What happened
President Donald Trump yesterday said the U.S. will stop giving Israel billions in military aid by the end of the year, calling it as a joint decision with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Trump’s “surprise announcement came as Americans headed to the polls,” The Washington Post said, and he presented the decision “in transparently political terms as attitudes toward Israel sour in both parties, especially among Democrats.” 

Who said what
Israel is “fine with it because they’ve become a very successful country,” Trump said in a phone interview with Fox News. “They don’t need it,” so “why should we suffer the slings from lunatics” like Michigan Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, handing Democrats “a bad talking point.” El-Sayed, who won his Senate race last night, responded: “Even a broken clock can be right twice a day.”

Neither Netanyahu nor his office responded to Trump’s announcement. But “Israeli officials, including from the security establishment, were surprised,” The Wall Street Journal said. And “Israel’s powerful security establishment still sees the assistance as critical.”

What next?
Abruptly ending Israeli military aid by the end of 2026 “would be all but impossible, and Congress will have a large say in what happens,” The Associated Press said. The agreement to provide Israel $3.8 billion a year doesn’t expire until 2028.

What happened
At least seven European passenger flights and a cruise ship were targeted with bomb threats yesterday, disrupting travel. The threats “turned out to be hoaxes,” The Associated Press said, but they “prompted searches, diversions and, in one case, an escort by the Italian Air Force.” The affected airlines included Poland’s LOT, Ryanair, SAS and Wizz Air. 

Who said what
“Anxiety over airspace security is high in Europe” after a “spate of hybrid warfare attacks and intimidation tactics” widely attributed to Russia, The New York Times said. European officials have been “blaming both Russia and Iran for what they describe as ‘hybrid attacks’ and acts of sabotage,” including hackers shutting down supermarket fridges, Reuters said. The exceptionally large number of bomb threats in a single day, without a “clear target state, airline or route, indicates that general ​disruption to aviation operations is the aim,” aviation risk analyst Rhys Jones told Reuters. 

What next?
Bomb threats are “not a new phenomenon” and these could involve copycats or a single person or state actor, Matthew Borie of Osprey Flight Solutions told the AP. But the “coordinated response mechanisms” by the European countries and NATO mean travelers shouldn’t “be alarmed.”

A slew of fraudsters appear to have found a new target: writers. Many authors looking to promote their latest novels are reportedly falling victim to these scammers, many of whom promise authors access to the reading public while preying on them financially.

Book club scams, for example, lure published writers with “invitations from reading communities that start to unravel after a basic Google search,” said author Snigdha Poonam at The Dial. Others scams include offers to “publish our next book, market our book, handle social media for us, represent us as agents and get us book-to-movie deals.”

Once the fraudsters are able to secure payment, often the “paper trail leads to Nigerian third parties holding bank accounts in America,” said The Dial. Author John Cocks paid “Mary Brown” $478 for a “book trailer and some commissioned reviews,” said The Guardian. Cocks later noticed the PayPal receipt listed a Nigerian person named Dayo Oguntuase.

Artificial intelligence plays a large role, as it can “help to tailor emails, produce fake pictures and documents and create websites” to lure in writers, said The Times. Authors who “normally consider themselves very tech savvy” are “suddenly being confronted” with AI-created deception, said Eleanor Dawson, of the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, to The Times.

To combat the onslaught, writers should use trustworthy sources. If an author hires a “qualified freelance marketing or PR team, you will pay significantly more ,” said Literary Hub,  but you will also “receive actual strategy, real outreach and meaningful expertise.”