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AC Milan coach Paulo Fonseca may be done with the Rossoneri after they drew 1-1 at San Siro on Sunday against AS Roma. The Portuguese manager is expected to be sacked by the Italian club, per multiple reports , after a challenging start to the season as AC Milan are currently eighth in the standings with 27 points after 17 Serie A games. Former Porto manager Sergio Conceicao is expected to replace him, according to the reports. Conceicao reportedly agreed to join AC Milan before the AS Roma game but the decision was postponed until now. Among the reasons for the sacking, Fonseca had some issues over the past weeks with some of the key players on this roster, including winger Rafael Leao and club captain Theo Hernandez, per reports. 🔴⚫️ AC Milan are on the verge of sacking Paulo Fonseca. Final steps being discussed internally. Sérgio Conceição, ready to become the new head coach if all goes to plan. pic.twitter.com/fRfM0rSvC3 The former FC Porto manager will take charge of AC Milan and will likely coach his first game against Juventus and his son Francisco on Friday in the semifinal of the Supercoppa Italiana. Conceicao is expected to sign a deal until the end of the season with an option to extend his deal and he is likely to sign his deal before the Rossoneri travel to Saudi Arabia for the Supercoppa Italiana. Fonseca's cycle at AC Milan had some ups, including the win at the Estadio Santiago Bernabeu against Real Madrid, and also some negative moments as the fans are now putting pressure on American businessman and Rossoneri owner Gerry Cardinale. The decision to sack Fonseca would only be the latest decision that goes against what the club planned before the start of the 2024-25 season. It's now up to Conceicao to turn things around, but it's difficult to imagine that things can drastically change only with the appointment of a new head coach, not to mention, also needing American Christian Pulisic to recover from his latest injury .Emotions taking over politicsShort Interest in Aditxt, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADTX) Declines By 45.2%

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NEW YORK — The masked gunman who stalked and killed the leader of one of the largest U.S. health insurance companies outside a Manhattan hotel used ammunition emblazoned with the words "deny," "defend" and "depose," two law enforcement officials said Thursday. The words were written in permanent marker, according to one of the officials, who spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity. With the gunman still at large, police also released photos of a person they said was wanted for questioning in connection with the shooting. UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, 50, died in a dawn ambush Wednesday as he walked to the company's annual investor conference at a Hilton hotel in Midtown. The reason behind the killing remained unknown, but investigators believe it was a targeted attack. This image shows a man wanted for questioning in connection to the investigation of the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson outside a Manhattan hotel. The message left on the ammunition echoes the phrase "delay, deny, defend," which is commonly used by attorneys and insurance industry critics to describe tactics used to avoid paying claims. It refers to insurers delaying payment, denying a claim and then defending their actions. Health insurers like UnitedHealthcare have become frequent targets of criticism from doctors and patients for complicating access to care. Investigators recovered several 9 mm shell casings from outside the hotel and a cellphone from the alleyway through which the shooter fled. Inside a nearby trash can, they found a water bottle and protein bar wrapper that they say the gunman purchased from a nearby Starbucks minutes before the shooting. The city's medical examiner was looking for fingerprints. The killing and the shooter's movements in the minutes before and after were captured on some of the multitudes of security cameras present in that part of the city. The shooter fled on a bike and was last seen riding into Central Park. Bullets lie on the sidewalk Wednesday outside the Hilton Hotel in midtown Manhattan where Brian Thompson, the CEO of UnitedHealthcare, was shot and killed in New York. The hunt for the shooter brought New York City police to at least two hostels on Manhattan's Upper West Side on Thursday morning, based on a tip that the suspected shooter might have stayed at one of the residences, according to one of the law enforcement officials briefed on the investigation. The photos police released Thursday of a man wanted for questioning were taken in the lobby of the HI New York City hostel. "We are fully cooperating with the NYPD and, as this is an active investigation, can not comment at this time," said Danielle Brumfitt, a spokesperson for the hostel. Police received a flood of tips from members of the public, many of them unfounded. On Wednesday evening, police searched a Long Island Rail Road train after a commuter claimed to have spotted the shooter, but found no sign of the gunman. "We're following up on every single tip that comes in," said Carlos Nieves, a police spokesperson. "That little piece of information could be the missing piece of the puzzle that ties everything together." Investigators believe, judging from surveillance video and evidence collected from the scene, that the shooter had at least some prior firearms training and experience with guns and the weapon was equipped with a silencer, said