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Aryna Sabalenka beats Jessica Pegula to win her first US Open

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Aryna Sabalenka beats Jessica Pegula to win her first US Open

Aryna Sabalenka, of Belarus, reacts against Jessica Pegula, of the United States, during the women’s singles final of the U.S. Open tennis championships on Saturday in New York.

Frank Franklin II/AP


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NEW YORK — Aryna Sabalenka got past Jessica Pegula 7-5, 7-5 in a rollicking U.S. Open women’s final Saturday to win her first championship at Flushing Meadows and third Grand Slam title of her career.

Sabalenka, a 26-year-old from Belarus, adds this trophy to the two she earned at the Australian Open each of the past two seasons, also on hard courts. And the victory allowed her to leave Arthur Ashe Stadium in a far better mood than when she was the runner-up to Coco Gauff at the 2023 U.S. Open.

Pegula, a native New Yorker whose parents own the NFL’s Buffalo Bills and NHL’s Buffalo Sabres, was participating in a major final for the first time. She’s won 15 of her past 17 matches over the past month but both losses came against Sabalenka in tournament finals.

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The No. 2-seeded Sabalenka appeared in full control when she reeled off five consecutive games to grab the opening set and move ahead 3-0 in the second, before the No. 6 Pegula made things more interesting. In the next game, Pegula dropped a point and showed her frustration by whacking a ball off the video wall behind the baseline, dislodging a little square panel.

Maybe that released some tension for the 30-year-old American, because suddenly Pegula asserted herself, using her own five-game run. But when she served at 5-4 with a chance to force a third set, Pegula let Sabalenka level the second with a break.

That was part of a three-game, match-ending surge for Sabalenka, who soon was collapsing to the court, dropping her racket and covering her face with both arms while lying on her back.

Sabalenka is as demonstrative as anyone in the sport, her body language usually a spot-on barometer of whether things are going well — or not — for her.

As she sputtered a tad at the start Saturday, it was tough to read what she was thinking against Pegula, who eliminated No. 1 Iga Swiatek in the quarterfinals.

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Even while falling behind 2-0, then being a point from trailing 3-1, Sabalenka reacted to her own mistakes — or winners off Pegula’s racket — by simply turning her back to the court and breathing the picture of calm, as star athletes from other sports such as Stephen Curry, Lewis Hamilton and Noah Lyles looked on from the stands.

Once Sabalenka got going, once her booming strokes — her forehands are the fastest these past two weeks, speedier than any woman’s or man’s — were calibrated just so, it quickly became apparent the outcome would be determined by what she did.

By the close, the statistics made that obvious: Sabalenka finished with far more winners than Pegula, 40-17, and also more unforced errors, 34-22. Sabalenka controlled most exchanges, with Pegula mainly stuck responding as best she could.

There was one moment of clear anger from Sabalenka. It came at 5-all in the first set, when she double-faulted to face a break point, then leaned forward and cracked her racket against the court four times while holding the handle with both hands.

She saved that break point, wound up holding in that game, then breaking Pegula to own the opening set.

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A year ago, Sabalenka blew a lead against Gauff. Didn’t let that happen again this time.

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Takeaways from Sean 'Diddy' Combs' ex-girlfriend Cassandra Ventura's testimony

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Takeaways from Sean 'Diddy' Combs' ex-girlfriend Cassandra Ventura's testimony
Madeline Halpert

BBC News in New York court

Reuters/Jane Rosenberg In a courtroom sktech, Sean "Diddy" Combs watches as his former girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura reacts during testimony to prosecutor Emily JohnsonReuters/Jane Rosenberg

Prosecutors’ star witness, Sean “Diddy” Combs’ ex-girlfriend Casandra Ventura, took the stand on Tuesday in the hip-hop mogul’s sex trafficking trial, accusing the rapper of controlling her life and coercing her into “humiliating” sex acts.

Mr Combs has pleaded not guilty to charges including racketeering conspiracy, sex trafficking, and transportation to engage in prostitution.

Family and friends have come to court in large numbers to support Mr Combs, whose legal team has not yet questioned Ms Ventura.

