March 3 Photo Brief: Dennis Rodman in North Korea, Afghan Ski Challenge, SpaceX Dragon in space, sinkholes
Dennis Rodman returns from North Korea, the Afghan Ski Challenge, SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle in space, sinkholes in the news and more in today’s daily brief.
-
- North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (2nd L), his wife Ri Sol-Ju (L) and former NBA basketball player Dennis Rodman (3rd L) watch an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang in this undated picture released by North Korea’s KCNA news agency on March 1, 2013. KCNA reported that a mixed basketball game of visiting U.S. basketball players and North Korean players was held at Ryugyong Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium in Pyongyang on February 28, 2013. (KCNA via Reuters)
-
- Plisko Julius, a 54-year-old from Slovakia, performs on a street as the late Pope John Paul II at Piazza Navona in Rome March 3, 2013. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters)
-
- Brazilian BOPE police elite unit personnel patrol during an operation at Caju shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, early morning March 3, 2013. Brazilian police on Sunday occupied crime-infested slums near Rio de Janeiro’s international airport and seaport as part of efforts to drive out drug traffickers ahead of the 2014 World Cup. The operation, which began at 4:55 am local time, involved more than 1,300 police and members of the military backed by mechanized units of the Brazilian navy, which entered the favelas of Caju and Barreira do Vasco and seized control of their narrow streets. (Christophe Simon/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Belarus soldiers from an Interior Ministry special unit compete in a tug-of-war during a military show marking Maslenitsa holiday on the outskirts of Minsk on March 3, 2013. Maslenitsa is an medieval pagan festival that celebrates the end of winter and the start of spring. (Victor Drachev/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Pakistani residents gather after the bomb blast in Karachi on March 3, 2013. A bomb attack in Pakistan’s largest city Karachi on Sunday killed at least 23 people, including women and children, and wounded 50 others, police said. (Asif Hassan/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Haitians travel in a truck loaded with bananas in a shantytown in Port-au-Prince on March 2, 2013. Brazil began the process of reducing its peace-keeping forces operating under the MINUSTAH mandate from 1910 to 1450 men, the same number that was there before the deadly 2010 earthquake that left a death toll of more than 250,000. (Vanderlei Almeida/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Demolition crews and Hillsborough County Fire Department watch as the house, where Jeffrey Bush was swallowed by a sinkhole, is demolished in Seffner, Florida March 3, 2013. Florida rescue workers ended their efforts on Saturday to recover the body of Jeffrey Bush, who disappeared into the sinkhole that swallowed his bedroom while he slept and demolished the suburban Tampa home due to its dangerous conditions, a rescue spokeswoman said. (Scott Audette/Reuters)
-
- Farmer Lindy Haynes rubs the snout of her favourite pig named ‘Peanut’ outside her home on her property known as ‘Pigsville’ in the New South Wales town of Mudgee, located 155 miles west of Sydney March 2, 2013. Haynes believes that all farm animals should be ‘free range’, and allows the pigs, chickens, cats and dogs on her farm to move freely in and out of her house, with most sleeping inside at night. Picture taken March 2, 2013. (David Gray/Reuters)
-
- A worker of the Ramat Gan Safari Park Wildlife Hospital pulls a string tied to the claw of a female Imperial Eagle as he helps it to regain its flying ability at a park near Tel Aviv March 3, 2013. Brought to the wildlife hospital some four months ago with a broken wing, the eagle underwent surgery and physiotherapy. The training is needed in order to build the eagle’s flight muscles, which were atrophied while it was recovering from the injury. The eagle will be released in a few days, safari spokeswoman Sagit Horowitz said on Sunday. (Nir Elias/Reuters)
-
