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Kyiv mayor says attack has caused fires in at least two districts; Ukraine hits Russian rocket facility in long-range strike. What we know on day 1,636

Russian forces launched a missile ⁠attack on Kyiv early on Sunday, sparking fires in ⁠at least ⁠two districts of the Ukrainian capital, the city’s mayor said. Kyiv’s ⁠military administration said one person had been injured. Witnesses reported explosions in the city amid air alerts that sounded after 2am.

Mayor Vitali Klitschko, writing on ⁠Telegram, said falling ​debris had ‌caused a ‌fire in a non-residential part of ‌a northern suburb. Several cars were on fire, and another fire had broken out in an area just south of the city ‌centre, he said. Unofficial ​Telegram channels posted photos of what were described as market stalls ablaze. Russia ‌has in ​recent ​weeks been staging intensive air attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities.

Ukraine says long-range strikes hit a Russian military airfield and a rocket centre ⁠that supports ⁠Russia’s nascent Starlink-style satellite ​internet network. President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday said Flamingo cruise missiles struck the rocket facility, about 900km from Ukraine’s border, as part of Kyiv’s campaign to pressure Moscow to end ⁠the war by targeting sites deep inside Russia.“It is important that Russia’s war potential be reduced. Peace is needed, and this must be evident in Russia – through concrete damage ⁠to specific facilities,” Zelenskyy wrote on X. He said the airfield hosted aircraft used to attack Ukraine.

Ukraine’s armed forces said direct hits were ‌recorded at the airfield in Russia’s ‌Nizhny Novgorod region and the Progress rocket centre in Samara region, sparking fires ‌at both sites. The Samara plant produces rockets used to launch satellites for the Rassvet broadband network, which Russia is developing as an alternative to SpaceX’s Starlink. Starlink operates in Ukraine but not in Russia, giving Kyiv an advantage in drone operations and battlefield communications.

In Samara region, local officials said air defences had repelled a “massive missile attack”. “Samara’s industrial infrastructure ‌sustained localised damage,” Ivan Noskov, head of the regional capital, said in an online post. Emergency services were working at the scene, he said.

Russia has ⁠asked Washington and ⁠Ankara ⁠to explain reports ​of possible plans ⁠to transfer to Kyiv a “substantial ⁠arsenal” ​of ‌US weapons ‌and ammunition ‌held by Turkey, a spokesperson for Russia’s foreign ministry said ‌on Saturday. Such a transfer would ​cause “serious harm … to our bilateral relations ⁠with Washington and ​Ankara,” the spokesperson ​said in ​a ‌statement.

A Russian strike on an apartment block in south-eastern Ukraine on Saturday killed a three-month-old baby and wounded 11 people, local officials said. Drones hit the building in the town of Marhanets, said Oleksandr Hanzha, head of the Dnipropetrovsk regional military administration.

Russia’s defence ​ministry on Saturday said in the ‌past 24 hours its drones ​and missiles had ​struck Ukrainian logistics centres and energy and transport infrastructure used by the Ukrainian army, as well as assembly workshops for long-range drones and drone boats.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has told Russian president Vladimir Putin in a letter that he was “proud” of their countries’ strong ties, state media reported. North Korea has become a key ally of the Kremlin, sending troops to support Moscow’s war effort in return for economic benefits and military technology, analysts say. Kim added that he had a “firm belief” that Russia would thrive and defend its “territorial integrity” under Putin’s “wise leadership”.

In a letter to Kim delivered on Friday to mark Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule at the end of the second world war, Putin said relations between the two countries had reached the “unprecedentedly high level of comprehensive strategic partnership”. “Our states are actively cooperating in all the sectors while making concerted efforts to ensure the regional security and stability,” the Russian leader said.

The exchange of letters follows Ukraine’s accusation this month that Moscow had launched North Korean ballistic missiles in a strike that killed at least nine people and wounded dozens. Kyiv has also recently said that up to 50,000 North Korean troops are due to deploy to Russia, although it has provided no evidence to back the claim or a timeframe for the deployment.

Albanese and Minns said buyback would begin in two phases from 2 November, with state and commonwealth to split costs

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New South Wales will become the first state to undertake Australia’s biggest gun buyback in 30 years in a jointly funded scheme in response to the Bondi beach terror attack.

Anthony Albanese and the Minns government said the buyback would begin in two phases from 2 November.

• Bangladesh win Test match in Australia for first time

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60th over: Australia 178-5 (Green 49, Webster 0) Beau Webster to the middle, blocks his first three balls.

There it is for Bangladesh! And still with a lead of 50. Mehidy comes around the wicket, floats his off-breaks in, straightens them down the line. Carey goes down the wrong line, more leg stump, even though that ball pitches more on middle. It turns away slightly, grazes the edge, and is well caught. Such a dangerous player gone, and now Bangladesh are one wicket away from the bowlers.

National Weather Service reports that more than 11in of rain fell over a two-day period in some areas

At least five people are dead after devastating floods that swept through Indiana this week, officials said, as storms continued to batter the state on Saturday and first responders used boats to rescue more people from rising waters in neighborhoods along the White River in Indianapolis.

