The Virgin Group founder had his legs shaved, put on lipstick and squeezed into a red skirt to honor a bet by serving as a flight attendant Sunday on an AirAsia trip from Perth, Australia, to Malaysia.

But he earned a reprimand from AirAsia chief Tony Fernandes after he deliberately dumped a tray of orange juice on Fernandes' lap.

Branson lost a bet to Fernandes in 2010 after they wagered that their Formula One racing teams would finish ahead of each other. Fernandes' team landed two spots above Branson's.

Fernandes gleefully declared after Sunday's nearly six-hour flight on his budget airline that Branson's skills as an attendant were "rubbish" and that he was being immediately fired.

A cheerful Branson, who was tasked with pouring beverages, serving meals and making flight announcements, posed with Fernandes and popped champagne after stepping out of the plane at Malaysia's main low-cost carrier terminal south of Kuala Lumpur.

He said in brief remarks that he was "glad to have gotten the bet over with and (was) looking forward to getting back into my clothes."

"I always wanted to be an air hostess, but it looks like I have to get back to normality," Branson said. The flight helped raise money for an Australian foundation for hospitalized children.

Asked how Branson rated as an attendant, Fernandes quipped, "Out of 10, maybe one, for a bit of humor."

"I wanted to kill him actually" for spilling the juice, the Malaysian told reporters.

"He looked at me, I said, 'don't you dare,' and the next thing I know, he tipped the whole tray on me," Fernandes added. "He and the girls mopped it up, but I was walking around the flight in my underwear for a while because I didn't bring another pair of trousers."

The IRS, an independent agency in the Treasury Department, has already apologized for scrutinizing the tax-exempt status of groups with conservative titles such as "Tea Party" or "Patriot" in their names. And White House spokesman Jay Carney said Friday it was wrong.

But Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said Sunday she was disappointed that Obama "hasn't personally condemned this." The president, Collins said, "needs to make crystal clear that this is totally unacceptable."

Collins and other Republicans challenged the tax agency's claim that the practice was initiated by low-level workers.

"I just don't buy that this was a couple of rogue IRS employees," said Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine. "After all, groups with 'progressive' in their names were not targeted similarly."

If it were just a small number of employees, she said, "then you would think that the high-level IRS supervisors would have rushed to make this public, fired the employees involved, apologized to the American people and informed Congress. None of that happened in a timely way."

The IRS said Friday that it was sorry for what it called the "inappropriate" targeting of the conservative groups during the 2012 election to see if they were violating their tax-exempt status. The agency blamed low-level employees, saying no high-level officials were aware.

But according to a draft of a watchdog's report obtained Saturday by The Associated Press that seemingly contradicts public statements by the IRS commissioner, senior IRS officials knew agents were targeting tea party groups as early as 2011.

The Treasury Department's inspector general for tax administration is expected to release the results of a nearly yearlong investigation in the coming week.

Lois G. Lerner, who heads the IRS division that oversees tax-exempt organizations, said last week that the practice was initiated by low-level workers in Cincinnati and was not motivated by political bias.

But on June 29, 2011, Lerner learned at a meeting that groups were being targeted, according to the watchdog's report. At the meeting, she was told that groups with "Tea Party," ''Patriot" or "9/12 Project" in their names were being flagged for additional and often burdensome scrutiny, the report says.

The 9/12 Project is a group started by conservative TV personality Glenn Beck.

Rep. Mike Rogers, R-Mich., said "the conclusion that the IRS came to is that they did have agents who were engaged in intimidation of political groups is as dangerous a problem" as the government can have.

He added, "This should send a chill up your spine. ... I don't know where it stops or who is involved."

Congressional Republicans already are conducting several investigations and asked for more.

"This mea culpa is not an honest one," said Rep. Darrell Issa, R-Calif.

After the Associated Press report, Carney said that if the inspector general "finds that there were any rules broken or that conduct of government officials did not meet the standards required of them, the president expects that swift and appropriate steps will be taken to address any misconduct."

Collins said the revelations about the nation's tax agency only contribute to "the profound distrust that the American people have in government. It is absolutely chilling that the IRS was singling out conservative groups for extra review."

The IRS' Lerner said that about 300 groups were singled out for additional review, with about one-quarter scrutinized because they had "tea party" or "patriot" somewhere in their applications.

She said 150 of the cases have been closed and no group had its tax-exempt status revoked, though some withdrew their applications.

