LONDON -- Former International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was bundled into the back of a police car to escape protesters after a speaking engagement at Britain's Cambridge University on Friday that angered women's rights activists.

About 150 demonstrators, waving banners and chanting "2, 4, 6, 8, no more violence, no more rape" had circled the Cambridge Union Society where Strauss-Kahn delivered a speech on globalization and the Eurozone to a select group of students.

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As the French economist left, the angry crowd, shouting references to New York hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo who accused him of sexual assault, tried to scale barricades guarded by police and security officers set up to protect him.

Placards were thrown at the car and protesters scuffled with officers as he was whisked away.

"I don't think he should have been invited here to speak to students," student Morgan Wild, 23, told Reuters. "I think it's part of a crass PR campaign to rehabilitate his reputation and we shouldn't be taken for fools."

Strauss-Kahn calls sexual encounter with maid a 'moral failing'

"It's got nothing to do with freedom of speech," said student Francesca Williams, 21. "They're inviting a man who hates women. I don't think DSK should be given the privilege of speaking in front of a private audience."

Cambridgeshire Police said a 19-year-old man was arrested for assaulting a police officer and a woman, 22, was detained for a breach of the peace. Two others were arrested on Friday morning after banners were plastered all over the Union Society building.

The Cambridge News website displayed photos showing its walls defaced with messages including "DSK GO AWAY" and "WOMEN DESERVE BETTER."

'Flabbergasted'
There was tight security inside the venue with the gray-haired Strauss-Kahn flanked by four burly men during his speech and 25 guards brought in for the occasion.

But even within the historic 19th century building, where politicians such as British wartime leader Winston Churchill have addressed students, he was unable to escape controversy.

One student asked him to explain vaginal bruising suffered by Nafissatou Diallo, the maid behind the sexual assault allegations who is now pursuing civil claims against Strauss-Kahn in New York.

"The reality is that I spent a week in prison. There hasn't been a prosecution," he replied to a rapt audience listening over the faint shouts and sirens heard from outside.

Diallo's lawyer, Douglas Wigdor, spoke to about 100 Cambridge students and journalists on her behalf at a rival event earlier Friday.

According to the Guardian newspaper, Wigdor said he was "flabbergasted" at the invitation. He called it "an affront to all victims of sexual crimes."

"The history of Cambridge and the history of the union are now interspersed with Strauss-Kahn. I don't blame Strauss-Kahn. I blame the union," he said.

A statement posted Friday on the Cambridge union's website said the invitation was made well before Strauss-Kahn's controversial departure from the IMF. His experience in French politics mean that he was "exceptionally well qualified" to speak on the financial crisis and the French presidential election, it said.

Some of those attending the speech, many of them economics or politics students, agreed. They said they wanted to hear about Strauss-Kahn's experiences in the IMF and politics, not his personal life.

"This is a forum for free speech," said politics student Milad Matin, 21. "It's not a value judgement. I'm not endorsing rape by watching him speak."

Strauss-Kahn held in French prostitution probe

Strauss-Kahn has mostly kept a low profile since New York prosecutors dismissed charges of attempted rape and sexual assault against him in August, based on concerns about Diallo's credibility. But in recent months he has rejoined the international speech circuit.

Though the criminal case is over, the first civil court hearing over Diallo's claims is scheduled for March 28.

Strauss-Kahn was also held for two days in January in a police station in the northern French city of Lille, where investigators questioned him about allegations that a prostitution ring organized by his business acquaintances provided women for clients of Lille's Carlton Hotel.

Police want to establish whether Strauss-Kahn knew that women at parties he attended in Lille, Paris and Washington were prostitutes. His lawyer has said Strauss-Kahn had no reason to think so.

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Reuters and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

BERLIN -- Germany's best-selling daily, Bild, has removed its trademark pictures of topless women from the front page in a gesture to quell a storm of complaints, the paper said Friday.

Bild, which sells about 4 million copies a day, will now carry the images on page three instead, a format favored by British tabloids.

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"It is perhaps a small step from a female perspective, but for Bild and all men in Germany, it is a big step," Bild said in an article.

 

Topless women on the cover have been part of Bild's identity for 28 years. More than 5,000 have bared their breasts there since 1984, according to the BBC.

"I'm pleased that the pictures have finally disappeared from the front of the paper but the question is how long it will stay away. It was very degrading but we will have to wait and see whether this is permanent," said Monika Lazar, women's spokeswoman for Green party.

The decision, which was taken on International Women's Day on Thursday, is intended to make the paper more acceptable to women but without losing its character, the paper said. Bild also gave all female employees the day off to mark International Women's Day.

"Of course Bild wants to remain sexy. But in a more modern way, and better packaged inside the paper. Just as so many women and reader panels have wanted," the paper said.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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ICHINOSEKI, Japan – We’re on the Iwate coast of Japan this week, looking back on the devastation wrought here nearly a year ago by the Tohoku earthquake and tsunami that flattened coastal communities and killed nearly 20,000 people.

The cleanup we have witnessed on our frequent trips back here since the disaster is simply astounding and is a testament to the strength of the communities that remain. In fishing towns like Otsuchi, Kesennuma and Ichinomaki, NBC News has documented the gradual steps to recovery, from search and rescue, to the clearing of rubble, to the sorting and removal of debris from city streets.

One thing absent in our coverage though: reconstruction.

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My colleague Ian Williams earlier in the week wrote about the issues facing the town of Otsuchi, where 10 percent of the town’s population of 16,000 is dead or missing and nearly 70 percent of the town was obliterated by the tsunami.

Today, all that stands in much of Otsuchi are the foundations of the buildings that once stood there – skeletal remains of sleepy neighborhoods that once occupied these parts. In the surrounding hills around, small communities of short-term, pre-fabricated homes for the displaced have sprung up, granting a small degree of normalcy to residents who had spent months living in schools, recreation centers and other temporary camps.

When the government will allow, much less begin, construction of new permanent homes in these areas is difficult to predict. In communities like Otsuchi, the debate seems to be centered on whether residents should be allowed to begin rebuilding now or must the town’s coastal defenses be strengthened before development can begin.

With many of these coastal towns having disproportionally older populations – a result of the departure of many younger residents to other parts of Japan for work – the desire for quickly built, affordable housing is a popular sentiment among people here.

It was with that backdrop that I watched a video yesterday released in early January of a 30-story hotel tower being built in China in a shockingly quick 360 hours. 

It’s not the first time we’ve seen such feats from China, or from Chinese construction firm, Broad Sustainable Building (BSB). Two years ago, the three-year-old company shocked the world by constructing a 15-floor hotel in two days.

This time around they doubled down on the aptly named T-30 Hotel.

Not only that, but they gave viewers a unique look at a style of building construction that has been employed by the West for some time, but with unique adaptions that BSB developed and hope will help launch the style throughout Asia.

Pre-fab solution?
BSB’s system of pre-fabrication involves constructing segments of a building in advance at an indoor factory. There the basic building blocks of a modern building – things like ventilation, water pipes and electrical wiring – are pre-installed, allowing for the segments to be uniformly stacked at the construction site and assembled like Lego blocks.

The savings in construction time is perhaps the most note-worthy thing. An interesting piece done on BSB and its latest feat by the Los Angeles Times quotes one expert on pre-fabricated architecture who noted that such construction techniques can shave a third or a half off building schedules in western countries.

BSB sliced off between one-half and two-thirds of construction time on T-30.  Not to mention 20 to 30 percent off building costs through reduced construction times and greater efficiencies.

