International sports, Australian Open tennis
Longest women’s match on record won by 30-year-old Schiavone
Sydney, Australia (GenevaLunch) - Canton Vaud’s Stanislas Wawrinka beat Andy Roddick in straight sets, 6-3, 6-4, 6-4 to reach the quarter-finals of the Australian Open. In the semi-finals he will meet Roger Federer, who came past Tommy Robredo 6-3, 3-6, 6-3, 6-2.
It is the first time two Swiss men have reached the quarters of a Grand Slam.
Wawrinka played a masterful match against the big serving American, dominating the rallies with his backhand and hitting more aces. In the top half of the draw, Rafa Nadal and Andy Murray are looking in ominous form. Murray and Novak Djokovic easily beat their opponents but 4th seed Robin Soderling lost to Ukrainian Alexander Dolgopolov in five sets.
In the women’s draw, Maria Sharapova was knocked out by German Andrea Petkovic. The best match was won by Italy’s Francesca Schiavone who beat Svetlana Kuznetsova 6-4, 1-6, 16-14. The match ended after 4 hours, 44 minutes, setting a record as the longest women’s Grand Slam match in the Open era, notes the Canadian Press news agency.
Schiavone is 30 years old, but playing better than she did in her younger years. The Sunday match was 14 minutes longer than the previous record, set in 2010, also in Sydney, when Barbora Zahlavova-Strycova beat Regina Kulikova.
She will meet top seed Caroline Wozniacki in the quarters.
Links to other sites: Australian Open, Swissinfo
A Qantas flight from Sydney to Buenos Aires with 199 passengers on board has had to return to the airport safely after crew detected smoke coming out of one of the control panels in the cockpit. The Boeing 747 took off Monday, 15 November, and one hour into the flight, passengers noted that the plane made a complete turn and the plane started ditching fuel. There were no lights and no intercom announcements. After landing, the pilot went down the aisle and explained the problems encountered personally.
It is the second time since a mid-flight engine failure caused an Airbus A380 to return to Singapore 4 November that Qantas has had to abort a flight out of safety concerns. The entire Qantas A380 fleet is still grounded while engine-maker Rolls Royce endeavours to repair a defect to the Trent 900 engines. There are 37 A380 superjumbos equipped with the Trent 900 engines.
Links to other sites: Reuters, Sydney Morning Herald
Australian airline Qantas has grounded its entire fleet of six Airbus A380, after a flight from Singapore to Sydney turned back six minutes into a flight, Thursday 4 November. The airplane turned back and landed safely at Singapore airport with 440 passengers on board. Passengers told reporters they heard a loud bang and saw smoke and debris coming from one of the left engines.
Residents on the Indonesian island of Batam, near Singapore, say they heard a loud explosion as the plane flew over and saw debris fall to the ground in a residential area. No one was hurt. Qantas officials spoke of an “uncontained engine failure”, meaning the engine failure was not limited to the engine.
There are 37 A380s in operation around the world. It is currently the world’s largest airliner, capable of carrying up to 850 passengers and made its maiden flight in 2005.
Links to other sites: CBC, Sydney Morning Herald, VOA
Source: AP
Calf taking his first steps at Taronga Zoo, Sydney, Australia (photo: Bobby-Jo Vial)
Australia is having a good day: first the news about police killing Dalmatin, the mastermind behind the Bali bombings which killed 100 Australians, and now the cheering news about a little elephant calf at the Taronga Zoo in Sydney, born shortly after 03:00 Wednesday 10 March. The calf was declared dead in his mother’s womb three days earlier, but surprised everyone when he was born alive, and first signs are encouraging: with help from the intensive care staff at the zoo he has taken his first steps within just hours of his birth, attempted to suckle his mother, Porntip, and touched the trunks of the other elephants at the zoo, writes the Sydney Morning Herald.
“Advice from world elephant reproduction expert, Dr Thomas Hildebrandt of the Berlin Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Health is that such an outcome after a protracted labour has never been seen before,” according to the zoo’s pages on the new calf. ” He said the birth will completely re-write the elephant birth text books.” The zoo now believes the calf was in a coma during his mother’s lengthy labour, which explains why they were unable to pick up his vital signs.
Five Sydney men have been found guilty of preparing terrorist acts in one of Australia’s longest criminal trials, which began in November 2008 and involved 180 “sitting days” in a specially-built courtroom. The jury was out for 23 days deliberating. The men, charged with possessing chemicals and bomb-making instructions, cannot be named for legal reasons. They are expected to be sentenced in December. BBC, Sydney Morning Herald, Australia
Sixteen-year-old Jessica Watson is expected to arrive in Sydney Monday afternoon Australia time after fighting winds to 33 knots and heavy swells. Watson says she is determined to make a bid to be the youngest person ever to sail solo around the globe, and her parents are behind her, but one snag could be the fallout from a Maritime Safety Queensland report issued after she collided with a cargo ship 9 September concluded that she may have fallen asleep and that she “had kept ‘irregular latitude and longitude entries’ in her log, had no course plots nor a fatigue management plan” according to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Links to other sites: jessicawatson, Watson’s blog at youngestround.blogspot.com, news.com.au
Police in Melbourne, Australia swooped on 19 properties around the city and arrested four men they say were plotting to storm Holsworthy army base northwest of Sydney with automatic weapons and kill as many soldiers as possible until they themselves were killed. The men, Australian nationals of Somali and Lebanese origin, are believed to be linked to militant Islamist group Al-Shabaab in Somalia, which is battling the Western-backed government. More than 400 police officers were involved in the early Tuesday 4 August operation. One of the men, Nayef El Sayed, aged 25, appeared in court and has been charged with terrorism offenses. A fifth man, arrested earlier for other reasons, was still being questioned. CNN, Sydney Morning Herald
London, England (Economist Intelligence Unit) – The annual Economist liveability survey of 140 cities worldwide ranks Vancouver in first place with an almost perfect 98 score out of 100. There are four European cities among the top 10. Vienna is in second place, Helsinki in seventh, just ahead of eighth-tied Geneva, Sydney and Zurich.
Australian Airline Qantas will cut up to 1,750 jobs and ground 10 aircraft in an attempt to stay afloat in their worst aviation downturn in years. They will also defer delivery of super-jumbo A380s and other aircraft and have decreased their profit forecast by 80 percent. The airline said Australian domestic routes would be the most heavily affected by the capacity cuts, along with routes to the US, UK and South Africa. Sydney Morning Herald
The Reserve Bank of Australia cut its benchmark rate Tuesday 7 April to its lowest level in nearly 50 years. The central bank’s governor, Glenn Stevens, said that although there were signs of continued weakness in the global economy, considerable injections of fiscal spending “should help contain the downturn” over the rest of the year. Australia & New Zealand Banking Corp. representatives warned that unemployment could exceed 8 percent by 2010. International Herald Tribune, Sydney Morning Herald
