By DMYTRO ZHYHINAS, DEREK GATOPOULOS and VASILISA STEPANENKO

KYIV, Ukraine (AP) — The icy ground crackling under their feet, members of an elite Ukrainian drone-hunting team set up for a long night.

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Antennas and sensors are clipped to a light stand. Monitors and controls are pulled from hard cases, and a game-changing new weapon is readied for deployment.

The Sting, shaped like a flying thermos, is one of Ukraine’s new homegrown interceptors.

The unit’s commander says the interceptors can effectively counter Russia’s fast-evolving suicide drones, which are now flying faster and at higher altitudes.

“Every destroyed target is something that did not hit our homes, our families, our power plants,” said the officer, known only by the call sign “Loi,” in line with Ukrainian military protocol. “The enemy does not sleep, and neither do we.”

Nightly attacks on Ukrainian cities and power infrastructure have forced Kyiv to rewrite the air defense rule book and develop cut-price drone killers costing as little as $1,000.

Interceptors went from prototype to mass production in just a few months in 2025 and represent the latest shift in modern warfare.

Effective defense in Ukraine depends on mass production, rapid adaptation and layering low-cost systems into existing defenses instead of relying on a few expensive, slow-to-replace weapons.

Models like the Sting – made by the volunteer-driven startup Wild Hornets – and the newly appeared Bullet can surge in speed before crashing into enemy drones. They are flown by pilots watching monitors or wearing first-person-view goggles.

An engineer assembles interceptor drone of “General Cherry” company at the workshop in Ukraine, on Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

The economics are crucial. Andrii Lavrenovych, a member of the strategic council of the fast-growing startup General Cherry which develops the Bullet, says the drones they destroy cost anywhere from $10,000 to $300,000.

“We are inflicting serious economic damage,” he said.

Russia favors the Iranian-designed Shahed suicide drone and has produced multiple variants of the triangle-winged craft, armed with jammers, cameras and turbojet engines in a constant battle of innovation.

“In some areas they are one step ahead. In others, we invent an innovative solution, and they suffer from it,” Lavrenovych said.

Federico Borsari, a defense analyst at the Washington-based Center for European Policy Analysis, says interceptors are a valuable addition to Ukraine’s — and Europe’s — anti-drone arsenal.

FPV drones are seen in a storage of the workshop of “General Cherry” company in Ukraine, on Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

“Cheap interceptor drones have become so important, and so quickly, that we can consider them a cornerstone of modern counter-unmanned aerial systems,” he said. “They realign the cost and scale equation of air defense.”

Their mobility and low cost allow them to defend more targets, but Borsari added: “It would be a mistake to see them as a silver bullet.”

Their success, he said, depends on sensors, fast command and control as well as skilled operators. They can be used in a menu of options that starts with multimillion-dollar missiles and ends with nets and antiaircraft guns.

Defense planners in Ukraine and NATO expect the hyper-scaling of drone production on both sides of the conflict to continue in 2026, adding urgency to European plans to create a layered air-defense system known as the “drone wall.”

An interceptor drone of “General Cherry” company takes off at the polygon in Ukraine, on Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

The network along Europe’s eastern borders, to be rolled out over two years, is designed to detect, track and intercept drones, with Ukrainian-style interceptors playing a potentially central role in destroying threats.

Ukrainian drone makers are set next year to expand coproduction with U.S. and European firms. Merging battle-tested designs and valuable data with Western scale and funding, the collaboration would boost output and embed Ukraine in NATO-member supply chains.

Another inevitable trend, Lavrenovych argues, is increased automation.

An engineer assembles FPV drone of “General Cherry” company at the workshop in Ukraine, on Dec. 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Evgeniy Maloletka)

“Our mobile groups shouldn’t have to approach the front line, where they become targets,” he said.

“Drones must become fully autonomous robots with artificial intelligence — as scary as that may sound — to help our soldiers survive.”

Volodymyr Yurchuk and Efrem Lukatsky contributed to this report.

By Julie Appleby, KFF Health News

For the millions of Americans who buy Affordable Care Act insurance, there’s still time left to enroll for 2026. But premium increases and the expiration of enhanced tax subsidies have led to larger-than-expected costs.

Concerned shoppers, wondering if there’s anything they can do, are consulting insurance brokers or talking to representatives at ACA marketplace call centers.

“We’re hearing from people with complex medical conditions who don’t think they can survive if they don’t have access to medical care,” said Audrey Morse Gasteier, executive director of the Massachusetts Health Connector, that state’s insurance marketplace.

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And some are considering going outside the ACA to find more affordable options. But that requires caution.

