North Korea

Israel had obtained detailed pictures of a Syrian complex from an apparent mole, which supported an Israeli belief the facility was nuclear and led to an air strike on it last month, ABC News reported on Friday. ABC, citing a senior U.S. official, said the person had provided several pictures of the complex from the ground, and Israel showed the images to the CIA. The U.S. spy agency helped pinpoint "drop points" to assist in potential targeting, ABC said.

After 9/11, the State Department allowed more and more Iranians to legally enter the United States through Diversity Visas, an immigration program that two government investigations have identified as a national security risk. Iran, among four other nations, is defined as a terror-sponsoring state by the State Department.

US envoy Christopher Hill said talks on disarming North Korea which opened Thursday could produce a road map for declaring and disabling its nuclear programmes as early as this weekend.

The cyber attacks are part of what China believes will be the frontline of any attack against countries such as America, Britain and North Korea. Pentagon assessments believe that China’s race towards reaching “electronic dominance” over their rivals by 2050 is part of their view that such a dominance is “critical to seize the initiative” in the first stages of a war.