Ms Ventura, who is pregnant, told prosecutors about the alleged physical and emotional abuse she endured at the hands of the rapper during so-called “freak-offs”, or sexual encounters the couple had with male escorts.

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Here are some of the most notable parts of her first five hours of testimony.

Warning: This story contains details that some readers may find distressing.

Ms Ventura fell ‘in love’ with Mr Combs

Prosecutors began by questioning Ms Ventura – one of their two central witnesses in the case – about her 11-year, on-and-off relationship with Mr Combs.

Now 38 and pregnant in her third trimester with her third child, Ms Ventura met Mr Combs when she was a 19-year-old aspiring singer and he was 37. Mr Combs’ record label would later sign Ms Ventura as an artist, and shortly after, their romantic relationship began.

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Their relationship progressed over a series of several trips. At the time, she testified, she felt like they were in a monogamous relationship, though she knows now that he had other girlfriends.

She said she “fell in love” with the “larger than life entrepreneur and musician”. But it was not long before she noticed another side to him, she said.

REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg A court sketch shows as Sean "Diddy" Combs watches as his former girlfriend Casandra "Cassie" Ventura is sworn in as a prosecution witness
REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg

Mr Combs wanted to ‘control’ every part of her life, Ms Ventura says

Mr Combs wanted to “control” her life, Ms Ventura said. She said he paid for her home, her cars, her phone and other technology that he would sometimes take away to “punish” her.

“Control was everything, from the way that I looked … to what I was working on,” Ms Ventura said.

Eventually, she claimed, the control turned violent. Mr Combs would “bash on my head, knock me over, drag me and kick me” frequently, Ms Ventura testified, sometimes through tears.

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She alleged that she was left with swollen lips, black eyes and knots on her forehead.

Ms Ventura felt ‘humiliated’ by ‘freak-offs’

Prosecutors spent hours on Tuesday asking Ms Ventura about so-called “freak-offs”.

Ms Ventura told the court how Mr Combs introduced her to the sexual events during the first year of their relationship: They would hire a male escort or stripper to have sex with Ms Ventura while Mr Combs watched.

Ms Ventura told the court that she first tried the encounters to make Mr Combs “happy”. But she said they humiliated her, and sometimes lasted three to four days.

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“I felt pretty horrible about myself,” she told the court, wiping away tears. “It made me feel worthless.”

Ms Ventura told the court she never wanted to have sex with anyone but Mr Combs, and claimed she would take myriad drugs – marijuana, ecstasy and ketamine – to help her perform to Mr Combs’ satisfaction, but also to “disassociate”.

The drugs were “a way to not feel it for what it really was”, she said, “having sex with a stranger I didn’t really want to be having sex with”.

Mr Combs flew male escorts in for freak-offs, court hears

As prosecutors pressed Ms Ventura about the “freak-offs”, she told the court of how Mr Combs would direct her to find male escorts, strippers or dancers to have sex with while he watched.

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She alleged that Mr Combs would pay the men anywhere from $1,500 to $6,000 in cash, depending on their performance.

They found the men through stripper companies and sites like Craigslist. Some of their photos were displayed to the jurors, including Daniel Phillip, who finished his testimony earlier on Tuesday.

Ms Ventura and Mr Combs had the enounters in cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Las Vegas and Ibiza, Spain, Ms Ventura testified.

Sometimes, men would be flown in during vacations, she alleged, and Mr Combs would direct her to ask staff to pay for and arrange their travel, calling them new employees.

Among other charges, prosecutors are trying to prove that Mr Combs engaged in sex trafficking – human trafficking for the purpose of sexual exploitation – and transportation to engage in prostitution.

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Mr Combs ‘directed’, Ms Ventura says

As prosecutors pressed Ms Ventura for graphic details, one key element emerged: Ms Ventura claimed that Mr Combs controlled every part of the encounters.

He chose the outfits she wore – down to the extremely high heels she kept on for hours – as well as the sexual acts that transpired and the lighting, Ms Ventura told jurors.

“If Sean wanted something to happen, that was what was going to happen,” she said. “I couldn’t say no.”

