SEOUL — North Korea said it was open to dialog with the US but that it would not return to the "humiliating negotiating table" until it has boosted its nuclear arsenal enough to fend off an American attack, the state news agency reported. "Genuine dialog is possible only at the phase where the DPRK has acquired nuclear deterrent enough to defuse the US threat of nuclear war unless the US rolls back its hostile policy," the North's foreign ministry said in a statement carried by the state news agency, KCNA.

SEOUL — The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) — the Pentagon’s intelligence arm — reported “with moderate confidence” in an intelligence assessment that North Korea had mastered a startling technology: the ability to shrink a nuclear warhead and place it on a crude missile. But President Barack Obama came out in apparent loggerheads with the Defense Department. And he wasn’t the first to question the Pentagon’s calculation.