And since much of the construction is done in the relative safety of the factory floor compared to many stories in the air, BSB’s on-site accidents noticeably dipped.

The company also claims a number of innovations in its designs that would certainly appeal to rebuilding residents in northeastern Japan. After all, the inspiration for BSB’s formation were reconstruction efforts in China’s Sichuan province after an 8.0 earthquake rocked the region in 2008, leveling cities and leaving towns in such disrepair, they were forced to completely relocate.

According to the video, which was released by BSB, the new hotel is designed to handle earthquakes up to 9.0 on the Richter scale and incorporates design advances like external solar shading, three-stage air purification systems and improved insulation techniques that make the building five times more energy efficient than other Chinese buildings.

Pre-fabricated building techniques are already in use throughout the affected regions of Japan as a form of temporary housing. In fact, Japan was already moving residents into pre-fabricated houses just eight days after the quake and as of last week there were 52,620 temporary houses built in 911 locations throughout the country.

However, much of this housing is built on school sports fields and other public spaces – often contracted out for two years before the temporary housing must be disassembled and the space returned.

That’s a point not lost on the residents we talked to this week. Many living in short-term housing are older and have no meaningful income. So they live off pensions with no realistic means of building or renting new homes.

To deal with this issue that will seemingly boil over in 2014, Iwate prefecture alone has announced they will construct between 4,000-5,000 permanent public housing units for the displaced.

Where and when these housing blocks will be built in this nation where land is at a premium is one that will certainly keep urban planners here busy for years to come.

The lessons learned from the T-30 exercise should not be lost on municipal governments up and down the Iwate coast. Pre-fabricated housing once viewed as a short-term fix can now be the answer to a very long-term problem.

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MOSCOW – Vladimir Ryzhkov’s body language said it all. 

The veteran Russian opposition leader was up on stage during the first mass  protest after Vladimir Putin’s big presidential election win. And he looked like a man on auto-pilot as he introduced one speaker after another, half-heartedly peppering his remarks with calls for “taking power back” and “Russia without Putin.”

A month earlier, Ryzhkov had seemed as energized as Jumpin’ Jack Flash as he barked down his microphone in minus-10 degree Fahrenheit weather and looked out on a sea of humanity chanting for a “New Russia.” But on this much warmer night in the modest Pushkin Square in central Moscow, Ryzhkov’s spirit seemed to freeze over as he gazed on a crowd a fraction of the size of the earlier one. Surrounded by phalanxes of riot police, the protest seemed much smaller than the police estimate of 14,000.

“I’m optimistic and pessimistic,” he told me as the two-hour rally drew to a close.

“If Putin blocks our protests, we will come back in the hundreds of thousands [to commit acts of] civil disobedience.”

Did he think there would be violence? “Yes – I’m afraid there’s no other way,” he said, looking dejected.

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Level playing field
This week has been a moment of truth for the mostly middle-class activists who say they want nothing more than what most of us in the West take for granted: a civil society and a level political playing field. The re-election of Putin came with many claims of election fraud from both domestic and foreign observers.

Sergei Strokan, a foreign affairs writer for the popular Kommersant daily newspaper, seemed to put it best. “The big question for the Russian opposition is whether there is life after March 4.”

As we sipped coffees in the up-market Moscow bistro where many say the protest movement was born, I asked Strokan what the protesters could possibly do next. After all, according to the final tally, Putin won almost 64 percent of the vote. Even factoring in all of the alleged cheating, he still would have garnered a majority of ballots.

“Before they do anything truly effective,” Strokan replied, “they must first admit one simple fact: That Vladimir Putin still enjoys the support of the vast majority of Russians.”   

Yevgeny Tinchenko, a 25-year-old, unemployed Russian from Siberia, summed up the reasons behind that support. I met him in Zagorsk, about 50 miles outside of Moscow, where he was looking for a job in a traditionally pro-Putin religious center.

“Putin inspires trust as a person,” Tinchenko told me. “I simply like him. When I see him on TV I think things will improve if he is running the country.” But Tinchenko went on to say that he only saw Putin on state-run TV, and knew next to nothing about the other candidates.

There no doubt Putin used all of the ideological and propaganda weapons at his disposal to exploit those feelings  and win big, in the first round of the vote. Now he needs to fulfill the almost $170 billion in campaign promises he made over the past month – from pay raises for school teachers to more housing for war veterans. 

Putin power plays
Meanwhile, from his renewed position of strength, Putin is doing everything he can to diminish the opposition’s authority, in part by proffering a whole tree of olive branches.

For instance, the Kremlin called on Russia’s chief prosecutor to review the charges against Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the former oil oligarch and Putin arch-enemy, imprisoned since 2003 because he dared challenge Putin’s authority. This is seen as a sign they may be softened or dropped. 

It’s an example of how, firmly back in the driver’s seat, Putin can maneuver in a chess game he arguably plays better than anyone (except, perhaps, former world champion – and opposition leader – Gary Kasparov).

In another deft Putin move, he reached out to a rival candidate, billionaire Mikhail Prokhorov, after the latter said the election results were “unfair.” Putin called Prokhorov and asked him if he’d accept a cabinet post in the new government. (It’s unlikely, though, that Prokhorov, who came in a strong third in the election, will accept the offer.)

The moves underscore Putin’s clever attempt to peel away the center of the protest movement.

‘Two Russias’
But, unfortunately for Putin, this opposition goes much deeper than a clutch of hard-core extremists. It’s a whole emerging Russian middle-class – millions of people with money and property – but no voice. 

“We are on the verge of losing stability for the single reason that society has already split,” said Strokan. “The crack is growing wider and wider, and what we see now is not one Russia, but two Russias. And neither listens to the other.”

Kremlin watchers like Strokan worry about a collision course that Putin and the protesters seem to be headed on. The president-elect can crack down on what he sees as a minority of U.S. stooges, but he doesn’t have any ideas about how to reconcile the two sides.

The protesters, meanwhile, know what they don’t want – and that’s another six years of Putin. But they, too, lack any effective strategy to pressure Putin to either reform the system, or step down.

It’s all shaping up into a perfect storm of long-term trouble for Russia. And that’s terrible news for America and the world.

Jim Maceda is an NBC News foreign correspondent based in London who has covered Russia and the former Soviet Union extensively.

Tens of thousands of Bahrainis demonstrated on Friday to demand democratic reforms, stepping up pressure on the U.S.-allied government with the biggest protest yet in a year of unrest.

They began marching along a highway near Manama in response to a call from leading Shiite cleric Sheikh Isa Qassim, who urged people to renew their calls for greater democracy.

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A live blog showed images of the protesters carrying banners denouncing "dictatorship" and demanding the release of detainees.

"We are here for the sake of our just demands that we cannot make concessions over and we stick with them because we have sacrificed for them," Sheikh Isa Qassim said before the march in his weekly sermon in the Shiite village of Diraz.

Qassim and other Shiite clerics led the march.

"It is the biggest demonstration in the past year. I would say it could be over 100,000," said a Reuters photographer after protesters filled up the main Budaiya highway in the area of Diraz and Saar, west of Manama.

Security forces fired tear gas at a small group of protesters, but the rally was mostly peaceful, the BBC reported.

Activists had called for the biggest rally since the Bahraini authorities quelled a popular protest with help from Saudi troops more than a year ago.

