The World

ABU DHABI — Russia, Ukraine and the United States will hold three-way talks in Abu Dhabi on November 10-11, the Kremlin said Tuesday. Putin aide Vladimir Medinsky will lead Moscow's delegation. They are the first trilateral talks since February, before the US-Israeli war on Iran. Putin told envoy Steve Witkoff last month that Russia wanted the agenda centered on long-term security arrangements for a final settlement rather than a short truce. Kyiv wants binding guarantees and wants Europe involved. The Kremlin says the format will be trilateral for now but has not ruled out European participation. Earlier this month a Kremlin aide suggested the Middle East crisis could delay the round. On Thursday First Lady Melania Trump is hosting Russian and Ukrainian officials at the White House. Ukraine honored her for brokering the local truce around Oleshky.

MANILA — Southeast Asian leaders meet in Manila on November 10 for the ASEAN summit. The Diplomat notes that the date matches the original expiry of the US-China trade truce, which was extended after the September 24 Xi-Trump summit. Myanmar's Min Aung Hlaing, who took office as president in April after the 2021 coup, has visited five ASEAN states since. Malaysia was the latest, and Indonesia and Brunei may follow. Myanmar has set up a committee to push for normalization with the bloc. Full readmission needs consensus among the members and some progress on the Five-Point Consensus, which looks unlikely soon. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meeting ASEAN defense ministers in Cebu, proposed a US-ASEAN defense cooperation framework without giving details. Crisis Group reports Washington is also stepping up engagement with Naypyitaw, citing scam centers and rare earths.

TBILISI — Georgia's Constitutional Court will resume hearings on November 9 in the ruling Georgian Dream party's suit to ban five opposition parties. The court paused them for its 30th-anniversary events. The parties are the United National Movement, Coalition for Change, Strong Georgia-Lelo, the Federalists and Giorgi Gakharia's For Georgia. Georgian NGOs note that together they won nearly 38% of the 2024 vote. Four of the seven sitting judges must side with the plaintiffs, and the court has until June 24, 2027 to decide. The court rejected nearly all defense motions, including recusal bids. Opposition leaders call the case a step toward one-party rule. Georgian Dream says the parties are foreign agents. Analysts quoted by the Jamestown Foundation expect the European Court of Human Rights to suspend any ban. Opposition leaders plan a large demonstration on November 28.

DAR ES SALAAM — Tanzania's High Court is expected to deliver judgment Friday in the treason case against Tundu Lissu, leader of the main opposition party Chadema. The court heard final submissions from September 23, with Lissu and the prosecution closing on September 28 and 29. Prosecutors allege that his 'No Reforms, No Elections' campaign before the October 2025 general election amounted to a plot against the state. Lissu says the case is politically motivated. Crisis Group reports that Chadema has kept up nationwide rallies under the banner 'Free Tundu Lissu, New Constitution'. It also declared October 29 to November 4 a mourning period for the victims of the 2025 election violence. Crisis Group lists Tanzania among the African political flashpoints it is tracking this month, alongside Somalia, whose opposition has been invited to election talks from November 14.

Binance has published an incident report on the record theft the FBI attributes to North Korea's TraderTraitor group. The hackers first probed the exchange in June, and Binance detected and stopped that attempt. They later approached an engineer through a fake job recruitment process. In a second interview he was told to download an "assignment" that carried malware. By Oct. 20 the attackers had used his machine and an internal AI tool to compromise two more employees on wallet infrastructure. That gave them credentials and a container deployment token. On Oct. 29 they ran a malicious script against the wallet signing service and moved about $6.34 billion across multiple blockchains. The group also pushed 35 malicious npm packages. The FBI says the proceeds are being converted mainly into Ethereum. Tether, Circle, Ripple, Arbitrum and Optimism have frozen $2.85 billion on-chain.

WASHINGTON — U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia Faruqui on Monday dismissed criminal charges against former FBI officials Nikki Floris and Bradley Benavides. He sharply criticized the Justice Department and U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro's office. According to Common Dreams, which cites reporting by The New York Times, he said what happened "cannot be described as anything other than weaponization." He also said he could not ignore the timing of the case ahead of the 2026 midterms. The ruling follows his earlier decision to strike a DOJ filing in the case. In a related matter, James Comey was charged on Oct. 5 under the Espionage Act, which has a 10-year limitations period. That date was exactly 10 years after the alleged conduct, according to an MS NOW opinion piece. Comey has moved to dismiss. He argues the charge was brought by information, while the 10-year statute refers to an indictment. DOJ says its recent charges were not rushed or improper.

WASHINGTON — CREW, Public Citizen and the Project On Government Oversight sued the Defense Department on Nov. 2 in U.S. District Court in Washington. They allege that Hegseth's "Project Meridian: The Future of Warfare" violates the Federal Advisory Committee Act. Hegseth created the panel on Sept. 30, with Elon Musk, Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich as co-directors. The complaint says 19 of its 21 members work in the private sector. It also says the Pentagon filed no charter, published no Federal Register notice and held closed meetings. The plaintiffs ask the court to vacate the memo and bar the panel from advising the department. They also want the Pentagon barred from acting on its recommendations, which are due Jan. 28, 2027. The Pentagon told NPR that MITRE, which manages the study, applies technical review and conflict-of-interest safeguards. The allegations are unproven, and nothing in the filing automatically halts the work.