United States

On the eve of a summit in Beijing, and just hours after Pyongyang's chief nuclear negotiator said North Korea is ready to hold talks with the United States "if the conditions are mature", South Korea's Yonhap reports that North Korea has fired a projectile believed to be a ballistic missile, from a region named Kusong located northwest of Pyongyang, where the North previously test-launched its intermediate-range missile.

The nature of the projectile was not immediately clear, a South Korean military official told Reuters.

A Russian man wanted by the Justice Department on charges connected to hacking U.S. companies now claims the FBI offered him immunity in exchange for accepting responsibility for cyberattacks targeting former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.

As The Washington Times reports, Yevgeny Nikulin, the alleged hacker, laid the claim to Russian media Thursday in a letter sent from a Czech Republic prison cell amid an international extradition battle currently underway between Washington and Moscow.

Donald Trump said he expects to make a "fast decision" on a replacement for fired FBI Director James Comey, perhaps before he departs the U.S. on May 19 for his first foreign trip as president. Trump said the candidates under consideration to lead the FBI - White House officials have identified 11 of them so far - are "outstanding people." He said most are "very well known" and of the "highest level."

As Bloomberg reports, the 11 candidates under consideration as a permanent replacement for Comey:

Via The Daily Bell

There is a dangerous myth that permeates the political arena that government agencies and bureaucrats can somehow be non-political and independent.

How absurd. On the one hand, there are obvious political appointments, like Eric Holder as Attorney General under Obama, or Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State under Trump. Each was clearly chosen to advance the interests of the President, Holder for his radical leftist views and Tillerson for his business ties.

Less than 24 hours after it first emerged, it has been called the first global, coordinated ransomware attack using hacking tools developed by the NSA, crippling over a dozen hospitals across the UK, mass transit around Europe, car factories in France and the UK, universitied in China, corporations in the US, banks in Russia and countless other mission-critical infrastructure.