Later, hundreds of protesters broke away from the march to walk down the main highway into Manama in an attempt to return to a traffic intersection that protesters occupied for a month during last year's uprising.

Activists said riot police blocking the road fired tear gas and the interior ministry said protesters threw stones.

The government, pressed by its Western allies to allow peaceful expression of dissent, has allowed more opposition protests in recent months.

The BBC reported some protesters chanted "Down, down Hamad," referring to King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.

A statement from the royal court praised a small Friday rally of several hundred government loyalists under the name "Fateh Gathering", and the Qassim march, as signs of democratic maturity.

"The events at the Fateh Gathering as well as the gathering in the Northern Governorate are a source of pride for Bahrainis as a model of correct democratic behavior," state news agency BNA reported.

Majority Shiites were in the forefront of the protest movement which erupted in February 2011 after uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. The Shiia population makes up about 70 percent of the country's 525,000 citizens.

The ruling Sunni Muslim Al Khalifa family crushed the protests a month later, imposing martial law and bringing in Saudi and United Arab Emirates troops to help restore order. It accused the Shiite power Iran of fomenting the unrest.

On Friday, Iraqi followers of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Basra in support of the Bahraini opposition. Around 3,000 people chanted anti-Saudi slogans and carried Bahraini and Iraqi flags.

Daily clashes
Bahrain, where the U.S. Navy Fifth Fleet is based, has remained mired in crisis and Shiite youths clash daily with riot police. The unrest has slowed the economy in what used to be a major tourism and banking hub.

Tension has risen around the February 14 anniversary of the uprising, with security forces maintaining a tight grip on the intersection formerly known as the Pearl Roundabout, which remains closed.

Pro-government Sunni groups have organized smaller counter-rallies, warning authorities not to enter into a dialogue on reforms that could give the elected parliament legislative clout and the power to form governments.

Those groups look to Sunni power Saudi Arabia as a key ally and demonize the opposition as loyal to Iran, a charge the opposition parties deny. Analysts say Riyadh does not want Bahrain to agree to reforms that empower Shiites.

Activists say at least 27 people have been killed in the unrest since June, many from the effects of tear gas. The government disputes the causes of death.

King Hamad appeared to dismiss the opposition last month, saying they were disunited.

Qassim said Friday's march would show how strong the opposition was. "The march will either prove you are only an isolated minority making demands, or that the demands are widely popular," he said in his sermon, which was posted on YouTube.

Next month, the Bahraini Grand Prix motor race is due to be held in the country, according to the BBC.

Reuters contributed to this report.

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UNITED NATIONS – The leader of Syria's main opposition group rejected calls Friday by U.N. envoy Kofi Annan for peace talks with President Bashar Assad's government, saying it’s pointless and unrealistic as long as the regime is massacring its own people.

As the prospects for diplomacy faltered, a Turkish official said two Syrian generals, a colonel and two sergeants defected to Turkey on Thursday, a day after a Syrian deputy oil minister also deserted Assad's regime, making him the highest-ranking civilian official to join the opposition.

The military defections are significant as most army defectors so far have been low-level conscripts.

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Annan, who has been appointed joint U.N.-Arab League envoy to Syria, has said his mission was to start a "political process" to resolve the conflict in the country. He is due in Syria on Saturday where he will meet with Assad, U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon confirmed.

Ban told reporters in New York that Annan also plans to meet with the Syrian opposition before leaving the country on Sunday.

In a telephone interview from Paris, Burhan Ghalioun, who heads the opposition Syrian National Council, told The Associated Press that Annan already has disappointed the Syrian people.

“These kind of comments are disappointing and do not give a lot of hope for people in Syria being massacred every day,” Ghalioun said. “It feels like we are watching the same movie being repeated over and over again.”

“My fear is that, like other international envoys before him, the aim is to waste a month or two of pointless mediation efforts,” he added, referring to Annan.

Tank rounds and mortar bombs
Syrian forces killed at least 54 people on Friday as they sought to quell demonstrations against Assad before the weekend’s peace mission.

Tank rounds and mortar bombs crashed into opposition districts in the rebellious central city of Homs, killing 17 people, activists said, while 24 were killed in the northern province of Idlib and more deaths were reported elsewhere.

"Thirty tanks entered my neighborhood at seven this morning and they are using their cannons to fire on houses," said Karam Abu Rabea, a resident in Homs's Karm al-Zeitoun neighborhood.

The U.N. says more than 7,500 people have been killed in the past year since the revolt against Assad erupted in the country's south and engulfed the country. Activists put the death toll at more than 8,000.

The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

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UTATSU, Japan – At first light, the cove at Utatsu is a picture of tranquility, the silence broken only by the chugging of engines as a fleet of small boats makes its way out across the flat blue water.

But the small harbor from which they leave is cracked and has sunk by two and a half feet. Beyond the beach is the crumpled remains of a seawall, tossed aside by the tsunami, and behind that the foundations are all that are left of a cluster of homes.

"I can't even find the words to describe it," said Hiroko Mirura, who heads a local women's fishing association, and who lost her husband in last year’s tsunami.

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Before the disaster, the local economy was built around scallops, oysters and seaweed – with the seaweed from here prized across Japan. But Utatsu lost 80 of its 100 fishing boats.

 

The boats that survived were mostly out at sea when the raging water swept in, but for the first time since the disaster, they are now back out, harvesting seaweed.

 

"It's a start," Mirura told me, "but we still need to fix the fishing facilities." Now up to 200 people are back at work.

Slimy mess tastes good
We joined the seaweed farmers on a bitterly cold morning as they pulled from the water giant branches of the slimy weed, known in Japan as wakame. It's grown from long frames, marked by rows of buoys. Mostly this is a family business, and men and women with craggy weathered faces worked methodically at the weed with their curved knives.

Few words were spoken, though one man, taking a break, cigarette hanging from his lips, told us: "It's good, the quality is very good this year." They expect it to fetch high prices in the market.

Back on shore, the Wakame is dunked in boiling water, to soften and clean it, before being salted as a preservative. In the past this processing machinery had been kept at their homes, but was mostly swept away with those houses.

The new equipment has been provided under a program backed by the U.S. charity Mercy Corps and their Japanese partner Peace Winds. The giant U.S. retailer Walmart also provided support.

"This is really the beginning of seeing their economy come back to life," said Randolph Martin, who heads Mercy Corps' East Asia operations, and has spent a good chunk of the last year in Japan looking for this type of high impact micro-investment.

"It’s more than just getting the economy going. It's about getting their lives and livelihoods back," Martin told me. "You look here and you don't see helpless victims of a disaster. You see resilient survivors."

 

Around 100 sets of processing equipment have been supplied to the community here. One elderly man bent over his tank of boiling water, stirring the weed with his gloved hand. He stepped back to hand me a stalk of Wakame with a sort of cork-screw type head on it, and regarded as a particular delicacy. It was slimy, crunchy and salty – but surprisingly tasty.

The elderly man laughed, so did several women seated on the ground nearby, sorting through more seaweed, just dragged like some slimy alien off another boat.

The task of rebuilding this battered coast is enormous, but for the small hamlet of Utatsu the return of their seaweed business is an important step towards restoring their livelihoods and sense of community.

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Updated at 12:45 p.m., ET: WASHINGTON -- A 30,000-pound bunker buster bomb designed to smash through some 200 feet of concrete before exploding is a "great weapon" that could be used by U.S. forces in a clash with Iran over its nuclear program, an Air Force general said on Thursday.

