North Korea insisted that denuclearization has "already gone out of the negotiating table" on Saturday, in a statement from the country's ambassador to the United Nations.
Brian Hook, the State Department special representative for Iran, boarded a military plane at Andrews Air Force Base Friday night and flew to Zurich, where Saturday he swapped an Iranian scientist for an American student who'd been captive in Iran.
The latest: Iranian officials handed over Chinese-American graduate student Xiyue Wang, 38, detained in Tehran since 2016 on what the U.S. says are false charges, for scientist Massoud Soleimani, who faced a federal trial in Georgia.
An American graduate student imprisoned in Tehran since 2016 was released on Saturday in exchange for an Iranian stem cell researcher held in the U.S., the New York Times reports.
Why it matters: Iran may have released American Xiyue Wang to distract from its recent wave of protests and the government's harsh response, the Times writes. The U.S. estimates around 1,000 Iranians died as a result of the mass clashes.
Reddit said that accounts that shared sensitive U.S.-U.K. trade documents on its platform acted as part of a suspected Russian-based disinformation operation, in a post on Friday.
The big picture: The platform believes that the accounts that shared the leaked documents are tied to the same Russian disinformation campaign reported by Facebook in May, which focused on Ukraine, the Syrian civil war and "political news in Europe."
Senior British diplomat Alexandra Hall Hall has left the U.K. diplomatic service over Brexit, saying in a letter that she could no longer "peddle half-truths" for the leaders she does not "trust," CNN reports.
Why it matters: Her resignation comes a week before the UK general election, "at a moment of deep political sensitivity for UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who is seeking re-election on the promise that he can 'get Brexit done,'" per CNN. In her resignation letter, she wrote that she was unnerved to see the British civil service deliver half honest information on Brexit, and how that has undermined the credibility of British diplomats around the world.
Twenty years ago, on New Year's Eve 1999, a political newcomer and former KGB operative named Vladimir Putin suddenly assumed the Russian presidency.
Part two of our "20 Years of Putin"special report examines what he has built, and what will happen to it when he's gone. It's based on conversations with exiled oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky, three former U.S. ambassadors to Moscow, leading experts and former chiefs of the Pentagon and CIA. Read part one.