Collins appeared on CNN's "State of the Union," Rogers was on "Fox News Sunday" and Issa spoke on NBC's "Meet the Press."

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Shrinking the size of kids' plates and bowls and encouraging them to eat more frequently throughout the day might help them eat less and keep off extra weight, new research suggests.

In one study, researchers found first graders served themselves smaller portions when using miniaturized dishware - and ate less food when they had less on their plate.

Another review of past research found kids and teens who ate most often during the day were 22 percent less likely to be overweight than those who ate the fewest meals and snacks.

Jennifer Fisher, who worked on the dish-size study, said it was preliminary but could still inform parent choices.

"For now, certainly it seems like something parents can easily incorporate into their daily lives without a lot of work and effort," Fisher, from Temple University in Philadelphia, told Reuters Health.

She and her colleagues studied 42 elementary school kids who were given the chance to serve themselves lunch. On four days the kids used child-sized plates and bowls; on another four they used adult-sized dishware, which was twice as large.

First graders served themselves an average of 300 to 500 calories worth of the lunch entre - pasta or chicken nuggets - each day.

When they used adult dishware, the kids took an average of 90 more calories of food, the researchers found. And kids who ended up with more food on their plates also tended to eat more, Fisher's team wrote Monday in Pediatrics.

"It doesn't appear that simply because you might have large dishware at home, your child is going to overeat," said Fisher - because it depends on who's doing the serving and how much is served.

But, she added, "If more food appears on the plate, they're going to eat more."

"The results are very interesting and confirm our expectations that the impact of plate size on adults in the laboratory also apply to children," Dr. Thomas Robinson, a childhood obesity researcher at Stanford University in California, told Reuters Health in an email.

"This study provides very important preliminary evidence that using smaller dishware may help reduce children's energy intakes."

For their own analysis, researchers from Harokopio University in Athens, Greece, looked at 11 studies, mostly conducted in the Mediterranean, that compared eating frequency and weight in close to 19,000 kids and teens.

The overall pattern showed that youth who ate most often - typically at least four or five times per day - were least likely to be overweight or obese. However when they looked closer, the researchers found that link only held up in boys.

Robinson, who was not involved in the new research, said it's hard to tell which came first in those studies: eating frequency or extra weight.

The results "do not look very convincing one way or another," he said. "It is also hard to come up with a convincing reason why boys and girls would be different."

The researchers said their findings don't prove that a given child will lose weight by eating more often. But schools, for example, may be able to make a difference by integrating smaller, more frequent meals into the day.

"Instead of providing three big meals per day, it would be better (for parents) to have their children eating smaller meals and more snacks throughout the day," co-author Mary Yannakoulia told Reuters Health in an email.

However, she added, parents still need to pay attention to the quality of those snacks.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 17 percent of kids and teens in the U.S. are obese - a proportion that has almost tripled since 1980.

"We know that it's so complex that there's absolutely not one cause or solution," Fisher said.

A third study also published this week in Pediatrics found teens who spent more time focused on the TV were heavier than their peers. However, time spent playing video games or on the computer was not tied to weight.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/jsoh2P Pediatrics, online April 8, 2013.

TORONTO (Reuters) - So starved for success that even a taste of playoff action can be savored, the Toronto Maple Leafs and their fans are enjoying a long-awaited return to the postseason but hunger for more.

A Mardi Gras-like buzz swept across Toronto with the Maple Leafs in the postseason for the first time since 2004, but the excitement may be short-lived as the team was pushed to the brink of playoff elimination after Wednesday's gut-wrenching 4-3 overtime loss to the Boston Bruins.

The Bruins now hold a commanding 3-1 lead in the opening-round series and can deliver the knockout blow at home on Friday that would end the Stanley Cup dreams of Leafs Nation.

Toronto snapped the NHL's longest active post-season drought this year but have failed to record a home win for a fan base that has stood by their team through thick and thin, selling out the Air Canada Center (ACC) year after year.

The Maple Leafs have not won a playoff game at home since April 2004 but they came excruciatingly close until Boston's David Krejci delivered the dagger in overtime on Wednesday, two days after the visitors enjoyed a 5-2 win.

Treated to a display of hockey at its thrilling best, it was the type of enthralling game that reminded Maple Leafs fans of what they had been missing through those barren nine years and surely whet their appetite for more.