one of the law enforcement officials who spoke with the AP. This still image from surveillance video shows the suspect, left, sought in the the killing of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, center, Wednesday outside a Manhattan hotel. Security camera video showed the killer approach Thompson from behind, level his pistol and fire several shots, barely pausing to clear a gun jam while the health executive tumbled to the pavement. Cameras showed him fleeing the block across a pedestrian plaza before getting on the bicycle. Police issued several surveillance images of the man wearing a hooded jacket and a mask that concealed most of his face, which wouldn't have attracted attention on a frigid day. Authorities also used drones, helicopters and dogs in an intensive search, but the killer's whereabouts remained unknown. Thompson, a father of two sons who lived in suburban Minneapolis, was with UnitedHealthcare since 2004 and served as CEO for more than three years. The insurer's Minnetonka, Minnesota-based parent company, UnitedHealth Group Inc., was holding its annual meeting with investors in New York to update Wall Street on the company's direction and expectations for the coming year. The company ended the conference early in the wake of Thompson's death. UnitedHealthcare is the largest provider of Medicare Advantage plans in the U.S. and manages health insurance coverage for employers and state and federally funded Medicaid programs. In the U.S. healthcare system, even the simplest act, like booking an appointment with your primary care physician, may feel intimidating. As you wade through intake forms and insurance statements, and research out-of-network coverage , you might wonder, "When did U.S. health care get so confusing?" Short answer? It's complicated. The history of modern U.S. health care spans nearly a century, with social movements, legislation, and politics driving change. Take a trip back in time as Thatch highlights some of the most impactful legislation and policies that gave us the existing healthcare system, particularly how and when things got complicated. In the beginning, a common perception of American doctors was that they were kindly old men stepping right out of a Saturday Evening Post cover illustration to make house calls. If their patients couldn't afford their fee, they'd accept payment in chicken or goats. Health care was relatively affordable and accessible. Then it all fell apart during the Great Depression of the 1930s. That's when hospital administrators started looking for ways to guarantee payment. According to the American College of Healthcare Executives, this is when the earliest form of health insurance was born. Interestingly, doctors would have none of it at first. The earliest health plans covered hospitalization only. A new set of challenges from the Second World War required a new set of responses. During the Depression, there were far too many people and too few jobs. The war economy had the opposite effect. Suddenly, all able-bodied men were in the military, but somebody still had to build the weapons and provision the troops. Even with women entering the workforce in unprecedented numbers, there was simply too much to get done. The competition for skilled labor was brutal. A wage freeze starting in 1942 forced employers to find other means of recruiting and retaining workers. Building on the recently mandated workers' compensation plans, employers or their union counterparts started offering insurance to cover hospital and doctor visits. Of course, the wage freeze ended soon after the war. However, the tax code and the courts soon clarified that employer-sponsored health insurance was non-taxable. Medicare, a government-sponsored health plan for retirees 65 and older, debuted in 1965. Nowadays, Medicare is offered in Parts A, B, C, and D; each offering a different layer of coverage for older Americans. As of 2023, over a quarter of all U.S. adults are enrolled in Medicare. The structure of Medicare is not dissimilar to universal health care offered in other countries, although the policy covers everyone, not just people over a certain age. Medicaid was also signed into law with Medicare. Medicaid provides health care coverage for Americans with low incomes. Over 74 million Americans are enrolled in Medicaid today. The Obama administration was neither the first nor the last to champion new ways to provide health care coverage to a wider swath of Americans. The first attempts to harmonize U.S. healthcare delivery systems with those of other developed economies came just five years after Medicare and Medicaid. Two separate bills were introduced in 1970 alone. Both bills aimed to widen affordable health benefits for Americans, either by making people Medicare-eligible or providing free health benefits for all Americans. As is the case with many bills, both these died, even though there was bipartisan support. But the chairman of the relevant Senate panel had his own bill in mind, which got through the committee. It effectively said that all Americans were entitled to the kind of health benefits enjoyed by the United Auto Workers Union or AFL-CIO—for free. But shortly after Sen. Edward Kennedy began hearings on his bill in early 1971 , a competing proposal came from an unexpected source: Richard Nixon's White House. President Nixon's approach , in retrospect, had some commonalities with what Obamacare turned out to be. There was the employer mandate, for example, and an expansion of Medicaid. It favored healthcare delivery via health maintenance organizations, or HMOs, which was