Imavov calls for Chimaev’s title after UFC main event win over Borralho

In the main event of UFC Fight Night in France, Nassourdine Imavov defeated Caio Borralho to claim his title as a potential challenger to Khamzat Chimaev’s title.

Imavov won his fifth straight UFC fight by falling in front of his home crowd at Accor Arena in Paris: 50-45, 49-46, 49-46.

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Imavov (20-4 MMA), who controlled the distance for the duration of the fight, did not allow Borralho (17-2 MMA), who entered the match with an impressive 62% of his victories by KO/TKO or submission, despite the fact that he had controlled the distance for the duration of the match.

Imanov, who claimed the No. 2 ranking in the UFC middleweight division, was angry that Borralho didn’t go as planned.

He had one message for Chimaev (15-0 MMA), despite not obtaining a stoppage victory.

Imavov declared, “I am next,” as the audience erupted after the match. Borralho remained unbeaten for ten years. I simply won him over with style. To compete for the UFC middleweight title, I must be the one to follow.

Borralho, who is No 7 overall, lost for the first time in the UFC. He acknowledged Imavov as one of his most difficult opponents in the entire career after the fight.

Borralho thanked Nassourdine for the respect. “Thank you so much, Nassourdine,” he said, “I believe he was the better man today.” As I had anticipated, he moved very quickly. He performed very well in the contest. I really struggled with [my strategy]. For both the fans and the UFC, I wanted to make this fight entertaining. You can see why I tried to strike with one of the best strikers in history: “a great war.”

At 2:56 of the second round, lightweight Benoit Saint Denis won the co-headline fight by securing a rear-naked choke over Mauricio Ruffy.

Saint Denis (15-3 MMA) won over the hometown crowd, becoming the first fighter to submit Ruffy (12-2 MMA) in his career.

A seven-fight winning streak that started in November 2019 was broken by Ruffy’s defeat at Saint Denis.

The No. 2 seeded Imavov requested that his next fight be his title defense against Khamzat Chimaev [Per Haljestam/Imagn Images via Reuters]

Gaza war film The Voice of Hind Rajab wins 2nd prize at Venice festival

The Silver Lion award was presented to a five-year-old Palestinian girl by Israel during its ongoing conflict in Gaza.

French-Tunisian director Kaouther Ben Hania’s The Voice of Hind Rajab placed second on Saturday behind American independent director Jim Jarmusch’s Father Mother Sister Brother.

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The movie details Hind Rajab’s true story, which was claimed by Israeli forces last year as she and her family attempted to flee Gaza City.

Real audio from Rajab’s hours-long call to the Palestine Red Crescent Society, in which rescuers tried to comfort her as she lay stranded in a car with her aunt, uncle, and three cousins who had all been shot down by Israeli fire.

The two ambulance workers who attempted to save the girl also died at the scene.

The Venice Lido film received the most positive reviews, with many people predicting the movie would win after a 23-minute standing ovation at its premiere on Wednesday.

When Ben Hania presented her with her award, he claimed that Rajab’s story was tragically the story of “an entire people enduring genocide” as well as the young girl’s.

“Cinema cannot retake Hind, nor can it overthrow the atrocity she committed against her. Nothing can ever be restored, but film can preserve the voice of the voice and make it resonate across borders, according to the director.

“Her voice will keep evoking until justice is served, and until accountability is real.”

More than 64, 000 Palestinians have been killed by Israel’s occupation of Gaza, including more than 18, 000 children, in addition to the festival’s extensive shadow.

At the ceremony, Jarmusch, who won the coveted Golden Lion, wore a badge that read “Enough” to show his opposition to Israel’s continued siege and bombardment of Gaza.

The 72-year-old director acknowledged earlier this week that he was concerned that one of his main distributors had taken money from a business that had links to the Israeli military when he unveiled Father Mother Sister Brother.