For once, fans who pay the highest ticket prices in the NHL, even before prices were hiked 75 percent to an average $218 for the first round of the playoffs, left the packed ACC feeling they had received full value for their money.

"I have been around this game a long time and it seems in overtime it is one bounce, one shot, one rebound, one deflection, one block, it's all the ones that go against you," lamented Toronto coach Randy Carlyle.

"It feels like a dagger after the effort that was put forth by our group.

"It was a man's hockey game out there. There was a lot of energy, a lot of physical play but that's the way the playoffs are played."

After watching playoff hockey from a distance for nearly 10 years, Leafs Nation can be forgiven for not fully understanding the nuances of postseason hockey.

SHIFT IN PHILOSOPHY

Better days, however, may be ahead for a franchise that has always appeared more interested in the bottom line than their place in the standings.

The recent hiring of Tim Leiweke as chief executive of Maple Leafs Sports & Entertainment (MLSE), which in addition to the NHL team owns the National Basketball Association's Raptors and Major League Soccer's Toronto FC, signals a shift in philosophy within the sporting empire.

Leiweke, who steered the Los Angeles-based sports colossus Anschutz Entertainment Group (AEG) for 18 years, says winning trophies will be the priority in Toronto, which is exactly what the Leafs faithful, who packed Maple Leaf Square outside the team's arena on Wednesday, want to hear.

Under Leiweke's watch AEG filled its trophy case with the NBA's Lakers, NHL's Kings and MLS's Galaxy winning a combined 10 championships and he now wants to do the same at MLSE.

The Maple Leafs are the NHL's only franchise valued at $1 billion, according to Forbes, and are the crown jewel in the MLSE portfolio that also includes condominiums, stadiums, arenas, bars and a television station.

But it is a ravenous and loyal fan base that provides the foundation for all MLSE businesses.

The last time the Maple Leafs appeared in the playoffs Maple Leaf Square was nothing more than a plan on the architect's drawing board.

Now it is the gathering place where MLSE's biggest asset, its fans, gather in the thousands to watch Maple Leafs games on a massive outdoor screen just outside the ACC.

Wearing Leafs sweaters, their faces painted in the team's blue and white colors, fans line up for hours just to be close to their team while the overflow spills onto nearby streets and into nearby bars.

Chants of "Go-Leafs-Go" echo off the condo towers that cast long shadows over the square but there is nothing organic or spontaneous about the scene, the space designed for just such a purpose and providing a lively backdrop for MLSE's media co-owners Rogers and Bell.

From the MLSE boardroom to the Leafs lockerroom the value of that support may be counted in different ways but there is no disputing its value.

"We have unbelievable fans here and I think it's great for them to finally be able to cheer a playoff game," praised Leafs forward Joffrey Lupul. "They've stuck with us. They deserve this."

(Editing by Frank Pingue)

Plague is a fatal disease so infamous that it has become synonymous with any dangerous, widespread contagion. It was linked to one of the first known examples of , when Mongols catapulted plague victims into cities.

The bacterium that causes plague, , has been linked with at least two of the most devastating pandemics in recorded history. One, the Great Plague, which lasted from the 14th to 17th centuries, included the infamous epidemic known as , which may have killed nearly two-thirds of Europe in the mid-1300s. Another, the Modern Plague, struck around the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, beginning in China in the mid-1800s and spreading to Africa, the Americas, Australia, Europe and other parts of Asia. []

Although past studies confirmed this germ was linked with both of these catastrophes, much controversy existed as to whether it also caused the Justinianic Plague of the sixth to eighth centuries. This pandemic, named after the Byzantine emperor Justinian I, killed more than 100 million people. Some historians have suggested it contributed to the decline of the Roman Empire.

To help solve this mystery, scientists investigated ancient DNA from the teeth of 19 different sixth-century skeletons from a medieval graveyard in Bavaria, Germany, of people who apparently succumbed to the Justinianic Plague.

They unambiguously found the plague bacterium Y. pestis there.

"It is always very exciting when we can find out the actual cause of the pestilences of the past," said researcher Barbara Bramanti, an archaeogeneticist at Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

"After such a long time nearly 1,500 years, one is still able to detect the agent of plague by modern molecular methods," researcher Holger Scholz, a molecular microbiologist at the Bundeswehr Institute of Microbiology in Munich, Germany, told LiveScience.

