Axios

The Trump administration is pushing to get a nuclear arms control agreement with Russia ready for President Trump and Vladimir Putin to apply their signatures before Election Day.

Where things stand: The U.S. believes the prospective deal has buy-in from Putin — who has discussed arms control on a series of phone calls with Trump — and could be negotiated in as little as a week, according to a source familiar with the discussions.

The UN's World Food Program (WFP) was awarded this year's Nobel Peace Prize in a pointed assertion that multilateralism is saving lives despite the nationalism espoused by leaders like President Trump.

What they're saying: "Multilateralism seems to have a lack of respect these days,” said Nobel Committee director Berit Reiss-Andersen. "The need for international solidarity and multilateral co-operation is more conspicuous than ever."

Europe is now recording far more new coronavirus cases than ever before.

The big picture: One reason is testing. Deaths and hospitalizations remain far below the levels seen in the spring, though they continue to tick upward.

Russia’s sphere of influence appears to be spinning out of control, with war in the Caucasus, revolution in Kyrgyzstan and an uprising in Belarus.

The big picture: The three crises are very different, but their roots all stretch back to the former Soviet Union — and all three are testing Russia’s influence today.

38 countries joined Germany at the United Nations this week in condemning China's human rights abuses in the northwest region of Xinjiang, where the government is engaged in a sweeping campaign of demographic genocide against Uighur Muslims and other ethnic minorities.

Why it matters: Statements like this one provide a sense of which countries are willing to challenge China over human rights, and which are lining up behind Beijing.

The U.S. Treasury on Thursday imposed a sweeping set of sanctions on 18 major Iranian banks in a move that could blow apart the international remnants of the country's 2015 nuclear deal.

Why it matters: "The move all but severs Iran from the global financial system, slashing the few remaining legal links it has and making it more dependent on informal or illicit trade," per Bloomberg.

Elliott Broidy, the former deputy finance chairman of the Republican National Committee, appears set to plead guilty to conspiracy to act as an unregistered foreign agent by lobbying the Trump administration to drop an investigation into the massive Malaysian embezzlement scheme 1MDB, according to a court filing.

Why it matters: Broidy is the latest 2016 Trump campaign associate to face criminal charges, joining former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, deputy chairman Rick Gates, chief executive Steve Bannon, adviser Michael Flynn, outside adviser Roger Stone and fellow deputy finance chairman Michael Cohen.

The number of coronavirus cases exceeded 6 million in Europe Wednesday, per AFP, as the World Health Organization warns that the continent is experiencing "rising COVID-19 fatigue."

The big picture: Cases are surging across the U.K., France, Italy, Spain and Germany, with records set in several European countries in the past week.

Brazil became on Wednesday the third country to surpass 5 million coronavirus cases, as the virus death toll in the nation neared 150,000.

By the numbers: Brazil has the third-highest number of cases after India (almost 6.8 million) and the U.S. (over 7.5 million), per Johns Hopkins.