The mayor of Indianapolis, Joe Hogsett, and other state officials implored residents in areas at risk of flooding to heed any evacuation warnings at a news conference.

• Argentinian powers to 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 victory

• Heat and humidity take toll on Djokovic

• Britain’s Fery holds off Duckworth 6-4, 2-6, 7-6

The scoreboard did not yet indicate that anything was awry, but even as Novak Djokovic led by a set in his opening match at the Cincinnati Open, he was already struggling badly.

From the second set onwards, he spent much of his time between points squatting and bending over as he desperately tried to catch his breath in the notorious Ohioan humidity. He was eventually dispatched 2-6, 6-4, 6-4 by Thiago Agustín Tirante of Argentina, who took this golden opportunity to register the biggest win of his career.

• Men’s and women’s 4x100 teams complete wins in style

• Hunt will aim for fourth gold in mixed relay on Sunday

No sooner had Amy Hunt won a staggering third European gold medal in five days than she pointed at the superwomen guiding her closer to history. “We’re the fantastic four,” she said.

It was hard to argue with that, especially after watching Britain’s 4x100m women power to glory in 42.05secs, more than 10 metres clear of Switzerland and Poland.

This tense, powerful six-parter starkly captures the nation’s slide into oppressive terror. Its capturing of a shameful moment in history is hugely vivid

The final episode of Kabul pointedly soundtracks its opening scene with a speech given by George W Bush when America invaded Afghanistan in 2001. “The oppressed people of Afghanistan will know the generosity of America and our allies,” Bush’s teleprompter tells him to say. “The United States of America is a friend to the Afghan people.”

This taut six-part thriller, a pan-European co-production, is set in Afghanistan’s capital in August 2021, at the end of a 20-year western intervention that has, ultimately, not delivered the stated goal of freeing the country’s people from the fundamentalist authoritarianism of the Taliban regime. To the contrary, the Taliban are ready to install a more fearsome version of their old government as soon as the scheduled withdrawal of the Americans and their European allies takes place.

Kabul aired on BBC Four and is available on iPlayer in the UK and on SBS On Demand in Australia

The veil is slowly being lifted on the forced or coerced migration – ‘blackbirding’ – of Pacific Islanders for labour

What’s in a name? If that name happens to be Townsville, the coastal north-east Queensland city, the answer is: slavery.

While he scarcely went to the place that still bears his name, Robert Towns, the 19th century British-born Australian colonist, has largely been warmly and sentimentally regarded as a genteel, civic-minded merchant and entrepreneur. Like so many bastards of Australian colonisation, history has coddled him in soft biography, and continues to celebrate him in nomenclature and statuary.

NPR's Rob Schmitz speaks with State Department spokesperson Tommy Pigott about the with Iran and the hundreds of thousands of foreign nationals who have had their U.S. visa revoked.

Fully self-driving cars for hire have been hailed as the technology of the future for years now. That future has finally arrived -- but only in some cities.

When multiple sclerosis began to affect her fine motor skills, Shakira Hussein found a way to redesign her dream, rather than give it up altogether

At first, I failed to recognise the significance of the deterioration in my violin technique.

I was preoccupied by other concerns – the crushing exhaustion that I would describe to my doctors as “not normal tiredness”, the unexplained falls from my bike. I did not draw any connection between these issues and my out-of-tune violin playing. Only when the right side of my body detached itself from my central nervous system to the point where I could no longer pick up a pen or walk without a stick to support myself did the words this feels neurological cross my mind.

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Матрица лазерных диодов от киношного проектора стоит на Таобао как б/у видеокарта десятилетней давности — 260 юаней за демонтаж. Внутри — 14 синих кристаллов Nichia, около семидесяти ватт оптической мощности и собственная линза на каждом диоде. К ней нужны буст-конвертер за пятьсот рублей, процессорный кулер, восемь банок 18650 и вечер с паяльником.

Ниже — полная сборка: расчёт драйвера, настройка тока, борьба с пусковым выбросом, который тихо убивает кристаллы, и честный разбор мест, где моя конструкция кривая.

Сразу дисклеймер, без него никак: это лазер 4 класса опасности. Он не «может повредить глаз при неудачном стечении обстоятельств» — он поджигает дерево на дистанции вытянутой руки. Если вы никогда не работали с лазерными диодами, начните с чего-то на порядок дешевле и слабее.

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Anthony Albanese has just been speaking alongside the New South Wales premier, Chris Minns, about the state’s gun buyback scheme agreed in response to the Bondi terror attack.

The prime minister said:

Australians are quite rightly proud of our gun laws but the fact is there are more guns in Australia today than there were at the time of dealing with the Port Arthur gun buyback that occurred under the Howard government.

These arrangements are available to every state and territory, and this reform comes on top of previous reforms that have been undertaken by my government in partnership with states and territories in particular the first ever development of a national firearms register.

In some ways, I feel that you should give them their money now, and let them help them with the cost of living.

It is their money; they’ve they’ve sacrificed it in lieu of pay. So, in a lot of cases, people want it.