Kasatkina frustrated after defeat on day of mixed fortunes for Australian players
Melbourne is known for its unpredictable wind and it blew both ways for Australian tennis fans on Tuesday.Torturous, late-night losses suffered by Daria Kasatkina and Kimberly Birrell came about 12 hours after Maya Joint’s straight-sets defeat, ending the Australian Open ambitions of the three highest ranked local female players.As the sun comes up on Wednesday morning, however, the country will have six women in the second round, the most at a grand slam since eight progressed at Melbourne Park in 1992.The last to secure their berth was qualifier Maddison Inglis, who defeated compatriot Birrell 7-6 (6), 6-7 (9), 6-4 in an all-Australian clash that lasted three hours and finished after midnight.Inglis broke down at the match’s conclusion, overcome with emotion after beating her close friend.
“The last few days have been a bit stressful,” she said,“I absolutely adore her [Birrell] so it was really hard to see her on the other side, but I’m stoked I could play through those feelings and be in the second round,It means the world,”Kasatkina knew she should have been there too, after she failed to convert two set points in the first, and then let qualifier Nikola Bartunkova off the hook early in the decider,The world No 126 from the Czech Republic secured the victory 7-6 (7), 0-6, 6-3 in a topsy-turvy contest.
The 28-year-old former Russian – who passed her Australian citizenship test last week – was left furious with herself, at one point smashing her racket into the Kia Arena surface as the match slipped away.“It’s the small details which I’m missing, just the things which you’re getting playing a lot of matches,” Kasatkina said.Having contested only four tour matches since October after a break, she said she took fluids to address cramp late in the match.“It’s stress plus waiting around for about 12 hours,” she said.“You are in this state of mind which consumes a lot of energy.
”Earlier, Dane Sweeny and James Duckworth increased the count of Australian men in the second round to five,Duckworth outlasted Croatian lucky loser Dino Prizmic in five sets by winning the last two,Sweeny, 24, shared a compelling meeting of opposites which also marked the final appearance at Melbourne Park for French veteran Gaël Monfils,The Australian dropped to the ground in elation after defeating the 39-year-old from France 6-7 (3), 7-5, 6-4, 7-5, lifting himself up to meet an embrace from his taller opponent,Monfils has announced 2026 will be his final year on tour and he spent the latter stages of the near four-hour contest bent double between points.
It was a stark contrast to the effervescent Australian who has been likened to Lleyton Hewitt but has struggled to carve out a place on the tour.“It’s been my whole life since I can remember,” the 24-year-old Sweeny said of the efforts to persevere in the sport.“I feel like I’m watching a show, it feels pretty unbelievable to be in this position.”Monfils was presented with a gift from the tournament director, Craig Tiley, to celebrate a 20th appearance at the Australian Open.Addressing the crowd after a standing ovation, the winner of 13 tour titles acknowledged his connection to Melbourne Park, where he has made the quarter-finals twice.
“For me, my journey starts in 2003 with you guys.I came here for the first time, now we are 2026 and somehow this is the finish line,” he said, before offering his best to the man who ended it.“This kid’s got heart, so I really wish you good luck for the next one.”Before leaving the court, Sweeny wrote on the lens of the camera: “This too shall pass.” Explaining afterwards, he said: “The only constant in life is change really, and this is a big moment, it’s exciting, but it will come back down.
” He meets the eighth seed, Ben Shelton, in the second round.
Nandy intends to refer Daily Mail’s Telegraph takeover to regulators
The culture secretary, Lisa Nandy, intends to ask the UK’s media and competition watchdogs to examine the proposed £500m takeover of the Telegraph titles by the owner of the Daily Mail.Daily Mail & General Trust (DMGT) agreed a deal in November to buy the titles, in a move that will create a right-leaning publishing powerhouse.Nandy said on Tuesday she was “minded to” task Ofcom with looking at the impact on media plurality of bringing the Daily and Sunday Telegraph titles together with the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday.The Competition and Markets Authority will look at whether the proposed deal creates competition issues.Nandy is expected shortly to issue a public interest intervention notice (PIIN), which starts an investigation process of up to 40 working days
Water winners: who will gain from the industry’s spending spree in England and Wales?
When a sluice gate failed 24 metres below the water’s surface at Thames Water’s Queen Mother reservoir near London’s Heathrow airport, there were no easy fixes available. Emptying 37m cubic metres (1,307m cu ft) of water was not an option, meaning that helmeted divers were limited to 98-minute stints in the high-pressure environment.The risky project required a team on a floating platform with a crane to cut out the broken equipment with thermal lances, bolt a plate on to the reservoir wall, and install the new equipment. It took more than a year until last October to complete, according to Glenfield Invicta, the contractor that carried out the work for Thames Water.Water companies across Britain are gearing up for more of these repairs and upgrades than ever this year, as the industry undertakes the biggest spending spree in its history until 2030
Donald Trump trashed global economic orthodoxy. A year on, did he leave Australia a winner or loser?
One year into Donald Trump’s presidency and experts in Australia and around the world can hear the grinding of history’s gears.“We have entered a new economic era; one with rules that are very different to the past,” the Commonwealth Bank’s chief economist, Luke Yeaman, wrote in October.We exit the heyday of globalisation and its relentless, single-minded pursuit of efficiency, to … what?At this point it looks like a world of rising trade protectionism, populism, self-sufficiency, suspicion, conflict and crackdowns on the movement of people and capital.Sign up: AU Breaking News emailTrump has exploded so many established norms that his return to the White House seems to have ruled a line between what was before, and what is now and will be.The “liberation day” tariffs in April last year triggered fears of a global trade war that would smash the world economy
GSK to buy food allergy drug maker RAPT in $2.2bn deal
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Bessent urges Europe not to retaliate against Trump’s Greenland tariffs
The US treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, has urged European countries not to retaliate against the US’s trade tariffs announced over the Greenland crisis.Speaking in Davos during the World Economic Forum, Bessent said countries and companies should pause and “let things play out” after Donald Trump threatened a 25% tariff on a slew of European countries in his pursuit of the autonomous Danish territory.As global stock markets fell amid political uncertainty, Bessent indicated that retaliatory tariffs would be unwise, citing last year’s tit-for-tat tariff war that broke out between the US and China.Last April, Trump’s “liberation day” tariff announcement caused turmoil in global stock markets before some countries agreed trade deals and markets recovered to reach record highs later in the year, fuelled in part by the AI boom.Bessent told a press conference at the annual meeting of global leaders: “I would say this is the same kind of hysteria that we heard on 2 April
Number of employed people in UK falls again as wage growth slows
The number of employed people in the UK has fallen, particularly in shops, restaurants, bars and hotels, reflecting weak hiring, while private sector wages grew at the slowest rate in five years, official figures show.Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed the number of employees on payrolls fell by 43,000 in December from the previous month, to 30.2 million – the biggest monthly drop since November 2020.The rate of unemployment remained at a four-year high of 5.1% in the three months to the end of November, but this was up from 4
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