a novel idea at the time. HMOs, which offer managed care within a tight network of health care providers, descended from the prepaid health plans that flourished briefly in the 1910s and 1920s. They were first conceived in their current form around 1970 by Dr. Paul M. Ellwood, Jr. In 1973, a law was passed to require large companies to give their employees an HMO option as well as a traditional health insurance option. But that was always intended to be ancillary to Nixon's more ambitious proposal, which got even closer to what exists now after it wallowed in the swamp for a while. When Nixon reintroduced the proposal in 1974, it featured state-run health insurance plans as a substitute for Medicaid—not a far cry from the tax credit-fueled state-run exchanges of today. Of course, Nixon had other things to worry about in 1974: inflation, recession, a nation just beginning to heal from its first lost war—and his looming impeachment. His successor, Gerald Ford, tried to keep the proposal moving forward, but to no avail. But this raises a good question: If the Republican president and the Democratic Senate majority both see the same problem and have competing but not irreconcilable proposals to address it, why wasn't there some kind of compromise? What major issue divided the two parties? It was a matter of funding. The Democrats wanted to pay for universal health coverage through the U.S. Treasury's general fund, acknowledging that Congress would have to raise taxes to pay for it. The Republicans wanted it to pay for itself by charging participants insurance premiums, which would be, in effect, a new tax. The next significant legislation came from President Reagan, who signed the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act, or COBRA, in 1985. COBRA enabled laid-off workers to hold onto their health insurance—providing that they pay 100% of the premium, which had been wholly or at least in part subsidized by their erstwhile employer. While COBRA offers continued coverage, its high expense doesn't offer much relief for the unemployed. A 2006 Commonwealth Fund survey found that only 9% of people eligible for COBRA coverage actually signed up for it. The COBRA law had a section, though, that was only tangentially related. The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act, or EMTALA, which was incorporated into COBRA, required all emergency medical facilities that take Medicare—that is, all of them—to treat patients irrespective of their insurance status or ability to pay. As Forbes staff writer Avik Roy wrote during the Obamacare debate, EMTALA has come to overshadow the rest of the COBRA law in its influence on American health care policy. More on that soon. It wasn't until the 1990s that Washington saw another serious attempt at healthcare reform. Bill Clinton's first order of business as president was to establish a new health care plan. For the first time, the First Lady took on the role of heavy-lifting policy advisor to the president and became the White House point person on universal health care. Hillary Clinton's proposal mandated : The Clintons' plan centralized decision-making in Washington, with a "National Health Board" overseeing quality assurance, training physicians, guaranteeing abortion coverage, and running both long-term care facilities and rural health systems. The insurance lobbyists had a field day with that. The famous "Harry and Louise" ads portrayed a generic American couple having tense conversations in their breakfast nook about how the federal government would come between them and their doctor. By the 1994 midterms, any chance of universal health care in America had died. In this case, it wasn't funding but the debate between big and small governments that killed the Clinton reform. It would be another generation before the U.S. saw universal health care take the stage. Fast-forward to 2010. It was clear that employer-sponsored plans were vestiges of another time. They made sense when people stayed with the same company for their entire careers, but as job-hopping and layoffs became more prevalent, plans tied to the job became obsolete. Thus the Affordable Care Act, or ACA, was proposed by Barack Obama's White House and squeaked by Congress and the Supreme Court with the narrowest of margins. The ACA introduced an individual mandate requiring everyone to have health insurance regardless of job status. It set up an array of government-sponsored online exchanges where individuals could buy coverage . It also provided advance premium tax credits to defray the cost to consumers. But it didn't ignore hat most people were already getting health insurance through work, and a significant proportion didn't want to change . So the ACA also required employers with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees to provide health coverage to at least 95% of them. The law, nicknamed Obamacare by supporters and detractors, set a minimum baseline of coverage and affordability. The penalty for an employer that offers inadequate or unaffordable coverage can never be greater than the penalty for not offering coverage at all. The model for Obamacare was the health care reform package that went into effect in Massachusetts in 2006. The initial proposal was made by then-Governor Mitt Romney, a Republican who now serves as a senator from Utah. Despite an onslaught of court challenges, Obamacare remains the law of the land. For a while, Republican congressional candidates ran on a "repeal-and-replace" platform plank, but even when they were in the majority, there was little legislative action to do either. Still, Obamacare