The three-part meditation on the uneasy ties between parents and their adult children is based on Jarmusch’s winning movie, which stars Cate Blanchett, Adam Driver, and Tom Waits.

He thanked the grand jury for “appreciating our quiet film” and called Saturday’s victory an “unexpected honor.”

In other categories, Xin Zhilei won best actress for her role in the drama The Sun Rises On Us All, which explores issues of sacrifice, guilt, and unresolved feelings between estranged lovers who share a dark secret, while Italy’s Toni Servillo won best actor for his wry portrayal of a weary president nearing the end of his mandat in La Grazia.

Benny Safdie received the best director nod for The Smashing Machine, a film starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as the real-life mixed martial arts pioneer Mark Kerr.

Gianfranco Rosi, an Italian filmmaker, won the special jury award for his black-and-white film Below the Clouds, which explores life in Naples’ troubled southern city and is characterized by frequent earthquakes and the threat of volcanic eruptions.

One of the award-winning actors, Servillo, spoke about Gaza from the stage and praised activists on a flotilla of boats trying to “break” Israel’s hold on the island.

According to Servillo, they “have chosen to set sail with courage to Palestine and bring a sign of humanity to a place where human dignity is consistently and cruelly undermined.”

Annapurna Roy, who was the recipient of the Horizons sidebar’s best director prize led by French filmmaker Julia Ducournau, also dedicated a portion of her remarks to the Gaza conflict.

For her debut film, Songs of Forgotton Trees, about two migrant women in Mumbai, Roy, an Indian, won.

Every child is deserving of peace, freedom, and freedom, and Palestine, according to Roy. I support Palestine, “. Although I may upset my country, I have no bearing.

Maryam Touzani, the filmmaker who won the audience award at Armani Beauty’s film competition in Gaza, also brought attention to the conflict there.

How many mothers have been abandoned? she stated. How many more before this horror is over? We “refuse to lose” our humanity.

The Venice festival regularly hosts big Oscar winners, with films that have won almost 90 Oscar nominations and almost 20 in the process. It also marks the start of the awards season.

A trio of Netflix movies, Kathryn Bigelow’s nuclear thriller A House of Dynamite, Guillermo del Toro’s re-telling of Frankenstein, and Jay Kelly, a comedy-drama from Noah Baumbach, were just a few of the films that left Venice empty-handed.

Trump threatens ‘war’ on Chicago as thousands protest federal crackdown

As thousands of protesters marched in Chicago and Washington, DC, to protest the deployment of National Guard troops and immigration agents to Democratic-led cities, US President Donald Trump has threatened to launch his newly renamed “Department of War” there.

A parody of the movie Apocalypse Now, which depicts a ball of flames as helicopters scurry over Chicago, the third-largest city in the US, was included in Trump’s threat, which was posted on his Truth Social platform on Saturday.

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Trump wrote on his social media page, “I love the smell of deportations in the morning.” Chicago is “about to learn why it’s called the Department of WAR.”

The president provided no further information besides the phrase “Chipocalypse Now,” a play on the name of Francis Ford Coppola’s dystopian 1979 film set in the Vietnam War, in which a character declares, “I love the smell of napalm in the morning.”

Trump has repeatedly threatened to add Chicago to the list of other Democratic-led cities where more federal enforcement is being conducted. His administration will deploy National Guard personnel and increase immigration enforcement in Chicago, just like it did in Los Angeles.

Chicago’s Democratic Governor, JB Pritzker, expressed outrage over Trump’s position and said the state “won’t be intimidated by a wannabe dictator.”

The American president is threatening to attack an American city. This is not intended as a joke. He wrote in a post on X that “this is not normal.”

In solidarity with DC communities, thousands of demonstrators are taking part in the “We Are All DC” national march.

Additionally, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson criticized Trump’s threat as “beneath the honor of our nation.”

He wants to occupy our city and violate our Constitution, according to the reality. By defending each other and Chicago from Donald Trump, Johnson wrote on X.

