Ukraine

• Western leaders were due to meet in Germany on Saturday to hear Pres. Zelensky's "victory plan," but the meeting was postponed after Pres. Biden cancelled his trip to manage anticipated relief efforts for Hurricane Milton (which made landfall in Florida today).
• Some saw Biden's cancellation as an indicator of weakening U.S. enthusiasm for supporting Ukraine.

• Israel deployed a fourth combat division to southern Lebanon and continued its airstrikes throughout the country - including on Beirut.
• Israel's security cabinet plans to vote today on its response to Iran's direct ballistic missile attack. Defense Minister Gallant promised a "powerful, precise, and above all - surprising" response.

• Russian regulators banned Discord, an online chat and messaging app, citing the platform's failure to remove illegal content like extremist posts and child sexual abuse material.
• As often in Russia, there may be more to the story. Shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine, it banned its citizens from using Facebook and X to get real news about the war. Unlike Facebook and X, though, Russia's military uses Discord to communicate in the field since it doesn't have a dedicated secure messaging platform. Banning domestic Discord users could help restrict the flow (or leak) of sensitive information from the front.
• (Turkey followed Russia in banning Discord, but in Turkey's case the ban was imposed because Discord refused to share its user data with the government.)
• Separately, a Russian court convicted ex-U.S. Marine Trevor Reed - in absentia - for serving as a mercenary for Ukraine, and sentenced him to 14.5 years in prison.
• This time, the charges against Reed seem legit: the State Department acknowledged that he was injured fighting in Ukraine in July. He may have been motivated by the bad time he had in Russian prison from 2019 to 2022 on bogus charges that the U.S. called a "theater of the absurd." He was traded in a 2022 prisoner swap for a convicted cocaine smuggler, and apparently quickly volunteered to fight against Russia.

• Human Rights Watch warned that Haiti's gangs are increasingly recruiting young boys to join their ranks - and pushing young girls into forced domestic labor for - and sexual abuse by - gang leaders. According to UN estimates, around one-third of Haiti's gang members are children.

• The FBI arrested an Afghan immigrant, Nasir Ahmad Tawhedi (and an unnamed co-conspirator who is a minor) for allegedly planning a terrorist attack in the U.S. on Election Day (November 5) in the name of Islamic State-Khorasan (IS-K).
• Tawhedi immigrated to the U.S. in 2021 under a special immigrant visa program open to Afghans who helped U.S. forces during Operation Enduring Freedom. Investigators say he has lately been communicating and conspiring with IS-K.