Category World News

Jannik Sinner, the reigning champion of the US Open, defeated Lorenzo Musetti 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 on Wednesday in the first all-Italian men’s Grand Slam quarterfinal, continuing his relentless run at the US Open.

The world no. 1 will face Canadian 25th seed Felix Auger-Aliassime in the semifinal on Friday, continuing his 26-game winning streak.

It was a good performance, Sinner said, “I was very solid, I started well,” and it’s almost midnight.

He praised Musetti, saying, “We obviously know each other well.

There are so many Italians in the draw because we are all from the same country. It’s nice to play here because there are so many Italians there. You can play Davis Cup with someone, and other things, but you must break up because of it. Everything is in order when we shake hands.

It’s amazing, but I’m sure some Italians aren’t sleeping there. We have a lot of support and it’s a special nation.

The only joy he had in the opening set was when Sinner’s thunderous hitting from the beginning helped him take a 5-0 lead. Musetti received the loudest applause of the evening when he got on the board, but that was in the opening set.

Musetti did a quick break early in the second, but Sinner resisted his threat and drew his advantage, before easeing through the next set and completing it with a clean hold.

Every Grand Slam semifinalist is playing incredible tennis, Sinner continued.

It’s a very special tournament, they say. The year’s final grand prix. On the biggest stadium in the world, with such a large crowd, there is no better place to play a night game.

It means a lot to me, I thought.

Former president Alejandro Toledo’s second conviction in connection with widespread corruption led to his release from prison for 13 years and four months.

One of five former presidents imprisoned in Peru in recent years, including ex-President Martin Vizcarra, who was freed on Wednesday as he prepares to go on trial for allegedly accepting bribes more than ten years ago.

Toledo, 79, who served as president from 2001 to 2006, was found guilty of obtaining high-value real estate by using bribe money from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht, now known as Novonor.

In addition to paying off mortgages on two other properties, Toledo and his wife allegedly used $5.1 million to pay off two other properties while using $5.1 million to purchase a house and an office in a fashionable Lima neighborhood. According to the prosecution, the funds were routed through a Costa Rican offshore company that Toledo established to launder the illicit funds.

Toledo was found guilty of accepting up to $35 million in bribes from Odebrecht in exchange for awarding the company lucrative public works contracts in October of that year. His conviction was announced on Wednesday.

Toledo’s attorneys consistently refuted allegations of money laundering and collusion during his yearlong trial.

His two sentences will be concurrently served.

Toledo, an economist with degrees from the University of San Francisco and Stanford University, is awaiting release from prison on the Lima police base.

The special facility for former country leaders is currently housing two other ex-presidents, Ollanta Humala and Pedro Castillo.

While Martin Vizcarra was detained at the same facility, a top Peruvian court on Wednesday ordered his release while he was awaiting trial for allegedly accepting bribes while he was the Moquegua region governor 11 years ago.

Before his trial, Vizcarra was imprisoned last month and the prosecution requested a 15-year sentence. He has disputed the allegations against him, claiming that they represent political persecution.

In 2026, he had a plan to run for president again.

In this century’s “Car Wash” scandal, almost all of Peru’s presidents and governments have been implicated in the Odebrecht corruption cases.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the president of the United States, has been accused of putting lives at risk by disobeying decades of life-saving science and reversing medical progress in a letter to him.

In a joint statement released on Wednesday, the organizations, including the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Public Health Association, and the American Association of Immunologists, said that Kennedy is pressuring Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) experts to “turn their back on decades of sound science” in order to advance his agenda.

The organizations also accused Kennedy of making repeated attempts to denigrate science and public health, leaving Americans “less safe” in a variety of ways.

Our nation requires “leadership that encourages open, honest dialogue,” promotes misinformation, reverses medical progress, and decimates programs that protect us, according to the statement.

We are “deeply concerned” that policies that reject sound interventions will cause Americans to suffer and perish without cause.

Following his firing of Susan Monarez, the agency’s director, less than a month after she was sworn in, several former CDC directors last week claimed Kennedy’s decisions are putting Americans’ health at risk.

Kush Desai, a deputy press secretary for the White House, claimed Monarez’s actions did not “align with” President Donald Trump’s agenda and that she had resigned.

According to Monarez’s attorneys, she had been targeted because she “refused to rubber-stamp unreliable, reckless directives and fire devoted health experts.”

In response to Kennedy’s influence over the organization, her departure occurred as well as the resignations of at least four other senior CDC officials.

Kennedy stated in a social media post on Wednesday that his goal is to “restore the CDC’s focus on infectious disease” and to “rebuild trust through competence and transparency.”

Since being appointed by Trump, Kennedy, who has long been accused of spreading anti-vaccine misinformation, has significantly altered US vaccine regulations, which has sparked conflict with health officials.

He withdrew federal advice in May for pregnant women and young children receiving COVID shots. Additionally, he removed all of the experts’ vaccine advisory panel from the CDC in June, replacing them with hand-picked advisers, including fellow anti-vaccine activists, in their place.

In a move that health experts said could increase the US’s vulnerability to upcoming outbreaks of respiratory viruses, he then abruptly ended nearly $500 million in funding for mRNA vaccine research in August.

