❗️Russian troops liberated the settlement of Makarovka in the Donetsk People's Republic, the Russian Defense Ministry announced.

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🇷🇺🪖More statements from the Russian Defense Ministry's daily briefing on the special military operation's progress:

🔸 The Russian Armed Forces hit military airfield and Ukrainian energy facilities.

🔸 Ukraine lost over 440 soldiers in the Russia's Battlegroup Zapad area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost over 370 militants in the Russia's Battlegroup Tsentr area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost over 140 troops in the Russia's Battlegroup Vostok area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost up to 625 servicemen in the Russia's Battlegroup Yug area of responsibility.

🔸 Russian aviation shot down four HIMARS missiles and 102 Ukrainian drones.

🔸 Ukraine lost up to 110 soldiers in the Russia's Battlegroup Dnepr area of responsibility.

🔸 Ukraine lost up to 70 troops in the Russia's Battlegroup Sever area of responsibility.

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📑What could Trump 2.0 mean for US healthcare?

US President-elect Donald Trump has promised to “bring down costs” and increase the quality of healthcare.

What changes can be expected?

🔸 During his first term, Trump tried but failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA), aka Obamacare.

🔸 Trump called Obamacare “lousy health care” and floated replacing it, saying, "If we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people, our population, less money, and provide better health care than Obamacare, then I would absolutely do it."

🔸 Trump has vowed to protect Medicare, the federal health insurance program for people aged 65 or older and younger people with disabilities.

🔸 Cuts to Medicaid, the largest government health-insurance program that covers low-income Americans, may be expected under Trump.

🔸 During his first term, Trump proposed cutting the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) and eliminating the Medicaid expansion that was passed as part of the ACA.

🔸 A work requirement might be added for some able-bodied adult beneficiaries, with federal spending on the program capped.

🔸 Trump has promised to veto a federal abortion ban “under any circumstances", saying, "It is up to the states to decide.”

🔸 Trump didn’t rule out banning certain vaccines, promising to “make a decision” after RFK Jr. hinted at the possibility of ending vaccine mandates.

🔸 With an estimated 108,000 people dying from drug overdoses in the US last year, Trump blamed it on the migrant crisis. Although he criminalized all fentanyl-related substances in 2018, overdose deaths continued to soar.

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🇬🇪Georgian Dream Party wins parliamentary elections with 53.93% of votes
 
The Georgian Central Election Commission approved on Saturday the final report of the parliamentary elections held on October 26, with the ruling Georgian Dream Party receiving 53.93% of the votes and 89 seats in parliament.
 
The ruling Georgian Dream Party advocates for maintaining relations with Russia and opposes anti-Russian sanctions.

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💣 Israeli strike hit an apartment building in the Burj al-Barajneh neighborhood in the southern suburbs of Lebanon's Beirut.

This area is a refugee camp for Palestinians established by the Red Cross in 1948.

Video by Sputnik correspondent

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❗️Latest updates on protests in Abkhazia

🔸 Abkhazian President Aslan Bzhania announced his readiness to resign if protesters vacate the government building

🔸 Bzhania stated he would run for the presidency again if an early resignation occurs

🔸 The president claimed parliamentary deputies are being pressured with unlawful demands for the president's resignation

🔸 The number of people injured during the unrest near the government complex has risen to 14, the Apsnypress news agency reported

🔸 The opposition parties have ended talks with the government and plan to "strengthen their position," opposition deputy Kan Kvarchia declared

🔸 Protesters at the presidential administration building rejected Bzhania's proposal for early elections and refused to leave the government complex, Sputnik's correspondent reported

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📹They stand and watch the devastation

For many Lebanese, Israeli strikes have already become routine.

Whenever the Israeli army announces where and what will be hit in Beirut, not only do journalists flock to the sites of the impending strike to watch, but citizens who have simply gotten used to the hell they live in.

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📑 Pentagon loses battle with auditors, fails seventh financial review in a row

The US Department of Defense has failed its seventh consecutive audit, with more than half of its departments unable to provide the 1,700 auditors working on the financial inspection with sufficient data to accurately evaluate the status of hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of assets under the Pentagon’s domain.

DoD comptroller and Chief Financial Officer Michael McCord – appointed by President Obama in 2014, and under whom the Pentagon failed every one of its audits since they began in 2017, assured that the Pentagon had “turned a corner in its understanding of the depth and breadth of its challenges” and will do better in the future.

The Pentagon hopes to receive a passing grade by 2028, as required in this year’s National Defense Authorization Act.

The DoD spent $187 million on this year’s audit.

