Connect with us

Top Stories

Weekly News Quiz – AARP

Published

on

Top Stories

Wimbledon men’s semifinals: Live updates, highlights as Jannik Sinner, Novak Djokovic seek bid to the final

Published

on


World No. 1 Jannik Sinner and No. 2 Carlos Alcaraz are each one win away from meeting in the Wimbledon final, just over a month after their legendary duel at Roland-Garros crown in June. However, they have No. 6 Novak Djokovic and No. 5 Taylor Fritz, respectively, standing in their way in the semifinals on Friday.

Sinner and Djokovic will face each other in the semifinals again after the top-seeded Italian eliminated the 24-time Grand Slam winner in three sets at the French Open. Sinner has yet to drop a set at Wimbledon as he looks to avenge his championship loss to Alcaraz last month. Djokovic, 38, continues to age like fine wine as he scraped his way to the semifinal over the last week and a half.

Advertisement

Djokovic has won six of the last 10 Wimbledon men’s singles titles, while Alcaraz emerged victorious each of the past two years, beating the Serbian veteran both times.

Alcaraz will face a familiar foe either way should he reach the final, but he first has to get past Fritz. The American has been on a fiery path at Wimbledon, with each match seeing a fourth set, minus a walkover against Jordan Thompson in the round of 16.

Fritz will look to play spoiler for the rest of the semifinalists and get his second straight title after winning the Lexus Westbourne Open in June.

How to watch the Wimbledon men’s singles semifinals

Date: Friday, July 11

Advertisement

Carlos Alcaraz-Taylor Fritz start time: 8:30 a.m. ET

Jannik Sinner-Novak Djokovic start time: 10:10 a.m. ET

Location: Center Court | All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club, Wimbledon, London

TV channel: ESPN | ESPN+ | Disney+

Follow along with Yahoo Sports for live updates, highlights and more from the Wimbledon men’s singles semifinals:



Source link

Continue Reading

Top Stories

Trump looks to quash criticism on natural disaster response during Texas visit

Published

on




CNN
 — 

President Donald Trump is traveling to central Texas on Friday to survey the aftermath of a catastrophic flood that has killed more than 100 people and put his administration on the sudden defensive over its emergency response efforts.

The flooding, which overwhelmed whole neighborhoods in a matter of minutes, has sparked mounting scrutiny of the government’s warning systems and rescue operations – including a fresh set of bureaucratic obstacles that slowed work by the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the earliest phases of the response.

But Trump is expected to use the trip to tout the progress that search-and-rescue teams are making on the ground, in a show of solidarity aimed at quelling criticism and emphasizing the White House’s close coordination with Texas officials.

“It’s a no-brainer – you go out there and you let people know you care about them,” said one person close to the White House. “President Trump does not want to see things like this happen on his watch. And he views himself as a fixer.”

Trump, who will travel to Texas with first lady Melania Trump, is expected to meet with first responders in the area and receive a briefing from local elected officials, according to a White House official. The president is also planning to meet with some families who were affected by the flood, the official said. The trip has been designed, in part, to not interfere with ongoing search and rescue and recovery efforts.

Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Sen. Ted Cruz are among those expected to be on site with Trump as well. And Sen. John Cornyn, who is facing a bruising primary challenge from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, is slated to travel aboard Air Force One with Trump, a Cornyn aide confirmed. The trip comes a day after Paxton’s wife filed for divorce, citing “biblical grounds” for ending their 38-year marriage. Trump has so far stayed neutral in the race.

The trip marks the White House’s latest show of support for Texas’ recovery effort, even as Trump officials continue to push for downsizing the government’s emergency preparedness operations – or even eliminating FEMA altogether.

And it represents a stark contrast with Trump’s attitude earlier this year toward California Gov. Gavin Newsom, whom he targeted with harsh criticism amid the blue state’s battle against devastating wildfires.

Trump ultimately visited California in his first domestic trip after taking office, greeting Newsom on the tarmac upon his arrival. But the two have since continued to tussle over a request for billions of dollars in recovery aid for California that remains in limbo.

“Would he do that with Texas? Probably not,” said one Republican operative close to the administration. “There is a difference in terms of how he approaches these things, depending on whether it’s a red state or a blue state.”

In a statement, White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson rejected the suggestion that Trump has taken different approaches to certain states based on their politics.

“President Trump has led historic disaster recovery efforts in both California and North Carolina – he’s doing the same in Texas,” Jackson said, citing federal efforts to help quickly remove debris in southern California and support the cleanup process in western North Carolina. “Any claim that the President is giving certain states preferential treatment is not only wrong, it’s idiotic and misinformed.”

Trump has targeted political opponents for their handling of natural disasters in the past, criticizing then-President Joe Biden following deadly wildfires in Hawaii in 2023 and fanning conspiracy theories about the Biden administration’s response in North Carolina to Hurricane Helene last year.

Trump even briefly suggested Biden might be culpable in some way for the flooding in Texas, initially telling reporters that his predecessor was responsible for the water “setup.” It was unclear what he was referring to, and Trump quickly clarified he wasn’t blaming Biden. Since then, Trump and his top aides have avoided casting blame, while accusing critics of the administration’s response of trying to politicize a tragedy. The White House has maintained that the disaster was largely inescapable, while commending the efforts of Abbott – a close political ally – and other state and local officials.