Israel stepped in line, asking the United States for the advanced bombs and refueling planes that could aid an Israeli strike on Tehran's underground nuclear sites, an Israeli official told Reuters on Thursday. 

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"Such a request was made" around the time of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's visit to Washington this week, the official said, confirming media reports.

But the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity given the sensitivity of the issue, played down as "unrealistic" reports that the United States would condition supplying the hardware on Israel promising not to attack Iran this year.

Netanyahu told President Barack Obama at a White House meeting on Monday that Israel had not yet decided on military action against Iran, sources close to the talks said.

'A great weapon'
Serious talk of the buster bomb surfaced on Thursday after a high-raking military official described the bomb, designed to smash through some 200 feet of concrete before exploding, as a "great weapon” and could be used by U.S. forces in a clash with Tehran over its nuclear program.

Lieutenant General Herbert Carlisle, Air Force deputy chief of staff for operations, said the massive ordnance penetrator, which the military began receiving only last year, is part of the U.S. arsenal available for strikes against countries like Iran, which has some buried nuclear facilities.

"The massive ordnance penetrator is a great weapon. We are continuing to improve that. It has great capability now and we are continuing to make it better. It is part of our arsenal and it will be a potential if we need it in that kind of scenario," Carlisle told a conference on U.S. defense programs.

The Pentagon has begun working on military options if sanctions and diplomacy fail to prevent Tehran from building a nuclear weapon.

World powers to Iran: Open Parchin military site to IAEA inspectors

Defense Secretary Leon Panetta told the National Journal in an interview on Thursday that planning had been going on "for a long time."

Major powers are increasingly concerned about Iran's nuclear enrichment program, which they view as an attempt to build an atomic weapon. But Tehran says it is meant for peaceful energy production.

Israel holding off?
Israel is worried about potential for Iran to acquire nuclear weapons. Netanyahu said during his Washington visit that time was running out for diplomacy and sanctions.

Nevertheless, Netanyahu reportedly is willing to wait at least a few weeks to let sanctions work.

"I am not standing with a stopwatch in hand. It is not a matter days or weeks, but also not a matter of years. Everybody understands this," Netanyahu told an news program in Israel according to Britain's Telegraph newspaper.

"We would be happy if this thing is resolved peacefully, if Iran decides to stop its nuclear program," he said according to the Telegraph. "To stop it, to dismantle its facility in Qom, and to stop enriching uranium. I will be most happy, I think all Israel's citizens will also be happy."

Panetta, who has said diplomacy and sanctions should be given more time, told the National Journal he did not think Israel had decided whether to order a high-risk raid on Iran's nuclear sites.

He said the United States was committed to preventing Iran from acquiring atomic weapons and would have a greater impact than Israel if it decided force was necessary.

"If they decided to do it there's no question that it would have an impact, but I think it's also clear that if the United States did it we would have a hell of a bigger impact," Panetta said.

The tough rhetoric from the Pentagon came despite President Barack Obama's effort this week to tamp down "loose talk" and "bluster" about possible military action, saying there was still an opportunity for diplomacy.

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Reuters and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

An Indonesian millionaire who was once known as one of the world's up-and-coming collectors and dealers of rare wines was arrested on Thursday and accused of trying to bamboozle other wealthy buyers with more than $1.3 million worth of counterfeit bottles.

Rudy Kurniawan, 35, of Arcadia, Calif., was arrested in Los Angeles, where he has lived in luxury for years despite a longstanding deportation order expelling him from the country, federal prosecutors said. He is charged in New York with repeatedly trying to sell sophisticated fakes of vintages that can trade for thousands of dollars per bottle.

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The criminal charges follow years of increasing suspicions about Kurniawan among top wine connoisseurs. Some of his wines were pulled from a sale in 2007 after an auction house declared them to be fakes. The billionaire yachtsman, entrepreneur and wine investor William Koch sued Kurniawan in 2009, claiming that several bottles he'd purchased from him were phony.

Prosecutors charged Kurniawan with "multiple fraudulent schemes" relating to his wine business between 2007 and 2012, including attempting to sell fake wine and fraudulently obtaining millions of dollars in loans.

The complaint was unsealed on Thursday in Manhattan federal court.

"Mr. Kurniawan's days of wine and wealth are over, if the allegations in this case are proven," Manhattan U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement. "Rudy Kurniawan held himself out to be a wine aficionado with a nose for a counterfeit bottle, but he was the counterfeit."

He has sold millions of dollars' worth of wine in recent years, including about $35 million in 2006 alone, prosecutors said.

The complaint alleged that in one scheme, Kurniawan consigned for auction at least 84 bottles of counterfeit wine purporting to be from Domaine Ponsot in Burgundy, France, which were expected to sell for about $600,000.

Watch video report at NBC Los Angeles

Kurniawan attempted to sell one bottle that he said was a 1929 bottle from Domaine Ponsot, but Domaine Ponsot did not begin estate bottling until 1934, the complaint said.

Kurniawan also consigned bottles of wine that had supposedly been bottled between 1945 and 1971 from the Clos. St. Denis vineyard of Domaine Ponsot, according to the complaint. But Domaine Ponsot did not make wine from that vineyard until 1982.

Prosecutors said that batch of fakes was expected to sell for $600,000 until it was withdrawn from sale amid questions about its authenticity. When Domaine Ponsot investigated, prosecutors said, Kurniawan claimed to have purchased the bottles from someone in Asia. The phone numbers he provided for this buyer, however, turned out to be fakes too. One rang to a regional Indonesian airline, the other to a shopping mall.

Other fraud charges against Kurniawan are related to a $3 million loan he received from a company that wasn't named in court papers. Prosecutors said the wine collector understated his personal debts by $11 million when he applied for the loan.

Kurniawan was charged with three counts of wire fraud and two counts of mail fraud. Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, prosecutors said.

'Trophy wines'
His lawyer could not immediately be reached for comment.

In a 2006 profile in the Los Angeles Times, Kurniawan boasted of sometimes dropping $75,000 on a single case, and he talked of his own skill at sniffing out forgeries.

Many of Kurniawan's alleged victims were "people with a lot of money," Peter A. Nelson, of Monopole Wine, told NBC Los Angeles.

They included "collectors who look for trophy wines ... to impress their friends with or to have extravagant wine-tasting dinners," Nelson said.

Reuters, The Associated Press, NBC Los Angeles and msnbc.com staff contributed to this report.

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A Saudi Arabian woman died and dozens more were injured after a protest at a university was stormed by stick-wielding police, London's Times newspaper reported on Friday.

Human Rights Watch's Christoph Wilcke told msnbc.com from Germany that he had read in Arabic-language news reports that hundreds of female students from the Arabic literature and education departments of King Khaled University in the southwest of the country were angry at "harsh" treatment by their supervisors and the fact that trash in their departments was not picked up for three days.

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Some reports put the number of protesters at 5,000, said Wilcke, a senior researcher at the organization's Middle East and North Africa division for Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

One protester died in the hospital of an epileptic seizure and another miscarried her unborn child after the demonstration was broken up, the newspaper reported. (The Times operates behind a pay wall).

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Videos that Wilcke had seen showed "women shouting, being agitated ... (but) entirely peaceful," he said.

Wilcke estimated that between 50 and 100 members of the religious police were called to the university along with regular police, based on the reports he had seen. Protesters threw shoes as police arrived, the Times reported.

The university promised to investigate the incident, the Times reported.