Kennedy stated that the US will support “safer” and “maintenance effective” mRNA development technologies for other vaccine development technologies.

The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s International Vaccine Access Center claims that the cutting-edge technology has the potential to treat diseases like cancer and HIV and that millions of people have died from COVID-19.

On August 20, hundreds of federal health employees wrote to Kennedy to demand that he stop “propagating false health information” and that he either resign or be fired.

Russia has unwavering opposition to any discussions about deploying foreign troops in Ukraine.

Moscow would not engage in discussions of an international post-conflict security force, according to Maria Zakharova, a spokeswoman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, on Wednesday.

On the sidelines of the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Zakharova told reporters that Russia would not discuss the country’s fundamentally unacceptable and security-mining foreign intervention in Ukraine.

According to Zakharova, European leaders should be aware that when discussing this subject, they should have a pointer in the form of Russia’s position when developing plans for a multinational force in the event of an agreement to end the conflict in Ukraine.

The European Commission has “precisely outdone itself,” she said, “regarding the losses of Ukraine.”

Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission, earlier this week, stated in her comments that the EU had “pretty precise plans” for the deployment of a multinational force to Ukraine.

On Thursday, Volodymyr Zelenskyy and other European leaders are scheduled to meet in Paris to discuss post-conflict security arrangements for Kyiv.

The details of the security guarantees for Ukraine were worked out, according to French President Emmanuel Macron on Wednesday, but they are still “extremely confidential.”

The day a peace [accord] is signed, Macron said, “We the Europeans are prepared to provide the security guarantees to Ukraine and Ukraine.”

Moscow and Kyiv are still far apart on the terms of any potential peace agreement, despite President Donald Trump’s pledge to put an end to the conflict as quickly as possible.

Ukraine’s agreement with Russia would need to include land in four of the regions it has annexed since 2022, whereas Kyiv has ruled out ceding any territory.

In the most recent iteration of Australia’s controversial offshore detention policies, the Australian government has agreed to pay the tiny Pacific island nation of Nauru about $1.6 billion over three decades to resettle former detainees who have “no legal right to remain in Australia.”

In exchange for an initial $ 408 million Australian dollars ($ 267 million) and approximately $ 70 million Australian dollars ($ 46 million) each year thereafter, both governments signed a secretive agreement last week.

A “snap Senate hearing” on Wednesday night, according to independent senator David Pocock, revealed that the Australian government could lose up to 2.5 billion Australian dollars ($1.6 billion) over the course of 30 years as a result of the “agreement with Nauru to send asylum seekers there.”

After Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke announced last week that he had signed a memorandum with the president of Nauru “for the proper treatment and long-term residence of people who have no legal right to stay in Australia, to be received in Nauru,” the Senate hearing took place.

According to Clare Sharp, head of immigration at the Department of Home Affairs, “it’s in both countries’ interests to move through this as effectively as we can.”

Because money doesn’t flow until people arrive, she said, “It’s in Nauru’s interest.”

Nauru is one of the smallest nations on earth, with an estimated 12 500 people living on its shores and a continent that is only 21 square kilometers (8. 1 square miles) wide.

The agreement with Australia will “support Nauru’s long-term economic resilience,” according to Nauru’s president David Adeang, who released a statement on Sunday.

The deal with Nauru was “discriminatory, disgraceful, and dangerous,” according to Jana Favero, deputy CEO of the Melbourne-based Asylum Seeker Resource Center.

Favero claimed that the deal’s broad language could lead to the deportation of many thousands of Australian citizens.

Not the small number that the government would have Australians believe, according to Favero in a statement, “is tens of thousands of lives at risk.”

There are no guarantees that all 354 people, including some who have been found guilty of serious crimes, will be deported to Nauru, according to Australian immigration officials, who will make the final decision.

When their visas are revoked, the Australian government has been trying to find a solution for the country’s immigration crisis. In 2023, the nation’s High Court ruled that indefinite detention was unlawful if deportation was not an option, leading to the release of 220 people.

According to government officials, Australia currently has 35 people who are in that situation.

Although their transfer reportedly has been delayed by legal issues, Australia paid an undisclosed sum in February for Nauru to accept three immigrants who had been found guilty of violent crimes.

When Australia first began its contentious offshore detention program in 2001, Nauru was one of the two nations that Australia initially directed asylum seekers to.

After Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s election pledge to end offshore detention, the last refugees left Nauru and came back to Australia in June 2023.

The legally binding 1966 International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, including one protecting the right to contest detention in court, was violated by Australia’s offshore policy in January of this year, according to the UN Human Rights Committee.

In recent years, Nauru has turned to other migration-related initiatives to revive its economy, which has historically relied heavily on fertiliser-export phosphate, a crucial ingredient. However, those supplies have long since run out, and mining is thought to have caused 80% of Nauru to be uninhabitable.

The government of Nauru announced last month that the country’s first new citizens had been accepted as part of the Economic and Climate Resilience Citizenship Programme, which offers citizenship and a passport for a $ 105, 000 minimum investment.