April 1 Photo Brief: Easter Egg roll at the White House, Kid President prank, RIP Pattycake the NYC gorilla, Watering of the Girls
Easter Egg roll at the White House, Kid President April Fools’ Day prank, RIP Pattycake the NYC gorilla, Watering of the Girls Easter tradition and more in today’s daily brief. Warning: Some photos may depict injury and/ or violence.
- Children race to roll eggs as they participate in the White House Easter Egg Roll on the South Lawn of the White House in Washington, DC, April 1, 2013. US President Barack Obama hosts the annual event, featuring live music, sports courts, cooking stations, storytelling and Easter egg rolling. (Saul Loeb/AFP/AFP/Getty Images)
- Performers dressed as medievel knights joust at Knebworth House in Hertfordshire April 1, 2013. Knebworth House, a stately home of the Lytton family since 1490, hosted The Knights Of Royal England in their first medievel jousting tournament of the season. (Olivia Harris/Reuters)
- Young Slovak men dressed in traditional costumes pour a bucket with cold water over a woman as part of Easter celebrations in the village of Trencianska Tepla on April 1, 2013. Slovakia’s men traditionally splash women with water and hit them with a willow to evoke youth, strength and beauty for the upcoming spring season. (Samuel Kubani/AFP/Getty Images)
- A woman prepares for traditional Easter celebrations in Holloko, 62 miles east of Budapest on April 1, 2013. Locals from the World Heritage village of Holloko celebrate Easter with the traditional “watering of the girls”, a Hungarian tribal fertility ritual rooted in the area’s pre-Christian past. (Bernadett Szabo/Reuters)
- Farmer Dai Brute shouts to his sheep dogs from his quad bike as he feeds sheep in one of his fields at Gwndwnwal Farm on April 1, 2013 in Brecon, Wales. Dai Brute runs Gwndwnwal Farm in Llan-Talyllyn. The recent cold snap has meant that farmers have had to continue feeding their sheep long into the period when they would normally be able to survive on grass the more mild weather. (Chris Jackson/Getty Images)
- A vendor eats as she waits for customers at a poultry market in Hefei, Anhui province, April 1, 2013. Two people in Shanghai, one of China’s largest cities, died this month after contracting a strain of avian influenza that had never been passed to humans before, the official Xinhua News Agency reported on Sunday. (Stringer/Reuters)
- An activist from Congress party shouts as he stands on a police barricade during a protest at Gandhinagar, in the western Indian state of Gujarat, April 1, 2013. Hundreds of activists from Congress party and farmers held a protest on Monday demanding 12-hour electricity supply for farmers and a roll back of the Gujarat Irrigation and Drainage Bill that was passed by the state’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government recently, according to a media release by the protesters. (Amit Dave/Reuters)
- Kenyan police patrol at dusk in Nairobi’s Huruma area on March 31, 2013, where unrest erupted on March 30 following a Supreme Court ruling that upheld Uhuru Kenyatta’s victory in the presidential elections of March 4 over his main rival, outgoing Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga. (Tony Karumba/AFP/Getty Images)
- A businessman uses his mobile phone in Tokyo’s business district April 1, 2013. Japanese business sentiment improved in the first three months of 2013, a central bank survey showed, after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s aggressive monetary and fiscal policy prescriptions helped to weaken the yen and bolster share prices. (Toru Hanai/Reuters)
- A colony of sea lions rest on the shore of a beach at the bay of San Fernando, a national reserve, in Nazca, Ica, March 30, 2013. The bay, approximately more than 150,000 hectares in size, is a natural habitat to birds like guanayes, pelicans and boobies, along with a dozen marine mammals including sea lions, according to the National Service of Protected Natural Areas (SERNANP). (Mariana Bazo/Reuters)
- Locusts are seen in the Menabe region of western Madagascar, March 29, 2013. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that half the island nation has been infected by locusts which are threatening the production of rice, the country’s main staple. Picture taken March 29, 2013. (Clarel Faniry Rasoanaivo/Reuters)
- South Korean soldiers participate in military drills near the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Cheorwon, 48 miles northeast of Seoul April 1, 2013. South Korea will strike back quickly if the North stages any attack, the new president in Seoul warned on Monday. (Lee Hae-ryong/Yonhap via Reuters)