The researchers said these findings confirm that the Justinianic Plague crossed the Alps, killing people in what is now Bavaria. Analysis of the DNA suggests that much like the later two pandemics of plague, this first pandemic originated in Asia, "even if historical records say that it arrived first in Africa before spreading to the Mediterranean basin and to Europe," Bramanti told LiveScience.

After the Modern Plague spread worldwide, it became entrenched in many rural areas, and the World Health Organization still reports thousands of cases of plague each year. However, doctors can now treat it with modern antibiotics.

The researchers now hope to reconstruct the whole genome sequence of the plague strain in these ancient teeth to learn more about the disease, Scholz said.

The scientists detailed their findings online May 2 in the journal .

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The Osaka-based company, which makes Viera TVs and Lumix digital cameras, has been battered by plunging prices, the strong yen, an ailing TV business and intense competition from the likes of South Korea's Samsung Electronics Co.

A good chunk of the net loss came from hefty restructuring expenses, including impairment losses as the company wrote down the value of assets related to its solar, lithium-ion and mobile phone businesses. The company also reduced its global staff over the year from 330,767 to 293,742.

Sales declined 7 percent during the year to 7.3 trillion yen, the company said in its financial results, citing a "severe business situation" in the electronics industry, including sluggish demand for flat-panel TVs.

Panasonic, which lost a record 772 billion yen the previous year one of the biggest losses ever in Japan acknowledged that its three-year business plan had fallen far short of the desired results. Under its next three-year management plan, it promised to immediately eliminate unprofitable businesses.

For this fiscal year, it projected a net profit of 50 billion yen ($500 million).

In late March, President Kazuhiro Tsuga said the company will persist with trying to fix its ailing TV business, describing an exit from the fiercely competitive industry as a "final resort."Panasonic said sales of its plasma TV had fallen by about half, while LCD TVs suffered a 3 percent decline.

Panasonic, established in 1918 and an archrival to Sony Corp. during Japan's rapid industrialization following World War II, has been shifting its business from consumer electronics to focus more on operations that cater to other businesses such as batteries and solar panels.

The company said it plans to restructure its TV, semiconductor, mobile phone, circuit board and optical product businesses so that they will become profitable by fiscal 2016.

It remains strong in household appliances, with sales of refrigerators and washing machines both growing during the year.

With the dollar breaking above 100 yen Friday for the first time in four years, Panasonic is likely to benefit as the yen's weakness boosts foreign earned income. But the company's exposure to fluctuations against the U.S. dollar has shrunk over the years due to hedging and other practices, said Hideaki Kawai, managing director in charge of accounting and finance.

A weakening of 1 yen against the dollar is expected to boost operating profit this year by 1 billion yen, he said.

Ammar Asim Faruq Harris was arrested Feb. 28 in Los Angeles and is jailed in Las Vegas.

The district attorney filed the notice of intent to seek the death penalty Wednesday after a special panel reviewed the case and recommended that action.

Harris, 27, is charged in the Feb. 21 pre-dawn killings of Kenneth Cherry Jr., a cab driver and cab passenger after police say he fired shots into Cherry's Maserati while driving a Range Rover on the Las Vegas Strip.

The Maserati crashed into a taxi cab that exploded, killing Michael Boldon, 62, Las Vegas; and passenger Sandra Sutton-Wasmund, 48, Maple Valley, Wash.

Harris is charged with the murder of all three. He's also charged with the attempted murder of Freddy Walters, a passenger in the Maserati who was shot along with Cherry but survived.

Police said Harris and Cherry had exchanged angry words at a casino valet stand before speeding with tires squealing up the neon-splashed Strip.

Tehran Boldon, the younger brother of Michael Boldon, told the Las Vegas Sun after Wednesday's filing that Harris has "shown no remorse, and he needs to be made example of."

"Hopefully it will send a message to people like him that think it's a game," he said (http://bit.ly/12hcumo ). "I would hate to think that he could outlive me when I don't think he should be living at all."

Harris previously was arrested in 2010 in Las Vegas on charges of pandering, kidnapping, sexual assault and coercion. The charges were dropped, but a witness re-emerged after Harris' arrest this year and a jury indicted him in April on three counts of sexual assault and one count of robbery related to the 2010 arrest.

___

Information from: Las Vegas Sun, http://www.lasvegassun.com

Obama on Thursday was dropping in on Austin, Texas, and using that bustling state capital as a backdrop to talk about attracting jobs, providing skills training and ensuring that hard work begets a decent living.