- This combo of photos shows a dead fire salamander from below (L) and up (R) with two heads on display at the Central Magazine of the Scientific Collections (ZNS) of Halle University in Halle, Germany, on February 22, 2013. The seven cm long salamander was raised by a breeder in Plauen and lived as conjoined twin for one-and-a-half years. (Jan Woitas/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Lightning strikes Jakarta’s skyline late on March 3, 2013 during monsoon rains. Indonesia’s wet season last from November to March. (Romeo Gacad/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- This NASA image on Twitter by ISS Flight Engineer Chris Hadfield, the SpaceX Dragon cargo vehicle soars over sub-Saharan Africa during the approach to the International Space Station on March 1, 2013. The privately-owned unmanned US space capsule owned by SpaceX arrived at the International Space Station on March 3, bringing to the space outpost food, scientific materials and other crucial equipment. The capsule named Dragon was captured — with the help of a robotic arm – by NASA Expedition 34 Commander Kevin Ford and Flight Engineer Tom Marshburn, 5:31 am EST (1031 GMT), when the ISS was over northern Ukraine, US space officials said. (NASA HO via AFP/Getty Images)
-
- In this photograph taken on March 1, 2013, an Afghan Hazara girl watches the Afghan Ski Challenge in the Shahidan Valley of Bamiyan province. Seventeen Afghan ski challengers and twelve foreigners participated in the third annual Afghan Ski Challenge in Bamiyan during which the Afghan Hazara men won the first three positions. (Massoud Hossaini/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- Britain’s Queen Elizabeth tours the Royal London Hospital in east London in a February 27, 2013 file photo. Britain’s Queen Elizabeth has been admitted to London’s King Edward VII hospital with symptoms of gastroenteritis, a Buckingham Palace spokesman said on Sunday. (Ian Gavan/Reuters)
-
- Models wearing designs created by Berlin fashion designer Daniel Rodan in 2009 to mark the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall attend a demonstration called “Don’t touch the East Side Gallery” in Berlin March 2, 2013. Developers plan to build luxury apartments close to the East Side Gallery, an open air 0.8-mile painted section of the Berlin Wall which is adorned with the work of artists such as Keith Haring and Gerald Scarfe, but builders had to stop tearing down the wall on Friday due to protests. (Tobias Schwarz/Reuters)
-
- Cyclists ride past the Colosseum as they take part in the “Roma Maxima” cycling race on March 3, 2013 in Rome. (Tiziana Fabi/AFP/Getty Images)
-
- This picture taken on February 25, 2013 shows people standing beside an enormous hole in the ground in Guangyuan, a village in southwest China’s Sichuan province. Now the hole currently measures 24.9 metres in diameter and local residents fear the pit will continue to grow until it starts swallowing nearby houses. (AFP/Getty Images)
-
- A conductor of a military band performs during a rehearsal before the opening session of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People on March 3, 2013 in Beijing, China. Over 2,000 members of the 12th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative, a political advisory body, are attending the annual session, during which they will discuss the development of China. (Feng Li/Getty Images)
-
- Muslim brides smile as they wait for the start of their rituals during a mass marriage ceremony in the western Indian city of Ahmedabad March 3, 2013. A total of 162 Muslim couples from the across the Gujarat state took wedding vows on Sunday during the mass wedding ceremony organised by a Muslim voluntary organisation, organisers said. (Amit Dave/Reuters)
Ex-NBA star Rodman says North Korea’s Kim wants Obama to call
Bill Trott/Reuters
2:52 p.m. EST, March 3, 2013
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star known more for his body piercings and tattoos than international diplomacy skills, said on Sunday he returned from North Korea with a message from its leader Kim Jong-un for President Barack Obama – “call me.”
Rodman appeared on ABC’s “This Week” program a few days after an unlikely meeting with Kim in the North Korea capital Pyongyang, where Rodman was working on a documentary about basketball.
With the international community concerned about North Korea’s nuclear weapons program and continued belligerence, Rodman had extremely rare access to Kim. They attended a basketball game, where they were seen laughing and talking at courtside, and also had dinner together.
“He wants Obama to do one thing – call him,” Rodman said. “He said, ‘If you can, Dennis – I don’t want (to) do war. I don’t want to do war.’ He said that to me.”
Rodman said he told Kim, who followed his father and grandfather as leader of the isolated totalitarian nation in December 2011, that his love of basketball could serve as a foundation of a relationship with the U.S. president, who also is a basketball fan and plays regularly.
“(Kim) loves basketball. And I said the same thing. I said, ‘Obama loves basketball.’ Let’s start there,” Rodman said.
Baltimore neighborhoods
Baltimore street photographers
Year in review
Freddie Gray: protests, aftermath
24 hours with...
A. Aubrey Bodine
Viewing Baltimore from above