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Iga Swiatek’s US Open title defense ends with a loss to Jelena Ostapenko in the fourth round

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

NEW YORK (AP) — Iga Swiatek arrived at the U.S. Open as its reigning champion, as the winner at three of the past six Grand Slam tournaments and as the owner of the No. 1 ranking for nearly 1 1/2 years. None of that mattered on Sunday night against Jelena Ostapenko, whose powerful style disrupts Swiatek’s rhythm — and beats her every time.Swiatek’s title defense at Flushing Meadows ended in the fourth round with a 3-6, 6-3, 6-1 loss to 2017 French Open champion Ostapenko in the fourth round at Arthur Ashe Stadium. The result also means Swiatek’s stay at atop the WTA will end next week, when current No. 2 Aryna Sabalenka will rise to the top spot for the first time.“The main thing is that she doesn’t really like to play against big hitters. … She likes to have some time,” said the 20th-seeded Ostapenko, a 26-year-old from Latvia. “When I play fast, aggressive and powerful, she’s a little bit in trouble.”Ostapenko accumulated 31 winners to 18 for Swiatek.More i...

South Korea’s Yoon will call for strong response to North’s nuclear weapons at ASEAN and G20 summits

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — South Korea’s president says he’ll tell world leaders about the need to faithfully enforce U.N. sanctions on North Korea and block the country’s illicit activities to fund its weapons programs when they converge in Indonesia and India for annual summits this week.President Yoon Suk Yeol is to visit Jakarta for four days starting Tuesday to attend a series of summits scheduled on the margins of a meeting of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders. On Friday, he’ll travel on to New Delhi for a summit of the leading rich and developing nations.“At the upcoming ASEAN-related Summits and the G20 Summit, I intend to urge the international community to resolutely respond to North Korea’s ever-escalating missile provocations and nuclear threats and to work closely together on its denuclearization,” Yoon said in written responses to questions from The Associated Press.“As long as the U.N. Security Council sanctions currently in place are faithfully im...

New Delhi got a makeover for the G20 summit. The city’s poor say they were simply erased

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

NEW DELHI (AP) — New Delhi’s crowded streets have been resurfaced. Streetlights are illuminating once dark sidewalks. City buildings and walls are painted with bright murals and graffiti. Planted flowers are everywhere.Many of the city’s poor say they were simply erased, much like the stray dogs and monkeys that have been removed from some neighborhoods, as India’s capital got its makeover ahead of this week’s summit of the Group of 20 nations. Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s government hopes the elaborate effort to make New Delhi sparkle — a “beautification project” with a price tag of $120 million — will help showcase the world’s most populous nation’s cultural prowess and strengthen its position on the global stage. But for many street vendors and those crammed into New Delhi’s shantytowns, the makeover has meant displacement and loss of livelihood, raising questions about the government’s policies on dealing with poverty. In a city of more than...

Four astronauts return to Earth in SpaceX capsule to wrap up six-month station mission

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) — Four astronauts returned to Earth early Monday after a six-month stay at the International Space Station. Their SpaceX capsule parachuted into the Atlantic off the Florida coast.Returning were NASA astronauts Stephen Bowen and Warren “Woody” Hoburg, Russia’s Andrei Fedyaev and the United Arab Emirates’ Sultan al-Neyadi, the first person from the Arab world to spend an extended time in orbit. Before departing the space station, they said they were craving hot showers, steaming cups of coffee and the ocean air since arriving in March. Their homecoming was delayed a day because of poor weather at the splashdown locations, but in the end, provided a spectacular middle-of-the-night show as the capsule streaked through the sky over Cape Canaveral toward a splashdown near Jacksonville.The astronauts said it was incredible to be back. “You’ve got a roomful of happy people here,” SpaceX Mission Control radioed.SpaceX launched their replacements o...

Security in Ecuador has come undone as drug cartels exploit the banana industry to ship cocaine

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) — Men walk through a lush plantation between Ecuador ’s balmy Pacific coast and its majestic Andes, lopping hundreds of bunches of green bananas from groaning plants twice their height. Workers haul the bunches to an assembly line, where the bananas are washed, weighed and plastered with stickers for European buyers. Owner Franklin Torres is monitoring all activity on a recent morning to make sure the fruit meets international beauty standards — and ever more important, is packed for shipment free of cocaine.Torres is hypervigilant because Ecuador is increasingly at the confluence of two global trades: bananas and cocaine.The South American country is the world’s largest exporter of bananas, shipping about 6.5 million metric tons (7.2 tons) a year by sea. It is also wedged between the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia, and drug traffickers find containers filled with bananas the perfect vehicle to smuggle their product.Drug traffickers’ inf...