The president argued in February's State of the Union address that an economy that is growing and creating well-paying middle-class jobs must be the guiding principle for Washington policymakers. He proposed a broad expansion of pre-kindergarten to accommodate every 4-year-old, calling it a smart investment that will help improve educational outcomes, along with raising the federal minimum wage to $9 to help working families. Both ideas faced almost immediate resistance from some lawmakers who said the proposals cost too much and could stunt the economy, and Obama has barely discussed either proposal since then.

At the time of the speech, the debate over gun-control legislation was heating up following the December massacre of 20 first-graders and six educators at a Connecticut elementary school. A bipartisan group of senators was drafting a sweeping immigration bill desired by both political parties, and Congress and the White House were blaming each other for $85 billion in automatic spending cuts that would kick in March 1.

The series of field trips Obama begins Thursday marks an attempt by the president to remind the public that he hasn't forgotten about the issue that concerns them the most: the economy and jobs. The outing also comes amid questions about whether the second-term president has enough sway to get his agenda through a divided Congress before attention turns to the November 2014 midterm elections.

Since his second inauguration, Obama has lost a bid to expand background checks for gun buyers and was similarly unsuccessful at getting lawmakers to undo the spending cuts. On Thursday, the Senate Judiciary Committee is scheduled to begin considering and voting on scores of proposed changes to the immigration bill, which is facing opposition from conservatives, religious leaders and others.

His jobs proposals have stalled in Congress, with Republicans showing no interest in job-creation plans based on new federal spending. They also argue that Obama's regulatory regime and new health care law the president's signature domestic policy achievement to date are hindering more robust job growth.

"The president doesn't seem to understand that it's his policies that are undermining economic growth and job creation," House Speaker John Boehner said Thursday as the president departed.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell ridiculed Obama's trip as mere image-building.

"If you're someone who's all about the visual, then of course putting on a pair of goggles or showing up at a factory is a great way to at least look like you're doing something about job creation," he said.

By traveling to Texas to begin this renewed attention to his jobs initiatives, Obama is choosing a state represented by two of the most conservative Republican members of the U.S. Senate John Cornyn and tea party hero Ted Cruz. Texas also has the second-highest Hispanic population in the country, an attractive demographic group for Democrats and a key audience for Obama as he also pushes for an overhaul of immigration laws.

Obama's effort to highlight jobs and the economy is buoyed by last Friday's positive jobs report, which found that the unemployment rate had dipped to a four-year low of 7.5 percent in April and employers had added 165,000 jobs and that far more jobs were added in in February and March than previously thought.

"He's focusing on economic issues that are at the core of his agenda, and have always been at the core of his agenda," White House press secretary Jay Carney said.

But the slowly improving economy masks the stagnant wages and fewer working hours that strike directly at the president's base of support young people, racial minorities and the less affluent. The average unemployment rate in the first three months of the year was 7.7 percent, but the rate was 13.6 percent for blacks and 9.5 percent for Latinos.

Before Obama departed Washington for a stay of about five hours in Texas, the White House announced a pair of initiatives it said would help the economy in the absence of action by Congress.

The administration announced the launch of a competition to create three new Manufacturing Innovation Institutes, partnerships among businesses, universities and government to help U.S.-based manufacturers and workers create good jobs. Five federal agencies Defense, Energy, Commerce, NASA and the National Science Foundation are putting $200 million toward the effort. The president also will ask Congress for a one-time investment of $1 billion to create a nationwide network of 15 such institutes.

The White House also announced an executive order and other steps to make government data more easily available to entrepreneurs, researchers and others who can then use the information to create new products and services, build businesses and create jobs.

Obama planned to visit Manor New Tech High School near Austin, where the curriculum is based on science, technology, engineering and math. He'll hold separate meetings with middle-class workers and technology entrepreneurs, and visit Applied Materials, a high-tech company whose products help make goods like smartphones, flat-screen TVs and solar panels more affordable, according to its website.

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Associated Press writer Jim Kuhnhenn contributed to this report.

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Follow Darlene Superville on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/dsupervilleap

The study shows that, despite radical changes in society, women still dominate the retail marketplace. Although women's personal and professional advancements have grown significantly in recent decades, the time spent grocery shopping has not decreased.

