Evening Brief, Friday 6 November

Friday brought a new wave of bomb threats against at least 18 flights in nine European countries, from Italy and France to Hungary, Cyprus, Romania, Britain and Portugal. The aircraft landed without incident, and checks found no explosives. Prague's airport said nine flights were threatened, including a WizzAir Prague to Rome service diverted to Venice, where passengers were evacuated and traffic paused briefly. Hungary sent fighter jets to escort three passenger planes within an hour, and four threatened flights over French territory landed safely at Orly in Paris.

Investigators now treat the wave as larger than the usual background noise of hoax threats. Adnkronos reported at least 35 flights diverted or checked from Tuesday to Thursday, before Friday's 18. At Milan Malpensa, two alerts on Thursday involved flights from Thessaloniki and Porto, both cleared after searches. Prosecutors in Busto Arsizio opened a false-alarm case against unknown persons, while Italy's postal police try to trace the senders. National anti-mafia and anti-terrorism prosecutors are coordinating district offices, and the national cybersecurity agency has sent reports on the cases.

An email sent to 18 media outlets claimed responsibility for the alerts and warned of attacks on aircraft, cruise ships, metro stations and trains. Its authenticity has not been verified. RTÉ evacuated its Dublin headquarters after a bomb threat, and Sky News said it had received a security threat hours later. The clearest fact remains prosaic, and reassuring: authorities found no device on the aircraft they checked.

Donald Trump said he had met Kirill Dmitriev, an adviser to Vladimir Putin and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, in Washington and predicted a large agreement covering more than Ukraine. He gave no terms, no timetable and no account of what he discussed with Dmitriev. The comment followed a White House event hosted by Melania Trump with Russian and Ukrainian officials, centred on a six-day truce in Oleshky, a Russian-occupied city in Kherson region. The truce expired on 1 November, and accounts differ on who made it possible.

The diplomatic track now moves to Abu Dhabi, where Kyiv, Moscow and Washington are scheduled to meet on 10 and 11 November. Jared Kushner said separate US talks in Brussels with Ukrainian, NATO and European partners had focused on security guarantees for Ukraine and a wider European security architecture. No official Brussels statement had been issued, according to one account. The last trilateral format of this kind met in Geneva in February, after two earlier rounds in Abu Dhabi.

The fighting has not paused for the choreography. Volodymyr Zelensky asked the Ibero-American Summit in Madrid for quick help to keep Ukraine's energy systems running under Russian strikes. He also referred to recent Russian attacks that left people missing, including the bombing of a school used as a shelter in Zaporizhzhia region. Trump said he would not comment on the strikes, keeping his public remarks on the meeting with Dmitriev and the deal he says will follow.

Paraguay's Congress failed to accept Santiago Peña's resignation and instead moved into impeachment mode, leaving him provisionally in office while the process runs. The president received the charges late on Thursday, a 15-page accusation with about 300 pages of annexes, and asked for 72 hours to hire a lawyer and prepare a defence. The Senate rejected the request and summoned him to start immediately. Peña framed the fight as one over basic procedure.

The political crisis grows out of Ueno Bank, a lender launched as a fintech in 2021 that rapidly became one of Paraguay's main financial institutions. It managed about $850m in public funds, including deposits from state institutions and pension bodies. Supervisors later found risky loans to companies linked to controlling shareholders and irregularities in asset records. Once accounts were corrected, capital fell below half the legal minimum, and the Central Bank intervened to move deposits and recoverable assets elsewhere. About three million customers, nearly half the country, saw accounts, cards and transfers blocked.

The street pressure is blunt. Thousands kept vigil outside Congress, the bank's headquarters and the labour ministry in Asunción, some burning useless Ueno cards. Workers at Grupo Vazquez, the holding company behind the bank and more than 37 other firms, fear for wages and jobs. The Central Bank's return schedule began on Friday, but many depositors still do not know when they will recover access to their money.

Gadi Eisenkot publicly asked Isaac Herzog to give him the mandate to form Israel's next government, after presidential consultations ended with 67 recommendations for Eisenkot and 46 for Benjamin Netanyahu. Herzog says he will announce his choice on Sunday, 8 November. Netanyahu's Likud finished as the largest party in the 27 October election, but no bloc reaches the 61 seats needed for confidence, and the blocs veto each other across several lines.

Eisenkot argues that 74 lawmakers have no confidence in Netanyahu, though he has not proved he can assemble a governing majority. His Yashar party holds 21 seats inside an opposition bloc of 48. Netanyahu's bloc has 53, including Likud's 27. The two Arab lists hold 19 seats between them, and United Torah Judaism, with seven seats, has broken its traditional alliance with Netanyahu without naming a candidate.

The path remains awkward. The Joint List offers outside support for Eisenkot while objecting to his conditions, including recognition of Israel as a Jewish state and service obligations for all. Ra'am's Mansour Abbas wants to join the government directly and backs the Trump plan for Gaza and the disarmament of armed factions, including Hamas. Avigdor Liberman ruled out a minority government, which narrows the obvious arithmetic before Herzog gives the first 28-day mandate.

The European Commission issued preliminary findings that TikTok breaches the Digital Services Act through the recommendation system behind its For You feed. Regulators say the algorithm treats watch time and likes as interest, then serves users more of the same. In the videos examined, that meant content about sadness, isolation, weight and body image. Brussels says the loop can deepen anxiety, lower self-esteem and worsen eating disorders, especially for minors and vulnerable adults.

The Commission says TikTok failed to assess the systemic risks of its algorithm properly and that its safeguards do not work well enough. The "Not interested" button carries too little weight because watch time still dominates the feed, according to the findings. Officials also say only 0.2% of users choose the non-personalised feed option. Brussels wants TikTok to stop using watch time as a recommendation signal, rely more on explicit preferences and give users easier tools to steer what they see.

The case was built from more than 20,000 videos and advice from outside experts in psychiatry and psychology, according to a Commission source. It is the third time the Commission has confronted TikTok with findings under the DSA. If the findings are confirmed, the platform faces a fine of up to 6% of annual worldwide turnover. TikTok can now answer the preliminary findings before the Commission takes any final decision.

The US economy added 165,000 jobs in October, far above the 65,000 forecast in a Bloomberg poll, and the unemployment rate fell to 4.1% from 4.2%. Revisions also improved the picture for earlier months, with September lifted to 60,000 jobs and August and September together revised up by 84,000. The report gave the Federal Reserve less reason to hurry toward easier policy after it had held rates steady at its previous meeting.

Markets moved quickly. Traders raised bets on another rate increase in December, and the two-year Treasury yield rose 0.06 percentage points to 4.53%. CME's FedWatch tool put the chance of a December increase at roughly 71%. Fed chair Kevin Warsh pointed to the strength of hiring when he spoke to reporters, while New York Fed president John Williams said inflation was still too high and had to return to the 2% target.

Economists still see a labour market that hires cautiously rather than one that overheats. Alexander Krüger of Bethmann HAL said supply and demand for workers remain in balance, even as the employment engine revs up again. The political timing is sharp: the report landed three days after midterm elections gave Democrats control of Congress, with voters still angry about the cost of living despite solid job growth.