Sometimes, Ms Ventura said, she would take the lead on which male escorts to hire because Mr Combs was “very busy”, but she only did so at his direction, she said.

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She said freak-offs had a very specific “pattern” of sexual acts each time.

“He was controlling the whole situation,” she alleged. “He was directing it.”

At times, Ms Ventura said, she tried to tell Mr Combs that she felt “horrible”. But when he dismissed her concerns, she said, she relented, worried he would get angry or question their relationship.

Ms Ventura is expected to continue her testimony on Wednesday, when she could also face cross-examination.

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Austin Welcomed Elon Musk. Now It’s Weird (in a New Way).

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Austin Welcomed Elon Musk. Now It’s Weird (in a New Way).

Each weekend for the past few months, Mike Ignatowski has gone to one of two Tesla dealerships in Austin, Texas, to protest Elon Musk, Tesla’s chief executive and the most famous transplant to the state’s most left-leaning city.

Not too long ago, Mr. Ignatowski, a 67-year-old computer engineer, was an admirer of Mr. Musk — before Mr. Musk aligned himself with President Trump. Now Mr. Ignatowski waves a “Fire Elon” sign during the protests, even as he conceded he’s not quite mad enough to part with the blue Model 3 Tesla that he bought “before we knew Elon was crazy,” as his bumper sticker attests.

That’s how it goes in Texas’ capital, where Mr. Musk’s sharp rightward shift has been received with a mix of anger and hair-pulling agony. Austin’s conflicted feelings reflect both the billionaire entrepreneur’s economic influence on the city and the city’s broader transformation from a medium-sized college town arranged around the State Capitol to a tech-fueled metropolis with a glass-and-steel skyline and a changing image.

Tie-dyed T-shirts still urge residents to “Keep Austin Weird,” mostly in hotels and tourist shops. But a different kind of counterculture has taken root amid an influx of decidedly right-of-center figures (including Mr. Musk), self-described freethinkers (like the podcasters Joe Rogan and Lex Fridman), and conservative entrepreneurs (like Joe Lonsdale). Already in town was Austin’s resident conspiracy theorist, Alex Jones, and his far-right Infowars. There’s even a new, contrarian institution of higher learning looking to compete with the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Austin.

Weird, perhaps, but not in the way of the old bumper-sticker mantra.

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“If you say ‘Keep Austin Weird’ to somebody under the age of 40, they would think of that as an antique-y slogan, like Ye Old Shoppe,” said H.W. Brands, a historian at the University of Texas. “It doesn’t have any resonance for their lived experience of Austin.”

The city’s transformation followed a deliberate, decades-long project to attract technology companies to its rolling hills.

“I’m one who thinks it has changed for the better,” said Gary Farmer, who helped attract new businesses as the founding chairman of Opportunity Texas, an economic development group. “The culinary arts, the performing arts, the visual arts, the music scene — it’s all better.”

At the same time, housing prices have skyrocketed, and the population — already the whitest among big cities in Texas — has shed some of its diversity.

In 2023, more people moved out of Austin’s Travis County than moved in, and the share of Hispanic residents in Austin declined even as across all of Texas, the Hispanic population has grown to become a plurality. Black families have also been leaving Austin, said Lila Valencia, the city’s demographer.

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The biggest increase in new residents has been among households making more than $200,000 a year, which grew by 70 percent from 2019 to 2023, Ms. Valencia said. The share of households making below $100,000 a year declined.

Austin now has about 100 accredited private schools, more than double the 39 it had two decades ago. Enrollment in the city’s public schools has been falling.

For years, locals resisted development, to no avail.

“They were building a lot of freeways in Houston and Dallas, and Austin turned away that money,” said Tyson Tuttle, the former chief executive of Silicon Labs, who moved to Austin in 1992. “They were saying, if we don’t build it, they won’t come. And they came anyway.”

Many in Austin’s new elite have chafed at the progressive policies in city and county government over issues such as homelessness and policing. Last year, some of them, including Mr. Musk, backed a primary challenger to the local Democratic district attorney, José Garza. In a companywide email, Mr. Musk encouraged Tesla employees to vote in support of the challenger.

