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Russian-launched “kamikaze drones” attacked Kyiv this morning, killing at least one person, days after the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, promised there would be “no need for more massive strikes” on Ukraine.
Photos showed the drones swooping low across the skies of Ukraine’s capital as police officers fired at them from the ground and people scurried to shelters. Other images showed smoke rising from explosions across the city.
Kyiv’s mayor, Vitali Klitschko, said a woman died from one of the blasts in the city’s central Shevchenkiv district and another person was trapped under the rubble of a house.
Strikes were also reported in Sumy province in the country’s north-east, and in Dnipropetrovsk in the south-east, where a fire broke out at an energy facility after it was hit by a missile.
What has Ukraine’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskiy, said? “The enemy can attack our cities but it won’t be able to break us. The occupiers will get only fair punishment and condemnation of future generations. And we will get victory,” he said.
What else is happening? Here’s what we know on day 236 of the invasion.
Senator raises alarm Saudis could share US defence technology with Russia
A senior Democratic lawmaker has raised alarms about the possibility that sensitive US defense technology could be shared with Russia by Saudi Arabia after the kingdom’s recent decision to side with Moscow over the interests of the US.
Richard Blumenthal, a member of the Senate armed services committee who has proposed a one-year freeze on weapons sales to Saudi Arabia following Opec+’s decision to cut oil production, said he would “dig deeper into the risk” in discussions with the Pentagon.
“I want some reassurances that they are on top of it and if there are risks, I want to determine what can be done to mitigate those risks immediately,” Blumenthal said in an interview with the Guardian.
The comments show the depth of the rift that has emerged between the Saudi monarchy and Democrats in Washington, who have reacted with fury against a recent decision by the Opec oil cartel to begin cutting production next month by 2m barrels a day.
What has the White House said? On Sunday, the White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said President Biden would act “methodically” in re-evaluating the relationship, but options include changes to security assistance to Saudi Arabia.
Sanders: Democrats shouldn’t court far-right ‘racist, sexist, homophobic’ voters
Democrats should give up trying to appeal to racist, sexist or homophobic voters on the far right even as their party tries to preserve thin majorities in both congressional chambers, the progressive US senator Bernie Sanders said on Sunday.
Sanders’ remarks came during an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press after the host, Chuck Todd, asked a question about attempting to woo over supporters of Donald Trump, which include white nationalists who helped stage the deadly January 6 Capitol attack on the day Congress certified the former Republican president’s defeat to Joe Biden in the 2020 election.
Todd said Sanders “made a big deal about wanting to court Trump voters” in the 2016 election that Trump won as well as the 2020 race that he lost and wondered if the Vermont senator still felt they were worth that.
“There are some extreme rightwing voters who are racists, who are sexists, who are homophobes – xenophobes,” Sanders said. “No, I don’t think you’re ever going to get them.”
What does Sanders say the party should do instead? Sanders said Democrats should sympathize with “millions of … working-class people” who can’t afford healthcare, college tuition for their children or their prescription drugs.
In other news …
Almost a year after pro-Trump rioters at the US Capitol beat and electrocuted Michael Fanone almost to death, he decided to end his 20-year law enforcement career with a resignation letter written on a paper napkin. He speaks to the Guardian about his experience and how he is adjusting to his new life.
The leftist frontrunner to become Brazil’s next president labelled the far-right incumbent, Jair Bolsonaro, “a tiny little dictator” and “the king of fake news and stupidity” during a television debate that will help define the political future of one of the world’s biggest democracies.
At a recent school board meeting where about 1,000 people gathered in Dearborn, Michigan, to pressure district officials to censor books with LGBTQ+ themes, some conservative Muslim residents joined forces with the Christian right.
Ghislaine Maxwell has spoken from a US prison cell about how she feels “so bad” for her “dear friend” Prince Andrew. In her first lengthy interview since her conviction on sex-trafficking charges last year, Maxwell also spoke about the infamous picture of Andrew with his arm around the waist of 17-year-old Virginia Giuffre.
Stat of the day: US shelters record 25% increase in surrenders – and one animal ‘returned in droves’
The great pet adoption boom peaked in April and May 2020 with nearly one in five US households, or 23m, giving animals new homes during the pandemic, according to the ASPCA. But as our return to a sense of normalcy has coincided with historic inflation rates, pet owners are forced to re-evaluate their priorities. “We’re packed right now. We’re putting animals in cages in the hallways,” explains Katy Hansen, of New York’s Animal Care Centers (ACC), a no-kill shelter that has recorded a 25% uptick in surrenders this year over last.
Don’t miss this: I retrained as a hospice nurse – and lost my fear of death
Laura Horn has found what she calls her end-of-life career, “a vocation to last the rest of my life”. In her 60s she decided to train as a registered nurse, specialising in hospice care. “I’m a brand new nurse but that’s not what’s important,” she says. “I’ve had life experience.” After Margaret, her wife of 20 years, died “suddenly and unexpectedly”, Horn understood she had to make a change. She had been thinking about volunteering in a hospice, after her mother and both parents-in-law were given palliative care.
Climate check: Alaska cancels snow crab season over population decline
Alaska officials have cancelled the upcoming snow crab season, due to population decline across the Bering Sea. The fall Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will not happen. The winter harvest of smaller snow crab has also been cancelled for the first time. The causes of the population collapse are being researched but probably include increased predation and stresses from warmer water, which the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) believes may have prompted the crabs to shift away from coasts.
Last Thing: ‘Badasses of the mountains’ – goats clash with sheep as key US glaciers melt
In one corner, there is the agile climber with steak knife-like horns. In the other is America’s largest wild sheep. They are locked in significantly one-sided combat in the mountains of the US west, scientists have found, in a battle over resources uncovered by the region’s vanishing glaciers. Joel Berger, lead author of the research, said he was “flabbergasted” to see the number of skirmishes. “[The goats] are the badasses of the mountains,” said Berger. “They have these saber-like horns; they are bolder, more aggressive. The goats just have a very high win rate.”
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