March 18 Photo Brief: Thomas Perez nomination, fishing in Somalia, Aurora Borealis, air pollution levels in China
President Barack Obama nominates Thomas Perez for Labor Secretary post, the fishing industry in Somalia, air pollution levels in China and more in today’s daily brief.
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- U.S. President Barack Obama (L) looks on as Assistant Attorney General of Justice Department’s civil rights division Thomas Perez (R) speaks during a personnel announcement March 18, 2013 at the East Room of the White House in Washington, DC. President Obama has nominated Perez to succeed Hilda Solis as the next labor secretary. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
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- South Sudanese soldiers withdraw from the garrison town of Jau, the disputed border with Sudan March 17, 2013. South Sudan began pulling its army out of a buffer zone with its old civil war foe Sudan on Sunday and thousands of troops streamed out of this border garrison town. The creation of a demilitarised buffer zone is seen as a crucial first step in resuming landlocked South Sudan’s oil exports through Sudan, which Juba shut off in January last year during a row with Khartoum over fees. Picture taken March 17, 2013. (Hereward Holland/Reuters)
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- Palestinian labourers wait to cross into Jerusalem at an Israeli checkpoint in the West Bank town of Bethlehem March 18, 2013. U.S. President Barack Obama is due to make his first official visit to Israel and the Palestinian Territories this week, looking to improve ties after sometimes rocky relations with both sides during his first term in office. Israeli settlement expansion lies at the heart of much of the rancour between Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Obama, who has said the U.S. does not accept the legitimacy of continued settlement. (Ammar Awad/Reuters)
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- Employees of PSA Peugeot Citroen burn tyres during a demonstration in front of the Peugeot headquarters near the Arc de Triomphe in Paris March 18, 2013 to protest against the closure of the PSA Aulnay automobile plant and the government’s economic policy and industrial layoffs. (Jacky Naegelen/Reuters)
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- Men bask in the sun outside a closed shop at the ancient city of Bhaktapur near Nepal’s capital Kathmandu March 18, 2013. (Navesh Chitrakar/Reuters)
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- A handout photograph taken on March 16, 2013 and released on March 18 by the African Union-United Nations Information Support Team shows a Somali man carrying a large sailfish to the fish market in the Xamar Weyne district of Mogadishu. Every morning Mogadishu’s fisherman bring their catch ashore upon which it is quickly unloaded and transported to Xamar Weyne’s fish market where it is sold for consumption on the local market and, increasingly, for export to other countries. Over the last two decades, instability on land has greatly restricted the development of the country’s fishing industry, but now that Somalia is enjoying the longest period of sustained peace in over 20 years, there is large-scale potential and opportunity to harvest the bountiful waters off the Horn of Africa nation, which boasts the longest coastline in Africa. (AU-UN IST Photo via AFP/Getty Images)
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- A Puma helicopter lands near legionnaires of the French army’s 2nd Foreign Parachute Regiment in the Adrar of the Ifoghas mountains on March 17, 2013. A French corporal was killed tracking down jihadist fighters in their northern Mali mountain bastions, bringing to five the number of French deaths since Paris launched a military offensive in the country two months ago. Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian said on March 17, 2013 the 24-year-old soldier was killed and three of his comrades wounded when their vehicle was struck by a roadside bomb blast in the Ifoghas mountains, without saying when it happened. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Afghan men feed pigeons in front of the shrine of Hazrat-i Ali ahead of ‘Nowruz’, the Persian New Year celebrations in Mazar-i Sharif on March 17, 2013. Nowruz, one of the biggest festivals of the war-scarred nation, marks the first day of spring and the beginning of the year in the Persian calendar. Nowruz is calculated according to a solar calendar, this coming year marking 1392. (Farshad Usyan/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A disabled man begs as people pass by in Bangkok’s shopping district March 18, 2013. (Damir Sagolj/Reuters)
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- This picture taken on on March 12, 2013 shows dead pigs lying on rocks next to a dirty tributary of the Yangtze River in a village in Yichang, in central China’s Hebei province, some 1,200 kms from the eastern city of Shanghai. Meanwhile, the number of dead pigs found in the Huangpu river running through China’s commercial hub Shanghai has reached more than 13,000, state media said on March 18, as mystery deepened over the hogs’ precise origin. (AFP/Getty Images)
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- Liquid and congealed blood are seen inside the cups during a blood cupping session on March 18, 2013 in Singapore. Cupping therapy dates back to ancient Chinese, Egyptian and Middle Eastern cultures and is used to treat a variety of medical conditions ranging from skin problems, blood disorders, fertility disorders and stroke. The process involves pricking the skin with needles before immediately applying a cup on top to draw congealed blood. Although the treatment is used widely throughout Asia and the Middle East, western medical groups remain sceptical of the health claims made by supporters and practitioners of the therapy. (Suhaimi Abdullah/Getty Images)
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- A reindeer is seen near king penguins on a beach of the South Georgia islands January 20, 2013. Hunters have culled 3,500 reindeer on the British islands of South Georgia near Antarctica in a step to get rid of animals introduced a century ago from Norway as a source of food. Reindeer numbers have surged and their trampling is a threat to plants and to seabirds nesting on the ground. (Alastair Wilson/HO via Reuters)
