Month: June 2022

Rafael Nadal pulled away to beat Casper Ruud 6-3, 6-3, 6-0 in the French Open final on Sunday for his 14th championship at Roland Garros and 22nd Grand Slam title overall, adding to two records he already owned.  Nadal’s victory came two days after his 36th birthday and made him the oldest title winner in the history of the clay-court tournament.  Ruud led 3-1 in the second set, a deficit that spurred Nadal to raise his level — he took the last 11 games.  The Spaniard’s first triumph in Paris came in 2005 at age 19. No man or woman …

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Pope Francis added fuel to rumors about the future of his pontificate by announcing he would visit the central Italian city of L’Aquila in August for a feast initiated by Pope Celestine V, one of the few pontiffs who resigned before Pope Benedict XVI stepped down in 2013. Italian and Catholic media have been rife with unsourced speculation that the 85-year-old Francis might be planning to follow in Benedict’s footsteps, given his increased mobility problems that have forced him to use a wheelchair for the last month. Those rumors gained steam last week when Francis announced a consistory to create …

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Officials in British prime minister Boris Johnson’s ruling Conservative Party expect a challenge to his leadership this week and have penciled in a vote for Wednesday, the Sunday Times newspaper reported. A growing number of Conservative lawmakers have said they have lost faith in Johnson’s government over a “partygate” scandal, with some saying they have submitted letters to officially call for a vote of confidence in their leader. At least 54 Conservative members of parliament are required to formally request a confidence vote to the chairman of the party’s 1922 Committee for one to be triggered. The letters are confidential …

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Albania’s parliament on Saturday elected a top military official as the country’s new president after no candidates were nominated in three rounds of voting. General-Major Bajram Begaj won the post after the 140-seat Parliament voted 78 in favor, four against and one abstained.The governing left-wing Socialist Party nominated and voted for Begaj, 55, after failing to reach a compromise with the opposition on a candidate to replace President Ilir Meta, and no independent candidate was nominated. Most of the opposition boycotted the voting. Begaj is post-communist Albania’s eighth president and the third from the military ranks. The five-year presidency has …

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British pop superstar Ed Sheeran was on Sunday set to bring the curtain down on four days of momentous nationwide celebrations to honor Queen Elizabeth II’s historic Platinum Jubilee. The multi-award-winning singer-songwriter will perform at the finale of a daylong pageant lauding the 96-year-old monarch’s record seven decades on the throne, as a long weekend of festivities across the U.K. concludes. Sheeran is one of numerous “national treasures” poised to perform a “special tribute” to the queen against the backdrop of Buckingham Palace to mark the milestone never previously reached by a British sovereign. Meanwhile, millions of people are expected …

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In return for Turkey agreeing on the NATO membership of Sweden, officials in Ankara have requested that Stockholm hand over or censor journalists, politicians and activists who, they say, are supporting Kurdish “terrorists.” One of these people, Amineh Kakabaveh, a Swedish parliament member, spoke to VOA’s Dakhil Shammo in Stockholm. Camera: Bapeer Sherwani …

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As soon as they had finished burying a veteran colonel killed by Russian shelling, the cemetery workers readied the next grave. Inevitably, given how quickly death is felling Ukrainian troops on the front lines, it won’t be empty for long. Col. Oleksandr Makhachek left behind a widow, Elena, and their daughters Olena and Myroslava-Oleksandra. In the first 100 days of war, his grave was the 40th dug in the military cemetery in Zhytomyr, 140 kilometers west of the capital, Kyiv. He was killed May 30 in the Luhansk region of eastern Ukraine where the fighting is raging. Nearby, the burial …

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Queen Elizabeth’s son and heir Prince Charles and her grandson Prince William will pay tribute to the record-breaking monarch at a pop concert at Buckingham Palace on the third day of nationwide celebrations for her 70 years on the throne. The “Party at the Palace,” which will feature singers Alicia Keys and Diana Ross, is the main Platinum Jubilee event Saturday. By early evening, tens of thousands of people had gathered on the Mall, the grand boulevard that runs up to the palace, and in a nearby park to watch the concert on big screens, while those with tickets surrounded …

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The death toll from a German train derailment near a Bavarian Alpine resort climbed to five on Saturday as another body was recovered from the wreckage, police said.   Investigators were combing the overturned carriages for victims and clues as to the cause of Friday’s accident near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, a region gearing up to host the G-7 summit in late June.   “At the moment we do not believe there were further victims, but I cannot yet say for sure,” regional deputy police chief Frank Hellwig told reporters.   He said four of the dead were women, with another 44 people …

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