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LONDON — U.K. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak on Saturday promised to provide tanks and artillery systems to Ukraine, amid renewed missile attacks by Moscow targeting multiple Ukrainian cities for the first time in nearly two weeks.

Ten people were wounded, including two children, in the southeastern city of Dnipro, where a Russian missile strike destroyed a section of a residential building, officials said. Infrastructure facilities were also hit in the western Lviv region and northeastern Kharkiv. Kyiv, the capital, was also targeted.

Sunak made the pledge to provide Challenger 2 tanks and other artillery systems after speaking to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on Saturday, the British leader’s Downing Street office said in a statement.

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It didn’t say when the tanks would be delivered or how many. British media have reported that four British Army Challenger 2 main battle tanks will be sent to Eastern Europe immediately, with eight more to follow shortly after, without citing sources.

Zelenskyy tweeted his thanks to Sunak on Saturday “for the decisions that will not only strengthen us on the battlefield, but also send the right signal to other partners.”

Ukraine has for months sought to be supplied with heavier tanks, including the U.S. Abrams and the German Leopard 2 tanks, but Western leaders have been treading carefully.

The Czech Republic and Poland have provided Soviet-era T-72 tanks to Ukrainian forces. Poland has also expressed readiness to provide a company of Leopard tanks, but President Andrzej Duda stressed during his recent visit to the Ukrainian city of Lviv that the move would be possible only as an element in a larger international coalition of tank aid to Kyiv.

Earlier this month, France said it would send AMX-10 RC armored combat vehicles to Ukraine, designated “light tanks” in French. The U.S. and Germany announced the same week that they would send Bradley fighting vehicles and Marder armored personnel carriers, respectively, for the first time.

Sunak’s announcement came as Russian forces fired missiles at Kyiv and other parts of Ukraine on Saturday in the first major barrage in days.

In the southeastern city of Dnipro, a missile strike destroyed a section of a multistory residential building, deputy head of Ukraine’s presidential office Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Telegram. He said there were likely people under the rubble. A rescue operation was underway.

In the northeastern Kharkiv region, Gov. Oleh Syniehubov said two Russian missiles hit an infrastructure object again on Saturday afternoon, following a similar attack in the morning, In the city of Kharkiv, the subway suspended operations amid the attacks, according to its Telegram channel.

Another infrastructure facility was hit in the western Lviv region, according to Gov. Maksym Kozytskyi.

Air defense systems were activated in other regions of Ukraine, as well, and as another round of air raid sirens sounded across the country in the afternoon, regional officials urged local residents to seek shelter.

Vitali Kim, governor of the southern Mykolaiv region, hinted in a Telegram post that some missiles have been intercepted over his province.

Earlier in the day, explosions also rocked the capital, Kyiv. The blasts occurred before air sirens sounded, which is unusual. It’s likely the explosions came ahead of the warning sirens because the attack was by ballistic missiles, which are faster than cruise missiles or drones.

According to Ukrainian air force spokesman Yurii Ihnat, Russia attacked Kyiv with ballistic missiles flying from the north.

“The ballistics are not easy for us to detect and shoot down,” he told local media. The warning about the missile threat was late because of the lack of radar data and information from other sources.

An infrastructure target was hit in the morning missile attack, according to Ukrainian officials.

Explosions were heard in the Dniprovskyi district, a residential area on the left bank of the Dnieper River, Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said. Klitschko also said that fragments of a missile fell on a nonresidential area in the Holosiivskyi district on the right bank, and a fire briefly broke out in a building there. No casualties have been reported so far.

This was the first attack on the Ukrainian capital since Jan. 1.

On Saturday morning, two Russian missiles hit Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city. The strikes with S-300 missiles targeted “energy and industrial objects of Kharkiv and the (outlying) region,” governor Syniehubov said. No casualties have been reported, but emergency power cuts in the city and other settlements of the region were possible, the official said.

The attacks follow conflicting reports on the fate of the fiercely contested salt mining town of Soledar, in Ukraine’s embattled east. Russia claims that its forces have captured the town, a development that would mark a rare victory for the Kremlin after a series of humiliating setbacks on the battlefield.

