World number three Coco Gauff and number seven Zheng Qinwen will square off in the championship match of the WTA Finals in Riyadh after claiming impressive victories on Friday.
The 20-year-old Gauff knocked out world number one Aryna Sabalenka 7-6, 6-3 to become the youngest player to reach the final at the season-ending championships since Caroline Wozniacki in 2010.
Zheng, a gold medallist in singles at the Olympics this year, became the first tournament debutante to reach the final at the WTA Finals since 2021 with a 6-3, 7-5 victory over Wimbledon champion Barbora Krejcikova.
Gauff improved to 5-4 head-to-head against Sabalenka, and proved to be the more stable player in their semi-final, as she saved nine of 13 break points throughout the match.
“I’m happy with the way I played. I know against Aryna, she’s always going to be a tough match. She’s world number one for a reason,” said the 2023 US Open champion.
Gauff beat Zheng in their sole previous meeting, on clay in Rome earlier this season, and the American was formerly coached by Pere Riba, who currently works with the Chinese player.
“She’s playing great tennis,” said Gauff of Zheng. “Just playing confident tennis will help me and give me the best shot at winning. I’m not really nervous. Year-end to me has always been a bonus and being here is already a privilege.”
With a combined age of 42 years and 271 days, the match-up between Zheng and Gauff will feature the youngest combined age for the two finalists at the WTA Finals since Maria Sharapova and Serena Williams in 2004.
In front of a buoyant crowd at King Saud University Indoor Arena, Sabalenka was under pressure in her first service game, needing eight and a half minutes to hold for one-all, after saving two break points.
Several forehand errors from Gauff cost her the next game as Sabalenka broke for a 2-1 advantage, but the Belarusian’s lead was short-lived, as she immediately got broken at love.
The pair were neck and neck until Sabalenka broke through in game 11, drawing the error from Gauff to give herself a chance to serve for the opening set.
A clever short ball from Gauff resulted in a Sabalenka mistake and the set fittingly went to a tiebreak. The American raced to a 6-1 lead in the breaker and finally clinched the 59-minute set on her fourth opportunity.
The second set was a different story, with Gauff taking the helm and breaking twice to build a 4-1 gap. In a marathon sixth game, Sabalenka needed eight break points to get one of the breaks back but her effort was nullified by Gauff, who took four points in a row on her opponent’s serve to surge ahead 5-2.
The Floridian couldn’t serve out the win but kept up the pressure on Sabalenka’s serve to reach the final after one hour and 49 minutes of sheer battle.
Earlier in the day, the 22-year-old Zheng needed one hour and 40 minutes to overcome Krejcikova in their semi-final encounter, firing nine aces along the way.
Zheng led 6-3, 3-0 before the eighth-seeded Krejcikova launched a comeback but the Chinese star regained control of the match to make it two wins from two clashes against the Czech.
"It feels so special because this is my first WTA Finals and right now I'm in the final, which is unbelievable. She's a really good player, today we gave a good match," said Zheng, who is bidding to become the first player to win the WTA Finals on her maiden appearance since Ashleigh Barty in 2019.
"It was tricky because at 3-0 I think I dropped my performance, suddenly my performance went down and she played more free and I was suddenly 3-4 down. I gave so much control to myself to not panic too much. It shows I was mentally strong in that moment."
Since the event's inauguration in 1972, Zheng is only the second Asian player to reach the decider at the WTA Finals after Li Na pulled off that feat in 2013.
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Conflict, drought, famine
Estimates of the number of deaths caused by the famine range from 400,000 to 1 million, according to a document prepared for the UK House of Lords in 2024.
It has been claimed that the policies of the Ethiopian government, which took control after deposing Emperor Haile Selassie in a military-led revolution in 1974, contributed to the scale of the famine.
Dr Miriam Bradley, senior lecturer in humanitarian studies at the University of Manchester, has argued that, by the early 1980s, “several government policies combined to cause, rather than prevent, a famine which lasted from 1983 to 1985. Mengistu’s government imposed Stalinist-model agricultural policies involving forced collectivisation and villagisation [relocation of communities into planned villages].
The West became aware of the catastrophe through a series of BBC News reports by journalist Michael Buerk in October 1984 describing a “biblical famine” and containing graphic images of thousands of people, including children, facing starvation.
Band Aid
Bob Geldof, singer with the Irish rock group The Boomtown Rats, formed Band Aid in response to the horrific images shown in the news broadcasts.
With Midge Ure of the band Ultravox, he wrote the hit charity single Do They Know it’s Christmas in December 1984, featuring a string of high-profile musicians.
Following the single’s success, the idea to stage a rock concert evolved.
Live Aid was a series of simultaneous concerts that took place at Wembley Stadium in London, John F Kennedy Stadium in Philadelphia, the US, and at various other venues across the world.
The combined event was broadcast to an estimated worldwide audience of 1.5 billion.
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Selma Abdelhamid, the group's moderator, offers her guide to guide the cost of having a young family:
• Buy second hand stuff
They grow so fast. Don't get a second hand car seat though, unless you 100 per cent know it's not expired and hasn't been in an accident.
• Get a health card and vaccinate your child for free at government health centres
Ms Ma says she discovered this after spending thousands on vaccinations at private clinics.
• Join mum and baby coffee mornings provided by clinics, babysitting companies or nurseries.
Before joining baby classes ask for a free trial session. This way you will know if it's for you or not. You'll be surprised how great some classes are and how bad others are.
• Once baby is ready for solids, cook at home
Take the food with you in reusable pouches or jars. You'll save a fortune and you'll know exactly what you're feeding your child.
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The more serious side of specialty coffee
While the taste of beans and freshness of roast is paramount to the specialty coffee scene, so is sustainability and workers’ rights.
The bulk of genuine specialty coffee companies aim to improve on these elements in every stage of production via direct relationships with farmers. For instance, Mokha 1450 on Al Wasl Road strives to work predominantly with women-owned and -operated coffee organisations, including female farmers in the Sabree mountains of Yemen.
Because, as the boutique’s owner, Garfield Kerr, points out: “women represent over 90 per cent of the coffee value chain, but are woefully underrepresented in less than 10 per cent of ownership and management throughout the global coffee industry.”
One of the UAE’s largest suppliers of green (meaning not-yet-roasted) beans, Raw Coffee, is a founding member of the Partnership of Gender Equity, which aims to empower female coffee farmers and harvesters.
Also, globally, many companies have found the perfect way to recycle old coffee grounds: they create the perfect fertile soil in which to grow mushrooms.
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Key facilities
- Olympic-size swimming pool with a split bulkhead for multi-use configurations, including water polo and 50m/25m training lanes
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Towering concerns
HIV on the rise in the region
A 2019 United Nations special analysis on Aids reveals 37 per cent of new HIV infections in the Mena region are from people injecting drugs.
New HIV infections have also risen by 29 per cent in western Europe and Asia, and by 7 per cent in Latin America, but declined elsewhere.
Egypt has shown the highest increase in recorded cases of HIV since 2010, up by 196 per cent.
Access to HIV testing, treatment and care in the region is well below the global average.
Few statistics have been published on the number of cases in the UAE, although a UNAIDS report said 1.5 per cent of the prison population has the virus.
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