'Caught up with the world'
While seen by some as a champion of women's rights in the deeply conservative country, Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah "has not made good on any big hopes concretely" since he came to power in 2005," Wilcke said.

Nevertheless, the demonstration and the fact that it was being reported highlighted the "general evolution of Arab society," Wilcke said. A recent protest at a women's prison went virtually unreported, he said.

Amnesty calls Saudi beheading for sorcery 'shocking'

"Here something happened and we heard about it," he said. Wilcke added that it was also significant because of the size and the fact that the women demonstrated openly.

"They stood in the blazing sun and decided to chant for a while," he said. "It means that the Saudis have caught up with the world, they are more aware of their rights … (but it) doesn't mean that the government has shifted gear."

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Thousands of miles from their home in Seymour, Tenn., Scott and Theresa Johnson host Shabbat dinners in their Jerusalem apartment every Friday night for "lone soldiers" — as the young men and women who travel from foreign countries to serve in the Israeli army are known.

Typically, 20 or 30 of the soldiers join the Johnsons for a traditional meal and wine and to join in a rousing rendition of "Shalom Aleichem," an old Hebrew song sung to greet the Sabbath day of rest. Scott Johnson leads the song wearing a "kippah" — a traditional Jewish head cover — and standing beneath a painting of Gilad Shalit, the Israeli soldier held prisoner in Gaza for five years before being released in October.

The Johnsons, however, are not Jewish. They are evangelical Christians who live in Israel full-time, operating a U.S.-based 501 c(3) nonprofit, the Servants to Christ Corp.

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Servants to Christ is one of scores of evangelical Christian organizations working in Israel on a variety of charitable missions. And its presence is just one example of the increasingly tight embrace of the Jewish state by both the leadership of American evangelical churches and organizations and their grass-roots supporters.

Pro-Israel rhetoric — fueled in part by increasing tensions in the Middle East over Iran's nuclear program and the threat it might pose to the Jewish state  — is a staple of many U.S. evangelical leaders' speeches and sermons.

It has likewise become a popular refrain among GOP presidential candidates looking to shore up their support with the party's conservative religious wing.

Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich, for example, recently made comments calling the Palestinians an "invented people" and has said he would support Israel if it decided to attack Iran.

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Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, said such staunch support for Israel is fundamental to the evangelical movement.

"American evangelicals have it in their DNA: God blesses those who bless the Jews and curses whoever curses the Jews," he said.  "We want God to bless America and if America doesn't support Israel we don't have his blessing. It doesn't mean Israel is always right, it doesn't mean we don't remonstrate Israel, but we are going to have their back."

War for American hearts and minds rages over Islam

That broad backing for Israel is in part grounded in a widely held evangelical belief that the existence of a Jewish state is a prerequisite for the second coming of Jesus.

Many evangelicals believe that when Jesus returns, it will be to Israel. The purpose of his Second Coming will be to destroy its enemies and return to heaven with his followers in what is variously called the Rapture or the End Times.

'Islamaphobic'
Under this interpretation of the Book of Revelation, the Rapture can't happen if there is no Jewish state in the Holy Land.

But critics — including some within the evangelical movement itself — say that such devout allegiance to Israel is also being driven by a more worldly concern: fear of Islam.

"We definitely believe they (U.S. evangelical leaders) are Islamaphobic and that is hindering them from having the right approach toward Islam," said Munther Isaac, an instructor at Bethlehem Bible College who describes himself on his blog as a Palestinian evangelical Christian.

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Isaac is a co-organizer of a five-day conference that began Monday in Bethlehem titled "Christ at the Checkpoint." The goal of the event, which is expected to draw up to 600 people, is "to equip the global church to understand Scripture as it relates to the Palestinian context, and to discuss the theological importance of Peace and Justice in an evangelical context." Among the lectures on the agenda is one titled "Loving the Muslim."

Isaac, 32, said many evangelicals and politicians who court them often make no distinction between radical Islam and the religion's mainstream: "The more we demonize Islam in our talks, in our books, in our sermons, the more we polarize them … it's like feeding the enemy and empowering the more radical voice, and we shouldn't do that."

But Land, of the Southern Baptist Convention, criticized what he referred to as "replacement theologians" within the evangelical movement who do not see the creation of the state of Israel as an act of divine intervention.

"Unfortunately, many people in the replacement theology crowd seem to give moral equivalence to Israel and her enemies and we do not see moral equivalence," Land said. 

He also rejected the notion that “Islamaphobia” plays any role in evangelical support for Israel, ticking off numerous deadly attacks perpetrated by Muslim extremists against Americans and others, including the 2009 Fort Hood shooting in Texas and the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

American Muslims come of age in post-9/11 era

"There is a dangerous cult loose within Islam called Wahhabism, and it's called Jihadism," he said. "It needs to be confronted for what it is and it needs to be defeated. When people are trying to kill you it's not Islamaphobic, it's reality."

Others are more direct in their criticism of Isaac and other organizers of the Christ at the Checkpoint conference.

"We think our support for Israel is a positive response from the heart, not out of a diagnosed or supposed phobia," said David Parsons, a spokesman for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, a nonprofit evangelical ministry. He called the Christ at the Checkpoint organizers "misguided" and "dishonest."

"They've not been honest about why the wall and the checkpoints are there, and they downplay the terrorists' threats to Israel, and they downplay the persecution of Palestinian Christians by their Muslim neighbors," Parsons said.

Political tumult
Mistrust of Islam and its adherents within the evangelical movement is well documented.  A survey published last year by the Pew Center Forum on Public Life indicated that 67 percent of more than 2,200 evangelical leaders surveyed expressed an unfavorable view of Islam and that 47 percent considered Islam to be a "major threat" to Christianity.

But many evangelical Christian Zionists point to the current escalation of tensions between Israel and Iran, which Israel says is trying to develop nuclear weapons, as well as the political tumult and violence in the Middle East arising from the continuing Arab Spring uprisings, as legitimate reasons to be concerned.

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Rebecca Brimmer, chief executive and president of Bridges for Peace, a Jerusalem-based evangelical group that operates the largest food drive in the country, said: "I don't hate any people or group. But, it's like with (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad saying hateful things — if I quote what Ahmadinejad says, does that mean I am Islamaphobic? Or does it mean I am a realist that says this is what this man is saying and we should pay attention." Ahmadinejad has been quoted as calling for the destruction of Israel.

That sentiment has spilled over into broader forums.

Conservative American political commentator Glenn Beck last year organized a gathering of more than 3,000 people in the ancient Israeli city of Ceasaria for what he called a "Restoring Courage" tour intended to highlight concerns that pro-Islamist governments were springing up throughout the Middle East and north Africa in the wake of last year's "Arab Spring" revolts. While Beck is Mormon, the event drew a heavily evangelical crowd and featured evangelical pastor John C. Hagee as a keynote speaker.

Republicans could give Obama green light on Iran

Hagee, a Texas minister and the founder of Christians United for Israel, revved up the crowd with these words: "People of Israel, we have come from America and the nations of the world as people of faith. God is with you. Fifty million evangelicals in America are with you. This time in history you are not alone. ... Your enemies are our enemies, and your fight is our fight. We are united, and we will prevail."

The belief that a military conflict between Israel and Iran is coming explains why many evangelical Christians, like the Johnsons, are also big supporters of the Friends of the IDF (the Israeli Defense Forces, a charitable organization providing assistance to Israeli soldiers.