Congress looks increasingly unlikely to extend the enhanced subsidies before the year’s end. Late Wednesday, the House passed a package of measures favored by conservatives that does not address the subsidies and is largely viewed as dead on arrival in the Senate. Earlier Wednesday, however, four GOP moderates joined with Democrats to sign a discharge petition to force a vote — likely in January — on a three-year extension. The Senate and President Donald Trump would also have to approve the measure, but if extended the subsidies could be applied retroactively.

Meanwhile, the deadline for choosing a health plan is quickly approaching. The official end of open enrollment is set for Jan. 15 for coverage starting Feb. 1. In most states, it’s already too late to enroll for coverage starting Jan. 1.

Here are five considerations in the decision-making process:

1. Short-term plans: ‘You have to be healthy’

Some ACA shoppers might find themselves considering short-term insurance plans sold outside the government-run marketplaces — or steered toward the plans by insurance brokers. Be wary.

Short-term plans are just that: insurance originally designed as temporary coverage for situations like changing jobs or attending school. They can look a lot like traditional coverage, with deductibles, copayments, and participating networks of hospitals and doctors. Still, they are not ACA-compliant plans and are not available on the official ACA marketplaces.

They are often less expensive than ACA plans. But they cover less. For example, unlike ACA plans, they can impose annual and lifetime caps on benefits. The vast majority do not cover maternity care. Some might not cover prescription drugs.

Short-term plans require applicants to complete a medical questionnaire, and insurers can exclude coverage or cancel a policy retroactively for those with preexisting medical conditions. Also, depending on the terms of the particular plan, a person who develops a medical condition during the coverage period might not be accepted for renewal.

In addition, short-term plans are not required to cover care on the ACA’s checklist of essential benefits, such as preventive care, hospitalization, or emergency services.

The shortcomings of the plans, which critics say are sometimes marketed in misleading ways, have led Democrats to label them “junk insurance.” The Trump administration argues they’re suitable for some people and has sought to make them more widely available.

“We recommend it when it makes sense,” said Joshua Brooker, a Pennsylvania insurance broker. “But if you’re going to enroll in short-term coverage, you need to know which boxes are unchecked.”

“They’re not for everyone. You have to be healthy,” said Ronnell Nolan, the president and CEO of Health Agents of America, a trade group.

And they’re available in only 36 states, according to KFF, a health information nonprofit that includes KFF Health News. Some states, such as California, prohibit them. Others set tight restrictions.

2. Beware of coverage that’s not comprehensive

There are other types of health coverage offered by sales brokers or other organizations.

One kind, called an indemnity plan, is meant to supplement a traditional health insurance plan by paying toward deductibles or copayments.

Those plans do not have to follow ACA coverage rules, either. Generally, they pay a fixed dollar amount — say a few hundred dollars a day — toward a hospital stay or a smaller amount for a doctor’s office visit. Typically those payments fall short of the full costs and the policyholder pays the rest. They generally also require consumers to fill out medical forms stating any preexisting conditions.

Another type, a faith-based sharing plan, pools money from members to cover their medical bills. The plans are not required to keep any specific amount of financial reserves and members are not guaranteed that the plans will pay their health expenses, according to the Commonwealth Fund, a foundation that supports health care research and improvements to the health system.

Sharing plans expanded beyond faith communities after the ACA was adopted. Like short-term plans, they cost less than ACA plans but also don’t have to follow ACA rules.

They are not considered insurance, and some have been accused of fraud by state regulators.

“Yes, it is cheaper, and yes, it does work for some people,” Nolan said. “But you need to understand what that plan does. It would be my last resort.”

3. Consider a ‘bronze’ or ‘catastrophic’ plan, but be aware of deductibles

For those wanting to stay with ACA plans, the lowest premiums are generally in the categories labeled “catastrophic” or “bronze.”

Jessica Altman, executive director of California’s ACA exchange, said her state has noticed an uptick in enrollments in bronze-level plans. They have lower premiums but high annual deductibles — the amount a customer must spend before most coverage kicks in. Deductibles for bronze plans average nearly $7,500 nationally, according to KFF.

Another option, new for 2026, is expanded eligibility for catastrophic plans, which used to be limited to people younger than age 30. As the name suggests, they’re intended for people who want health insurance just in case they suffer a catastrophic health condition, such as cancer or injuries from a car accident, and the plans can have deductibles as high as the ACA’s annual limit on out-of-pocket spending — $10,600 for an individual or $21,200 for a family.

But now people losing subsidies because of the expiration of the enhanced tax credits can also qualify for the plans. However, they may not be available in every region.

Lauren Jenkins, a broker in Oklahoma, said some of her clients earning less than $25,000 this year had qualified for very low-cost or free plans with the enhanced subsidies. Next year, though, their costs may rise to $100 or more per month for a “silver”-level plan, a step up from bronze.

