• US, North Korea appear far apart on conditions for negotiation

    By John Newland, Staff Writer, NBC News

    A White House spokesman said Thursday that the United States was open to "authentic and credible" discussions with North Korea -- if it were to show a willingness to abandon its nuclear ambitions. But early signals from Pyongyang were less than enthusiastic.

    Aboard Air Force One as President Barack Obama was headed to Boston, spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters that U.S. officials would be willing to negotiate, but would "need to see clear evidence" that the North was "willing to live up to international obligations."

    "So far we have not seen that," he added. "Belligerent actions ... actually indicate the opposite of that."

    North Korea's response through its state media agency KCNA seemed unlikely to change that perception.

    A statement attributed to the policy department of North Korea's National Defense Commission laid down tough conditions under which the North might consider coming to the bargaining table.

    Among the North's demands were that the U.S. work to reverse sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council over Pyongyang's continued nuclear tests. "They should bear in mind that doing so would be a token of good will towards the DPRK," or Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the statement said.

    Less easy to define was a demand that the U.S. "stop all provocative acts against the DPRK and apologize for all of them."

    The statement appeared to refer to the Key Resolve and Foal Eagle joint military exercises conducted by U.S. and South Korean forces when it demanded that the U.S. "give formal assurances before the world that they would not stage again such nuclear war drills to threaten or blackmail the DPRK."

    It additionally demanded that U.S. immediately "withdraw all nuclear war means from South Korea and its vicinity and give up their attempt to reintroduce them."

    "They should bear in mind that the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula can begin with the pullout of the nuclear war means introduced by the U.S. and this may lead to the global denuclearization," the statement said.

    NBC News' Stacey Klein contributed to this report.

    Related:

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    Full North Korea coverage from NBC News

  • Israel's booming economy puts billions in US aid under spotlight

    Ariel Schalit / AP

    Israeli shop owners play backgammon in the Betzalel market in central Tel Aviv on Friday. A Bloomberg survey this week said the Israeli shekel was the strongest of 31 major currencies tracked over the last six months.

    By Martin Fletcher, Correspondent, NBC News

    TEL AVIV, Israel -- Boosted by newly discovered natural resources, Israel is surging ahead economically – a success that is pushing the issue of the country's $3 billion in annual aid from the United States onto the agenda.

    The country made its first intervention in the foreign currency market in almost two years Tuesday, buying $100 million to peg back the growing strength of its shekel.

    A Bloomberg survey this week said the shekel was the strongest of 31 major currencies tracked over the last six months.

    Last week, Israel passed another milestone, a potential gamechanger for its economy. Gas began to flow from gas fields off the coast. By 2015 Israel is expected to be fully energy independent, and may be a net exporter.

    And there’s more good news: In this water-challenged region, Israel is well on the way to water independence. Its water desalination industry supplies up to 40 percent of the country’s demand for water, and another 40 percent comes from recycled water from domestic and commercial consumption. Israel reuses its water two to three times.

    The boom may give a louder voice to calls for a reduction to the $3 billion worth of financial assistance Israel receives from the U.S. each year – especially in the Washington, where budget battles continue.

    U.S. campaign groups such as Stop The Blank Check and the Council for the National Interest have long campaigned for the aid program to end, but Republican Sen. Rand Paul recently joined the debate by saying the U.S. could no longer afford to keep borrowing money and then handing it out to others.

    "It will be harder to be a friend of Israel if we are out of money. It will be harder to defend Israel if we destroy our country in the process," Paul told the Jerusalem Institute for Market Studies, an Israeli think tank, in January.

    'A political football'
    That view is echoed by some in Israel, such as Naftali Bennett, a software tycoon and leader of the right-wing Jewish Home political party, who during the recent election campaign said the country needed to free itself from U.S. assistance.

    “Our situation today is very different from what it was 20 and 30 years ago. Israel is much stronger, much wealthier, and we need to be independent,” he said.

    Michael Koplow, program director of the Israel Institute, a Washington think tank, said: “Foreign aid is always a political football – even more so when it comes to Israel. There is no doubt American attention is focused on its own finances.”

    However, he noted that 74 percent of the U.S. aid, which is meant for military and defense equipment, has to be spent with U.S. companies.

    “Given that Israel is a reliable military spender, you would have to think the defense lobby is going to make sure this aid continues,” Koplow said.

    Even those hostile to the aid think it unlikely that Israel’s prosperity will prompt a change.

    “The money doesn’t help alleviate poverty in Israel now, so there is no reason why lack of poverty there would cause it to end,” said Robert Naiman, director of Just Foreign Policy.