Pizza in the trenches
Scott Johnson, who calls himself an ardent "Christian Zionist," says he is not ashamed to take sides. During the Lebanon war in 2006, the Johnsons took a van and went to Ramban Hospital in Haifa to pick up wounded soldiers and return them to their homes. They also went to the Lebanon border and delivered pizza, falafel and shawarma to Israeli soldiers in the trenches. And on several occasions they have hosted barbecues on their terrace for entire units of the IDF.

"I believe Islam is a threat to the world. It's a threat to decent, moral human beings. Not 100 percent of them, but the ones in control," Scott Johnson said.

Observers say evangelical support for Israel gained momentum after Israel's Six Day War in 1967 against Syria, Jordan and Egypt. Many evangelicals viewed Israel's victory against its Soviet-backed Arab neighbors with admiration, reminiscent of the biblical story of David, the future king of Israel, defeating gigantic Philistine warrior Goliath.

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In 1980, after the international community condemned Israel for declaring Jerusalem the "eternal and indivisible capital" of the Jewish state and 13 nations shifted their embassies to Tel Aviv, Christian Zionists established the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem, to show their support for the Jewish state.

During the 1980s, the Israeli government began to organize all-expenses-paid "familiarization" tours of the Holy Land for evangelical pastors in an effort to cement such support. Evangelical Christian Mission trips and humanitarian tours continue today, giving the country not only moral support but also a nice economic boost. During the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, for example, roughly 5,000 evangelicals visit Israel as part of the Christian celebration of the Feast of Tabernacles, and 60 percent of Israel's 2.8 million tourists last year were Christian pilgrims, according to the Ministry of Tourism.

Historically, some Israelis have been suspicious of Christian groups inside the country, worrying that their aim is to convert Jews to Christianity. But given their staunch political support for Israel in recent years, most Israeli politicians now welcome them.

"I think why there is there such a strong connection between Jews and Christians, especially at the political level in Israel, is we saw during the (Palestinian uprising) intifada that one by one, the nations of the world were turning against us," said Joshua Reinstein, director of the Israeli Knesset's Christian Allies Caucus. "But Christians stood their ground and stood up next to us." 

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LONDON -- With nine bedrooms, a stylish indoor pool and a suede-walled private movie theater, it was a standout luxury home -- even in a London neighborhood already full of celebrities and super-rich foreign oligarchs.

But after being wrecked by squatters, 7 Winnington Close is now at the center an international court battle over the multi-billion dollar assets of dead Libyan dictator Moammar Gadhafi.

The $16 million property, in north London’s wealthy Hampstead area, was bought by the despot's playboy son Saadi about six months before the Arab Spring uprisings began.

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Now that the Gadhafi regime has been swept away, Libya's new government wants ownership of the home, alleging it was purchased with cash plundered illegally from the state and its citizens.

The country's new rulers will ask Britain's High Court on Friday for the repatriation of the property as the proceeds of corruption.

Lawyer Mohamed Shaban will argue that Saadi, a former professional soccer player who is now living under house arrest in Niger, could not possibly have afforded the mansion on his wages as a commander in the Libyan army and therefore must have purchased it with state funds.

Fast cars
It is significant development – the first international move to recover parts of the vast Gadhafi family portfolio of property, hedge funds, fast cars and private jets.

"If we are successful, we will then start to build a case for the other assets," Giuma Bukleb, media attaché to the Libyan Embassy in London, told msnbc.com.

The court case will also signal the end of a year-long occupation of the house by squatters.

A group calling itself "Topple The Tyrants" took over the house during the uprising, demanding that it be returned to its "rightful owners," the Libyan people.

The squatters unfurled a banner on the roof that read, "Out of Libya, Out of London" and "Solidarity," and posted a notice on the door declaring the building occupied – a move that under British law prevents owners from using force to access to their own property without the backing of court bailiffs.

One Libyan law student who took part in the occupation told the London Evening Standard the mansion had been "pretty much destroyed" inside, adding: "There's no furniture, just mattresses. The swimming pool is smashed and the heating doesn't work."

When msnbc.com visited the house this week there was no answer at the door. A black leather couch had been pushed up against the side entrance to prevent access.

'Peace and quiet'
The occupation has bemused neighbors, whose quiet cul-de-sac is now regularly besieged by reporters and Libyan political activists.

"It was noisy at the start but we haven’t heard anything for a while," said one neighbor, who declined to be named. "I hope the court action is successful so that Libyans get their property and we get our peace and quiet."

Robert Palmer, a campaigner for anti-corruption group Global Witness, said Friday's court case would be "hugely significant."

"This is the first action to recover the British assets of an Arab Spring dictator," he said. "A lot of people will be watching to see what happens."

$20 billion in assets?
Bukleb said much of the Gadhafi family's property is in London, where one of the dictator's sons, Seif, attended the London School of Economics.

Dealings with Gadhafi son embarrass London college

Libyan Embassy officials say a court victory will trigger a deeper investigation into the Gadhafi family's complex network of assets, which Britain's Treasury estimates could be worth almost $20 billion in total.

Many are owned through offshore investment companies. The house at the center of Friday's case is registered to Capitana Seas Ltd., a company based in the British Virgin Islands. The embassy's lawyers were forced to seek the U.K. Treasury's intervention in order to establish a link to Saadi Gadhafi, who is thought to be one of the company's directors.

Embassy officials believe the family's U.K. property assets include the $200 million Portman House on Oxford Street and apartments worth a total of $25 million in South Kensington.

"The fact is, we simply do not know for certain exactly how much the Gadhafi family had in London," Bukleb said.

A year after revolt, Libya mired in factional fighting

The National Transitional Council (NTC) won United Nations approval to access $1.55 billion in Libyan currency held in the U.K. by printer De La Rue last year.

Palmer believes Capitana Seas will not contest the court action because it is owed money by Saadi.

'Greedy hands'
Saadi's lawyer, Jerusalem-based Nick Kaufman, did not verify that claim, but told msnbc.com: "Even if Saadi was a director of the company, he was never lawfully served with any legal documentation relating to this outrageously speculative claim."

He added: "The NTC, which has been criticized for a lack of transparency in its own financial dealings, is exploiting the fact that my client is currently subject to wholly unjustified international sanctions and an Interpol red notice for baseless criminal charges -- which it itself instigated.

"As a result my client cannot leave the humanitarian protection afforded him by Niger without fear of unlawful arrest. He can neither travel abroad nor can he get access to funds, at present, to instruct British lawyers to represent his interests in the face of this outrageously speculative claim based on surmise and not evidence."

He added that the court action is "a meritless publicity stunt designed to lay greedy hands on a property that was lawfully acquired."

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LONDON -- Benson’s tail wagged lazily as he weaved through the crowds in London’s St. Pancras railway station.

“Good morning ladies and gents, police dog working,” said the pooch’s handler, Graham Rowlstone of the British Transport Police, as the pair strode beneath a soaring glass-and-blue-steel ceiling. “Just making sure it’s nice and safe for you.”

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Some travelers and commuters smiled, laughed and said hello to the black lab. A few petted him. But mostly the pair slipped easily through the concourse.

Suddenly, Benson cocked his ears, lifted his tail and picked up the pace. He trotted in front of a nondescript man in a dark blue fleece, sat down and looked up expectantly.

“Good morning, sir. Where are you traveling today?” Rowlstone asked.

It was a drill to show that Benson’s explosives-sniffing skills were still sharp. The dog passed the test and the man in blue – dog trainer and police officer Paul Saunders – dropped a tennis ball, which Benson chewed enthusiastically.

