonstrators mounted protests in cities across China recently over the disputed Diaoyu islands issue, known as the Senkaku islands in Japanese in the East China Sea. The relationship between China and Japan, the world’s second and third largest economies, is often strained by their historical rivalry even though they have significant business links. (Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Actress Cassandra Peterson attends the Premiere Of Disney’s “Frankenweenie” at the El Capitan Theatre on September 24, 2012 in Hollywood, California. (Frederick M. Brown/Getty Images)
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- Seattle Seahawks sea gals cheerleaders perform during the game against the Green Bay Packers at CenturyLink Field. (Kirby Lee/Image/Sport-US Presswire)
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- Four of seven members of a Taliban group pose for a photo in front of ammunition and guns they turned in to authorities near Herat. The Afghan Taliban dismissed NATO figures showing a decrease in insurgent attacks, saying the statistics reflect troop withdrawals and a “cowardly” avoidance of contact. (Aref Karimi/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Afghan children run to school on September 24, 2012, in a village on the road to Naghlu the French army base. France is the fifth largest contributor to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which is due to pull out the vast majority of its 130,000 troops by the end of 2014. (Jeff Pachoud/AFP/Getty Images)
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- An Afghan villager holds up a blood stained hand to US military soldiers from the 3rd platoon, C-company, 1-23 infantry, before they use a ballistics kit to test for explosive residue on his hands after he was shot because he was suspected of being an insurgent and planting a roadside bomb, in Genrandai village at Panjwai district, Kandahar on September 24, 2012. The wounded man denied being Taliban, an association with which consequently leads to incarceration for the suspect and his family, saying he had been working at a grapevine when he was shot. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Street photographer assistants wearing popular cartoon costumes try to pat a dog in the center of Ukrainian capital of Kiev. (Sergei Supinsky/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A boy swims at the pond of Baglamukhi Temple in Lalitpur, Nepal. (Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
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- A girl carrying her younger brother casts a shadow on a wall in Lalitpur, Nepal. (Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
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- A Roma man collects material from his home before it gets demolished by a bulldozer in a Roma suburb in the town of Maglizh. Thirty-two illegally built Roma houses were destroyed in the periphery of the central Bulgarian town of Maglizh. (Dimitar Dilkoff/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A Kashmiri farmer removes the outer shell of a walnut with the help of a knife during a drying process in Srinagar. Walnuts are grown in large quantities and are sold from 100 Rupees ($1.87) to 300 Rupees ($5.61) per kilogram in Kashmir, farmers said. (Fayaz Kabli/Reuters)
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- Tibetans dressed in religious attire play musical instruments as they lead a procession with the portrait of Tibetan spiritual leader The Dalai Lama (C) during the ceremonial start of the Second Special General meeting of Tibetans in Dharamshala. The four-day second Special General meeting of Tibetans which begins September 25 will be discussing the critical issues of recent self immolations by Tibetans in Tibet, and taking up the Tibet issue with new Chinese leadership. (Manjunath Kiran/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Dark clouds reflect in the water of the Elbsee lake near Aitrang, southern Germany, on September 24, 2012. Meteorologists forecast sinking temperatures and cloudy sky for the coming days in Bavaria. (Karl-Josef Hildenbrand/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Singer Ashanti attends Jumpstart’s Read For The Record on NBC’s The Today Show at New York Public Library on September 24, 2012 in New York City. (Stephen Lovekin/Getty Images Jumpstart)
China and Japan provoke a confrontation at sea
Baltimore Sun, Opinion
12:23 p.m. EDT, September 24, 2012
China and Japan are making a mountain of a molehill in their territorial dispute over a group of tiny, uninhabited islands in the East China Sea known as the Senkaku (in Japan) or the Diaoyu (in China). Whatever their name, they’re basically just a bunch of rocks sticking out of the water; the largest is less than two miles square.
Yet they’ve become the flash point for an increasingly shrill confrontation between Asia’s two economic giants that has threatened to disrupt their $340 billion trade relationship and even prompted talk of war. Both sides have dispatched naval vessels to the area. The U.S. needs to immediately use its good offices to nudge both sides back from the brink before things get out of hand.
China and Japan base their respective claims on various historical records going back a century or more. (Taiwan, which broke away from mainland China in 1948, has lodged a separate claim of sovereignty.) Japan points to the 1895 treaty that ended the first Sino-Japanese War as the 19th century drew to a close. China, meanwhile, rests its case on a 16th- century Ming Dynasty document that lists the islands among the emperor’s most prized possessions. Both sides rely on inconclusive and ambivalent evidence of the kind that should be referred to the International Court of Justice at the Hague for adjudication, not decided by gunboat diplomacy.
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