Situation Reports

The U.S. State Department has notified Congress that it wants to approve the sale of 50 F-35s to the United Arab Emirates, Politico reported Oct. 30.

Tunisia's judiciary is opening an investigation into a possible terrorist group known as al Mahdi in southern Tunisia and its links to the recent deadly attack against the French city of Nice, the deputy public prosecutor at Tunisia's Court of First Instance said Oct. 30.

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ended his tour of South and Southeast Asia with a visit to Vietnam in which he broadly called on Hanoi to play a stronger regional role, while notably avoiding any mention of China unlike previous legs of his journey, Reuters reported Oct. 30.

In an Oct. 30 op-ed penned to the South Korean news outlet Yonhap, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden wrote he would not use the U.S. troop numbers posted in South Korea as a means of bargaining with Seoul and would instead strengthen the two countries’ bilateral alliance, should he win the upcoming U.S. presidential election.

Seasonally adjusted GDP grew by 12.7 percent in the euro area and by 12.1 percent in the European Union in the third quarter of 2020 compared with the previous quarter, Eurostat reported Oct. 30. However, compared with the third quarter of 2018, GDP decreased by 4.3 percent in the euro area and by 3.9 percent in the European Union. 

The United States is allowing a growing number of chip makers to supply components to the Chinese telecommunications company Huawei, as long as the components are not used by Huawei’s 5G business, the Financial Times reported Oct. 28.

Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev echoed Turkish demands that negotiations on the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict occur in a quadrilateral format -- with Azerbaijan and Turkey on one side of the table, and Armenia and Russia on the other, TASS reported Oct. 29.

Should he be elected in November, former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden would reportedly work with U.S. allies to gain “collective leverage” against China before making a decision to remove tariffs on Chinese shipments, Reuters reported Oct. 29 after speaking with two of Biden’s top advisors. 

During his visit to Indonesia as part of a tour of South and Southeast Asia, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo that the United States planned to find new means of cooperating with Indonesia in the South China Sea, voicing support for Jakarta's work to enforce sovereignty over the Natuna Islands while condemning China's claims there as "unlawful,” Reuters Oct. 29. 

The Communist Party of China released a communique detailing in broad terms the outcomes of the closed-door fifth plenum of the 19th Party Congress, which focused on the 14th five-year economic plan and a first-ever 15-year roadmap for achieving President Xi Jinping’s goal of a "great modern socialist nation,” Reuters reported Oct. 29.