Category World News

Top seeds Carlos Alcaraz and Aryna Sabalenka have entered the second round of the Australian Open despite some early scares as the main draw of the first tennis Grand Slam of 2026 got under way in Melbourne.

Alcaraz was pushed in the second round by home qualifier Adam Walton despite a straight-sets win for the world number one on Sunday.

The Spaniard won 6-3, 7-6 (7-2), 6-2 in two hours and five minutes to launch his quest for his maiden Australian Open title, which would help him complete a career Grand Slam.

The reigning French and US Open champion hit eight aces and 38 winners to set up a second-round clash with Germany’s Yannick Hanfmann.

But he also made 36 unforced errors, more than his 81st-ranked opponent.

He has not made it past the quarterfinals in four trips to Australia, losing at that stage last year to Novak Djokovic and Alexander Zverev the year before.

Should he snap his Australia drought, Alcaraz would become the youngest man to bank a career Grand Slam, surpassing retired compatriot Rafael Nadal, who secured all four majors by the age of 24.

He would also be the youngest man in the Open era to win seven Grand Slams since Bjorn Borg, aged 23.

Meanwhile, an error-strewn Sabalenka made a stodgy start to her title charge in a 6-4, 6-1 win over French wildcard Tiantsoa Rakotomanga Rajaonah.

The world number one, who is chasing a third Melbourne crown in four years, faces Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova of Russia or Chinese qualifier Bai Zhuoxuan next.

“I did not start my best, but she was playing great, it was a tricky start”, said Sabalenka, who lost last year’s final.

The 27-year-old Belarusian, fresh from winning the season-opening Brisbane International, made a sloppy start in losing the first three points of the match when serving.

In front of the watching Roger Federer, Sabalenka clawed back to deuce but then misfired again to fall a game down in front of a shocked Rod Laver Arena.

Sabalenka, who is favourite to add a fifth Grand Slam title to her career haul, pulled back level, but if she expected the spirited world number 118 to melt away, it did not immediately happen.

The reigning US Open champion offered an apology to her underdog opponent at 4-4 when she unleashed a forehand into the 20-year-old’s head.

Sabalenka’s error count was rising, but she finally broke Rajaonah’s resistance to claim the first set, then eased home in the second.

“I was super-happy I found my level”, said Sabalenka, who was guilty of 13 unforced errors in the first set.

“It is always tricky playing someone young, someone you don’t know, and a lefty]left-hander]”.

Earlier, Zverev, last year’s runner-up to Jannik Sinner, shrugged off a sluggish start to beat Gabriel Diallo 6-7 (7), 6-1, 6-4, 6-2 in the afternoon match to enter the second round for the 10th straight year.

“Definitely, when I saw the draw, wasn’t too happy to be honest”, he said of the tricky challenge presented by 41-ranked Diallo. “He’s very young, very talented. Unbelievably aggressive.

” First set wasn’t my best tennis, I would say. It got a lot better after that for me. “

Seventh-seeded Jasmine Paolini beat Aliaksandra Sasnovich 6-1, 6-2, and number 12 Elina Svitolina and Maria Sakkari also advanced in straight sets.

Former Wimbledon champion Marketa Vondrousova withdrew because of a shoulder injury before her scheduled first-round match, giving a place in the main draw to Taylor Townsend, the lucky loser from qualifying, to take on Hailey Baptiste, who won&nbsp, 6-3, 6-7 (3), 6-3.

Frances Tiafoe overpowered Jason Kubler 7-6 (4), 6-3, 6-2, and Michael Zheng fended off Sebastian Korda 6-4, 6-4, 3-6, 6-7 (0), 6-3 in an all-American first-round match on Kia Arena.

Zheng will next face number 32 Corentin Moutet, who was booed after his underarm serve on match point in a 6-4, 7-6 (1), 6-3 win over Tristan Schoolkate.

Number 20 Flavio Cobolli became the first of the seeded men’s players to exit the tournament in a 7-6 (1), 6-4, 6-1 loss to British qualifier Arthur Fery.

In another eagerly-awaited match, former champion Venus Williams was unable to progress after being handed a wildcard by the tournament organisers.

Olga ‌Danilovic beat Williams 6-7 (5), 6-3, ‍6-4 after the Serbian fought back from 4-0 down in the deciding set to knock the American ⁠veteran out.

Williams, a seven-time Grand Slam champion who ‍returned to tennis last season after a 16-month break, became the oldest woman ever ‍to compete ⁠in the singles main draw on her return to the tournament after five years.

A hawkish pro-Ukraine sentiment has sprung up in the wake of the US military’s abduction of Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and subsequent threats by Washington to intervene in Iran during recent upheaval. The simple logic goes that if Russia’s allies are weak, Russia also becomes weaker.

US President Donald Trump is recently infected with the regime change fever that his Democratic predecessors spread, despite his earlier criticism of US interventionism.

One of its most vivid references is Leon Trotsky’s father’s Red Army’s export of revolution, a short-lived policy of Soviet Russia. In Hungary, Bavaria, and Latvia, there were several pro-Bolshevik governments that emerged throughout Europe. None of them endured for very long.