Ukrainian authorities and Zelenskyy insist the fight for Soledar continues.

Moscow has painted the battle for the town and the nearby city of Bakhmut as key to capturing the eastern region of the Donbas, which comprises of partially occupied Donetsk and Luhansk regions, and as a way to grind down the best Ukrainian forces and prevent them from launching counterattacks elsewhere.

But that cuts both ways, as Ukraine says its fierce defense of the eastern strongholds has helped tie up Russian forces. Western officials and analysts say the two towns’ importance is more symbolic than strategic.

Zakiya Sankara-Jabar’s cellphone buzzed relentlessly as a deadly storm system that spawned tornadoes throughout the U.S. South laid waste to relatives’ homes and churches across a part of Alabama known as the Black Belt.

Text messages and calls from loved ones, many of them hysterical, provided her with devastating updates of Thursday’s storms, which tore through her native Dallas County, including the history-steeped streets of Selma.

Family in the city synonymous with the civil rights movement saw their homes damaged, but they remained structurally sound. For those in Beloit, a nearby unincorporated town where Sankara-Jabar spent the first 20 years of her life, the damage was almost unfathomable.

“I have family who lost everything,” she said Friday. “My great-aunt’s house was leveled. I saw pictures and it’s like the house was never even there.”

Sankara-Jabar’s family has called this part of Alabama home for generations. Taking its name from the rich, dark soil, the Black Belt is a region all too familiar with hardship, both economic and social. Many of the civil rights movement’s most important struggles took place in the area, including “Bloody Sunday,” when nearly 58 years ago state troopers and deputized klansmen viciously attacked Black people marching nonviolently for voting rights across Selma’s Edmund Pettus Bridge.

FILE – Six Catholic nuns, including Sister Mary Antona Ebo, front row fourth from left, lead a march in Selma, Ala., on March 10, 1965, in support of Black voting rights and in protest of the violence of Bloody Sunday when white state troopers brutally dispersed peaceful Black demonstrators. Thursday’s Jan 12, 2023, storm inflicted heavy damage on Selma, cutting a wide path through the downtown area. Selma is a majority-Black working class city etched in the history of the civil rights movement and is now recovering from a natural disaster, in a region that has suffered for decades from economic depression and lacking public resources. (AP Photo, File)

Nearly every year since the march, Selma and Dallas County have welcomed back hundreds to thousands of movement footsoldiers, tourists, politicians and activists who ceremonially cross the Pettus Bridge to commemorate the sacrifices of those who bled for democracy. But when the annual celebration is over, the Black Belt continues on as a working class region struggling to deal with gun violence and drug addiction, much like many U.S. communities, but with far fewer resources.

Dallas County, which includes Selma, is home to about 37,600 people, roughly 71% of them Black and 27% white. The county’s median household income is $35,000 and nearly one out of every three residents lives in poverty.

“These are people who are not poor in spirit, but poor financially,” said Sankara-Jabar, a racial justice activist who now lives just outside of Washington, D.C. “Losing everything for somebody who was already working class and already poor financially is devastating.”

Thursday’s storm inflicted heavy damage on Selma, cutting a wide path through the downtown area, where brick buildings collapsed, oak trees were uprooted, cars were tossed onto their sides and power lines were left dangling. While Selma officials said no fatalities had been reported there, several people were seriously injured.

The city is famed for its historic sites: Pettus Bridge, where the Selma-to-Montgomery march is commemorated; Brown Chapel A.M.E. Church, where the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference worked with local activists during the Selma movement; and the National Voting Rights Museum and Institute, founded in 1991 and opened near the bridge.

Debris litters a local business that was destroyed by a tornado that passed through downtown Selma Ala., Thursday, Jan. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Butch Dill)

“We ask that people keep Selma in their hearts right now, because it is the communities of color that have suffered the most in this particular storm,” said Felecia Pettway, a member of the voting rights museum’s board of directors. “We are really concerned about what happens next.”