According to the study, two-thirds of women say they still handle much of the grocery shopping and, furthermore, they still take the time to make the decisions with three quarters of them forming shopping lists and 53% taking time to clip coupons and search for specials. And 40% of women shoppers say they spend about an hour in the supermarket.

Women are also the rulers of the kitchen. Eighty-four percent of women still act as the sole preparer of meals in the household, with 61% of women stating they prepare meals at least five times per week. And the majority of these meals are not prepackaged meals that require a quick nuke in the microwave, 64% make most meals using fresh ingredients which generally take more time.

Aside from meal preparation and grocery shopping, women are also responsible for the other important household areas: Seven in ten women say cleaning the house is their job and three-fourths take on the majority of the laundry in the home. Since women are those making the purchases, they have become frequent store brand purchasers, with only three percent saying they never buy store brands.

The survey was conducted to assess the role the women play in household shopping and thus how marketing strategies would be impacted for U.S. retailers and store brand suppliers. The study included over 1,000 women who were pre-qualified as their household's primary shopper. The results of the study do show that for the majority of women their roles in the household have not changed in any significant way.

Available Topic Expert(s): For information on the listed expert(s), click appropriate link.Brian SharoffProfNet -

SOURCE Private Label Manufacturers Association

In a highly conditional warning, the section of the Korean People's Army responsible for operations in North Korea's southwest said it will hit back if any shells fall in its territory during the drills, which began Monday and will end Friday. Should the allies respond to that, the statement said, Pyongyang's military would then strike five South Korean islands that stand along the aquatic frontline between the countries.

The area includes waters that are claimed by both countries, and is the most likely scene of any future clash between the rival Koreas. North Korea disputes a boundary unilaterally drawn close to its shores by the U.S.-led U.N. Command after the war, and has had three bloody naval clashes with the South since 1999.

Highly critical language is standard from North Korea during what the allies call routine military drills that they stage over the course of a year. Tuesday's statement was softer than the bellicose rhetoric Pyongyang unleashed with regularity during two months of larger-scale joint military drills by the allies that ended one week ago. That included threats of nuclear and missile strikes on Washington and Seoul.

Still, this new warning comes at a time of tentative diplomatic maneuvering on the divided Korean Peninsula, which is still technically in a state of war, as the three-year Korean War ended 60 years ago in an armistice, not a peace treaty.

The threat also came hours ahead of a summit by U.S. President Barack Obama and South Korea's new president, Park Geun-hye. They hope to present a strong front against North Korea during their meeting Tuesday at the White House, but also want to leave the door open to talks with Pyongyang.

There are concerns that any skirmish or shelling between the Koreas could escalate into war. Two attacks blamed on Pyongyang in 2010 killed 50 South Koreans, and Park has repeatedly said Seoul would respond aggressively to another attack from the North.

If Pyongyang conducts an attack similar to the 2010 shelling of an island that killed four South Koreans, "We will make them pay," Park told CBS in an interview aired Monday.

Inter-Korean relations are particularly strained amid North Korean anger over U.S.-South Korean military drills and U.N. sanctions in March that sought to punish the North over its February nuclear test, the country's third.

Last week, South Korea pulled out its last remaining citizens from a joint factory park in North Korea after Pyongyang withdrew all of its 53,000 workers earlier. The park is the last symbol of inter-Korean rapprochement.

Despite the allies' claims that the military drills are routine, Pyongyang calls them invasion preparation and is especially sensitive to the inclusion of any U.S. nuclear-capable assets. Washington in March responded to rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula by making the unusual announcements that it had sent nuclear capable B-52 and B-2 bombers to participate in the drills, prompting a harsh North Korean rhetorical response.

Nuclear-powered U.S. carriers routinely come to South Korea around this time of year as part of drills aimed at enhancing naval cooperation, South Korean Defense Ministry spokesman Kim Min-seok said Monday in a briefing. But Seoul wouldn't discuss whether any U.S. nuclear capable assets were participating in this week's drills, and U.S. military officials declined to comment on operations.

On Tuesday, Kim denied North Korea's claim that South Korea's military this week conducted live-fire artillery drills near the disputed Yellow Sea waters.

Kim also said the South Korean military is keeping an eye on any movements of a North Korean mid-range missile on the east coast that's capable of potentially hitting Guam. South Korean officials said last month that the North was prepared to test the missile at any time.

Kim said Seoul would confirm if North Korea completely withdraws the missile, which officials earlier said the North seemed poised to test. He said he couldn't share any other details.