is not the last word in American health care reform. Since then, there have been two important improvements to Health Reimbursement Arrangements, through which companies pay employees back for out-of-pocket medical-related expenses. HRAs had been evolving informally since at least the 1960s but were first addressed by the Internal Revenue Service in 2002. Not much more happened on that front until Obama's lame-duck period. In December 2016, he signed the bipartisan 21st Century Cures Act, which was mainly a funding bill supporting the National Institutes of Health as it addressed the opioid crisis. But, just like the right to free emergency room treatment was nested in the larger COBRA law, the legal framework of Qualified Small Employer Health Reimbursement Arrangements was tucked away in a corner of the Cures Act. QSEHRAs, offered only by companies with fewer than 50 full-time employees, allow firms to let their employees pick their insurance coverage off the Obamacare exchanges. The firms pay the employees back for some or all of the cost of those premiums. The employees then become ineligible for the premium tax credit provided by the ACA, but a well-constructed QSEHRA will meet or exceed the value of that subsidy. That brings this timeline to one last innovation, which expands QSEHRA-like treatment to companies with more than 50 employees or aspiring to have them. Individual Coverage Health Reimbursement Arrangements , or ICHRAs, were established by a 2019 IRS rule . ICHRAs allow firms of any size to offer employees tax-free contributions to cover up to 100% of their individual health insurance premiums as well as other eligible medical expenses. Instead of offering insurance policies directly, companies advise employees to shop on a government-sponsored exchange and select the best plan that suits their needs. Employer reimbursement rather than an advance premium tax credit reduces premiums. And because these plans are already ACA-compliant, there's no risk to the employer that they won't meet coverage or affordability standards. The U.S. is never going back to the mid-20th century model of lifetime employment at one company. Now, with remote employees and gig workers characterizing the workforce, the portability of an ICHRA provides some consistency for those who expect to be independent contractors for their entire careers. Simultaneously, allows bootstrap-phase startups to offer the dignity of health coverage to their Day One associates. The U.S. health care system can feel clunky and confusing to navigate. It is also regressive and penalizes startups and small businesses. For a country founded by entrepreneurs, it's sad that corporations like Google pay less for health care per employee than a small coffee shop in Florida. In many ways, ICHRA democratizes procuring health care coverage. In the same way that large employers enjoy the benefits of better rates, ICHRA plan quality and prices improve as the ICHRA risk pool grows. Moving away from the traditional employer model will change the incentive structure of the healthcare industry. Insurers will be able to compete and differentiate on the merits of their product. They will be incentivized to build products for people, not one-size-fits-all solutions for employers. This story was produced by Thatch and reviewed and distributed by Stacker Media. Sign up for our Crime & Courts newsletter Get the latest in local public safety news with this weekly email.SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — In an era of rising authoritarianism, at the heels of a six-hour martial law decree that unfolded while many South Koreans slept, something noteworthy happened: Democracy held. The past week in Seoul, officials and academics warn, is what a threat to democracy looks like in 2024. It's a democratically-elected president declaring martial law over the nation he leads, asserting sweeping powers to prevent opposition demonstrations, ban political parties and control the media. It's members of the military attempting to block lawmakers from exercising their power to vote on cancelling the power grab. And here's what it took to defeat President Yoon Suk Yeol 's lurch toward government by force: Unified popular support for democracy. Legislators storming the National Assembly past midnight, live-streaming themselves climbing over fences. A politician grabbing at a soldier's rifle and yelling “Aren't you ashamed?” until he retreated. And finally, decisively, Parliament assembling a quorum and voting unanimously to cancel martial law. It was a victory for a hard-won democracy — and for the idea that checks and balances among branches of government must work to counteract each other's ambitions, as the American founders wrote in the Federalist Papers in 1788. But as the drama played out in Seoul, the scaffolding of democracy rattled around the world. In other countries, the grab for power might have worked. Other would-be authoritarians might have been better prepared than Yoon. In deeply polarized societies — the United States, for example, where Republicans are staunchly loyal to president-elect Donald Trump — there might not have been decisive support from the public or the opposition. The military might have used force. And the members of the legislature might not have voted as one to snuff out the attempted takeover. “President Yoon's attempt to declare martial law reveals the fragility of the rule of law in divided societies, especially those with governments in which the chief executive cannot be easily dismissed by the legislature," said Tom Pepinsky, a government professor