So she is showing them bronze plans to bring down the monthly cost. “But they might have a $6,000, $7,000, or $10,000 deductible they now have to pay,” Jenkins said. “For people only making $25,000 a year, that would be detrimental.”

Both bronze and catastrophic plans are eligible to be linked with health savings accounts, which can be used to save money tax-free for medical expenses. They are more popular with higher-income households.

4. Another plan may have lower premiums

It can pay to shop around. Some people may be able to find a lower premium by shifting to a different plan, even one offered by the same insurer. There are also different levels of coverage, from bronze to “platinum,” where premiums also vary. Brooker said that in some locations “gold”-level plans are less expensive than silver, even though that seems counterintuitive.

Also, some people who run their own businesses but have only one employee might qualify for a group plan rather than an individual policy. Sometimes those can be less expensive.

Not every state allows this, Nolan said. But, for example, Nolan said, she has a client whose only employee is his wife, so she’s going to see whether they can get a group plan at lower rates.

“That might work out for them,” she said.

ACA rates for small group plans (fewer than 50 employees) vary regionally and are not always less expensive than individual coverage, Brooker said.

“It’s pretty all over the board as to where the rates are better,” he said.

5. Other rules of the road

Insurance experts encourage people not to wait until the last minute to at least take preliminary steps. Shoppers can go onto the official federal or state marketplace website and fill out or update an application with required income and other information necessary to determine what the 2026 plan year holds for them.

For instance, even without congressional intervention, subsidies will not go away entirely. They will be smaller, though, and there is an upper income limit — a cutoff for households earning more than four times the poverty level, which comes to $62,600 for an individual and $84,600 for a couple for 2026.

When shopping, consumers should make sure they land on an official ACA website, because there are look-alikes that may not offer ACA-compliant plans. Healthcare.gov is the official federal site. From there, people can find websites serving the 20 states, along with the District of Columbia, that run their own ACA exchanges.

The government sites can also direct consumers to licensed brokers and other counselors who can help with an application.

And a reminder: Consumers also need to pay their first month’s premium for coverage to take effect.

©2025 KFF Health News. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

By JAMES POLLARD and LINLEY SANDERS

NEW YORK (AP) — Most Americans aren’t making end-of-year charitable giving plans, according to the results of a new AP-NORC poll, despite the many fundraising appeals made by nonprofits that rely on donation surges in the calendar’s final month to reach budget targets.

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The survey, which was conducted in early December by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research, found that about half U.S. adults say they’ve already made their charitable contributions for 2025. Just 18% say they’ve donated and will donate again before the year is over. Only 6% report they haven’t given yet but will do so by December’s end. The rest, 30%, haven’t donated and don’t plan to.

Everyday donors faced competing priorities this year. President Donald Trump’s social services grant cuts, severe foreign aid rollbacks and November SNAP benefits freeze — plus natural disasters like Los Angeles’ historically destructive wildfires — left no shortage of urgent causes in need of heightened support. Trump’s tax and spending legislation offered an extra incentive to give, too; most tax filers will see a new charitable deduction of up to $1,000 for individuals and $2,000 for married couples.

But weaker income gains and steep price inflation meant that lower-income households had less money to redistribute. Other surveys have also found a yearslong decline in the number of individuals who give.

December still serves as a “very important deadline” for donors, according to Dianne Chipps Bailey, managing director of Bank of America’s Philanthropic Solutions division. She cited estimates from the National Philanthropic Trust that nearly one-third of annual giving happens in the final month.

“December 31 does provide a target to make sure that they’ve given what they intended to give before the year is over,” Bailey said.

Few donate on GivingTuesday

Perhaps no day is more consequential for fundraisers than GivingTuesday. Beginning as a hashtag in 2012, the well-known celebration of generosity now sees many nonprofits leverage the attention to solicit donations on the Tuesday after Thanksgiving. Americans donated an estimated $4 billion to nonprofits this most recent GivingTuesday.

But Americans were much more likely to make a Black Friday purchase than a GivingTuesday gift this year. Just under half say they bought something for Black Friday, according to the poll, compared to about 1 in 10 who say they donated to a charity for GivingTuesday.

“Black Friday gets the lion’s share of things,” said Oakley Graham, a 32-year-old from Missouri. “And then you’ve got GivingTuesday a couple days later. Most people have probably spent all their spending money at that point.”

Graham said his family has “definitely tightened the financial belt” in recent years. He and his wife are dealing with student loan debts now that the Trump administration suspended their repayment plan. Their two young children are always growing out of their clothes. It’s good if there’s anything left for savings.

He still tries to help out his neighbors — from handiwork to Salvation Army clothing donations.