- Visitors ride a boat in the Chidorigafuchi moat covered with petals of cherry blossoms in Tokyo April 1, 2013. Many people enjoy viewing the blossoms all over the country during the spring season. (Toru Hanai/Reuters)
- A man stands next to Sawa lake in Samawa, 160 miles south of Baghdad February 22, 2013. One of the most well-known lakes in Iraq, Lake Sawa, is a large closed body of salt water situated in the desert between Baghdad and Basra. The lake is dubbed by some as “the Pearl of the South” for its beauty and unique composition. It is surrounded by a cliff of piled sand dunes, providing a natural levee that keeps the water above ground level. As the lake has no proven link to either river or sea, the source of its water has been a mystery to researchers for centuries. (Mohammed Ameen/Reuters)
- A general view shows the port in Gaza City during a dust storm on April 1, 2013. (Mohammed Abed/AFP/Getty Images)
- A rainbow is reflected in a fountain on the river Alster, on April 1, 2013 in Hamburg, northern Germany. After cold weather in the last weeks, temperatures raised to 5 degrees in northern Germany. (Markus Scholz/AFP/Getty Images)
- Wearing a costume of polar bear a Greenpeace activist takes part in a staged show on the Moskva River in front of the Kremlin in Moscow on April 1, 2013. According to Greenpeace the staged show was aimed to draw attention to the threats of the catastrophic climate consequences of Arctic oil drilling. (Andrey Smirnov/AFP/Getty Images)
- Jamaat-e-Islami activists smash pieces of bricks on the head of Jahangir Alam, officer in-charge of Upashahar police camp, and try to snatch his pistol during a clash in Rajshahi April 1, 2013. At least four policemen were injured, one critically, and a firearm and a walkie-talkie were snatched from them when Jamaat-e-Islami activists and its student wing Islami Chhatra Shibir clashed with police in Rajshahi city on Monday morning, local media reported. (Stringer/Reuters)
- A dog lies near the barricade set up on the main bridge in the ethnically divided town of Mitrovica March 19, 2013. Serbia does not recognize Kosovo’s 2008 secession, but is under pressure from the European Union to improve ties and help overcome a split between Kosovo’s Albanians and a Serb enclave in the north over which Belgrade retained de facto control. Picture taken March 19, 2013. (Marko Djurica/Reuters)
- Haitian voodoo followers celebrate on one of the holiest days of their religious calendarat Souvenance village in Gonaives on Easter Sunday March 31, 2013. (Thony Belizaire/AFP/Getty Images)
- Richard Cadwallader (facing camera), 82, hugs Kim Yeon-soon, 72, during a reunion ceremony at a hotel in Seoul April 1, 2013. War veteran Cadwallader, who had served in the U.S. Air Force during the Korean War, was reunited with Kim, whom he helped receive treatment for burns she had sustained as a girl, on Monday for the first time in 60 years after a decades-long search, the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs said. Kim had sustained the burns during an accident when a relative had dropped an oil lamp on her, according to local media. (Kim Hong-Ji/Reuters)
- Pattycake, the first gorilla born in New York City, sits in the Wildlife Conservation Societyís Bronx Zoo, as pictured in this undated handout photo. Pattycake was under medical care due to her advanced age and was being treated for chronic cardiac issues, when she died Sunday March 31, 2013. (Julie Larsen Maher/Bronx Zoo/Handout via Reuters)
- An exhibitor prepares her horse for the parade on April 1, 2013 in Ardingly, United Kingdom. The Parade is an amalgamation of two traditional parades, the London Cart Horse Parade, founded in 1885 and the London Van Horse Parade, founded in 1904. The objectives of these parades was to improve the general condition and treatment of London’s working horses and to encourage drivers to take a humane interest in the welfare of their animals. There is a wide variety of breeds of animal ranging from donkeys to Dutch Friesians and Gelderlander’s, to magnificent heavy horses. (Bethany Clarke/Getty Images)
South Korea vows fast response to North; U.S. deploys stealth jets
Jack Kim, Reuters
11:08 a.m. EDT, April 1, 2013
SEOUL (Reuters) – South Korea will strike back quickly if the North stages any attack, the new president in Seoul warned on Monday, as tensions ratcheted higher on the Korean peninsula amid shrill rhetoric from Pyongyang and the U.S. deployment of radar-evading fighter planes.