at Cornell University who studies backsliding among democracies in Southeast Asia. Notably, he said in an email, “No members of President Yoon’s own party were willing to defend his actions in public." Nevertheless, Yoon’s surprise attempt to impose martial law revealed both the fragility and resilience of the country’s democratic system. Within three hours of his stunning announcement to impose military rule — claiming the opposition was “paralyzing” state affairs — 190 lawmakers voted to cancel his actions. In so doing, they demonstrated the strength of the country’s democratic checks and balances. Yoon’s authoritarian push, carried out by hundreds of heavily armed troops with Blackhawk helicopters and armored vehicles sent to the National Assembly, harked back to an era of dictatorial presidents. The country’s democratic transition in the late 1980s came after years of massive protests by millions that eventually overcame violent suppressions by military rulers. Civilian presence was again crucial in shaping the events following Yoon’s late night television announcement on Tuesday. Thousands of people flocked to the National Assembly, shouting slogans for martial law to be lifted and Yoon to step down from power. There were no reports of violent clashes as troops and police officers. “We restored democracy without having a single casualty this time,” said Seol Dong-hoon, a sociology professor at South Korea’s Jeonbuk National University. It’s virtually impossible for any leader of a democracy to pull off a transition toward martial law without a public willing to support it, or at least tolerate it. Opposition leader Lee Jae-myung, who narrowly lost to Yoon in the 2022 presidential election, attracted millions of views as he began live-streaming his journey to the National Assembly, pleading for people to converge to the parliament to help lawmakers get inside. The shaky footage later shows him exiting his car climbing over a fence to get onto the grounds. The vote at the National Assembly was also broadcast live on the YouTube channel of Assembly Speaker Woo Won Shik, who also had to scale a fence to get in. Yoon’s sense of crisis clearly wasn’t shared by the public, whose opinions, Seol said, were shaped predominantly by the shocking videos broadcast to their devices. “Ultimately, democracy is all about moving public opinion,” he said. “What was most crucial in this case was that everything was broadcast live on smartphones, YouTube and countless other media.” Opposition lawmakers are now pushing to remove Yoon from office, saying he failed to meet the constitutional requirement that martial law should only be considered in wartime or a comparable severe crisis — and that he unlawfully deployed troops to the National Assembly. On Saturday, an opposition-led impeachment motion failed after most lawmakers from Yoon’s party boycotted the vote. Yet the president’s troubles persist: The vote’s defeat is expected to intensify nationwide protests and deepen South Korea’s political turmoil, with opposition parties preparing to introduce another impeachment motion when parliament reconvenes next Wednesday. Han Sang-hie, a law professor at Seoul’s Konkuk University, said the martial law debacle highlights what he sees as the most crucial flaw of South Korea’s democracy: that it places too much power in the hands of the president, which is easily abused and often goes unchecked. Political scientists call what happened in South Korea an “autogolpe” — a “self-coup” — defined as one led by incumbent leaders themselves, in which an executive takes or sponsors illegal actions against others in the government. Yoon qualifies because he used troops to try to shut down South Korea's legislature. Self-coups are increasing, with a third of the 46 since 1945 occurring in the past decade, according to a study by researchers from Carnegie Mellon University and Penn State University. About 80% of self-coups succeed, they reported. In 2021, a power grab by Tunisian President Kais Saied raised similar concerns around the world after the country designed a democracy from scratch and won a Nobel Peace Prize after a largely bloodless revolution. In the United States, some have expresed worry about similar situations arising during the second administration of Donald Trump. He has vowed, after all, to shake some of democracy's pillars . He's mused that he would be justified if he decided to pursue “the termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” That’s in contrast to the oath of office he took in 2017, and will again next year, to “preserve, protect and defend the Constitution” as best he can. Nearly half of voters in the Nov. 5 election, which Trump won, said they were “very concerned” that another Trump presidency would bring the U.S. closer to authoritarianism, according to AP Votecast survey data. Asked before a live audience on Fox News Channel in 2023 to assure Americans that he would not abuse power or use the presidency to seek retribution against anyone, Trump replied, “except for day one," when he'll close the border and “drill, drill, drill.” After that, Trump said, "I'm not a dictator.” Kellman reported from London.Windtree Therapeutics Reports Third Quarter 2024 Financial Results and Provides Key Business Updates