    Yossi Mekelberg, associate fellow of the Middle East and North Africa Program at the U.K.’s Chatham House think tank, said: “It would be a matter of national pride to be economically successful and independent, but providing financial support also gives some leverage with Israel.”

    And Israel still has economic problems. Unemployment is relatively low at 6.3 per cent, but the gap between rich and poor is one of the highest of all developed countries, according to the OECD.

    “I don’t think a natural gas boom is going to do much to change that,” observed Koplow.

    That disparity swept Yair Lapid, an inexperienced but popular new politician, into the finance ministry earlier this year as part of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's ruling coalition. Most of his support came from the disillusioned middle class whose summer of protests in 2011 changed the country’s priorities from political to social issues.

    Now Lapid, 49, has to make good on his election challenge, “Where’s the Money?”

    Newspapers on Wednesday reported that Lapid had clashed with officials in his department who proposed increases to tuition fees for university students. Lapid responded on his Facebook page that “if students have to pay more I’ll go home and demonstrate against myself.”

    And as the government searches for budgets to cut and taxes to raise, newspapers are full of reports that Israel’s richest man, Idan Ofer, has decided to relocate to London in order to avoid paying more taxes – a motive his associates deny.

    He has become a juicy target for critics who have long claimed that the country’s handful of tycoons have been milking the country dry, leaving the poor to foot the bill.

    The gap between rich and poor, and how strange this is for Israelis brought up on the kibbutz ethos of “we’re all equal,” was well illustrated by the proverbial taxi driver who told a reporter, “Israel has changed. We all used to wear sandals. If you were rich, you wore better sandals.” 

    NBC News' Alastair Jamieson and Becky Bratu contributed to this report.

    Related:

    Analysis: Has Obama's Mideast trip changed the game on the ground?

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    Full Israel coverage from NBC News

     

  • Dominique Strauss-Kahn faces Washington gang-rape claim

    By Ian Johnston, msnbc.com

    A prosecutor in France is to consider claims by two prostitutes that ousted Intermational Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn was involved in a gang rape at a party in Washington, according to a French newspaper.

    The paper, Liberation, reported (in French) that it was alleged that two businessmen and a senior French police officer were present during the attack in 2010, when Strauss-Kahn was being tipped to become the next French president.

    Judges in France asked a French prosecutor to look into the escorts' claims and the prosecutor is due to announce next week if a further, formal investigation will take place, according to Liberation. Meantime, the New York Times reported the assault allegedly occured at a "sex party" at the W Hotel in Washington in December 2010.

    Strauss-Kahn and the others have not been charged in relation to the claim, but Strauss-Kahn does face separate charges of “aggravated pimping.”

    The escorts made the claims about the alleged gang rape in testimony given during the ongoing investigation of Strauss-Kahn’s involvement in an organized prostitution ring in Normandy.

    Former IMF boss, Dominique Strauss Kahn, continues to face sexual charges on both sides of the Atlantic. There is an alleged rape charge in the U.S. and alleged involvement in a prostitution ring in France. ITN's Martin Geissler reports.

    The alleged assault in Washington took place during a three-day trip to the city. The two escorts had accompanied two French businessman as their secretaries, according to Liberation's report.

    It alleged that one of the escorts, called "Marion," was raped by Strauss-Kahn in the presence of the three others, who she said did nothing to stop what was described as rough sex despite her vocal protests. 

    Meet Monsieur Caramel Pudding, likely French president

    According to excerpts of eyewitness testimony published by Liberation online, the others looked on while Strauss-Kahn "held her hands down, grabbed her hair and hurt her." The escort also alleged that one of the other men held her hands down as Strauss-Kahn sexually assaulted her.

    The woman gave testimony in the ongoing investigation but did not press charges in relation to the Washington incident. Normally victims need to press charges for a case to be brought, but officials can decide to do so in certain cases.

    The prosecutor will now decide whether to pursue the investigation to determine if there are grounds for a "group rape" charge.

    NYC maid can sue
    On Tuesday, a judge in New York ruled that a sexual assault lawsuit brought by hotel maid Nafissatou Diallo, 33, against Strauss-Kahn could go forward to trial, rebuffing his claim that he had diplomatic immunity.

    State Supreme Court Justice Douglas McKeon's ruling kept alive the civil case that emerged from a May 2011 hotel-room encounter that also spurred now-dismissed criminal charges against Strauss-Kahn. The episode was the first in a series of allegations about his sexual conduct that sank his political career.

