Defiant North Korea readies mass parade for founder

By David Chance

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea prepared for the annual celebration of its founder's birth on Monday, having rejected talks with South Korea aimed at reducing tensions and reopening a joint industrial park between the two countries.

The North has threatened for weeks to attack the United States, South Korea and Japan since new U.N. sanctions were imposed in response to its latest nuclear arms test in February.

Speculation has mounted of a new missile launch or nuclear test in a bid to either force Washington to hold talks with Pyongyang or to shore up the leadership of Kim Jong-un, the grandson of the reclusive state's founder.

The third Kim to rule in Pyongyang attended a midnight celebration of his father and grandfather's rule with top officials including his kingmaker uncle Jang Song-thaek and the country's top generals.

In Tokyo on Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry again offered talks if North Korea abandoned its nuclear weapons programme, which Pyongyang describes at its "treasured" sword.

Kerry's trip to South Korea, China and Japan was aimed at reassuring its allies and putting pressure on Beijing to act decisively to implement the United Nations sanctions.

North Korea has repeatedly stressed that it fears Washington wants to invade it and has manipulated the United Nations to weaken it. At the weekend, Pyongyang rejected an overture by new South Korean President Park Geun-hye as a "cunning" ploy.

"We will expand in quantity our nuclear weapons capability, which is the treasure of a unified Korea ... that we would never barter at any price," Kim Young-nam, North Korea's titular head of state, told a gathering of officials and service personnel applauding the achievements of Kim Il-Sung.

Kim Il-Sung's birthday is usually marked with a mass parade to showcase the North's military might. In 2012, following the death of his father, the 30-year old Kim Jong-un made a public speech, the first in living memory for a North Korean leader.

(Additional reporting by Arshad Mohammed and Kiyoshi Takenaka in TOKYO)

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Dublin tourists lead icy St. Patrick's Day parade

DUBLIN (AP) — Never mind the fickle Irish weather. A chilly, damp Dublin celebrated St. Patrick's Day with artistic flair anyway Sunday as the focal point for a weekend of Irish celebrations worldwide.

More than 250,000 revelers braved the occasionally snowy, sleety skies to line the streets for the traditional holiday parade, a 3-kilometer (2-mile) jaunt through the city's heart involving performers from 46 countries.

Unusually, 8,000 tourists in town for the festivities led this year's procession in a "people's parade." Many donned leprechaun costumes or deployed banners and flags of their home nations or U.S. states, with the Texans making the biggest impression as they sported "Happy St. Paddy's Day, Y'All!" T-shirts.

One marcher, a 22-year-old engineer from Calgary, Canada, defiantly showed it wasn't so nippy at all — by doing the hour-long walk shirtless, with only a painted-on shamrock covering his chest.

"It's not cold!" Oliver Feniak declared as he, like many in the leisurely paced 2 1/2-hour parade, stopped to shake hands with onlookers standing five-deep on O'Connell Bridge spanning the River Liffey.

Sunday's decision to put tourists in the vanguard was connected to a year-long tourism promotion called The Gathering that is organizing hundreds of clan reunions nationwide in hopes of boosting the economy. That's sorely needed in an Ireland struggling with 14 percent unemployment, heavy emigration and a household-debt crisis following the 2008 collapse of its Celtic Tiger boom.

St. Patrick's Day always marks the start of Ireland's full-court press for tourists. Since 1997 Dublin has expanded the holiday into a multi-day festival featuring special children's playgrounds, street amusement parks, concerts and walking tours. Irish President Michael D. Higgins is hosting a nationally televised TV show Monday night featuring many of Ireland's top artists and musicians, including Bono and Nobel-winning poet Seamus Heaney.

"We cherish the creativity, community spirit and rich culture for which we, as a nation, are renowned," Higgins said in a speech after the parade. "I have said on many occasions that while the experience of the so-called Celtic Tiger failed to live up to the best versions of Irishness, we have not been failed by our artists. In fact, our artists are a huge moral resource and great reputational asset for Ireland."

St. Patrick's Day is being marked in skylines across the world as part of a global campaign to floodlight landmarks green at night. This year the pyramids of Giza, the leaning tower of Pisa, Niagara Falls, and the Christ the Redeemer statue overlooking Rio are among dozens of iconic spots going green for the occasion.

While tens or thousands of foreigners have made a beeline for Dublin, practically the entire Irish government has gone the other direction, sending 19 ministers to 21 countries to capitalize on a marketing opportunity unique among nations.

Prime Minister Enda Kenny marched in Saturday's biggest U.S. parade in New York and is scheduled to meet President Obama at the White House on Tuesday, when the U.S. political establishment marks the Irish holiday.

It hasn't all gone smoothly. The government deputy leader, Foreign Minister Eamon Gilmore, caused diplomatic waves in Atlanta, Georgia, by snubbing the second-biggest American parade in nearby Savannah — because, Gilmore said, he didn't want to attend a dinner hosted by an Irish-American group that bans women from attending.

Most of Irish-America marked the holiday a day early, reflecting the view that such a notoriously boozy holiday shouldn't happen on a Sunday. But the Irish diaspora in most of the rest of the world stuck to marking St. Patrick's Day on March 17 as usual.

Many of Sunday's revelers suggested they were in Dublin specifically to soak up the pub atmosphere.

