Wall Street is jubilant today as the April unemployment rate dropped to 5.4%. As reported by Reuters:

Wall St. opens sharply higher after strong jobs data:

U.S. stocks rose sharply on Friday after data showed U.S. job growth rebounded and the unemployment rate dropped last month, signs of a pickup in the economy that could keep the Federal Reserve on track to hike interest rates this year.

Nonfarm payrolls increased by 223,000 in April, just below the 224,000 that economists polled by Reuters had expected.

The unemployment rate dropped from 5.5 percent to 5.4 percent, its lowest level since May 2008, despite an increase in the number of people entering the labor market.

The drop in the unemployment rate pushed it to within a whisker of the 5.0 percent to 5.2 percent range that most Fed officials consider consistent with full employment.

"I think this is exactly what the market was looking for. It's a Goldilocks number - not too strong, not too weak," said Adam Sarhan, chief executive of Sarhan Capital in New York.

March payrolls were revised to show only 85,000 jobs created, the smallest since June 2012.

Still, the solid report suggested underlying strength in the economy at the start of the second quarter after growth hit a soft patch in the first.

Such wonderful news right?

A jihadist group with ties to the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for a mortar attack on a Hamas base in the Gaza Strip.

The group, calling itself 'Supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL),' said in an online statement that it fired mortar rounds at a base used by the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades (Hamas' armed wing) in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, on Friday.

Witnesses told AFP they heard explosions close to Khan Yunis.

Vladimir Putin said that cooperation between Russia and China contributes to the creation of a more fair and democratic world order.

The cooperation between Russia and China contributes to the creation of a more fair and democratic world order, Russian President Vladimir Putin said in a made-for-TV documentary, aired on Friday.

"Our interstate interests coincide on the majority of positions, and this is exactly what forms the basis of our relations today. In the sphere of international relations, we coordinate our work at the United Nations Security Council level and within the framework of the United Nations. And this coordination is a very important part of the creation of a fairer, more democratic world order today," Putin said in an interview in a film by Alexei Denisov "Russia and China: The Heart of Eurasia," broadcast by Rossiya-1 TV Channel.

The German secret service BND has pulled the plug on the internet surveillance program for the US National Security Agency (NSA) amid the growing scandal over its extent of cooperation in spying on its EU partners, German media reported.

The Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND) - the German Federal Intelligence Service - stopped sharing internet surveillance data with the NSA on Monday, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung daily, public broadcasters NDR and WDR, and national news agency DPA reported.

Berlin has demanded that the US spy agency first file an official request explaining the need for the internet-based data from Germany's Bad Aibling listening post in Bavaria, where 120 BND employees and some NSA technicians work, according to reports.

The role reversal between Russia and the West becomes ever starker.

During the Cold War the West supposedly stood for international law and human rights. The USSR was supposed to represent the antithesis.

What we now see is the EU proposing to the UN Security Council a Resolution that would permit the European powers to launch military strikes to destroy ships supposedly owned by human traffickers in Libyan ports.

The Second US Circuit Court of Appeals said a lower court judge erred in dismissing a lawsuit challenging the program's constitutionality.

A US appeals court ruled Thursday that the National Security Agency's program that collected phone records of Americans is illegal, saying it exceeds the scope of what Congress authorized.

The case hinges on revelations from a leak of NSA documents by Edward Snowden that exposed the bulk collection of information domestically by the agency.

Israel has approved the construction of 900 settler homes in East Jerusalem, peace activists have said. It comes less than a day after newly-reelected Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced the formation of a right-wing coalition government.

The homes will be built in East Jerusalem's ultra-Orthodox Ramat Shlomo neighborhood, Peace Now group spokeswoman Hagit Ofran told AFP on Thursday. "They've approved the request, and now they're allowed to build," she said.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) has reportedly announced that one of its senior officials was killed in a US airstrike along with his eldest son and other fighters.

Nasser bin Ali al-Ansi was killed in a US airstrike, according to SITE jihadist monitoring group, citing an Al-Qaeda announcement. The report suggests he died on the night of April 21-22 in the port city of Al Mukalla in the south of Yemen. According to witnesses, an apparent drone strike destroyed a vehicle parked near the presidential palace there, killing the six Al-Qaeda militants inside.

The information cannot be independently verified so far.

Al-Ansi, a senior leader in the Yemen-based AQAP, was known for his video statement claiming responsibility for January's Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris, where 12 people were killed in the office of the satirical newspaper which had printed caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad.

He also appeared in the video claiming the capture and death of US hostage Luke Somers.

AQAP was formed in 2009 when Saudi and Yemen branches of the Al-Qaeda terror group merged. It is one of the most active subsidiaries of Al-Qaeda, and is considered the most dangerous by Washington because of its focus on attacks in other countries.

"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme," the great American writer Mark Twain once wrote. One might add: "And often, unfortunately, in an alarming way." Just days before the 70th anniversary of the capitulation of Nazi Germany in World War II, debate in the German media is raging about how the German army can again wage an effective armoured tank war against Russia.

In an article headlined "Why politicians rejected uranium projectiles for the Leo", the Die Welt national daily newspaper calls for equipping German Leopard 2 battle tanks with uranium munitions to effectively combat Russian tanks.

The article begins by announcing, with obvious satisfaction, that the defence ministry has recently "recalled into operation 100 mothballed Leopard 2 tanks at a cost of €22 million, thereby increasing the country's arsenal of combat tanks from 225 to 325". The primary purpose of this "unusual measure" is allegedly to signal to eastern European countries that "the trend towards further reduction of Germany's conventional military capabilities (has been) reversed".

However, the author then gives full vent to his frustration over the country's military inadequacy. The Leopard 2 tanks are, he writes, indeed "still excellent weapons ... but unfortunately [they are] no longer capable of effectively combatting the modern types of Russian tanks—particularly the T90 series". The reason is "exclusively the inadequate type of ammunition used for the [tank's] first-class 120 mm smoothbore cannon", which is manufactured by the German Rheinmetall arms company.

The Bundeswehr's (German army's) DM63 ammunition, currently used in heavy armoured combat, is not powerful enough "to penetrate the newer versions of T80 and T90 tanks. This will probably be even more the case for Russia's incoming Armata tank, which will be operational from 2020."

Radio "Liberty" has always been a propaganda ministry. Formerly its propaganda was directed against the Soviet Union. Today it is directed against distinguished Americans who are known and respected for their allegiance to the truth.

Radio Liberty's latest target is an American scholar who is far more widely respected than Radio Liberty. Like everything else in Washington the two-bit propaganda ministry is carried away by hubris and a mistaken opinion of its own importance.

A Radio Liberty non-entity named Carl Schreck, of whom no one has ever heard, has declared America's most distinguished Russian scholar, Stephen Cohen, to be "a Putin apologist."