WASHINGTON (AP) — President-elect Donald Trump's nominee to be secretary of the Navy, John Phelan, has not served in the military or had a civilian leadership role in the service. While officials and defense experts said the Navy is in sore need of a disruptor, they cautioned that Phelan's lack of experience could make it more difficult for him to realize Trump's goals. Trump late Tuesday nominated Phelan, a major donor to his campaign who founded the private investment firm Rugger Management LLC. The Trump transition team did not respond to a request for comment on his qualifications. According to his biography, Phelan's primary exposure to the military comes from an advisory position he holds on the Spirit of America, a non-profit that supports the defense of Ukraine and the defense of Taiwan. Not all service secretaries come into the office with prior military experience, but he'd be the first in the Navy since 2006. Current Secretary of the Army Christine Wormuth similarly does not have prior military service. She, however, has spent her career in a host of defense civilian positions. The appointment comes at a critical moment for the Navy, which has been stretched thin with deployments around the world and must contend with a shrinking fleet even as the naval forces of its main rival, China, are growing. Trump has campaigned on expanding the Navy and would need to fight bureaucratic inertia to do so. But it’s uncertain whether a secretary with no military experience — either in uniform or as a defense civilian — would be well-positioned to lead that effort. “It will be difficult for anyone without experience in the Pentagon to take over the leadership of a service and do a good job,” said Stacie Pettyjohn, a senior fellow and director of the defense program at the Center for a New American Security. “Services are sprawling organizations with distinct cultures, subcultures and bureaucratic interests, and where decisions are made through many formal processes. To change a service’s plans, one must understand this Byzantine landscape.” Experts said Phelan's nomination reflects that Trump is seeking service branch heads who will not push back on his ideas — but that Phelan's lack of experience is likely to create issues and delays of its own, They say the Navy can't afford to lose time. One of the Navy’s biggest challenges is preparing for a potential military confrontation with China over Taiwan, a self-ruled island that China claims as its own. " The stakes are high ," said Brad Bowman, senior director of the Center on Military and Political Power at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies. “The success or failure in addressing key problems in the U.S. Navy over the next couple years may have a decisive effect on war and peace in the Taiwan Strait and elsewhere.” Trump has called for a 350-ship Navy since his 2016 presidential campaign, but he experienced first-hand the difficulty in realizing that goal, given the challenges to shipbuilding and the erratic and often delayed congressional budget process. There are just under 300 battle force ships in the fleet — vessels that have a direct role in conducting combat operations. “The Navy is stretched covering Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific. Strategists have wanted to pull back from Europe and the Middle East, but recent conflicts have prevented that,” said Mark Cancian, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “So the next secretary will have a shrinking fleet, expanded overseas commitments, and an uncertain budget environment.” The Marine Corps has called for 31 amphibious warships to help it maintain a close-to-shore presence around the globe. The Navy regularly has had to extend the deployments of its aircraft carriers and escorting destroyers, for example, to respond to the unstable security situation in the Middle East. Each extension can create rippling effects: Ships don’t get maintained on schedule, and forces get tired of the lack of predictability for their families and leave the service. Service branch chiefs spend vast amounts of time not only responding to the White House but also appeasing members of Congress in frequent hearings on Capitol Hill, shaping budget requests, holding constant meetings on service member issues, attending industry conferences and filling speakers requests. That all requires a nuanced understanding of the service that a secretary is leading, because major change in any of the branches often involves a lengthy process to review directives and past policy. Any changes to the many weapons systems the Navy and Marine Corps need and pursue are subject to lengthy contract award challenges. “The Navy’s problem here is money,” Cancian said. “Even if the defense budget goes up, there will only be a relatively small increase available for shipbuilding. (If) the budget stays steady or goes down, then the Navy will have a major problem. The fleet will continue to shrink." Trump has signaled through multiple appointments, such as his selection of SpaceX founder Elon Musk to co-lead a nongovernmental Department of Government Efficiency, that he seeks to cut through red tape. But the service secretary can't do that without moving through Congress, which has produced many of those regulations and processes the military must follow. “It might help that he has a personal relationship with the president. However, his lack of experience in defense and the Pentagon will hurt the Navy," Cancian said. "It will take him a while to learn the levers of power.”An estimated 2.5 million people live in and around the city of El Fasher, the capital of North Darfur in western Sudan. But it's now at the centre of a devastating struggle between two warring factions, which has stretched into its second year. The Rapid Support Forces (RSF), an ethnically-Arab paramilitary group, has been fighting the Sudanese Armed Forces for control of the country. The civil