The Persian Soviet Socialist Republic, which existed in Iran’s Gilan province on the Caspian Sea between 1920 and 1920, was one of the Bolsheviks’ lesser-known revolutionary initiatives. The Red Army eventually had to retreat, and its local allies were quickly overthrown, so the idea was to try to spread the proletarian revolution all the way to India.

Iran once more appears to be a hub for revolutionary exports after a century, but this time with American and Israeli hawks trying to influence something akin to Maidan in Ukraine. The constant threat of US and Israeli intervention appears to be its strongest pillar and the source of immunity from domestic unrest, despite Iran’s theocratic regime’s reputation as hardly palatable and organic resistance to it. Iranians should avoid risking that their nation will become another Syria or Libya.

Iran has always faced oppression from outside powers, including Russia and the USSR, throughout the 20th century. In addition, Iran was the site of frequent convergence between Soviet and Western interests, such as the 1953 coup d’etat against Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, their shared opposition to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, and their support for the Iraqi side during the Iran-Iraq War.

Tehran and Moscow only forged a tentative alliance in the later years of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s rule, which grew even more energizing when Iran provided crucial drone technology to Russia at the start of the Russian all-out invasion of Ukraine.

The historical trajectories of Iran, Russia, and China all share important similarities. At various points in history, Western powers attempted to colonize these three states, but they were unsuccessful. The need to mobilize against the Western threat is just one of the three authoritarian instincts.

Given that it was one of those European powers that attempted to colonize parts of both Iran and China, Russia’s role in this triad is the most ambiguous.

That explains why Moscow is so adamant about Iran’s current predicament. The government of Putin is solely focused on winning the Ukrainian war, which it views as a proxy conflict with the West, for one reason or another. Putin only cares about Russian military engagements in the Middle East and Africa because they give the Kremlin additional leverage and options as they stretch the West’s resources. In the same category does Russia have a situational alliance with regimes in Venezuela, North Korea, and Iran.

The army and the navy are the only two allies that Russia has, according to Regime ideologues in Moscow, which frequently repeats Tsar Aleksandr III’s apocryphal maxim. In this worldview, the client regimes and allies of Russia are merely pointless chess pieces in the world game of nuclear superpowers.

As a result of the 2014 war in Ukraine, Putin’s military operations outside the former Soviet Union began as a response to the support of the Ukrainian government, which he describes as a “coup” installed by a “coup” in the Maidan revolution.

Russia later expanded its area of influence in Central and Western Africa, primarily at the expense of the French, by intervening in Syria and Libya.

Was Russia’s establishment of a global neo-empire supported by it? No, a few initial successes were frequently followed by setbacks, most notably when Bashar al-Assad, Moscow’s Syrian ally, fell in 2024. However, the point is never to create a global empire. The point is that Putin is very close to bringing an end to the conflict in Ukraine, and his efforts elsewhere helped to achieve what the majority of Russians will consider to be a total victory over the West’s formidable war machine.

Russia’s brutally inhumane airstrikes against Ukraine’s energy infrastructure are gradually making large urban centers, like Kyiv, uninhabitable in the middle of winter. The EU’s allies in Europe appear to be powerless to alter that situation.

Trump is playing a simultaneous match with a number of players, oddly including the US’s traditional European NATO allies, while Putin is solely focused on one chessboard.

The Trump administration’s desire to change the world’s regime in Iran, Venezuela, and especially in Greenland does not diminish Putin; it is a blessing. Moscow would be ideal in the situation where the US is attempting to play a quasi-neutral peacemaker in the Russo-Ukrainian conflict while getting bogged down in a number absurd and dangerous geopolitical projects.

Despite appearing absurd, Trump’s actions may have a logic behind them. It is a result of human nature’s tendency to choose a more comfortable path. Trump’s unselfish chess match with Putin is infinitely more difficult and risky of embarrassing defeat. Iran and Venezuela are both easier targets.

However, the most recent events indicate that even in these nations, the current US leader might find it difficult to implement a proper regime change. Trump only wants to get a quick, cost-free PR boost, so he needs the softest targets to do that. Who could be the next Maduro, if he proved to be one?

Cuba is less risky than any intervention from Iran or Greenland. However, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the president of Ukraine, has another leader who irritates Trump to no end, can be removed without military intervention, and stands in the way of the US president’s vision of being the world’s greatest peacekeeper.

No wonder Trump abruptly attacked Ukraine on Wednesday, claiming that Putin’s leader was the main barrier to peace, but Trump did it again.

Zelenskyy appears to be the softest of his potential targets, the very opposite of his archrival Putin, who is embroiled in a massive corruption scandal and stuck between politics and militarism. The US president’s political instincts can be easily predicted.

Greenlanders have voiced their opposition to US President Donald Trump’s repeated threats to seize control of their home. Rory Challands of Al Jazeera was one of the demonstrators in Nuuk, the capital of the Danish province, as they gathered under the banner “Not for Sale.”