Pettway is also a development director for Legal Services Alabama, an organization that provides free civil legal advocacy for low-income residents. The organization’s Selma office was damaged in the tornado.

It is not hyperbole to consider Selma’s downtown district hallowed ground. It’s the place from which the late Amelia Boynton Robinson, a Selma voting rights strategist and civil rights movement matriarch, convinced King to get involved in the movement, hoping he would help nationalize the voting rights struggle. It’s where the late Georgia congressman and voting rights icon John Lewis was beaten nearly to death by state troopers as he crossed the Pettus Bridge on March 7, 1965.

It’s also where the first Black president and the first Black vice president have offered tributes to a civil rights movement that helped their ascensions to high office go from pipe dream to reality.

When the expected ten of thousands gather there this coming March for the annual Selma Bridge Cross Jubilee, the downtown will resemble a huge street festival. There will be music blaring and vendors selling food, T-shirts and other memorabilia.

But when the national political figures leave and the news media cameras disappear, Selma’s high crime levels, pothole-covered streets, abandoned homes and vacant businesses will remain. The city famous for the voting rights struggle will still have to address its sagging voter turnout.

And undoubtedly, the community and areas of Dallas County will still be cleaning up and rebuilding from Thursday’s tornadoes.

“The community needs an infusion of support,” said Adia Winfrey, executive director of Transform Alabama, a nonprofit that promotes civic engagement and voter participation, and a member of the Black Southern Women’s Collaborative.

Winfrey said the needs of the entire Black Belt in Alabama, not just Selma, are manifold. From water, sewage and educational infrastructure to childcare, parental support and activities for young people, the area isn’t getting enough funding to make progress faster.

“There are great people doing great work, but their capacity is limited,” said Winfrey, who is also board secretary for the Selma Bridge Crossing Jubilee.

The jubilee is a cherished community tradition and it provides some degree of economic stimulus, she added.

“People just come for the photo op or the experience and don’t really leave anything,” Winfrey said. “And that is partially what Selma is missing. How do we leverage the excitement about jubilee and interest in the history of Selma, to bring the resources to Selma?”

FILE – State troopers swing billy clubs to break up a civil rights voting march in Selma, Ala., March 7, 1965. John Lewis, chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (in the foreground) is being beaten by a state trooper. Thursday’s Jan 12, 2023, storm inflicted heavy damage on Selma, cutting a wide path through the downtown area. Selma is a majority-Black working class city etched in the history of the civil rights movement and is now recovering from a natural disaster, in a region that has suffered for decades from economic depression and lacking public resources. (AP Photo, File)

On Friday, Sankara-Jabar said she grew frustrated with the seeming lack of urgency from statewide leadership to provide relief and shelter to Black Belt residents affected by the storm. As friends reached out asking where they could donate to help her family, Sankara-Jabar took to Twitter and tweeted Republican Gov. Kay Ivey.

“Ma’am with respect what are you doing?? I have family in Dallas County that have lost everything,” she wrote. “You are missing in action.”

Ivey did send a tweet after Sankara-Jabar’s plea, but not as a direct response.

“I just got off the phone with (President Joe Biden) following my visits to Dallas and Autauga Counties,” the governor tweeted. “I have asked him to expedite a major disaster declaration for Alabama. He assured me he will approve that as soon as he receives it. We are truly grateful!”

Sankara-Jabar said she plans to be vigilant about how emergency relief funding is distributed in her home state.

“I want to make sure that the state government of Alabama, which is controlled by Republicans, does right by the Black Belt, when the cameras are gone and when the news is not there anymore,” she said choking up with tears. “When those federal dollars come through for my family and everybody that lives in the Black Belt, those dollars need to go where they need to be.”

Associated Press writers Kim Chandler and Sharon Johnson contributed from Selma, Alabama. Aaron Morrison is a New York City-based member of the AP’s Race and Ethnicity team. Follow him on Twitter: https://www.twitter.com/aaronlmorrison.