Dealing with threats
As Britain gears up for the estimated one million visitors expected to descend on the city for the 2012 Olympic Games, bomb-sniffing teams like Benson and Rowlstone are preparing to deal with the threats that come with the big crowds.

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Benson is a relative newcomer to the explosives-detection space, which has been long dominated by “proactive” dogs, which concentrate on inspecting places such as lost-luggage departments and suspicious packages left on trains and buses. In other words, they deal with stationary targets. 

About three years ago, the British Transport Police and others began to train so-called passive dogs like Benson, which search for explosives among crowds of people, essentially following a scent until it stops.

 

Bomb-sniffer dogs are an integral part of the system in place meant to keep travelers safe and public transport running smoothly, British Transport Police Inspector Ed Purchase told msnbc.com.

“The dogs are an extended part of the security operation within London and around the country, making sure the railways are safe, members of the public are safe and that we can keep all the transport system open,” he said.

With the biggest and oldest dog unit in the country, the British Transport Police – in charge of policing Britain's railways and subways – know what they’re talking about.

Attack highly likely?
Britain has faced threats to its mass transit systems for well over a century – the first terrorist strike on London’s underground network was in the 1880s.

And just a day after the announcement was made to award the Olympics to London on July 6, 2005, the city suffered its worst peacetime attack when four suicide bombers killed 52 commuters.

Al-Qaida to Occupy: UK preps Olympics security

So it comes as no surprise that the issue of security on the country’s transport system weighs heavily on the minds of the Olympics organizers.

The games will see the U.K.’s largest peacetime security operation involving tens of thousands of security officials, with 13,500 military personnel, 12,000 police and 10,000 private contractors.

Current potential dangers to London come from a variety of sources including al-Qaida and related jihadi groups, right-wing extremists and Northern Ireland-related militants, according to officials.

The U.K.’s alert level is expected to be raised to “severe” during the games, meaning that an attack is considered highly likely, the government says.

Four-legged ambassadors
For Benson and his canine colleagues it will be a busy time. But while they are most valued for their keen noses, the dogs also have a key public relations role to play.

“(The dogs) are a tool … effective across a range of activities – reassurance, engagement with the public and detection – that’s why they’re attractive to us,” Superintendent Philip Trendall, of the British Transport Police's Counter Terrorism Support Unit, told msnbc.com.

“People notice us a lot more,” said Constable Tony Mart, who works with another black lab, named Pete. “They will always see a police officer with a dog. The interaction with the public is great,” he said.

About a dozen passives have been incorporated into the team over the last three years, Trendall said, but declined to discuss their success rates.

And he says that the dogs’ public-facing role in boosting confidence and good cheer is almost as important as its explosives-sniffing one.

“A machine that people want to come up and give a biscuit to and pat doesn’t exist,” he said.

F. Brinley Bruton is a reporter and editor with msnbc.com in London. Follow her on Twitter.

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Fearing that climate change could wipe out their entire Pacific archipelago, the leaders of Kiribati are considering an unusual backup plan: moving the populace to Fiji.

Kiribati President Anote Tong told The Associated Press on Friday that his Cabinet this week endorsed a plan to buy nearly 6,000 acres on Fiji's main island, Viti Levu. He said the fertile land, being sold by a church group for about $9.6 million, could provide an insurance policy for Kiribati's entire population of 103,000, though he hopes it will never be necessary for everyone to leave.

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"We would hope not to put everyone on one piece of land, but if it became absolutely necessary, yes, we could do it," Tong said. "It wouldn't be for me, personally, but would apply more to a younger generation. For them, moving won't be a matter of choice. It's basically going to be a matter of survival."

Kiribati, which straddles the equator near the international date line, has found itself at the leading edge of the debate on climate change because many of its atolls rise just a few feet above sea level.

Warming oceans could melt ice faster than expected

Tong said some villages have already moved and there have been increasing instances of sea water contaminating the island's underground fresh water, which remains vital for trees and crops. He said changing rainfall, tidal and storm patterns pose as least as much threat as ocean levels, which so far have risen only slightly.

Some scientists have estimated the current level of sea rise in the Pacific at about 2 millimeters (0.1 inches) per year. Many scientists expect that rate to accelerate due to climate change.

Fiji, home to about 850,000 people, is about 1,400 miles south of Kiribati. But just what people there think about potentially providing a home for thousands of their neighbors remains unclear. Tong said he's awaiting full parliamentary approval for the land purchase, which he expects in April, before discussing the plan formally with Fijian officials.

'We're trying to secure the future'
Sharon Smith-Johns, a spokeswoman for the Fijian government, said several agencies are studying Kiribati's plans and the government will release a formal statement next week.

Kiribati, which was known as the Gilbert Islands when it was a British colony, has been an independent nation since 1979.

Oceans' acidic shift may be fastest in 300 million years

Tong has been considering other unusual options to combat climate change, including shoring up some Kiribati islands with sea walls and even building a floating island. He said this week that the latter option would likely prove too expensive, but that he hopes reinforcing some islands will ensure that Kiribati continues to exist in some form even in a worst-case scenario.

"We're trying to secure the future of our people," he said. "The international community needs to be addressing this problem more."

Tong said he hopes that the Fiji land will represent just one of several options for relocating people. He pointed out that the land is three times larger than the atoll of Tarawa, currently home to more than half of Kiribati's population.

Although like much of the Pacific, Kiribati is poor — its annual GDP per person is just $1,600 — Tong said the country has plenty of foreign reserves to draw from for the land purchase. The money, he said, comes from phosphate mining on the archipelago in the 1970s.

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The State Department on Thursday dismissed any suggestion that the United States might pull its advisers out of Uganda, a prospect raised by the “KONY 2012” video generating millions of views on the Internet.

That viral video details the atrocities carried out by Josephy Kony’s Lord’s Resistance Army, or LRA, and is part of a marketing campaign by the advocacy group Invisible Children to raise awareness about the issue. The jungle militia leader is wanted for atrocities by the International Criminal Court and is being hunted by troops in four Central African countries. Last year, the U.S. sent nearly 100 Special Forces troops to Uganda to train military forces there in an attempt to stop Kony.

State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland on Thursday applauded the effort to “shine a light on the horrible atrocities of the LRA.”

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"Hundreds of -- and thousands of people around the world, especially the young people, have been mobilized to express concern for the communities in central Africa that have been placed under siege by the LRA,” Nuland said during a daily press briefing. “So the degree to which this YouTube video helps to increase awareness and increase support for the work that governments are doing, including our own government -- that can only help all of us."

How did 'KONY 2012' video spread so fast? Oprah

Nuland said U.S. is "very much involved" in supporting Uganda and its neighboring states with the Special Forces advisers, who are armed and combat-equipped but only for self-defense. “They've only been in for a couple of months, and we consider them a very important augmentation for our effort to help the East and Central African countries with this problem," she said.

The U.S. troops are armed and combat-equipped, bu their mission is as field trainers, although the military has said they will fight back if attacked.

Although there no plans to remove advisers, the mission is not an open-ended commitment, according to one senior defense official. So, while there is no specific timeline for how long American forces will be there, the U.S. constantly reassesses the situation and its effectiveness, that official said.

Since 2008, the U.S. has spent approximately $500 million helping to strengthen the Ugandan Army in its battle against the LRA.