“Not that I’m not willing to give here and there,” he said. “But it seems like it’s pretty tough to find the extra funds.”

Checkout charity proves more popular

Another avenue for nudging Americans to give is more widely used, even if individual donations are small. The AP-NORC poll found that about 4 in 10 U.S. adults say they donated to a charity when checking out at a store this year.

Graham is among those who reported giving at the cash register. As an outdoorsy person who enjoys hunting and fishing when he can, he said he is “always susceptible to giving for conservation.” He said he likely rounded up once or twice at Bass Pro Shops for that reason.

“With the finances, I don’t do a lot of buying these days. But a couple cents here or there is like — I can do that,” he said. “It doesn’t sound like much. But I know if everybody did it would make a difference.”

The poll found that older adults — those over 60 — are more likely than Americans overall to donate at store checkouts.

One Texas architect’s unusual process for year-end donations

About one-quarter of Americans plan to donate in the last weeks of the year, and Chuck Dietrick is one of them. The 69-year-old architect applies what he calls a “shotgun approach” as the year comes to a close.

He and his wife give monthly to Valley Hope, a nonprofit addiction services provider where their son did inpatient rehab. And then there are eight or so organizations that they support with end-of-the-year gifts.

Chuck Dietrick, left, and his wife, Lori Dietrick, sit for a portrait at their home in Anna, Texas, Thursday, Dec. 18, 2025. (AP Photo/LM Otero)

“We’re doing our own thing,” he said. “I don’t do Black Friday or Cyber Monday, either … So, I don’t do the GivingTuesday thing.”

Dietrick estimates their household donated somewhere between $501 and $2,500. The Dallas-Fort Worth area couple mostly contributes to organizations that have touched their lives or those of their friends.

There’s the Florida hospice that Dietrick said did a “super job” caring for his mother. He has relatives and friends who served in the military, so he also gives to the Disabled American Veterans and the Wounded Warrior Project.

“I would rather give a smaller amount of money to a variety of institutions that I care about rather than giving a big chunk of money to one,” he explained.

Giving plans went unaffected by federal funding cuts or the shutdown

Most 2025 donors say the amount they gave wasn’t affected much by this year’s federal funding cuts or the government shutdown, according to the AP-NORC poll, although about 3 in 10 say those situations did impact the charities they chose to support.

The survey suggests that, while private donors mobilized millions to fill funding gaps and hunger relief groups saw donation totals spike last month, many Americans did not respond with their pocketbooks to the nonprofit sector’s newfound pressures this year.

Jeannine Disviscour, a 63-year-old Baltimore teacher, is among 2025 donors who say the cuts prompted them to give more.

“I did not donate on GivingTuesday,” she said. “But I did donate that week because I was feeling the need to support organizations that I felt might not continue to get the support they needed to get to be successful.”

She estimates her household gave between $501 and $2,500. That included support for National Public Radio. Congress eliminated $1.1 billion allocated to public broadcasting this summer, leaving hundreds of NPR stations with some sort of budget hole. She said she wanted to ensure journalism reached news deserts where residents have few media options.

Living in an area that is home to many refugees, Disviscour also donated her time and money to the Asylee Women Enterprise. She said the local nonprofit helps asylum-seekers and other forced migrants find food, shelter, clothing, transportation and language classes.

“There is a gap in funding and there’s more need than ever,” she said. “And I wanted to step up. And it’s in my community.”

Sanders reported from Washington.

Associated Press coverage of philanthropy and nonprofits receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content. For all of AP’s philanthropy coverage, visit https://apnews.com/hub/philanthropy.

The AP-NORC poll of 1,146 adults was conducted Dec. 4-8 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 4 percentage points.

Barry Manilow will be having surgery to remove a cancerous spot on his lung and will reschedule his January concerts, the singer announced Monday.

Manilow, 82, said doctors found the cancer after he had an extended bout of bronchitis — six weeks, then a relapse of another five weeks.

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“My wonderful doctor ordered an MRI just to make sure that everything was OK,” Manilow wrote on Instagram. “The MRI discovered a cancerous spot on my left lung that needs to be removed. It’s pure luck (and a great doctor) that it was found so early.”

The singer added that doctors don’t believe cancer has spread, so for now he expects “No chemo. No radiation. Just chicken soup and ‘I Love Lucy’ reruns.”

A statement issued by Manilow’s representatives specified that the spot was a stage one tumor, and that the surgery would take place in late December.

Manilow will be recovering for the month of January and plans to return to action with Valentine’s weekend concerts beginning Feb. 12 at the Westgate Las Vegas Resort and Casino, and then his arena concerts will resume Feb. 28 in Tampa, Florida.

Manilow was due to perform 10 concerts in January at nine locations in Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Ohio. They will now be held in February.

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