"We came all the way from Kansas City to drink some Guinness!' declared one banner on the parade route displayed by John Mullen, a 46-year-old lawyer, and his 17-year-old son Jack.

The senior Mullen, whose roots lie in the western county of Mayo, said he and his boy actually were golfing their way through Ireland, not drinking. He said the key to enjoying Ireland was to soak up the locals' exceptionally good conversation regardless of the foul weather.

"Yesterday we got rained on, sleeted on, snowed on as we golfed. There was even some sun here and there. It was four seasons in one round," Mullen said. "People back home say I've got the gift of the gab, but I've got no game here. The conversations here are magnificent. But you sometimes wonder how you've ever going to get out of them!"

In the world's first major St. Patrick's party Sunday, about 30,000 spectators soaked up the sun as Sydney's Irish-Australians paraded through the city. Australia always marks St. Patrick's Day on a Sunday. After the event, partiers rallying at the city's Hyde Park saw 45 Irish men and women receive Australian citizenship. That's increasingly common as tens of thousands of Irish job-seekers have made Australia a favored new home while Ireland's own economy remains in the doldrums.

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Venezuelans flood streets for another Chavez coffin parade

By Andrew Cawthorne and Girish Gupta

CARACAS (Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans were on the streets again on Friday at a funeral parade for Hugo Chavez amid opposition protests that the government was exploiting his death for election purposes.

Chavez's remains were to be driven for about 12 miles through the streets of Caracas from an army academy to a military museum on a hillside where the former soldier launched his political career with a failed coup in 1992.

A state funeral was held a week ago.

Friday's events were the culmination of 10 days of official mourning in the South American OPEC nation led by the flamboyant socialist president for 14 years until his death from cancer.

Though his remains were to be placed for now in the museum on the edge of the populous January 23 neighborhood - arguably the most militantly pro-Chavez zone in Venezuela - there was still doubt over his final resting place.

The government wanted to embalm Chavez "for eternity" in the style of Soviet leaders Lenin and Stalin and China's Mao. But embarrassingly for Venezuela, officials say the process was started too late and may not be possible.

Parliament had been due to debate a motion this week to amend the constitution for Chavez's body to be laid in the National Pantheon, close to the remains of his idol and South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

The constitution states that honor can only be accorded to leaders 25 years after their death.

But the debate was delayed amid talk that Chavez's corpse may be taken to his hometown Sabaneta, in the Venezuelan "llanos," or plains, to fulfill his oft-stated wish to lie alongside the grandmother who raised him in a mud-floor home.

Crowds of red-shirted "Chavistas" lined the streets for Friday's parade. Some wore headbands with the name of acting President Nicolas Maduro, named by Chavez as his preferred successor. He is running in an April 14 vote.

"Chavez, I promise you, my vote is for Maduro," read the headbands, repeating a slogan at pro-government rallies.

"I've got 500 and I'm going to sell them all easily. Chavez left Maduro in charge and he will be president," said Miguel Angel, 43, selling the headbands.

'PERVERSE PROSELYTISM'

The opposition, whose presidential candidate Henrique Capriles faces a tough battle to beat Maduro amid so much emotion over Chavez, say the government is mawkishly protracting the mourning and exploiting his coffin as a campaign prop.

Capriles, a 40-year-old state governor who views Brazil as his political and economic model, plans to begin campaigning around the country over the weekend.

"We urge those indiscriminately using the president's name for the capture of votes to halt this perverse method of electoral proselytism," said a communique from the opposition.

"Let's have a decent campaign, without unfair advantages or abuses of power."

That, many analysts say, looks unlikely given the government's vastly superior financial resources and pro-government supporters' dominance of major institutions.

Fighting back against that impression, however, the government says Capriles is a well-financed puppet of both Venezuela's powerful and wealthy elite and the U.S. government.

The deification of Chavez in death has taken surreal turns.

Maduro suggested that in heaven Chavez helped persuade Christ to choose a Latin American pope.

And the state oil company has been distributing a flyer titled "Chavez Crucified" amplifying the government's accusation that he may have been infected with cancer.

"Chavez is a Christ, he suffered for his people, he extinguished himself in their service, he suffered his own calvary, he was assassinated by imperialists, he died young ... and he performed miracles in life," it said.

That level of eulogy is drawing scorn in some circles for a man who, though loved by millions of Venezuela's poor for his welfare policies and down-to-earth style, was also hated as an authoritarian bully by large segments of society.

The election campaign has started in a nasty atmosphere, with both camps accusing each other of dirty tricks, and Capriles and Maduro landing highly personalized blows.

Photos of guns aimed at TVs showing Capriles have been circulating, while an opposition newspaper this week juxtaposed a photo of Maduro next to Hitler giving a Nazi salute.

Maduro, a 50-year-old former bus driver who is trumpeting his working-class roots like Chavez, has a solid lead over Capriles of more than 10 percentage points, according to two recent opinion polls. Both came before Chavez's death.

At stake in the upcoming election is not only the future of Chavez's leftist revolution but also the continuation of Venezuelan oil subsidies and other aid crucial to the economies of leftist allies around Latin America, from Cuba to Bolivia.

Venezuela boasts the world's largest oil reserves.

(Editing by Vicki Allen)

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