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- Buddhist monks sit at a temple near Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon March 18, 2013. (Soe Zeya Tun/Reuters)
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- The air pollution levels in the sky over Tiananmen Square during the National People’s Congress (NPC) in Beijing is seen in this combination picture taken on the dates March 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14 and 15 (L-R) in 2013. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang pledged on March 17, 2013 that his government would “show even greater resolve” in tackling China’s festering pollution crisis, a source of increasing public fury. Air quality in Beijing has mostly stayed above “very unhealthy” and “hazardous” levels since the beginning of this year. (Wei Yao/Reuters)
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- Revellers celebrate “Ash Monday” by participating in a colourful “flour war”, a traditional festivity marking the end of the carnival season and the start of the 40-day Lent period until the Orthodox Easter, in the port town of Galaxidi, some 215 km (134 miles) north west of Athens, March 18, 2013. (Yannis Behrakis/Reuters)
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- Two brown bears play in the snow on March 18, 2013 at the Tierpark Hagenbeck zoo in Hamburg, northern Germany. Temperatures in the Hanseatic city were around the freezing point. (Sven Hoppe/AFP/Getty Images)
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- French artist with a completely tattooed body, Pascal Tourain, aka Bulldozer, performs on March 13, 2013 during his show “L’Homme Tatoue” (Tattooed Man) in Paris. The World tattoo 2013 will take place in Paris from March 22 to 24, 2013. Some 10.000 people are expected to attend the event. (Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A Syrian internally displaced woman and child are reflected in a puddle of water in the Bab al-Hawa camp along the Turkish border in the northwestern Syrian province of Idlib, on March 18, 2013. The conflict in Syria between rebel forces and pro-government troops has killed at least 70,000 people, and forced more than one million Syrians to seek refuge abroad. (Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Young Afghan girls play on swings near The Kart-e-Sakhi shrine in Kabul on March 18, 2012. Despite massive injection of foreign aid since the fall of the Taliban in 2001, Afghanistan remains desperately poor with some of the lowest living standards in the world. (Shah Marai/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Italian carabinieri policemen walk at St Peter’s square on March 18, 2013 at the Vatican, on the eve of Pope Francis inauguration mass. The leader of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics will be formally enthroned tomorrow at a mass in St Peter’s Square, with city authorities preparing for an influx of up to a million people to Rome. (Flippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images)
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- The Aurora Borealis bright up the sky at twilight on March 17, 2013 between the towns of Are and Ostersund, Sweden. (Jonathan Nackstrand/AFP/Getty Images)
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- Boys swirl fireballs on March 17, 2013 in the village of Lozen, some 15 km east from the capital Sofia, as Bulgarians are marking Sirni Zagovezni, an Orthodox Christian holiday during which they chase away evil spirits with fire rituals. (Nikolay Doychinov/AFP/Getty Images)
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- A blue plaque has been unveiled in London to John Lennon and George Harrison of The Beatles. The ceremony on 17th March 2013, was held at 94 Baker Street, which was the site of the now defunct Apple Boutique clothing store. 1967: Beatles John Lennon (1940 – 1980) and George Harrison (1943 – 2001) in Newquay while filming ‘The Magical Mystery Tour’. (Keystone Features/Getty Images)
Obama nominates Tom Perez as secretary of labor
Roberta Rampton and Rachelle Younglai
Reuters | 12:44 p.m. EDT, March 18, 2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Barack Obama on Monday nominated Tom Perez, head of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, as labor secretary, a Cabinet member who will play a key role in the administration’s efforts to raise the minimum wage and reform immigration laws.
Perez is the only Latino nominated to Obama’s second-term Cabinet so far. The Harvard-educated civil rights attorney is expected to face opposition from some Republican senators who say he has been too aggressive on certain immigration issues, and too political.
Obama urged the Senate to quickly confirm Perez, who he said would be an integral part of his economic team.
Perez, the son of immigrants from the Dominican Republic, helped pay for college by working as a garbage collector and in a warehouse, said Obama, who described Perez’s career as exemplifying the American success story.
“If you’re willing to work hard, it doesn’t matter who you are, where you come from, what your last name is – you can make it if you try,” Obama said. “Tom’s made protecting that promise for everybody the cause of his life.”
Perez’s nomination was championed by Hispanic groups, which have pushed for more representation in the Cabinet.
Perez made brief remarks in Spanish and English at the event, which was attended by top union leader Richard Trumka of the AFL-CIO labor federation and Benjamin Todd Jealous, head of the NAACP, the nation’s largest civil rights group, among others.
Perez said he looked forward to meeting with senators from both parties.
But Perez is expected to face tough scrutiny from Republicans like Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, who called Perez “the wrong man for this job” and criticized him for being too aggressive helping undocumented immigrants find work as part of an advocacy group called Casa de Maryland.
“His views on illegal immigration are far outside the mainstream,” Sessions said in a statement.
Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, the top Republican on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has also expressed concerns.
But Democratic Senator Patrick Leahy, head of the Judiciary Committee, called Perez a “fierce defender of workers’ rights” who is “uniquely suited” for the job and should be confirmed.
(Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Mark Felsenthal and Thomas Ferraro; Editing by Eric Beech)
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