The World

JERUSALEM — Israel's opposition bloc met in Herzliya on Tuesday and agreed to ask President Isaac Herzog to let Gadi Eisenkot try to form the next government, Anadolu reported. The 27 October election left no party or bloc with an outright majority in the 120-seat Knesset. Reports say the opposition alliance would rather partner with ultra-Orthodox parties than rely on Arab factions to reach a majority. Official results were due to be confirmed on 4 November, after which Herzog consults parties before naming a candidate. The coalition talks come while the Gaza ceasefire, in force since October 2025, remains shaky. Gaza's Health Ministry says 1,599 Palestinians have been killed since it began. Later phases of the US-brokered plan, covering Israeli withdrawal, governance and a stabilization force, have stalled. Israel conditions withdrawal on Hamas disarming.

ISLAMABAD — Taliban and Pakistani forces have clashed at least three times since 19 October along the Afghan border, according to FDD's Long War Journal. The Taliban said Pakistani drones hit security facilities in Paktika and that its forces hit back. Islamabad called that account fabricated and said the Taliban fired first. Pakistani military and intelligence officials have reportedly met Afghan anti-Taliban resistance figures. Crisis Group's November report says Pakistan claimed it retaliated for a 27 October attack on border posts in South Waziristan, and expects more clashes this month. The latest round began after a 18 September suicide attack in northwestern Pakistan that killed 31 people. A militant alliance with TTP roots claimed it, and Pakistan blames Kabul for sheltering the groups. A Moscow-hosted regional meeting on 5 October ended without a joint statement. Border crossings have been largely shut for over a year.

ADDIS ABABA — Relations between Ethiopia and Eritrea worsened sharply in October, and Crisis Group lists both countries among the deteriorating situations in its monthly tracker. On 1 October Ethiopia expelled ten Eritrean diplomats and closed its embassy in Asmara, citing alleged Eritrean backing for the TPLF insurgency in Tigray. Eritrea responded by severing diplomatic relations. Four days later Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed restated his ambition for Red Sea access, which Asmara reads as a possible bid to seize the port of Assab. Crisis Group separately warns that war has returned to northern Ethiopia and could widen to involve Eritrea. It also reports that Ethiopia has accused Sudan of violating its sovereignty, apparently over alleged support for Tigrayan fighters, a charge Khartoum's allies have not accepted in the reporting reviewed. Crisis Group does not list Ethiopia among its November risk alerts.

TAIPEI — US Army Pacific is positioning forces and equipment on the assumption that China could have the capability and intent to invade Taiwan by 2027, General Ronald Clark told a conference in Honolulu, Taipei Times reported. He said the so-called Davidson window, named for a 2021 warning from then-Indo-Pacific commander Admiral Philip Davidson, is still valid. Under an initiative called Army Ready Forward, equipment, supplies and personnel rotate through island chains west of the International Date Line, close to China. Clark called balancing costly high-end systems against cheap, mass-produced autonomous ones the most pressing problem. Other assessments cited in the report say Chinese leaders have no fixed timeline for unification and do not currently plan an invasion in 2027. Taiwanese defense officials and independent analysts described China's mid-October live-fire drills as routine rather than a major escalation.

WASHINGTON — The FBI has formally attributed the October 29 theft of more than $6 billion in digital assets from the Binance exchange to North Korea. It named the state-backed group TraderTraitor, which is also tracked as Lazarus Group, Jade Sleet and APT38. According to BleepingComputer, the attackers took about $6.36 billion across ten blockchains, most of it within 20 minutes, after compromising a DevOps engineer's laptop. The FBI says the hackers are mainly converting the proceeds to Ether and are expected to launder them through decentralized finance platforms and instant swap services. The bureau, the Secret Service and IRS Criminal Investigation asked exchanges and other service providers to block transactions tied to 628 published addresses. Blockchain analytics firms TRM Labs and Chainalysis had reached the same conclusion earlier.

WASHINGTON — Abraham Teklu Lemma, a former IT contractor at the National Reconnaissance Office, the State Department and the Justice Department, pleaded guilty on Tuesday in federal court in Washington to conspiring to transmit national defense information to the government of Ethiopia. The Justice Department says Lemma used his administrator access to take Top Secret material from a secure facility and pass it to Ethiopian officials. Authorities say much of it concerned an armed conflict in Ethiopia, and that he hoped it would be used to target paramilitary fighters. His co-conspirators included senior political, military and intelligence officials. Under the plea agreement, he faces 120 to 262 months in prison if the court accepts it. Sentencing is set for April 14, 2027. The Justice Department says the activity ran for more than two years. Court documents put his arrest in 2023.

LONDON — Senior High Court judges ruled on Tuesday that MI5, its director-general and individual officers will not face contempt-of-court proceedings. The ruling came even though the agency has admitted giving false evidence to three courts in the case of Agent X, an abusive informant. According to the BBC's account of the judgment, the panel accepted there was enough evidence to start contempt cases against two senior officers. It said a court-run process would be unmanageable and would largely duplicate the July findings of Sir John Goldring, whose inquiry found one officer lied repeatedly. It said any further action should follow a police investigation, with the Crown Prosecution Service deciding on charges such as misconduct in public office. One officer has resigned and another faces internal discipline. Both deny dishonesty. MI5 chief Sir Ken McCallum repeated his apology.