Chicago, DC protests

Trump has deployed troops in Los Angeles since June as part of his unprecedented law enforcement takeover of the nation’s capital, including one in Washington, D.C. He also suggested Baltimore and New Orleans might receive the same treatment, and he even mentioned federal authorities “wipe’em out” and the protesters might do the same in Portland, Oregon on Friday.

The US president added that a letter stating that it sends “a message of victory” to the world on Friday that the US president signed would become the Department of Defense instead of the Department of War.

The deployments of troops and federal agents have sparked legal protests and protests, with some calling them authoritarian show of force.

More than a thousand protesters marched through downtown Chicago on Saturday, using signs that read “I. C. E. out of Illinois, I. C. E. out of everywhere,” referring to ICE.

When confronting ICE agents, speakers gave advice to the audience. Additionally, they compared Israel’s presence in Gaza to the proposed ICE crackdown on Chicago.

As many people waved Palestinian flags and donned keffiyehs, co-chair of the US Palestinian Community Network Nazek Sankari said, “We are inspired by the steadfastness of Palestinians in Gaza. We reject Trump and his threats.

If Trump installed the National Guard in their city, Viviana Barajas, the leader of the community organization Palenque LSNA, promised that Chicagoans would “stand up” as Los Angeles had done.

This is Chicago, and he is utterly mistaken, according to Barajas, who said, “If he believes these frivolous theatrics to undermine our sovereignty will shut out the desire we have to protect our people.” “We have been studying DC and LA, and they have defended their cities.”

Protesters at the “We Are All DC” march in the US capital marched behind a bright red banner with the words “END THE D. C. OCCUPATION” in both English and Spanish.

They carried posters with slogans demonizing Trump and chanted “Trump must go now,” “Free DC,” and “Resist Tyranny.”

Heidi Zhou-Castro, a reporter for Al Jazeera in Washington, DC, claimed Trump’s supporters were “furious” and “authoritarian” and “fascist.”

She noted that Trump deployed the 2, 000 troops last month to combat what he termed a rise in violent crime, but that the number of such crimes in the US capital last year was “at a 30-year low.”

Former US diplomat Mark Fitzpatrick, who has lived in Washington for ten years, expressed concern over the administration’s “authoritarian nature.”

He claimed that the federal agents and national guards who are scurrying through our streets are “really an affront to the democracy of our city.” He added that the situation is worse for DC residents because they lack federal representation. We are at the mercy of a dictator like this, a wannabe dictator, because we lack our own senators and members of the House of Representatives.

Jun Lee, a printmaker artist, showed up with a “Free DC” sign she made on a woodcut block, one of the protesters on Saturday.

She claimed she attended the protest because she was “heartbroken and saddened” by the impact the federal intervention had had on her city.

“This is my home, and I’ve never, ever believed that everything I watched in a history documentary actually takes place in person, which is why this is significant to everyone.” We must fight and resist because this is where we live.

Trump has made the claim that the National Guard’s deployment has almost unlimited powers. He occasionally even raises questions about his rule over.

The majority of people claim that a dictator can be anything he wants if he stops crime. By the way, Trump stated last month that he was not a dictator.

Not that I don’t have the right to do anything I want to do, he continued, “I would.”

US Open: Sabalenka wins second straight title, defeats Anisimova

Amanda Anisimova, the eighth seed in the women’s final on Saturday, defeated American eighth seed Aryna Sabalenka, 6-3, 7-6 (3), retaining her US Open title, further establishing her status as the contemporary queen of hardcourt.

Since 2022, the Belarusian hasn’t missed a hardcourt major final. With her most recent success, she becomes the first woman to win consecutive US Opens, joining Serena Williams, who won three straight titles from 2012 to 2014.

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Due to Sabalenka’s constant complacency, the match between her and her closest-hitting, biggest-serving women boiled down to unforced errors.