The Lord's Resistance Army has an estimated 150 to 200 core fighters, with another 600 to 1,000 other supporters or affiliated members throughout central Africa. It arose in Uganda in the 1980s in response to alleged brutality against the Acholi people, but since has been blamed for thousands of mutilations and killings over the last 26 years. The militia abducts children, forcing them to serve as soldiers or sex slaves, and even to kill their parents or each other to survive.

Read more on the issue:

The Guardian: Kony 2012: what's the real story

Foreign Policy: Guest post: Joseph Kony is not in Uganda (and other complicated things)

Many Ugandans frustrated, suspicious with Kony 2012

NBC News' Courtney Kube and Jim Miklaszewski contributed to this report, as did The Associated Press.

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CAIRO, Egypt – International Women's Day took on special meaning for the more than 1,000 Egyptian women who braved harassment to march through downtown Cairo Wednesday. 

The demonstration was sparked by the belief of many women that the recent political victories by socially conservative Islamists, who now control over 70 percent of the parliament, will eventually undermine the few hard-fought rights they have won. 

“The situation is going backward,” complained flight attendant Nadia Salim. “The Salafists (conservative Islamists who believe in a strict interpretation of Sharia law and that women should have a limited role in society) and Muslim Brotherhood will bring us back 100 years.”

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Trying to preserve existing rights
The women said they took to the streets not to gain more rights, but to preserve those they already enjoy.  "We have to hold onto what we have because of the Salafists and Islamists," warned university professor Iman Azzad. 

Their main demand is that women should make up half of the committee that will draft Egypt's new constitution.  Women fear that the Islamist majority will take away their right to divorce and to win custody of their children

"Women are half of society," said Salim. "Why shouldn’t we form half of the constitutional committee?"

Activist Dina Abou El Soud said she had heard that the country’s judges had plans for women to make up only a 10 percent of the panel shaping Egypt's next constitution. She believes women's rights will be the first thing to be sacrificed in order to please the Islamist majority. 

It’s a sea change from the ousted regime of President Hosni Mubarak, when women were guaranteed 64 parliamentary seats.  In the latest post-revolutionary elections, the quota was eliminated and women won only five seats.  "The other seats went to the Muslim Brotherhood and Salafists," said El Soud, co-founder of the Revolutionary Women's Coalition, which has 4,000 members on Facebook.

 "We are going backward, backward and backward," she added as she passed out fliers in English and Arabic. "It is time to make a women's revolution”

El Soud also said that Islamists are trying to discredit existing women's rights by suggesting they were imposed by the Mubarak regime, deriding them as "Suzanne Mubarak's Laws,” the name of the former first lady.

"It’s ridiculous. They are international women's rights that we have gained,” she said.  

Ready for drastic measures
Considering what Egypt's roughly 40 million women stand to lose, Wednesday's turnout was miniscule. Mahy al Aref, a well-dressed pharmacy graduate, said the small crowd was probably due “a lack of educational awareness.”

She said she is worried about putting her German university degree to good use in an increasingly conservative society, a concern shared by her mother, Magda al Akkad, who runs an NGO. "I am worried because of the Islamist direction,” she said. “They have their ideas. I don't know where it will go, but I don't think they will be fair to women in general."

Al Akkad said she said she can foresee a day when Egypt would become unlivable for her and her daughter.  "If fanatics rule, I will leave this country,” she declared.

Four more high-ranking officers have defected from the Syrian armed forces and joined the year-old uprising against President Bashar al-Assad's rule, two rebel groups said on Thursday.

The men fled over the past three days to a camp for Syrian army deserters in southern Turkey, according to Lieutenant Khaled al-Hamoud, a spokesman for the Free Syrian Army. He told Reuters by telephone from Turkey the desertions bring to seven the number of brigadier generals who have defected.

Syria's deputy oil minister defects from Assad regime

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The seven are the highest-ranking officers to abandon Assad, and the rank is the fifth highest in the Syrian armed forces. Mustafa Sheikh was the first brigadier general to announce his defection.

UN prepares food stocks for 1.5 million Syrians"We have six brigadier generals who are now in Turkey and another, who has stayed to lead some battalions inside Syria," Hamoud said. "We plan to form an advisory council to absorb these and any other high-ranking defections and this group will plan operations for the FSA."

 

A Paris-based spokesman for Sheikh's Supreme Syrian Military Council, Fahad al-Masri, said the four recent defectors were still under the observation of Turkish authorities and their names could not yet be released.

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The Place Vendome parking garage in the center of Paris was ablaze earlier Thursday, sending a large plume of black smoke over the city’s skyline.

The fire reportedly broke out in a car parked on the second floor of the garage, according to gtspirit.com. There were no reports of injuries, although one of 90 firemen at the scene was said to have suffered smoke inhalation, The Australian reported.

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Place Vendome, in the city's First Arrondissement, is known for its upscale shopping and the posh Ritz hotel. Employees in the immediate area of the fire were reportedly evacuated.

The garage is also known for housing many expensive vehicles, and gtspirit.com speculated the blaze could end up causing damage in excess of $6.6 million. Unconfirmed reports suggest that the car that started the blaze was a Ferrari.

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An Italian and a British hostage kidnapped in May in Nigeria were killed on Thursday by their captors during a joint raid by British and Nigerian forces trying to free them, Italy's government said.

British Prime Minister David Cameron called Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti to inform him of the "tragic conclusion" of the operation, a statement said.

The joint forces intervened to free Italian Franco Lamolinara and Briton Christopher McManus, fearing that their lives were under threat, the statement said.

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Cameron said it appeared McManus and Lamolinara had been "murdered by their captors before they could be rescued," the BBC reported.

A witness told Reuters that security forces had tried to force their way into a compound in Sokoto, northwest Nigeria.

"The security agencies tried to break into the house but there was resistance. The people inside the house were shooting at them and they returned fire. They exchanged fire for some time," said Mahmoud Abubakar, who lives on the same street.

"I saw a military truck come out of the compound with two bodies on it. I didn't see their color, because they were covered with leaves," he added.

The captors were a faction of militant Islamist sect Boko Haram, a senior official at Nigeria's State Security Service said.

"The hostage-takers shot the hostages before they even entered the compound. All the terrorists have been killed as well," he said. "We arrested some suspects a few days before who led us to them."

British special forces were involved in the rescue, UK media reports said.

McManus’ family said they were devastated by the news.

“We knew Chris was in an extremely dangerous situation,” the family said in a statement published on The Telegraph. “However we knew that everything that could be done was being done. Our thoughts are also of course with the loved ones of Chris’ colleague, Franco Lamolinara, who are also coming to terms with this truly sad news.”

McManus and Lamolinara were working as engineers for a large construction company called Stabilini Visinoni Limited when they were kidnapped on May 12, 2011 in in Birnin Kebbi city, The Telegraph reported.

Kidnappings have become increasingly common in Nigeria in recent years.

Two Britons were held by the Movement for the Emancipation of Niger Delta in September 2008, the newspaper reported. A Scottish oil worker was abducted and his guard killed in April 2009, according to the Telegraph.

Cameron, in a statement published on the Telegraph, said the rescue attempt went forward after authorities “received credible information about their location.”

“A window of opportunity arose to secure their release, " Cameron said. "We also had reason to believe that their lives were under imminent and growing danger."

It was not immediately clear how the two men were killed.

In August a video of the hostages surfaced in the Nigerian capital Abuja with the two men on their knees and blindfolded, with three men wearing turbans and holding guns and ammunition behind them.

This article includes reporting by Reuters and msnbc.com staff.

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