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Mr. Garza won the primary by a two-to-one margin.

“If an asteroid fell from the sky and hit a Democratic candidate for office in Travis County and killed that person, that person’s corpse would still beat a live Republican,” said Evan Smith, a former leader of the Texas Tribune, an Austin-based nonprofit news site.

Still, the city’s demographic transformation has led many to lament its fading identity as a place of street buskers and a cross-dressing, homeless mayoral candidate. The Austin Chronicle, an alternative weekly newspaper, even sells a shirt that reads “R.I.P. Old Austin.”

Earlier this year, passers-by stopped to listen to an impromptu street performance on Congress Street, like old times, except the guitarist was the Trump-friendly Ted Nugent, and his appearance had been organized by hard-right Republicans.

Almost as common are complaints about the complainers.

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“I’m not one of those naysayers about Austin who say it was all better in the old days,” said Terry Lickona, who for 50 years has produced “Austin City Limits,” a public television showcase for local and national musicians. He added, “Austin has always attracted outsized characters,” including Willie Nelson and Michael Dell, the computer maker.

The struggles at Tesla, where profits have dropped sharply since Mr. Musk began closely aligning himself with Mr. Trump, could directly affect the city. At the same time, Austin is set to be the proving ground for his next big venture: self-driving Tesla taxis, which Mr. Musk promised for June.

Mr. Musk did not respond to an interview request.

“Having Tesla here is a huge benefit to the city,” said Mr. Tuttle, who has recently founded an artificial intelligence startup. “I wish that Elon would come home and focus on his business.”

The arrival of Mr. Musk and Tesla five years ago was a key moment for the city, punctuating a yearslong transformation that was accelerated by the Covid-19 pandemic. Many people, including celebrities and dissatisfied Californians whose politics were shifting amid the lockdowns, sought out the relative openness of Texas.

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“It’s, like, most of the good stuff and very little of the bad stuff,” Mr. Rogan said during a 2021 interview with Mr. Adler, months after moving there.

The result has been a slight moderation of the city’s politics and tensions over Mr. Musk between those who hate his actions in Washington and those who love his role as a technology entrepreneur.

The city “attracts people that are on all sides of issues,” said Joshua Baer, the founder of the Capital Factory, which helps finance and nurture technology startups. “My world is generally Elon fans and supporters.”

On a recent evening, more than two dozen Austinites convened in a church meeting room adorned with colorful messages of inclusivity for a gathering of Resist Austin, which organizes protests against Mr. Musk and Mr. Trump at Tesla dealerships.

“Our mission is lawful nonviolent resistance of authoritarians,” Ian Crowl, an organizer, said to the group, which included retirees, tech workers and graduate students. “If you want to throw a rock at a Tesla,” he added, “that’s not what we’re doing here.”

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Such tensions have been on the mind of Tesla drivers in Austin as well. Vikki Goodwin, a Democratic state representative, said she tries to be “invisible” when driving around in hers. When a car rammed into her at a stop light recently, she worried it might have been intentional.

“Oh my God,” Ms. Goodwin said she thought, “is it anger that caused him to drive into my car?”

The driver, in fact, was using his wife’s gas-powered car, Ms. Goodwin said he told her, and he assumed it would slow down quickly when he took his foot off the gas pedal — like his Tesla does.

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Surge in Chinese listings drives boom for US small-cap IPO market

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Surge in Chinese listings drives boom for US small-cap IPO market

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The volatile market for small US initial public offerings is “booming” thanks to a surge of Chinese listings on New York’s Nasdaq as companies race to beat a rule change that blocks the smallest deals.

The surge in listings kicked off late last year with 42 small offerings in the last three months of 2024, followed by 41 in the first quarter of this year — the two busiest quarters in records back 15 years, according to equity capital markets group Capital Markets Gateway (CMG). This was up from 20 in the second quarter of 2024 and 29 in the third.

Fifty-three of the past two quarter’s listings were from China and Hong Kong, with only 18 from the US, and all but nine on Nasdaq. CMG’s data excludes special purpose acquisition vehicles, which raise money in order to take over a private business.

