Marie Yovanovitch to Join Foreign Affairs Think Tank

Here is more from Politico:

Marie Yovanovitch is joining the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace as a senior fellow in the Russia and Eurasia program. Yovanovitch will primarily be working on her book while there.

Yovanovitch is a recently-retired US diplomat whose abrupt removal by President Trump from her post as ambassador to Ukraine became a focus of impeachment hearings. William Burns, President of Carnegie, has defended her on numerous occasions.

She is also a Senior State Department Fellow at Georgetown University's Institute for the Study of Diplomacy.

Korean President Meets With Think Tanks to Discuss North Korea

Here is what the Korean press is reporting:

Earlier in the day, [South Korean President Moon Jae-in] met with heads of leading U.S. think tanks, including Richard Haass, a former U.S. diplomat and currently the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, and discussed the North Korea issue.

Others at that meeting include Kevin Rudd (President of the Asia Society Policy Institute) and Thomas Byrne (President of the Korea Society).

But CFR head Richard Haass seems to be a favorite of Moon, who also met with Haass in June and asked for help "conveying a positive message about developing the South Korea-US alliance" to the US government and public.

US-North Korea Talks Being Organized by Think Tanker

Former US government officials plan to hold talks with the North Koreans in the United States, and the meeting is being organized by a think tanker.  Here is more from the Washington Post:

The planned talks are being organized by Donald S. Zagoria of the National Committee on American Foreign Policy, who served as a consultant on Asia during the Carter administration and has organized previous rounds of such talks. Zagoria declined to comment on the preparations.

The talks would be run independently of the State Department, where officials have privately questioned the utility of such discussions. But if the administration issued the visas, it would be an implicit seal of approval. And if the discussions go well, they could pave the way for official talks.

Zagoria, who works at NCAFP, used to work at RAND Corporation, a think tank deeply connected to the US governemnt.  His biography also notes that he is "actively involved" with the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) in New York.

Update: The talks have reportedly been cancelled.