Mateusz Slodkowski/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images)

• A college student from Massachusetts died in Cancun, Mexico after falling from an Airbnb balcony.
• Leah Pearse, 20, had climbed to the third-floor balcony to gain access to the locked property.
• Her boyfriend was initially arrested but was cleared of wrongdoing and her death was ruled accidental.

A 20-year-old student from Massachusetts has died in Cancun, Mexico, after trying to get into her locked Airbnb through its third-floor balcony, according to her obituary, reported on by NBC10 Boston.

Leah Pearse found herself locked out of the Cancun property on January 6, having left the keys inside, and tried to get in through the balcony before falling and dying instantly.

She was studying to be a nurse at Simmons University in Boston and working as a Certified Nursing Assistant at Mass General Hospital.

Pearse’s boyfriend, Augustine Aufderheide, was initially arrested by Cancun police after her death, Mexican news site NotiCaribe reported.

Aufderheide had told police that he and the deceased had been arguing before her death, according to Southern Maryland News Network.

However, authorities cleared Aufderheide of any wrongdoing, and her death was ruled an accident, according to NotiCaribe.

“The last thing I said to her,” her father, Reggie Pearse, told NBC10 Boston, “I just said to her, ‘Be careful,’ and she said, ‘I’ll try, Dad.'”

“She was extremely unpredictable, extremely quirky, extremely funny,” her sister Anna Pearse said.

Pearse spent her last day in Cancun on the beach with her boyfriend, who her sister said she was “so in love with.”

“All day, they were singing, ‘That’s Amore,'” Anna Pearse said. 

Her mother, Amy Goldfarb, said her daughter had died “at the top of her game.”

“She was so happy. She was so in love. She had just gotten straight A’s. She was proud and excited about her future,” she said.

Hudson’s Bay Company

• Saks Fifth Avenue has placed a bid to build a casino on the upper floors of its flagship store.
• “We are finalizing our plans to move forward with attaining a gaming license,” a source close to the company told Insider.
• Saks is one of several major companies vying for just three available casino licenses in the city. 

Watch out, Las Vegas — Manhattan may become the country’s next big gambling hub. 

Saks Fifth Avenue is throwing its hat in the ring for a coveted license to open one of New York City’s first casinos. A source close to Hudson’s Bay Company, owner of Saks, confirmed to Insider on Saturday that the company has officially placed a bid for one of the city’s three available licenses, which would allow the luxury department store to build and operate a full-scale casino. 

Per the source, the plan involves converting upper floors “currently used as a swing space” to develop the casino, intended to “attract visitors and tourists from around the world seeking that luxurious, Manhattan experience.”

“We have invested significant time and energy over the last year in building a strategic plan to most effectively and positively enhance our Saks Fifth Avenue experience with a luxury, high-end casino,” the source said. 

The area is expected to include the top three floors of the store, comprising a collective 200,000 square feet, and the casino would include a separate lobby from the department store, according to the New York Times, which first reported the bid. 

“The Saks Fifth Avenue flagship store is a staple of one of the most iconic streets in Manhattan,” the source told Insider. “It is of particular importance to us that we continue to invest in the vibrancy and spirit of Fifth Avenue itself.” 

A rendering of the Saks Fifth Avenue casino lobby.

Courtesy of Hudson’s Bay Company

Competition for the licenses has grown fierce since state legislators first authorized casinos in the city in April 2022. The state’s Gaming Facility Location Board opened formal bidding last week, in a process that requires a minimum asking price of $500 million for each license, Gothamist reported.  

Saks Fifth Avenue will be competing with other hopefuls, including Coney-Island owner, Thor Equities; Saratoga Casino Holdings, owner and operator of a race track near Albany; Legends, a company co-founded by affiliates of the New York Yankees; Chickasaw Nation, which operates several casinos across the US; and Steve Cohen, owner of the Mets, who is vying to build a casino with Hard Rock near Citi Field, per Gothamist. 

The winners of the licenses are expected to be announced later this year. The board will consider job creation potential, economic growth, and a commitment to collaborate with minority contractors, according to New York Daily News. 