    CNBC's Scott Cohn reports that Dominique Strauss-Kahn had tried to claim diplomatic immunity in fighting off the suit by the hotel maid.

    The housekeeper said Strauss-Kahn, 63, tried to rape her when she arrived to clean his Manhattan hotel suite. Strauss-Kahn has denied doing anything violent during the encounter.

    Prosecutors dropped the criminal charges last summer, saying they had developed doubts about Diallo's trustworthiness because she had lied about her background and her actions right after the alleged attack. Diallo has insisted she told the truth about what happened in the encounter itself.

    Strauss-Kahn bundled away from Cambridge University protesters

    Strauss-Kahn resigned his IMF job days after his arrest, and he didn't assert immunity from the criminal prosecution; his lawyers have said he was focused then on trying to exonerate himself. But after the lawsuit was filed, about three months later, they said he should have immunity from the civil case.

    Invoking an American sports metaphor, the judge said their argument amounted to a "Hail Mary" pass, and one that raised a question of fairness.

    "Strauss-Kahn cannot eschew immunity (in the criminal case) in an effort to clear his name only to embrace it now to deny Ms. Diallo the opportunity to clear hers," the judge wrote. 

    NBC News and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

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  • Sources: Scant evidence 'torture' helped war on terror, Senate probe finds

    By Reuters

    WASHINGTON - A nearly three-year-long investigation by Senate Intelligence Committee Democrats is expected to find there is little evidence the harsh "enhanced interrogation techniques" the CIA used on high-value prisoners produced counter-terrorism breakthroughs.

    People familiar with the inquiry said committee investigators, who have been poring over records from the administration of President George W. Bush, believe they do not substantiate claims by some Bush supporters that the harsh interrogations led to counter-terrorism coups.

    The backers of such techniques, which include "water-boarding," sleep deprivation and other practices critics call torture, maintain they have led to the disruption of major terror plots and the capture of al-Qaida leaders.

    One official said investigators found "no evidence" such enhanced interrogations played "any significant role" in the years-long intelligence operations which led to the discovery and killing of Osama bin Laden last May by U.S. Navy SEALs.

    'Tortured' Gitmo prisoner seeks release of secret videos

    The debate over the effectiveness of enhanced interrogations, which human rights advocates condemn as torture, is resurfacing in part because of a new book by a former top CIA official.

    In the book, "Hard Measures," due to be published on Monday, the former chief of CIA clandestine operations Jose Rodriguez defends the use of interrogation practices including water-boarding, which involves pouring water on a subject's face, which is covered with a cloth, to simulate drowning.

    Slideshow: Life goes on in Guantanamo

    John Moore / Getty Images

    President Obama's one-year deadline to close the facility has long passed as shutting it down has proven complicated and controversial.

    Launch slideshow

    "We made some al-Qaida terrorists with American blood on their hands uncomfortable for a few days," Rodriguez says in an interview with CBS News' "60 Minutes" that will air on Sunday. "I am very secure in what we did and am very confident that what we did saved American lives."

    Expert: War on terror at 'critical' point as al-Qaida looks to regroup in Africa

    For nearly three years, the Senate intelligence committee's majority Democrats have been conducting what is described as the first systematic investigation of the effectiveness of such extreme interrogation techniques.

    The CIA gave the committee access to millions of pages of written records charting daily operations of the interrogation program, including graphic descriptions of how and when controversial techniques were employed.

    The wives and children of Osama bin Laden are taken to a chartered flight out of Islamabad after being deported to Saudi Arabia.

    Sources agreed to discuss the matter on condition of anonymity because the report has not been finalized.

    The committee members' objective is to conduct a methodical assessment of whether enhanced interrogation techniques led to genuine intelligence breakthroughs or whether they produced more false leads than good ones.

    Report: Bin Laden told followers to kill Obama, Petraeus

    U.S. intelligence officials have acknowledged that while the harshest elements of the interrogation program, including water-boarding and other tactics which cause severe physical stress, were in use, the CIA never carried out a scientific assessment of the program's effectiveness.

    The Bush Administration only used water-boarding on three captured suspects. One of them was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the mastermind of the September 11, 2001 attacks.

    Slideshow: After the raid: Inside bin Laden's compound

    Farooq Naeem / AFP - Getty Images

    U.S. forces found and killed the al-Qaida leader in the affluent Pakistani town of Abbottabad, where he had been living in a large compound.

    Launch slideshow

    Other coercive techniques included sleep deprivation, making people crouch or stretch in stressful positions and slamming detainees against a flexible wall.