In the pivotal South Carolina primary, Republican candidates search for a path against Donald Trump

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

ANDERSON, S.C. (AP) — A microphone in hand, Sen. Tim Scott left the podium at a recent barbecue event in South Carolina and made his way through tables draped in red, white and blue as attendees finished plates of pulled pork and baked beans. As he talked about his campaign, Scott passed Casey DeSantis, the first lady of Florida, who looked ahead at the empty stage from which she would soon speak. She was there in place of her husband, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who was overseeing the response to Hurricane Idalia.Several hours earlier, former Gov. Nikki Haley packed an event hall about 130 miles to the northeast. An overflow crowd spilled out into the back hallways, with some people having to watch her remarks on a video monitor. The flurry of activity showed the priority these three campaigns are placing on South Carolina, where the Republican primary is traditionally the last chance for many White House hopefuls to break through before Super Tuesday. If former President Donald Tru...

Vice President Kamala Harris to face doubts and dysfunction at Southeast Asia summit

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

WASHINGTON (AP) — Vice President Kamala Harris will deepen her outreach to Southeast Asia this week at an international summit in Jakarta, Indonesia, where she’ll try to erase doubts about U.S. commitment to the region stirred by President Joe Biden’s absence. It’s Harris’ third trip to Southeast Asia and fourth to Asia overall, and she’s touched down in more countries there than any other continent. The repeat visits, in addition to meetings that she’s hosted in Washington, have positioned Harris as a key interlocutor for the administration as it tries to bolster a network of partnerships to counterbalance Chinese influence.This latest journey is another opportunity for Harris to burnish her foreign policy credentials as she prepares for a bruising campaign year. She’s already come under attack from Republican presidential candidates who say she’s unprepared to step up if Biden — the oldest U.S. president in history — can’t finish a second ...

Concert review: Greta Van Fleet attempts to recreate Led Zeppelin at Xcel Energy Center

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

Back in 1988, the song “Get it On” from a mysterious new band called Kingdom Come hit radio and it sounded so much like Led Zeppelin, some folks were convinced Robert Plant and Jimmy Page had kissed and made up.Alas, Kingdom Come turned out to be a bunch of Germans with bad perms. Once people realized how shameless they were in replicating Led Zeppelin’s sound, they quickly moved on. (I still vividly remember the audience booing them when they opened the Monsters of Rock tour that July at the Metrodome.)So when Greta Van Fleet came straight out of Michigan in 2017 with an even more blatant attempt to rewrite “Physical Graffiti,” I figured they’d enjoy a similar career path to the dumpster. Instead, the band of three brothers and their buddy on drums have not only been accepted, they’re actually popular. They drew about 13,000 surprisingly youthful fans to St. Paul’s Xcel Energy Center Sunday night.Yes, vocalist Josh Kiszka has expanded a bit beyond his Plant ...

Messi has 2 assists in front of star-studded crowd in Los Angeles as Inter Miami beats LAFC 3-1

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

Lionel Messi had two assists in front of a star-studded crowd as Inter Miami defeated Los Angeles Football Club 3-1 Sunday night.Facundo Farías, Jordi Alba and Leonardo Campana scored for Miami, which is unbeaten in 11 matches across all competitions since Messi joined the club in mid-July.Ryan Hollingshead scored for LAFC, which has dropped its last two.Sunday's match though will be Messi's last with Miami for at least the next two weeks. The 36-year-old will be part of Argentina's World Cup qualifiers against Ecuador on Thursday and Bolivia five days laterMessi has 11 goals and eight assists for Miami, which is eight points out of a playoff spot in the Eastern Conference with eight regular-season matches remaining.Miami’s visit to the defending MLS Cup champions was marked as one of the highlight games since Messi signed. It was viewed by 22,921 fans, a record for LAFC’s BMO Stadium.It also vaulted into one of the most-demanded tickets in MLS’ 27-year history.According to TickPick...

China’s biggest homebuilder reels as economy slows

Published Wed, 19 Feb 2025 10:41:28 GMT

When Country Garden, the biggest developer in China’s increasingly troubled real estate sector, published its annual report in April, the cover design exuded hope: a phoenix spreading its wings.The company said the image showed that China’s economy was “back on track” and that this year would see “growth soaring to new heights.”That was wishful thinking.Shortly after the report’s release, China’s nascent economic recovery lost steam and an already sluggish real estate market started to collapse. At Country Garden, presales of unfinished apartments, a crucial indicator of future revenue, plunged more than 50% in June and July, twice the rate of decline in the preceding five months.For the past three years, as dozens of major property developers defaulted after years of excessive borrowing, Country Garden was an outlier. But last month, it missed two interest payments — signaling that it, too, was at risk of financial collapse, with $187 billion in debt.Country Garden must come up wit...