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“The microcap IPO market is booming,” said Matthew Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, citing small Chinese companies in sectors from pharmaceuticals to construction. “It’s a highly speculative area,” he said, with many investors losing out because most of the stocks eventually fall far below their initial offer price.

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The IPOs came ahead of a raft of policy changes enacted by Nasdaq, effective as of April 11, which include requiring companies listing on its lowest rung under certain standards to raise at least $15mn. The Securities and Exchange Commission said Nasdaq’s new rules would “promote fair and orderly markets” and “protect investors and the public interest”.

Daniel McClory, head of equity capital markets and China at US underwriter Boustead Securities, said he had “30 IPOs in process right now and more than a third are for [companies in] south-east Asia and Greater China”.

The market for large-cap listings has meanwhile disappointed hopes of a revival under Donald Trump. Waves of market volatility around the president’s tariff announcements led bankers to postpone several hotly anticipated tech IPOs while other large listings received a cool reception.

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This has not stopped a flurry of sub-$50mn deals since tariffs shook markets in April. Small IPOs have continued despite Nasdaq raising the bar last month — with eight further deals since the rule change.

“Explosive returns” from companies such as Hong Kong-based Diginex, an ESG data group, and Chinese group EPWK Holdings, a crowdsourcing platform, “can fuel interest from traders hoping for quick gains”, said Kennedy.

Line chart of Share price, $ showing Shares in EPWK surged in late April but collapsed in early May

Shares in Diginex have climbed 1,375 per cent since it listed in January. Last Tuesday, it said UAE royal Sheikh Mohammed bin Sultan bin Hamdan Al Nahyan had struck a $300mn deal giving him the right to buy 6.75mn of its shares before the end of the year.

EPWK had risen 470 per cent in the months after its February market debut, but plunged 75 per cent last Monday.

The market for these small offerings is dominated by amateur traders, who are often more willing to jump on perceived bargains in the stock market during times of disruption when big money managers stay away.

The US Financial Industry Regulatory Authority in 2023 warned investors about “unusual price increases on the day of or shortly after the IPOs of certain small-cap issuers, most of which involve issuers with operations outside the US” and “IPOs raising less than $25mn”.

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The average value of money raised in the small IPOs tracked by CMG in the six months to March was around $9mn.

Brokers say there could be more small IPOs if market conditions improve. “If the market settled down and co-operated we could do an IPO a week,” McClory said. “As it is, we’re targeting about one a month.”

The two most prolific underwriters in the space — Dominari Securities and RF Lafferty — have each taken seven companies public this year, including Chinese “machine vision” company Lianhe Sowell and Hong Kong hotpot chain MasterBeef.

RF Lafferty is headquartered in the Trump Building in New York’s Financial District. Dominari Securities, which acted as lead underwriter for Diginex’s IPO, is a subsidiary of Dominari Holdings, a fintech group based about four miles north in Trump Tower. 

Shares in Dominari Holdings rose 580 per cent in the six weeks before a February 11 filing revealing that the president’s sons Donald Trump Jr and Eric Trump had joined its advisory board, the Financial Times reported last month.

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Dominari and RF Lafferty did not respond to requests for comment.

The rush of smaller Chinese IPOs comes as concerns swirl among some investors over whether Trump will delist some Chinese stocks from US exchanges amid trade tensions with Beijing.

One banker at a small US broker said some Chinese companies listing in the US recently had “inverted their corporate structure” to obscure where they carry out the bulk of their business. He said that Chinese companies with an overseas subsidiary were converting their operating company into the parent company “to sanitise the Chinese nature of the listing”.

A bar chart of counts of microcap IPOs by country of headquarters, 2023-25

McClory said he expected that any Trump ban would probably target large state-owned enterprises and sensitive industries rather than small companies. He dismissed concerns that Chinese IPOs in the US were taking investment dollars that would otherwise benefit US entrepreneurs.

“Virtually all of these Asian IPOs were full of investors from Greater China, or Chinese-American investors in the US and outside of China,” he said. “It’s not like they come to the US and take money from American widows and orphans.”

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