    The CIA started backing away from such techniques in 2004. Obama banned them shortly after taking office.

    One source cautioned there could still be lengthy delays before any information or conclusions from the Senate committee's report are made public.

    Hidden in plain sight: Inside a secret CIA prison

    One reason the inquiry has taken so long is that in 2009, committee Republicans withdrew their participation, saying the panel would be unable to interview witnesses to ensure documentary material was reported in appropriate context due to ongoing criminal investigations.

    Current and former U.S. officials have said one key source for information about the existence of the al-Qaida "courier" who ultimately led U.S. intelligence to bin Laden was Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

    KSM, as he was known to U.S. officials, was subjected to water-boarding 183 times, the U.S. government has acknowledged.

    Officials said, however, that it was not until some time after he was water-boarded that KSM told interrogators about the courier's existence. Therefore a direct link between the physically coercive techniques and critical information is unproven, Bush administration critics say.

    Supporters of the CIA program, including former Vice President Dick Cheney, have portrayed it as a necessary, if distasteful, step that may have stopped extremist plots and saved lives. 

    Former Vice President Dick Cheney discusses his new memoir, "In My Time," with TODAY's Matt Lauer. In the exclusive interview, Cheney defends the Iraq war, says waterboarding "worked" and tells Lauer the greatest achievement of the Bush administration was preventing further attacks on U.S. soil after 9/11.

    More world news from msnbc.com and NBC News:

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  • China's president-in-waiting Xi Jinping returns to Iowa

    Kevin E. Schmidt / Pool via AFP - Getty Images

    Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping talks with local people in the home of Roger and Sarah Lande in Muscatine, Iowa.

    By NBC's Jo Ling Kent

    MUSCATINE, Iowa – A young, blue-eyed Sarah Lande never thought the polite young man from China, Xi Jinping, sitting at her dining room table in 1985 would go on to become the next president of China. She simply thought of him as a gentle soul with genuine interest in her family’s Iowa roots, sharing a home-cooked meal of pork, beef and locally grown corn.

    Wednesday afternoon 27 years later – he returned to the same three-story home on Muscatine’s 2nd Street and walked through the same door, but this time as China’s next president.

    “Coming here is really like coming back to home,” Xi told a packed living room of familiar faces he met on his 1985 visit. “You can’t even imagine what a deep impression I had from my visit 27 years ago … because you were the first group of Americans that I came into contact with.”

    “Everything was very new and fresh,” he added.

    Xi’s visit is a rare glimpse at an ascending leader in China’s typically opaque and rigid Communist Party. No high-ranking official has had such direct and personal ties to the United States.

    'Old friends'
    Xi first visited Muscatine as a provincial official from Iowa’s sister state of Hebei almost three decades ago. Leading a delegation of four other local officials on an educational trip primarily focused on agriculture, Xi and his colleagues toured local farms and businesses as part of an exchange that began with Iowans going to Hebei in 1984. He met then- and current Iowa governor Terry Branstad and more than a dozen other Iowans in Muscatine he now calls his “old friends.”

    The cover of the Muscatine Journal showing the young Xi Jinping on his visit to Iowa in 1985. The headline on the story says, "Chinese visitors receive warm welcome" and there is photo of the town mayor handing Xi the keys to the city.

    Lande, who was one of the organizers of his trip, was constrained by a limited budget so she resorted to old-fashioned hospitality of home-stays and meals at home. Xi spent two nights with the Dvorchaks a few blocks away from the Landes. There, Xi slept in their son’s bedroom, decorated with Star Trek figurines and wall paper.

    “I wish I had updated the room,” Eleanor Dvorchak, 72, recalled. “But he was so congenial, anything would have been fine.”

    One thing was for certain, no one ever expected the quiet Xi to become China’s next leader.

    “Sometimes we are just in awe, that he is going to be the next leader,” Lande told NBC News in an interview ahead of the reunion.

    “Nobody knew,” Dvorchak added afterward. “At the time, I was impressed what a hard worker he was.”

    Clearly, Muscatine also left an indelible impression on Xi. Upon invitation back to Iowa by Governor Branstad, he requested to reunite with each person he met in Muscatine.

    Small-town charm
    Muscatine is the perfect, if coincidental, background to counterbalance Xi’s highly-scripted meetings in Washington. Aesthetically frozen in the 1950s, the town oozes both old-fashioned small-town charm and the harsh reality of post-industrial American economy. Many storefronts and warehouses stand empty in a place that once called itself the "pearl button capital of the world." Meanwhile, China has opened and expanded exponentially since 1985, into a roaring economy.

