The World

SEOUL — North Korea said on Monday that it would speed up the strengthening of its nuclear forces. State media carried a statement from Kim Jong-sik, a senior Workers' Party official. He described the US-South Korean Iron Mace exercise, held from September 29 to October 2, as a rehearsal for nuclear war. Analysts noted it was unusual for an official in his post to set out nuclear policy, a task usually left to the defence or foreign ministry. Separately, a South Korean army staff sergeant was found with a severe head injury at a frontline unit in Cheorwon on Monday morning and died. Military and civilian investigators are examining the cause, and no link to the border tensions has been established. On September 21, three South Korean soldiers were wounded by landmines south of the demarcation line. Seoul says the North laid them, and Pyongyang denies it. Pyongyang had also threatened to resume loudspeaker broadcasts by the end of October, but Seoul has seen no confirmation that it did.

Amnesty International says civilians in El Fasher still face detention, torture and killing a year after the Rapid Support Forces captured the North Darfur capital. The group puts the population at under 70,000, against more than one million before the war. Of 19 recent escapees interviewed, 17 had been held by the RSF, in some cases for months, and schools had been turned into detention centres. Residents described forced labour, including collecting bodies, and said the RSF made some of them tell cameras the city was safe to return to. A few aid groups have resumed work since September, but the RSF closely monitors them. In July, a UN fact-finding mission concluded that the RSF committed genocide in El Fasher. It warned that El Obeid, a city of about half a million people ringed by RSF forces, faces similar risks. The RSF has previously denied targeting civilians.

South Africans vote in municipal elections on Wednesday after a campaign marked by political killings, according to Crisis Group's monthly tracker. In October, gunmen killed a member of the ANC Women's League in Katlehong, Gauteng, and then four ANC Youth League members returning from her memorial. Two ANC officials were killed while campaigning in KwaZulu-Natal. On October 26, a prominent Democratic Alliance candidate was killed in Free State. In September, three Inkatha Freedom Party candidates were also killed in KwaZulu-Natal. Elsewhere in Africa, Tanzania's High Court is due to rule on Friday in the treason case against opposition leader Tundu Lissu. Prosecutors say his 'No Reforms, No Elections' campaign was a plot against the state, and Lissu says the case is politically motivated. The September CrisisWatch report gave the verdict date.

Colombia's government has announced it will militarize the border city of Cúcuta after an explosives attack on October 27 near the international bridge to Venezuela that injured several people. On Monday, Venezuelan Interior Minister Diosdado Cabello said the armed forces, police and local authorities were deployed along the frontier. He said Caracas must take precautions so its people are not affected by a conflict that is not theirs. His remarks were reported by Russian state-funded outlet RT. The measures follow a worsening security picture in Colombia. Crisis Group's October tracker cites the NGO Indepaz as counting 99 massacres and 382 deaths from January to October. That compares with 65 massacres and 212 deaths over the same period in 2025, and makes 2026 the deadliest year for massacres in a decade. On October 12, a vehicle bomb at a toll station in Cauca injured at least three civilians, and the army blamed a dissident FARC front.

WASHINGTON — The Justice Department has announced two Espionage Act leak cases in about a week. On Oct. 23, the FBI arrested Ian Brinksman, 42, of Washington, a CIA contractor with Top Secret/SCI access. A criminal complaint says he gave national defense information to a romantic partner who runs a Substack newsletter and has said online that she accepts leaks. The department did not name her. Separately, an indictment unsealed this week charges James Thomas Ashbacher, 37, of Spring Lake, North Carolina, a former contractor at the Army Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg. Prosecutors allege he posted classified images and video of military operations to social media, kept other classified material at home, and stole night vision goggles. The charges are allegations, and the defendants are presumed innocent. The Brinksman case carries up to ten years if he is convicted.

Lumen's Black Lotus Labs reports that China-linked Volt Typhoon ran a covert relay network, which it named Silent Train, for about three years. The network chains together hijacked home routers, IoT devices and enterprise appliances. Operators built a chain, used it for a single operation, then wiped it. Sessions averaged about four hours. The researchers tie the network to four confirmed zero-day campaigns and one likely one, all aimed at management platforms: Versa Director, N-able N-central, Cisco Catalyst SD-WAN, Arista VeloCloud Orchestrator and, likely, Quest KACE. Hundreds of victims were notified, across telecoms, government, defense contractors, satellite communications, water, energy and transport. Activity followed China Standard Time working hours. Lumen says the network has been disrupted, and all four vendors have issued patches. The findings come from Lumen's own telemetry and have not been independently reproduced.

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has ordered the Pentagon's intelligence and cyber agencies to treat foreign threats to the 2026 elections as a 'no-fail' mission, Fox News reports. The directive tells military intelligence agencies to collect and analyze information on foreign election threats. It also tells Cyber Command to use its existing authorities, in coordination with the Department of Homeland Security, to counter foreign cyber activity. The Pentagon, which now styles itself the Department of War, declined to explain how the order is being implemented, and Cyber Command declined an interview. The department said earlier that the order does not shift responsibility from state and local election officials to the military. U.S. intelligence officials told Fox they have seen no sign that a foreign adversary has tried to interfere with voting machines, election infrastructure or vote counting. Hegseth's memo was issued in late September.