Newspaper headlines: Focus on North Korea-US tensions By BBC News

Staff Published duration 15 April 2017

Most of the papers express concern about the tension between the US and North Korea - particularly the Daily Mirror whose headline screams: "We're on the brink of nuclear war".

The paper's editorial describes Donald Trump's public threat to attack North Korea as "lunacy" and says the "increasingly unhinged" president needs to "cool it".

image copyright EPA

The Sun admits these are "nervous times" but is more hawkish in its view. It says we have learned from the naivety of the left's "hero", Barack Obama, that doing nothing "can have even worse consequences".

The language surrounding the crisis concerns the Daily Mail, which says it finds it "hard to recall a time" when the rhetoric from world capitals was "so intemperate". Its editorial describes this week as "perhaps the darkest and most dangerous since the Cuban missile crisis in 1962".

The confrontation between Pyongyang and Washington has prompted the CIA to make a "threat", according to the Daily Telegraph . It says the head of the intelligence agency has warned rogue states should "take note" of Donald Trump's forthright military decisions in Syria and Afghanistan.

Father of all bombs

Testimonies of people who live near the site in Afghanistan where the US dropped the so-called "mother of all bombs" earlier this week are featured by several papers.

image copyright Reuters

£3,500 a shift

The Guardian claims "desperate" hospitals are so short of doctors that they're offering locums £95 per hour to cover gaps in their rotas. It says it has seen messages sent by "dozens" of hospitals across England and Wales, which "paint a picture of near panic".

Seagulls and footballs

A woman from Bridlington in East Yorkshire who was told she faces arrest for failing to return footballs which come over her fence attracts some sympathy.

The Daily Express says Penny Freeman was "incensed" as the balls smashed pots and broke plants, so she stashed them in her shed.

"We came here for a quiet retirement and what do we get?," she says. "Seagulls imprisoning us and harassed by footballs".

Selfies with the PM

Finally, several papers publish photographs of Theresa May dressed in a luminous bib acting as a marshal at a running race in her Maidenhead constituency.

image copyright PA image caption The prime minister with some of the runners at the annual Good Friday Maidenhead 10-mile race