Sabalenka, who fell to her knees after winning the match with an unreturnable serve, jumped up and down with her coaches in the stands in a moment of pure joy, thanked everyone who came here and flew in.

“I want you in my box, and I’m going to get to many more finals,” the statement read.

Anisimova, who was only playing in her second major final, struggled to hold onto the momentum despite having partisan supporters at the famed Arthur Ashe Stadium.

“It’s been a fantastic summer,” he said. It’s great to lose to two other women in a row, but it’s also very difficult, said 24-year-old Anisimova, who was left in tears once more after receiving a 6-0, 6-0 loss in the Wimbledon final two months ago.

“It’s not enough for my dreams to come true today.”

Since Serena Williams won the US Open in 2014, Sabalenka became the first woman to do so consecutively.

Sabalenka starts things off right.

In the first game, Sabalenka, 27, saved three break points, but Anisimova gave up the opening break when she shot past the baseline in the second half.

In the third game, Anisimova took her first step by winning a 12-shot rally with a forehand winner beyond Sabalenka’s reach. In the fifth minute, the American took a break from her rival, who had hit one beyond the baseline.

The frustrated Belarusian sprinted along the baseline in frustration and seized on her opportunity to break with Anisimova, breaking her in the sixth game and turning in the eighth with a second break point from the baseline.

Sabalenka finished the first set with an unreturnable serve and whizzed past her opponent to convert on a break point in the third game of the second set.

Anisimova fought back, leveling the score with a backhand winner of her own in the sixth, sending the crowd into a frenzied rage. However, the American party abruptly ended when their home hope scored the winning goal at break point.

In the tenth game, Anisimova watched Sabalenka flubbed a smash to help her regain control. In the tiebreak, Sabalenka sprinted to victory in spite of her own strength.

Aryna Sabalenka and Amanda Anisimova react.
After winning the US Open, Sabalenka, left, hugs Anisimova. [Charly Triballeau/AFP]

Russia-Ukraine war: List of key events, day 1,291

On Sunday, September 7, 2018, this is how things are going.

Fighting

  • Late on Saturday, Russian forces launched another large-scale drone attack on Ukraine, according to the Kyiv Independent, citing officials. Explosions were audible in cities across Ukraine, including Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Dnipro.
  • One person was killed and several others were hurt by a Russian attack in the Ukrainian town of Putyvl, according to regional governor Oleh Hryhorov. Among those injured was a nine-year-old child.
  • At least 15 people were also hurt by a separate Russian drone attack in Zaporizhia in the southeast, according to Ivan Fedorov, the head of the military in the region, which is partially occupied by Russia.
  • Authorities in Chernihiv, Ukraine, reported that a Russian drone dropped leaflets in the form of 100 Hryvnia bills to offer residents real money in exchange for coordinates to help Russia defeat Ukrainian forces.
  • No significant harm or an increase in radiation levels were caused by Ukrainian drones hitting the roof of the training facility for the Zaporizhzhia nuclear plant, according to the Ukraine-based government’s undersecretary. According to the statement, the strike occurred from a reactor unit about 300 meters (984 feet).

Weapons

diplomacy and politics

  • Officials from both countries were present at the burial of Poles who were killed by Ukrainian nationalist fighters during World War II, easing a remarkably difficult relationship between the two allies.
  • In an alleged sabotage ploy committed in December of 2024, a Georgian captain of a ship that is thought to belong to Russia’s so-called “shadow fleet” has denied intentionally dragging an anchor. In a Finnish court, Captain Davit Vadacthkoria and two senior Eagle S&nbsp officers are accused of “aggravated criminal mischief and aggravated interference with communications” in a Finnish court.

Sanctions

  • According to Belgian Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Prevot, securing Russian central bank assets from the 27-nation bloc could seriously harm Europe’s economy. After the Ukrainian invasion of 2022, the EU had frozen some 200 billion euros ($234.4 billion) of its central bank assets, the majority of which are held by Belgium’s Euroclear, a world-leading deposit company.