war – triggered in April 2023 by a dispute between the leaders of these two factions — has reignited old ethnic divisions between Arab and African Sudanese. It has also led to multiple allegations of war crimes and atrocities and created the "world's largest hunger crisis", according to the World Food Program. The city of El Fasher lies in the balance and its fall could determine the outcome of the war. The RSF is currently attacking the city from three directions — north, east and west. [DATAWRAPPER map of Sudan] Analysts from the Humanitarian Research Lab at Yale University can see "technicals" – utility vehicles, which typically have 50 calibre machine guns mounted on them – from the RSF inside the city on satellite images. "At this point, the majority of the city has been reduced to rubble by Sudan Armed Forces air strikes and Rapid Support Forces bombardment," said Nathaniel Raymond, the director of the Humanitarian Research Lab. Satellite images taken between November 3 and 8 show damage from shelling around El Fasher's Grand Souk (market), near where the Sudanese Armed Forces were based. There are craters and damaged buildings visible in the centre of the second image that were not present earlier. #startcarousel Shelling in this area indicates direct attacks on the Sudanese Armed Forces and an ability of the RSF to attack the centre of the city. The war comes to El Fasher Analysts from the Humanitarian Research Lab can also see artillery damage to buildings and have been tracking the use of a particular mortar shell used by the RSF. They can see the RSF is directly attacking the headquarters and air base of the last Sudanese Armed Forces detachment inside El Fasher, the Sixth Infantry Division. "The 6th Infantry Division headquarters building is near the Grand Souk in the centre of the city. The majority of the remaining Sudan armed forces are at the air base and the air base is taking fire now," Mr Raymond said. "We can see munition craters. We can see damage to buildings. We can see thermal scarring and that's an extremely troubling development. "Because we can see that some of those munition craters are small bore mortars, likely consistent with a weapon, like the M224 mortar. "And why that's bad is that those mortars have a maximum range of 3.5 kilometres, which means now we can say forensically that Rapid Support Forces are under 3.5 kilometres from the last stand location of the 6th Infantry division. "They are probably closer than that." What the fall of a city means for Sudan It's been very difficult for journalists to cover Sudan's horrific civil war, with the government denying visas and armed groups detaining media crews that have made it into Sudan. Mobile phone towers around much of the country have been destroyed, leaving satellite communications as the only way to get information from inside many parts of Sudan. Satellite images are one of the few ways to see what is happening. The scale of death and horror in Sudan – 11 million people displaced, millions starving, myriad atrocities and rampant disease – dwarfs more prominent conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine. But the war has not attracted the same international attention. Now, the fall of El Fasher, Mr Raymond said, could be the worst catastrophe in a war that has already been filled with immense suffering. "This would be the most significant event in the war today," Mr Raymond said. "The reason why, is that with the fall of El Fasher, the Rapid Support Forces will control Darfur. "They will be able to complete the Darfur genocide largely without resistance from the international community. "They can complete the liquidation of the non-Arab tribes of Darfur and they will be able to go and hit all the villages they've missed in the past few weeks." The RSF has reportedly denied allegations it has been committing genocide in Darfur. Displaced people forced to live in tents The greatest fear for aid groups is that once the Rapid Support Forces conquer El Fasher, they will attack an Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp called Zamzam, which is 12 kilometres to the south. Hundreds of thousands of people have fled to the camp, many from El Fasher. "We don't have our homes anymore, there are no schools and the malaria is spreading everywhere. The famine is hitting too," Aisha Suleiman Bahreddine, a 43-year-old mother of seven, told the ABC using satellite internet from inside Zamzam camp. "The elderly people cannot move anymore. We lack food, children's food, and for the elderly people. "Soon it will be monsoon. We have no cover whatsoever. Nothing to protect ourselves from the cold. "We made a tent with our clothes, Sudanese textiles. Life is very dire, life is so difficult." She said her family eats one meal a day: the Sudanese traditional dish made of fava beans. "Only one. We haven't eaten yet, and yesterday we ate one meal," she said. The people in the camp are relying on traders who bring food sporadically, as most of the major aid groups have evacuated. "The conditions are terrible, the humanitarian situation has deteriorated even beyond what we imagined," Gaffar Mohammud Saeneen, a political activist who co-chairs the small, independently-funded Team Zamzam aid program in the camp, told the ABC. "You cannot describe the suffering. Researchers have been able to track the expansion of Zamzam camp from the air. As the RSF advanced into El Fasher, civilians began fleeing. Researchers at the HRL detected a large number of new temporary structures (tents, shelters) in previously vacant areas of the Zamzam IDP camp in September and