Also this week, the DoD Inspector General’s Office calculated that Congress has now appropriated nearly $183 billion in assistance to Ukraine since February 2022, including $131.36 billion for security-related assistance and activities, and $43.84 billion for ‘governance and development’.

The problems at the Pentagon in accounting for taxpayer money aren’t new. On September 10, 2001, a day before the 9/11 attacks, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced that the Pentagon could not “track” some $2.3 trillion in transactions.

This echoed a February 2000 report by the DoD Inspector General that “$2.3 trillion was not supported by adequate audit trails or sufficient evidence to determine their validity, $2 trillion was not reviewed because of time constraints, and $2.6 trillion were supported.”

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⚡️Hostages have been taken in a restaurant in the French city of Issy-les-Moulineaux, near Paris. Police are on their way to the scene, and the area has been cordoned off, according to media reports.

The hostages in the Paris suburb were taken by the restaurant owner, and they are reportedly several staff members of the establishment, media say.

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🚨Three or four employees are being held hostage at a restaurant in the Paris suburbs. No customers are inside, according to the Figaro newspaper.

UPD: Employees of a restaurant in a suburb of Paris were taken hostage by the owner's son, the newspaper says.

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☢️ Russia cuts uranium exports to US. What’s next?

The Russian government has imposed temporary restrictions on the export of enriched uranium to the United States. This was a tit-for-tat move after the Biden administration signed a law banning Russian uranium imports until 2040, with exceptions allowed until 2028, despite warnings that the move could backfire on the American economy.

What consequences could Russia’s ban have?

🔸 Russia is the world's largest supplier of enriched uranium. It accounts for about 44% of the global capacity to separate the uranium isotopes needed in nuclear reactors. Its share of the enriched uranium market boasts an estimated export value of $2.7 billion.

🔸 As Russia was America’s top foreign supplier of fuel for its commercial nuclear reactors in 2022, the current measure may generate potential supply risks.

🔸 Some reactor operators may struggle to find an alternative supplier, said Jonathan Hinze, president of nuclear fuel market information and analysis company UxC.

🔸 The US has its own deposits of uranium, but its domestic enrichment capacity has been in decline. Biden’s bill banning imports of Russian enriched uranium also provided some $2.7 billion in federal funding to build new enrichment capacity in America.

🔸 Currently, the US has just one commercial enrichment facility in New Mexico, owned by a British, Dutch and German consortium, Urenco Ltd. It supplies about one-third of the enriched uranium used in American reactors.

“We don’t have enough enriched uranium here… They should have been stockpiling enriched uranium in anticipation of this happening,” nuclear analyst Chris Gadomski told BloombergNEF.

What about prices?

🔹 Restrictions on uranium supplies may affect prices as this automatically increases demand from other sources, where the enriched fuel has not yet been produced in the required quantity, analysts warn.

🔹 Bids for November 2025 uranium delivery soared $4 to reach $84 a pound after the news, per UxC.

🔹 Shares of other uranium or uranium-related companies have surged. Shares of Canada’s Cameco Corp. jumped by 6%, and those of US’ Ur-Energy Inc. and Uranium Energy Corp. rose by 10% and 13%, respectively.

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🛥War games show UK’s beleaguered flagship aircraft carriers ‘get sunk’ every time
 
In most war games carried out by the UK military, its costly flagship aircraft carriers “get sunk", The Times cited a source as saying. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, commissioned into the Royal Navy in 2017 and 2019, respectively, together cost £6.2 billion. ($7.8 billion) to build but are reportedly vulnerable to missiles.

A “whole load of scenarios” was run during war games to test the Royal Navy’s “ability to survive” against an “overwhelming force", a British military source was quoted as saying, adding:

“We stretch everything to the limit. At some point you will get to a scenario where it [the carrier] is sunk.”

The report comes amid an ongoing Strategic Defence Review commissioned by Britain’s Labor Prime Minister Keir Starmer, and overseen by the Defence Secretary John Healey. Both ministers and military chiefs have been pressured to implement cost-cutting measures due to financial constraints. Hence, large assets like the aircraft carriers are under heightened scrutiny to decide whether they are still a vital staple for modern warfare.

“There will be casualties,” a source hinted, indicating that the prospect of scrapping at least one of the carriers was raised.

Former Minister for Defence Procurement Lord Lee of Trafford told the outlet that the military was struggling to afford the requisite numbers of F-35 aircraft for the carriers, along with escort ships and support vessels.

Decades of defense cuts by successive British governments have left the country’s military understaffed and underequipped, resulting in delays in production and upgrades. The HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales have both been plagued by technical malfunctions, with humiliating breakdowns affecting Britain’s ability to participate in large-scale joint NATO drills.

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