Canadian tennis star Felix Auger-Aliassime defeated Spain’s Alejandro Davidovich Fokina 6-4, 7-6 (5) Thursday at the Qatar Open, setting up a semifinal against nemesis Daniil Medvedev. Auger-Aliassime, seeded second at the ATP 250 hard court event, fired eight aces and won 86 per cent of first service points in a win over the seventh-seeded Spaniard that took one hour 48 minutes to complete. The 22-year-old from Montreal faced just two break points in the match, with both coming in Game 6 of the second set. Auger-Aliassime induced Davidovich Fokina into unforced errors to come back from 15-40 and scored a…
Author: National Tone
KAMLOOPS, B.C. — Ontario’s Rachel Homan reached the championship round at the Scotties Tournament of Hearts with a 5-3 win Thursday over New Brunswick’s Andrea Kelly. Homan’s 5-2 record with a game to play secured the third and final playoff spot in Pool B behind Northern Ontario’s Krista McCarville (7-1) and Manitoba’s Jennifer Jones (6-1). The top three teams in each pool of nine teams advance to Friday’s championship round. Tiebreaker games will solve ties for third. The championship round determines Saturday’s four Page playoff teams. Defending champion Kerri Einarson (7-0) will advance as the top seed in Pool A,…
A senatorial candidate from Nigeria’s opposition Labour Party has been killed by unknown gunmen in southeastern Enugu State ahead of the country’s national election, according to police and a party official. Oyibo Chukwu was killed on Wednesday night after being ambushed as he was travelling back from a campaign event, according to Chinwuba Ngwu, the Labour Party chairman from the Enugu South local government area. “It is a devastating development for us. We are suspecting political assassination because he was favoured to win the election,” Ngwu said. Police confirmed the killing, which came hours after the parties and presidential candidates…
Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine a year ago insisting that he was reclaiming a historic part of Russia. The war that ensued was, in his terms, a civil war among Russians. It was also largely a civil war among Soviet-era systems. In a war in which both sides relied on Russian ammunition and systems, Russia had the clear resupply advantage. The West’s determination to prop up Ukraine’s arsenal meant that it had to transition Ukraine to Western systems. European Council President Charles Michel recently described what an unprecedented decision this was for Europe. “When [Ukrainian] President [Volodymyr] Zelenskyy called…
Ramallah, occupied West Bank – At least 150 Israeli soldiers in dozens of armoured vehicles swooped on Nablus on Wednesday in what turned out to be one of the deadliest military raids in the occupied West Bank since the mass Palestinian uprising or Intifada of 2000-05. Within four hours, the Israeli army killed 11 Palestinians and injured more than 80 people with live ammunition – some of them critically. The raid comes barely a month after 10 Palestinians were killed in a similar raid in the Jenin refugee camp about 41km (25 miles) away. Jenin and Nablus, which have emerged…
Police say ‘violent dissident republicans’ are the prime focus of an investigation into the shooting of an off-duty police officer.A senior Northern Irish police officer is in a critical but stable condition in hospital after being shot by two masked men while he coached children’s football, authorities said. A dissident Irish Republican Army splinter group is suspected of shooting Detective Chief Inspector John Caldwell on Wednesday night at a sports complex in Omagh, about 100km (60 miles) west of Belfast. Caldwell, a well-known officer who has led investigations into murders, organised crime and dissident paramilitary groups, was attacked by two…
Sometimes on this planet of ours, militaries do silly things. There was that time in 2021, for example, that the United States army accidentally stormed a sunflower oil factory in Bulgaria. That same year, the Italian armed forces erroneously blew up a chicken coop in northern Italy. A bit farther back, in the Battle of Karansebes of 1788, the Austrian army accidentally attacked itself, resulting in some 10,000 casualties. Now, another bizarre military stunt has been pulled on the world stage — but on purpose. On February 4, a US fighter jet shot down what the United States insists was a Chinese “spy…
The World Health Organization (WHO) says one woman dies every two minutes during pregnancy or childbirth, according to the latest data, with too few countries in the world managing to substantially reduce maternal death rates since 2016. The report, Trends in Maternal Mortality, showed that while there was significant progress in reducing maternal deaths between 2000 and 2015, those gains stalled or were even reversed in the five years to 2020. “While pregnancy should be a time of immense hope and a positive experience for all women, it is tragically still a shockingly dangerous experience for millions around the world…
The warmth of Russia’s and China’s relationship has been on display in the Kremlin as President Vladimir Putin held talks with China’s top diplomat Wang Yi and hailed the importance of the two countries’ cooperation. Images showed Wang and Putin exchanging a firm handshake and sitting across the table from each other during their meeting on Wednesday. Others showed Wang, the Chinese Communist Party’s most senior foreign policy official, looking relaxed as he walked with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Wang’s visit to Moscow – at the end of a tour of a number of European countries – comes nearly…
In one of the biggest games of the year for his team, Connor Bedard delivered an outstanding performance on Wednesday. .acf-block-preview .instagram-twitter-container width: 340px; margin: 0 auto; The Regina Pats star had a goal and five assists to lead his team to a 5-3 win over the visiting Medicine Hat Tigers in WHL action. The six-point effort tied Bedard’s season high, set against the Calgary Hitmen last month. .acf-block-preview .instagram-twitter-container width: 340px; margin: 0 auto; It marked the 17-year-old Bedard’s fifth straight multi-point game — and the goal was his 52nd of the season. The Pats entered the night tied…