While voters passed legislation that allowed casinos to open in the state in 2013, the policy allowed for only four casino licenses upstate to start, so the emerging businesses could get their bearings before having to compete with the New York City market, the Times reported.  

Michael M. Santiago

• Housing Works opened the first dispensary in New York state on Dec. 29.
• A real estate expert says license holders now face challenges with finding the right property for their businesses.
• Business owners are up against strict regulations and uneducated landlords in their search for a storefront.

The first legal dispensary in New York state opened its doors in December, but a commercial real estate expert says cannabis business owners have some hefty obstacles to overcome before they follow suit.

In March 2021, New York state legalized the recreational use of marijuana for adults, but it took nearly two years for the first 36 business licenses to be approved by the Office of Cannabis Management. The next hurdle, real estate exec Gregory Tannor of Lee & Associates NYC told Insider, is finding the right real estate for stores.

According to Tannor, opening a brick-and-mortar dispensary isn’t quite the same process as a coffee shop or clothing store. There are “buffer zones” that cannabis business owners must abide by while shopping for real estate. 

“Buffer zones are crucial for approval for the OCM,” Tannor told Insider. “These locations have to be outside of a certain vicinity of schools, places of worship, parks, and other dispensaries.”

In order to comply with New York’s buffer zones, a cannabis business cannot be within 500 feet of school or 200 feet of a house of worship, according to a report from Bloomberg. Tannor adds, the businesses must also be 1,000 feet away from another dispensary.

Hesitant landlords are another hurdle license holders will have to overcome to open a storefront. Marijuana’s illegal status at the federal level coupled with the poor reputation of illicit New York smoke shops means building owners often have reservations about leasing to a legal dispensary.

“There are landlords out there who just aren’t interested, but we try to educate them on what a dispensary actually is, feels, smells, tastes like, and the type of demographic it attracts,” Tannor said.

However, other landlords are aware of the multibillion-dollar cannabis industry and are hoping to cash in on the opportunity by raising the rent for cannabis businesses. 

“When you find the compliant real estate, the next step is dealing with some of these landlords who start to put a cannabis tax on their property,” Tannor said, adding that that’s where he and his team come in “with a Rolodex of compliant real estate” to help.

Despite the uphill battle to open legal dispensaries in New York, Tannor told Insider to expect more places to purchase weed opening up in the next few weeks. He predicts the shops will open on a “rolling basis” throughout 2023.

@AlexRaptor94/Twitter

• A video shows Ukrainian soldiers conducting a medical evacuation in Soledar.
• The rescue takes place as Russian shells fall around them.
• The soldiers appeared to be using a US-built M113 armored personnel carrier.

A dramatic video appears to show Ukrainian soldiers racing through the bombed-out streets of the eastern town of Soledar amid heavy fighting to rescue the wounded.

The video, which has circulated on social media and been shared by multiple media outlets, appeared to be filmed from a drone.

A medical evacuation vehicle can be seen speeding towards a building in Soledar amid Russian shelling before stopping around the side of a building. 

—AlexRaptor (@AlexRaptor94) January 11, 2023

A soldier can be seen getting out of the armored vehicle, displaying a red cross, and cautiously turning the corner of the building to greet a group of troops carrying what appears to be a wounded soldier.

The injured soldier is quickly loaded into the vehicle before it drives off at top speed amid falling shells. 

It is not clear when the video was filmed.

A Twitter user who posted the video noted that the Ukrainian soldiers appeared to be using an M113 armored personnel carrier, primarily supplied by the US. The armored vehicle, weighing 12.3 tonnes, can reach a top speed of 40 mph.

The M113, which first saw combat in Vietnam, is old and lightly armored but versatile and easy to operate, making them valuable on the battlefield, according to Forbes.

The salt-mining town of Soledar has been the center of fierce fighting in recent weeks, likely because of its proximity to the city of Bakhmut.

This week, Russian forces and the paramilitary Wagner Group claimed to have seized control of it, prompting some public squabbling between them.

Ukraine has denied Russia’s claims of victory, saying that fighting is ongoing.