“There’s never been a wave like this, outside of the breaking of a dam,” Trump said during a Cabinet meeting on Tuesday. “And this is the kind of thing that built up so fast, and it’s happened two or three times over the years, but not to this extent.”

The White House has pushed back hard on suggestions that its policies weakened the government’s defenses against such disaster threats. Some Democrats had publicly fretted that deep cuts to the federal bureaucracy would end up restricting the staffing and resources available in emergency situations.

After Democratic lawmakers, including Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, raised questions over whether efforts to reduce staff at the National Weather Service hampered forecasting of the heavy rains that caused the flash floods, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt called it a “depraved lie.”

“Many Democrat elected officials are trying to turn this into a political game, and it is not,” she said earlier this week. “This is a national tragedy.”

Trump officials, in meantime, have doubled down on their vows to shrink FEMA and shift more responsibility for disaster management to individual states – even as advocates for the agency pointed to the Texas flooding as a timely example of why vast federal resources are necessary.

FEMA officials trying to pre-position search-and-rescue crews following the disaster ran into new spending approval requirements imposed by the Trump administration that slowed its work, CNN first reported on Wednesday. Those teams weren’t authorized for deployment until more than 72 hours after the flooding began.

“This would be an unmitigated, unforced disaster, and it would certainly exacerbate the toll of extreme weather events,” a group of House Democrats wrote in a letter Wednesday to FEMA and the agency in charge of the National Weather Service. The letter decried the planned dismantling of FEMA and called for congressional hearings on the flood response.

The Homeland Security Department, which oversees FEMA, has defended the federal response and insisted it will forge ahead on plans to overhaul the agency. The federal response, one Texas official said, has been “as good as anyone could ask for,” given the circumstances, describing Noem as responsive.

On Wednesday, Noem argued that FEMA needs to be “eliminated as it exists today and remade into a responsive agency.”

“Federal emergency management should be state and locally led, rather than how it has operated for decades,” she said.

One state official viewed Texas’ response to the flooding as “a model for what other states could do to start building out a framework for how to be better in control of their own disaster response.”

For Trump, though, allies said the visit represents a more immediate calculation ingrained in him during his first term and on the campaign trail: It pays to show up for those who he believes showed up for him at the ballot box, especially in deep-red states like Texas.

“This is totally on brand,” the person close to the White House said. “He wants to be on the ground.”

This story has been updated with additional reporting.

Betsy Klein contributed to this report.



Source link

Continue Reading

Top Stories

The Galaxy Z Fold 7 just sold me on a foldable iPhone

Published

on


For years, I’ve been snickering at foldable phones, the perpetual “next big thing” that never quite gets here. And while I still think Samsung is mostly winning in this market by walkover, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 might have just made Apple’s case for what a foldable iPhone could look like. And I like it.

The double-stacked tradeoff was always a dealbreaker

Ever since its first edition, Samsung’s flagship foldable has looked to me like a bulky prototype that somehow escaped the lab. Sure, the company has iterated on the design and internal mechanics. Still, I never quite got past the fact that the Galaxy Z Fold felt like two phones stacked on top of each other for the benefit of a second, larger screen that, in turn, was a 7-inch solution in search of a problem.

Which is not to say the Z Fold line hasn’t evolved. It has, especially in the last few years, as it has managed to make the most of its closed and open footprints (proper app support notwithstanding).

Still, one gets the sense that the entire category always banked on the cool factor of having a phone that unfolds to a bigger screen, hoping that users would trick themselves into believing that the thick, double-stacked tradeoff was worth the hassle and the price tag.

Meanwhile, the last few years have had no shortage of rumors about Apple’s intention to release its own foldable iPhone. And while with every Galaxy Z Fold generation, my first reaction would always be “I don’t want the iPhone version of that”, this week’s announcement finally got me thinking “Oh! I could go for the iPhone version of that!”

Inconspicuosly thin enough

To each their own, of course. But with the Galaxy Z Fold 7, Samsung has finally cracked what I think is the one thing that’s kept this category from feeling truly mainstream: thickness. This is the first foldable that actually looks inconspicuously like a regular phone when it’s closed, and trade-offlessly unfolds into a bigger screen.

The Fold 7 is just 8.9mm thin when closed, down from 12.1mm of last year’s device. Open it up, and it’s a ridiculously slim 4.2mm. For reference, the iPhone 16 Pro is 8.2mm thin, and the iPhone 17 Air is rumored to be 5.5mm. Yes, the Fold has plenty more internal space to spread components and battery around, but still.

Of course, the price still feels absurd, even for “tomorrow’s tech, today!” territory. At $1,999.99 for the base model, which is $100 bump from last year, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 is closer than ever to the $2100–$2300 rumored price range of the foldable iPhone.

Would I pay two grand-plus for one? Probably not. Am I saying Apple should just copy Samsung outright? Nope. But for the first time, it feels like the tech is actually here to allow for a phone-looking foldable phone, rather than a hinged gadget that was over-engineered into existence.

Are you interested in the reportedly upcoming foldable iPhone? Let us know in the comments.

AirPods deals on Amazon

FTC: We use income earning auto affiliate links. More.



Source link

Continue Reading

Trending