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President Obama says the United States and South Korea are determined to stand firm against North Korean threats and that the days of Pyongyang manufacturing a crisis to get international concessions "are over."

In a joint news conference with South Korean President Park Geun-hye on Tuesday, Obama said the two leaders "very much share the view that we are going to maintain a strong deterrent" against North Korea.

"We're not going to reward provocative behavior, but we remain open to the prospect of North Korea taking a peaceful path," he said.

"So far, at least, we haven't seen actions on the part of the North Koreans that would indicate they're prepared to move in a different direction," he added.

He said he's never spoken directly to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose actions seem to be leading his country to a dead end.

Obama's talks with newly installed President Park show that the North has "failed again" to drive a wedge between Washington and Seoul, he said.

The president spoke of the "deep friendship" and the "great alliance" between the two countries.

Park's visit, her first abroad since becoming president in February, marks the 60th anniversary of the U.S.-South Korean alliance and comes amid ramped up rhetoric from North Korea, including threats to attack South Korea and the United States with nuclear missiles.

As we reported Monday, however, North Korea appears to have moved two medium-range missiles off launch standby in the country's east — a move that could signal a toning down of tensions.

That big immigration bill working its way through the Senate would let in lots more highly skilled workers on temporary visas. But there's a catch.

The bill says all employers who want to hire workers on these H-1B visas:

... would be required to advertise on an Internet website maintained by the Department of Labor and offer the job to any U.S. worker who applies and is equally or better qualified than the immigrants ... sought...

The daily lowdown on books, publishing, and the occasional author behaving badly.

According to a report in The Guardian, Sigmund Freud's famous couch has fallen into disrepair, and the Freud Museum in London has issued a plea for donations to finance the restorations. A gift from one of his patients, it went with him from Vienna to London when he fled the Nazis, and seated some of his most famous patients, such as the hysterical "Dora" and neurotic "Wolf Man." Freud supposedly told a friend that he used a couch because "I cannot let myself be stared at for eight hours daily."

In New York Magazine, critic Kathryn Schulz dares to be in the Great Gatsby-hating minority: "I find Gatsby aesthetically overrated, psychologically vacant, and morally complacent."

An article in a London tabloid claiming that Martin Amis hates "Brooklyn hipsters" has generated an odd amount of buzz, particularly given that so many people love to hate Brooklyn hipsters. What's next — Jonathan Franzen hates traffic and the flu?

For The New York Review of Books, Margaret Atwood advises on the use of dreams in fiction: "So let your characters dream if they must, but be advised that their dreams — unlike your own — will have a significance attached to them by the reader. Will your characters dream prophetically, foretelling the future? Will they dream inconsequentially, as in real life? Will they use accounts of their dreams to annoy or attack or enlighten the other characters? Many variants are possible. As in so many things, it's not whether, but how well."

The Cuban government and the Boston-based Finca Vigia Foundation are collaborating to digitize and preserve papers and records from Ernest Hemingway's estate on the outskirts of Havana, which scholars in the United States have not previously had access to. Digital images of 2,000 papers will go to John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum. According to The Associated Press, "The newly digitized files include letters from Hemingway to the actress Ingrid Bergman, letters to his wife Mary, passports documenting his travels and bar bills, grocery lists and notations of hurricane sightings."

The grim toll from the collapse of a garment factory in Bangladesh last month has risen to more than 650, as more bodies have been pulled from the rubble of the eight-story complex.

The number of people confirmed dead has now reached 657, CNN quoted Col. Sheikh Zaman, a military official overseeing the recovery operation in Savar, as saying.

Meanwhile, Adidas said Monday that it is encouraging workers in Asian factories where its popular sports gear is produced to use a new hotline to report possible grievances.

The Germany-based Adidas AG said in a statement that workers had only to "send an SMS [to the hotline] when they feel their rights are breached."

The Associated Press says: "Adidas' efforts to improve control of labor conditions coincide with a renewed debate on working conditions at the suppliers of Western firms in the wake of deadly incidents in Bangladesh's garment industry."

As we have reported, last month's collapse of Rana Plaza has put several Western retailers supplied by factories in Bangladesh in a difficult position, forcing some of them to take a stand on poor working conditions in the country.