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Serena Williams defeated Elena Vesnina 6-3, 6-1 to reach the second round of the Madrid Open on Monday.
The ninth-seeded Williams fired 13 aces and 40 winners during her opening match against Vesnina. Williams broke her Russian opponent four times during the first match at the Madrid tournament that is being played on the blue-clay court.
The ninth-ranked American will play Russia’s Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova in the second round. [Read more...]
Venus Williams held off a late surge by Simona Halep to win 6-1, 4-6, 7-6 (6) in the first round of the Madrid Open on Saturday.
The seven-time major winner hit three aces and broke the Romanian twice en route to taking the first set.
But Halep rallied to take the second set before Williams could finally edge her out in the decisive tiebreaker.
“On the last match point I went for it. I wanted to leave it all out there on the court,” said Williams, playing just her third tournament following a seven-month absence due to illness.
“A match like that can be good. We hit a lot of balls and I was able to get that clay-court mentality right away. I have to keep remembering I’m on clay.”
Earlier, fifth-seeded Sam Stosur also needed three sets to beat Petra Martic. [Read more...]
Unbeaten boxer Floyd Mayweather Jr. believes a mega-fight between him and Filipino ring icon Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao will never happen because of Pacquiao’s promoter, Top Rank chief executive officer Bob Arum.
Hopes for a Pacquiao-Mayweather mega-fight were kept alive after Mayweather won a hard-fought, competitive decision victory against Puerto Rican star Miguel Cotto last Saturday in Las Vegas (Sunday in Manila).
But Mayweather dashed those hopes in the post-fight press conference, telling reporters: “The Pacquiao-Mayweather fight is not going to happen. It’s never going to happen.” [Read more...]
US stocks fell as economic data sent mixed signals on the recovery a day before the April payrolls report, while shares of Green Mountain plunged after poor results.
Slower-than-expected growth in the dominant US services sector drove the day’s trading. The retail sector dragged the market lower after several chains, including Target and Gap, fell after missing April sales estimates.
Market expectations for Friday’s non-farm payrolls report have fallen this week. Traders now suspect the economy added 125,000 to 150,000 jobs in April, below a Reuters consensus forecast of 170,000. One trader said there had even been some talk of a number below 100,000. [Read more...]
Wind turbines have long produced renewable energy but a French engineering firm has discovered another eco-purpose for the towering structures.
Eole Water claims to have successfully modified the traditional wind turbine design to create the WMS1000, an appliance that can manufacture drinking water from humid air.
The company aims to start rolling out the giant products for sale later in 2012, initially focusing on remote communities in arid countries where water resources are scarce.
“This technology could enable rural areas to become self-sufficient in terms of water supply,” says Thibault Janin, director of marketing at Eole Water. [Read more...]
Australia is likely to overshoot its ”20 per cent by 2020” renewable energy target by about 6 per cent, according to Origin Energy, potentially adding to rising electricity costs.
Origin, Australia’s largest electricity retailer, says the recent trend of falling overall electricity demand and increasing penetration of rooftop solar and solar hot water systems means Australia is likely to require only 250 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity in 2020, rather than the fixed volume of 300 TWh anticipated in the renewable energy target legislation. [Read more...]
Users in the United States and the U.K. can enroll as organ donors via links to official registries on the world’s biggest social networking site, said CEO Mark Zuckerberg. The links should make it easier for people who want to donate their organs to sign up.
Facebook users who are already organ donors can add that information to their profile page, now known as their timeline.
Zuckerberg said his friendship with Apple Inc. co-founder Steve Jobs, who had received a liver transplant before he died last year, helped spur the idea, as did talks with his girlfriend Priscilla Chan, a medical student. [Read more...]