The World

ISTANBUL — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan used a joint appearance with Volodymyr Zelensky in Istanbul on October 31 to urge both Russia and Ukraine to stop attacking Black Sea shipping. The appeal follows a run of strikes on merchant vessels near NATO members. Suspected Russian drones hit two cargo ships off Bulgaria in mid-October, sinking one and leaving 11 sailors missing. On October 23 Romania blamed Russia after a drone sank another ship. NATO has said it will send extra patrol aircraft to the area. Crisis Group says the sea, a key route for Ukrainian and Russian grain, has been all but shut. Separately, Sweden plans to deploy Patriot air defences and about 100 troops to protect the Rzeszów-Jasionka logistics hub in Poland for seven months from December 1.

CARACAS — Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado returned from exile on October 25. Thousands greeted her, and at a Caracas press conference on October 29 she thanked President Trump for 'freedom' but called for elections in 2027 and criticized the US oil deal with Caracas. Delcy Rodríguez has governed as acting president since US forces seized Nicolás Maduro on January 3. Maduro and his wife have pleaded not guilty to the drug-trafficking charges and to a new torture conspiracy count; a June 2027 trial date has been set in New York. Washington has meanwhile eased pressure on the interim authorities, removing legislature president Jorge Rodríguez from its sanctions list. Venezuelans held their first national protest in almost two years on October 23, demanding an election, as long power outages fuel public anger.

NEW DELHI — The director general of the Indo-Tibetan Border Police, Shatrujeet Kapur, said on October 22 that face-offs with Chinese forces are occurring at several locations in Arunachal Pradesh and have not stopped. It is the first official confirmation of what local civil-society groups have alleged since June, when one group wrote that the PLA had occupied territory near Taksing. The Indian Army had called such reports baseless, and a government fact-checking unit labelled related videos fake. The admission comes after a political thaw: India and China agreed in August to identify less contested border sections for delimitation and to add hotlines, and Modi and Xi met at the BRICS summit in New Delhi on September 12. A Diplomat commentary by Sudha Ramachandran argues the denials weaken India's negotiating hand and says ITBP units were pulled from the frontier to police protests in Delhi.

BAMAKO — Mali's transitional government said in early October that its army, backed by Russia's Africa Corps, had retaken Kidal, the northern city seized in April by the Tuareg-led Azawad Liberation Front and the al-Qaeda-linked JNIM. Analysts quoted by the Washington Post's wire copy called it a major symbolic victory for the junta led by Gen. Assimi Goïta. Crisis Group's October tracker reports that the war goes on elsewhere. Suspected Islamic State-affiliated fighters killed scores of civilians in an attack in Mali, and JNIM and IS-Sahel fought each other heavily in the tri-border area with Burkina Faso and Niger. JNIM is also pressing government forces on several fronts. Mali's relations with Chad's neighbour Niger have been strained by a separate drone-attack dispute, which Crisis Group lists under Niger.

WASHINGTON — A federal magistrate judge in Washington has sharply criticized prosecutors in the case against Nikki Floris, a former FBI intelligence analyst in charge at the Washington Field Office, and Bradley Benavides, a former deputy assistant director in the Counterintelligence Division. Each is charged by complaint with one count of lying to the House Judiciary Committee in 2023 about their roles in FBI work touching the Hunter Biden laptop, including through the Foreign Influence Task Force. On Oct. 27, Judge Zia Faruqui struck a superseding complaint that added an obstruction count, because no judge had signed it. He called the way the case was charged unusual. A multi-day preliminary hearing followed, and the defense is seeking dismissal and alleging political motivation. Prosecutors can still seek a grand jury indictment at any time. D.C. U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro has defended the charges. The Justice Department has not publicly answered the misconduct claims in the sources reviewed.

WASHINGTON — With voting set for Tuesday, the channels federal agencies use to pass foreign-threat information to state and local election officials are at their weakest since the 2016 cycle, according to a CNN report drawing on interviews with nearly a dozen election-security experts. Cuts to federal programs have hampered the flow of intelligence. A late Department of Homeland Security effort to build an online sharing platform has not won the credibility earlier systems had with election officials. A classified briefing for election officials in mid-October, the first since the 2024 cycle, was marred when federal staff could not get the video call to work. People briefed on U.S. intelligence assessments say Russia is trying to disparage Democratic candidates, while China is focused on down-ballot candidates viewed as anti-China. A Common Cause official separately told the South China Morning Post that CISA has lost more than $700 million in funding.

WASHINGTON — A State Department Office of Inspector General report, newly made public and obtained by Lawfare, found that in September 2025 the department would need more than 12 years to review allegations of human rights violations against Israel Defense Forces units that receive U.S. security assistance. Lawfare's Tyler McBrien reports that the inspector general judged the vetting procedures underdeveloped, raising the risk that American aid reaches units that are legally ineligible. The finding bears on the Leahy laws, which bar U.S. assistance to foreign security units credibly implicated in gross human rights violations. The summary reviewed does not give the department's response or say whether any corrective steps have since been taken. The original Lawfare article and the underlying report were not reviewed for this account.