Afghanistan
Opium production in Afghanistan has risen fivefold in a year. According to a UN survey released on Thursday, it’s the first significant increase since the Taliban banned poppy cultivation in 2022. The UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) found that the area planted with opium poppy grew by 330 per cent, to more than 43,000 hectares, up from about 10,000 hectares in 2025. Estimated production rose by 400 per cent, from about 300 tonnes to just under 1,500 tonnes. Both figures remain well below levels before the ban, when some 232,000 hectares were under cultivation. For decades, Afghanistan was the world’s biggest source of illicit opium. Before the ban, it accounted for around 80 per cent of global supply. The Taliban seized power in August 2021. In April 2022, they outlawed poppy cultivation and all narcotics, citing religious grounds. – UN News Afghanistan opium production jumps fivefold as farmers find ways round Taliban ban
Moldova
Moldovan President Maia Sandu has called a meeting of the country’s National Security Council (CNS) days after a large-scale cyberattack on government information systems. The attack, most likely carried out with the help of artificial intelligence, resulted in the extraction of personal data belonging to approximately 750,000 Moldovans. On October 29, Sandu’s office announced that the meeting would take place in “the coming days to assess the attack and determine appropriate response measures”. The head of the country’s Cybersecurity Agency, Mihai Lupascu, told RFE/RL that “without a doubt, this is the most impactful…largest cyberattack recorded so far,” adding that the operation was “highly sophisticated,” “well-prepared,” and involved “several waves”. “We are dealing with a situation in which a highly skilled cyberactor carried out these activities with the clear objective of compromising information systems and exfiltrating data,” Lupascu said. – RFE/RL Moldovan President Calls Security Meeting After Massive Data Breach
Myanmar
Myanmar’s human rights situation is “catastrophic”, the UN independent expert on the country warned at a press briefing Thursday, as the war spirals with no end in sight. Myanmar has been engulfed in civil war since the military overthrew the democratically elected Government in February 2021, triggering widespread armed resistance across the country. Special Rapporteur Kelley Anne Eckels-Currie’s new report found that at least 8,384 civilians have been killed by the military since the coup, up until 15 September 2026. Special Rapporteurs are independent experts appointed by the UN Human Rights Council who serve in their individual capacity and receive no salary for their work. – UN News Myanmar’s illicit economy fuels escalating violence, with civilians bearing the brunt
Russia – Ukraine (and beyond)
Four days after Russia launched its all-out effort to subjugate Ukraine, the US government, and other Western allies, fired a broadside of financial sanctions aimed at punishing the Kremlin’s wallet for the assault. The Russian Central Bank was prominent. So was a multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund that the Kremlin calls the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF. The White House called it “a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin [that] is emblematic of Russia’s broader kleptocracy”. After months of dormancy, US negotiators have ramped up efforts to find a negotiated settlement to end Russia’s war on Ukraine — as well as normalize frosty relations between Washington and Moscow. The peace proposals vary. Many tilt heavily in Russia favor, something that was echoed in Putin’s remarks to European leaders earlier this week. They also include lifting sanctions on the RDIF, whose chief executive, Kirill Dmitriev, is the Kremlin’s point person for talks with the Americans. “This conversation is going on,” Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov told Russian reporters. “It’s been going on for some time, though I don’t know what the result will be”. “Dmitriev is actively reaching out, in particular, and therefore the question has come up and is being discussed,” Ushakov said on October 28, confirming a New York Times report a day earlier. US sanctions experts were wary. “Since its inception in the early 2010s, RDIF has served as a vehicle for channeling investments into companies and sectors that are strategically important to Putin,” said Peter Harell, who served as a senior director on the White House National Security Council from 2021 to 2022. “We should all be clear-eyed about what unsanctioning RDIF would mean: it would mean prioritizing American investment in Kremlin-aligned projects over supporting Ukraine,” he said. – RFE/RL The US Once Called It ‘A Slush Fund For Putin.’ Now Washington May Lift Sanctions On It.
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo says Russian President Vladimir Putin has shown no willingness to end his war against Ukraine, warning that Moscow’s growing cooperation with Beijing, Tehran, and Pyongyang poses a serious challenge to Western security. In an interview with RFE/RL on October 29, Pompeo, who served in President Donald Trump’s first administration, discussed Ukraine’s prospects for peace, the risks of negotiating with Putin, Iran’s support for Moscow, and the need for stronger Western security guarantees for Kyiv. – RFE/RL Putin Has Shown No Willingness To End Ukraine War, Says Mike Pompeo
Climate Action
From salmon spawning grounds in Canada to coral reefs in Indonesia, ecosystems around the world are being restored at an unprecedented rate. Some 252 million hectares across 149 countries – an area of land and sea roughly the size of Kazakhstan – are currently under restoration, making this the largest documented effort of its kind to date. More than one million green jobs have also been created in the process. “Today, we are witnessing the makings of one of the largest movements for nature in recorded history,” said Inger Andersen, Executive Director of the UN Environment Programme (UNEP). – UN News Nature is making a comeback – now restoration funding must quadruple
Cybersecurity, Surveillance
Cryptocurrency giant Binance said on Thursday that $6.3bn (£4.7bn) of digital assets have been impacted by what has been described as the “largest hack in history”. The world’s biggest crypto exchange said about half of those assets have been frozen with the help of other platforms, adding that it will “cover all losses”. Early checks show the incident may have involved an engineer’s laptop that had been compromised, which allowed an attacker to make unauthorised withdrawals, Binance said. Two analytics firms have attributed the incident, which eclipses a record-setting $1.5bn hack on the Bybit exchange in 2025, to a North Korean hacking unit called TraderTraitor. AI-powered investigations company TRM Labs said in a report that several elements of the Binance attack resemble earlier North Korean-linked incidents, including the Bybit hack. The lab’s global head of policy Ari Redbord told the BBC the Binance hack is a “watershed moment” that is unlike anything the industry has seen. The attacker still holds an enormous sum of stolen assets, meaning efforts to trace and recover the funds are far from over, Redbord added. Chainalysis, another crypto analytics firm, also said it has “high confidence” that the North Korean group are linked to the hack. – BBC Crypto giant Binance hit by ‘largest hack in history’