North Korea says the region is on the brink of a nuclear war in the wake of United Nations sanctions imposed for its February nuclear test and a series of joint U.S. and South Korean military drills that have included a rare U.S. show of aerial power.
The North, whose economy is smaller than it was 20 years ago, appeared to move on Monday to addressing its pressing need for investment by appointing a reformer to the country’s ceremonial prime minister’s job, although the move mostly cemented a power grab by the ruling Kim clan.
North Korea had said on Saturday it was entering a “state of war” with South Korea in response to what it termed the “hostile” military drills being staged in the South. But there have been no signs of unusual activity in the North’s military to suggest an imminent aggression, a South Korean defense ministry official said last week.
“If there is any provocation against South Korea and its people, there should be a strong response in initial combat without any political considerations,” President Park Geun-hye told the defense minister and senior officials at a meeting on Monday.
The South has changed its rules of engagement to allow local units to respond immediately to attacks, rather than waiting for permission from Seoul.
Stung by criticism that its response to the shelling of a South Korean island in 2010 was tardy and weak, Seoul has also threatened to target North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and to destroy statues of the ruling Kim dynasty in the event of any new attack, a plan that has outraged Pyongyang.
Seoul and its ally the United States played down Saturday’s statement from the official KCNA news agency as the latest in a stream of tough talk from Pyongyang.
North Korea stepped up its rhetoric in early March, when U.S. and South Korean forces began annual military drills that involved the flights of U.S. B-2 stealth bombers in a practice run, prompting the North to puts its missile units on standby to fire at U.S. military bases in the South and in the Pacific.
The United States also deployed F-22 stealth fighter jets on Sunday to take part in the drills. The F-22s were deployed in South Korea before, in 2010.
On its part, North Korea has cancelled an armistice agreement with the United States that ended the Korean War and cut all hotlines with U.S. forces, the United Nations and South Korea.
NUCLEAR WEAPONS “NOT A BARGAINING CHIP”
Park’s intervention came on the heels of a meeting of the North’s ruling Workers Party Central Committee where leader Kim Jong-un rejected the notion that Pyongyang was going to use its nuclear arms development as a bargaining chip.
“The nuclear weapons of Songun Korea are not goods for getting U.S. dollars and they are … (not) to be put on the table of negotiations aimed at forcing the (North) to disarm itself,” KCNA news agency quoted him as saying.
At the meeting, Kim appointed a handful of personal confidants to the party’s politburo, further consolidating his grip on power in the second full year of his reign.
The most surprising appointment came on Monday as former prime minister Pak Pong-ju was re-appointed as premier, although the move likely signaled another power struggle in Pyongang staged by the country’s leader Kim Jong-un.
Pak is viewed as a key ally of Jang Song-thaek, the young Kim’s uncle and also a protege of Kim’s aunt and is viewed as a pawn in a power game that has seen Jang and his wife re-assert power over military leaders.
Analysts said the move would not likely change Pyongyang’s approach to a confrontation that appears to have dragged the two Koreas closer to war.
Pyongyang’s on-off negotiations saw it take part in nuclear disarmament talks for five years aimed at paying it off in return for abandoning its atomic weapons program. Those talks fell apart in 2008. Some experts say the talks gave the North grounds to pursue a highly enriched uranium program that took it closer to owning a working arsenal.
Songun is the Korean word for the “Military First” policy preached by Kim’s father who used it to justify the use of the impoverished state’s scare resources to build a 1.2-million strong army and a weapons of mass destruction program.
CALLS FOR RESTRAINT
White House National Security Council spokeswoman Caitlin Hayden said North Korea’s announcement that it was in a state of war followed a “familiar pattern” of rhetoric.
China has repeatedly called for restraint on the peninsula.
However, many in South Korea have regarded the North’s willingness to keep open the Kaesong industrial zone, located just a few miles (km) north of the heavily-militarized border and operated jointly by both sides, as a sign that Pyongyang will not risk losing a lucrative source of foreign currency.
Closure could also trap hundreds of South Korean workers and managers of the more than 100 firms that have factories there.
(Additional reporting by Paul Eckert in WASHINGTON; Editing by David Chance, Raju Gopalakrishnan, Ian Geoghegan and Ron Popeski)