October. You can see them in the centre-right of the bottom image. Coupled with images showing large numbers of people moving south on the road from El Fasher, they can see that residents of the city have fled to the camp. Foreign aid workers have evacuated but the camp residents are unable to leave, because the Rapid Support Forces control the area around Zamzam. The people in the camp have already suffered in the fighting so far. "We came here because our neighbours got hit and they were killed. There was no one to help them," Samira Mohamad Abdallah, a mother of six from El Fasher, told the ABC. Carpenter Bilal Ishak Youness came to the camp out of fear for his wife and daughter. "We fled El Fasher because of the rape fear. There is no safety because of the militia. We are afraid of Rapid Support Forces militia men," he said. Satellite images analysed by show the camp residents are preparing to be attacked at any moment. "They're building fortifications at the IDP camp and it is clear that they think they're going to be attacked," Nathaniel Raymond said. "Zamzam is the largest remaining IDP camp in Darfur of the survivors of the first Darfur genocide in the early 21st century and the people in Zamzam camp are primarily Zaghawa (people)." "The Rapid Support Forces since March have burned to the ground most of the Zaghawa communities surrounding Al Fasher. "And when they entered the eastern south-eastern side of El Fasher during the late spring, early summer, the Rapid Support Forces started burning houses individually in the Zaghawa neighbourhoods. "So it is highly likely that the Rapid Support Forces will attempt to liquidate the Zaghawa en masse." Hopes rest on a ceasefire The people in the camp are already close to starving. The international experts who assess food availability in July classified conditions in Zamzam and around El Fasher as a famine . Nathaniel Raymond from the Humanitarian Research Lab said the fall of El Fasher would make conditions even worse and lead to mass starvation. "Sudan's the largest humanitarian crisis in the world, it's the largest displacement crisis in the world, it's the largest food security emergency in the world," he said. "It is a level of starvation now, that on its current trajectory, will likely exceed in terms of severity and scale the suffering we saw in 1984/85 in the Ethiopian famine. "We are on a trajectory in terms of potential starvation in Sudan were it may only be rivalled by the Chinese Great Leap Forward famine in the mid 20th century, so this may be the largest starvation event globally since the 1950s." Aid groups said the only hope for Darfur is an immediate ceasefire and enforcement of an arms embargo on the warring parties in Sudan. "We've been calling for this conflict to end," Mohammed Abdeladif, Save the Children's interim country director in Sudan, told the ABC. "We've been calling for a UN resolution for a ceasefire to take place and an immediate and sustained effort to open supply routes and secure ceasefire are critical to prevent the famine crisis from worsening and further atrocities happening. "That really requires concerted action at the national, regional and international levels. "Pressure has to really mount on all parties to the conflict, to end the fighting and stop impeding access." ABC

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Aeries Technology, Inc ( NASDAQ:AERT – Get Free Report ) was the recipient of a large decline in short interest during the month of December. As of December 15th, there was short interest totalling 69,200 shares, a decline of 16.4% from the November 30th total of 82,800 shares. Based on an average daily volume of 49,900 shares, the days-to-cover ratio is presently 1.4 days. Approximately 0.7% of the shares of the stock are short sold. Institutional Inflows and Outflows A hedge fund recently bought a new stake in Aeries Technology stock. Aristeia Capital L.L.C. bought a new stake in Aeries Technology, Inc ( NASDAQ:AERT – Free Report ) in the 2nd quarter, according to its most recent Form 13F filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm bought 177,250 shares of the company’s stock, valued at approximately $335,000. Aristeia Capital L.L.C. owned 1.16% of Aeries Technology as of its most recent filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Hedge funds and other institutional investors own 99.15% of the company’s stock. Aeries Technology Price Performance Aeries Technology stock opened at $0.88 on Friday. The business’s fifty day moving average is $1.14 and its two-hundred day moving average is $1.77. The company has a debt-to-equity ratio of 9.01, a quick ratio of 0.75 and a current ratio of 0.75. The firm has a market cap of $39.02 million, a P/E ratio of 1.87 and a beta of -0.63. Aeries Technology has a 52 week low of $0.59 and a 52 week high of $3.12. About Aeries Technology ( Get Free Report ) Aeries Technology, Inc operates as a professional services and consulting partner in the North America, Asia Pacific, and internationally. The company offers management consultancy services for private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies, including software solutions, product management, IT infrastructure, information and cyber security, ERP and CRM platform management, business process management, and digital transformation services. Further Reading Receive News & Ratings for Aeries Technology Daily - Enter your email address below to receive a concise daily summary of the latest news and analysts' ratings for Aeries Technology and related companies with MarketBeat.com's FREE daily email newsletter .