    Kevin E. Schmidt / The Quad City Times via AP

    Six-year-old Lucy Lande waits for the arrival of Xi Jinping at the home of her grandparents, Roger and Sarah Lande.

    But it was friendship, not jobs, that was the complete focus of today’s reunion. Fond memories about American movies and a tour of the Mississippi river took up most of the conversation.

    When Lande recalled Xi seeing puppies play in a Muscatine backyard in 1985, Xi replied, “We love puppies. We have two puppies as pets now.”

    However, Xi has not always been entirely friendly to foreigners. According to a diplomatic cable leaked by Wikileaks last year, the soon-to-be-president lashed out against countries who have criticized China's human rights and trade record.

    "There are some well-fed foreigners who have nothing better to do than point fingers at our affairs," Xi said at a lunch meeting in Mexico in February of 2009.

    Ultimately, Muscatine citizens and leaders alike had high hopes of leaving another positive memory with Xi that would, yet again, last far beyond his time in Iowa.

    “I hope we can really express the warmth and you know we’re proud of him and we look forward to really enhanced relations between China and America,” Lande told NBC News. “Let it start in the heartland.”

    “So many Iowans are pleased that a man we befriended those many years ago, has risen to such a position of prominence and respect in the great nation of China,” Gov.  Branstad said in a toast to Xi tonight at an official dinner in Des Moines.

    Others hope Vice President Xi’s two visits here will help push US-China relations in a more positive direction, as diplomatic tensions have escalated over trade and currency valuation.

    Hope for improved relations
    During the tea at her home, Lande told Xi that she hopes the US and China will “have a surge in the amount of visas that they issue, so we can have more international exchange and more trade, as we’re having here between Iowa and China.”

    Others in Muscatine are hoping to contribute to leaving a warmer legacy between the two countries.

    “If you meet people and treat them the way you would want them to treat you, then good things can come from that,” said Steinbach of the Muscatine Journal.

    “I hope that's the case for Muscatine and that Mr. Xi would take that back to China with him and remember that in any dealings he has in the years to come with the United States,” Steinbach added. “There are people here who are honest and hardworking that you'd I'm sure find in parts in China and anywhere else.”

    Xi’s stop through the Midwest also put Muscatine on the map like never before. The anticipation of Xi’s visit took the town by storm. The local paper welcomed Xi on its front page and reproduced the articles and photos that appeared in a 1985 edition, hailing his visit as a young official.

    At the local high school, a classroom of students dutifully practiced their "ni hao’s” and "xiexie's" ahead of Xi’s arrival.

    Jenny Juehring has been learning Mandarin for three years and today was selected to stand on the front porch of Lande’s to greet Xi and show off her language skills.

    “I think he's very cool, that'd he come back here, to a place that's so small and pretty insignificant, for such a small town,” Juehring told NBC News.

    Ho Xuefeng, a waiter at a Thai restaurant downtown, took the day off of work to watch Xi’s motorcade whiz by.

    “I’m originally from Shenyang,” Ho told NBC News. “To see someone like him come to this little town is rare.”

    The town’s McDonald’s posted a message on their marquee for their Chinese visitor: “Welcome back, Vice President Xi Jinping,” perhaps lending a new local meaning to “billions and billions served.”

    Inside, line cooks and high school-aged cashiers peered out the drive-through windows hoping to catch a glimpse of Xi’s motorcade whizzing by.

    Some protests
    But the trip wasn’t without minor hiccups. Free Tibet supporters lined the block leading to the home where Xi was hosted for tea and waved Tibetan flags, often chanting opposite equally animated college students from mainland China responding with “We love China!” across the street.

    Just minutes before Xi’s arrival at the Lande home, security officials rerouted the vice president’s motorcade to arrive on the other side of the house, where the Tibetan flags were far from sight.

    Agile protestors questioning the Chinese government’s human rights record slipped past police barricades, waving signs that read “Stop Prosecuting the Falun Gong” in English and Mandarin. They were quickly ushered away by Iowa State Troopers and a Chinese government representative.

    But overall, the visit was exactly how many in Muscatine hoped it would be: friendly, smooth and memorable.

    As Xi departed the Lande home in the evening rain, he peered through the window of his bullet-proof limousine, waving and waving to his “old friends” until his motorcade turned the corner.

    Clad in a red silk jacket emblazoned with Chinese characters, Lande waved after the polite young man who came over for that pork and corn dinner 27 years ago.

    “Wow, I just can’t believe it!” she said.