Coco Gauff overcomes opponent’s stall tactics to start U.S. Open
Coco Gauff rallied back from a first set 3-6 deficit to beat German qualifier Laura Siegemund Monday night in the first round of the U.S. Open. After winning a marathon 30-point, 25-plus minute game to start the second set, Gauff took the second and third sets 6-2 and 6-4 respectively to advance to the second round at Flushing Meadows.
Once Gauff took the lead in the second set, however, she had to contend with Siegemund’s stall tactics, which seemed designed to slow down play and rattle Gauff. Siegemund repeatedly took her time with her serve and leisurely went to the towel between points on Gauff’s serve, forcing the 19-year-old to wait to play the next point.
Although the chair umpire, Marijana Veljovic, warned Siegemund early in the third set, the behavior continued. Gauff finally lost her patience and called Veljovic out in a heated exchange.
“She’s never ready when I’m serving, she went over the clock like four times, you gave her a time violation once, how is this fair?…I’m going at a normal speed. Ask any ref here—I go at medium-paced speed…I’ve been quiet the whole match…Now it’s ridiculous. I don’t care what she’s doing on her serve, but on my serve, she has to be ready.”
The encounter appeared to temporarily fluster Gauff, who was leading the set serving 3-0 but wound up dropping that game. Gauff later double-faulted three times while serving for the match at 5-2—her only double faults of the entire match. Gauff held on in the final set to take the match, beating Siegemund 3-6, 6-2, 6-4 in 2-hours and 51 minutes.
When asked during her post-match on-court interview to describe what it was like to play the match, Gauff wryly replied: “Slow.”
The No. 6 seed Gauff was scheduled to face unranked Mira Andreeva of Russia yesterday (Wednesday) if the weather permitted as rain was an impediment for matches in Queens.
In other pairings on the woman’s side, former world No. 1 and seven-time Grand Slam singles champion Venus Williams was ousted from the Open in the first round on Tuesday by qualifier Greet Minnen of Belgium, 6-1, 6-1. It was the 43-year-old Williams’s most one-sided defeat in her illustrious career of playing in Grand Slam matches.
Williams is a two-time U.S. Open singles winner (2000, 2001) and two-time doubles titlist (1999, 2009), the latter playing with her younger sister Serena, who retired from competitive professional play after last year’s Open.
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Noel Pointer Foundation open house Sept. 7
The Noel Pointer Foundation (NPF) will hold an open house on Thursday, Sept. 7, from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. for families to learn about its music classes for kids. Attendance at the open house can be virtual via Zoom or in person at the foundation (247 Herkimer Street, Brooklyn, NY). Online registration is availableat https://www.noelpointer.org/about-us.
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East NY’s 2nd annual Black Inventors Youth Parade
Councilmember Charles Barron and Superintendent Tamra Collins will host East New York’s 2nd annual Black Inventors Youth Parade on Saturday, Sept. 16.
To join in as participants march in unity to celebrate Black intelligence and take part in this showcase for the community’s youth, assemble at 3 p.m. sharp at Linden (Sonny Carson) Park Linden Boulevard & Vermont Street in Brooklyn.
For more information, contact parade coordinator Keron Alleyne at 917-565-3052.
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Hurricane Idalia hits Florida with 125 mph winds, flooding streets, snapping trees and cutting power
PERRY, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Idalia tore into Florida at the speed of a fast-moving train Wednesday, splitting trees in half, ripping roofs off hotels and turning small cars into boats before sweeping into Georgia as a still-powerful storm that flooded roadways and sent residents running for higher ground.
“All hell broke loose,” said Belond Thomas of Perry, a mill town located just inland from the Big Bend region where Idalia came ashore.
Thomas fled with her family and some friends to a motel, thinking it would be safer than riding out the storm at home. But as Idalia’s eye passed over about 8:30 a.m., a loud whistling noise pierced the air and the high winds ripped the building’s roof off, sending debris down on her pregnant daughter, who was lying in bed. Fortunately, she was not injured.
“It was frightening,” Thomas said. “Things were just going so fast. … Everything was spinning.”
After coming ashore, Idalia made landfall near Keaton Beach at 7:45 a.m. as a high-end Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds near 125 mph (205 kph). It had weakened to a tropical storm with winds of 70 mph (113 kph) by late Wednesday afternoon.
As the eye moved inland, high winds shredded signs, blew off roofs, sent sheet metal flying and snapped tall trees. One person was killed in Georgia. But as of midday Wednesday, there were no confirmed deaths in Florida, although fatal traffic accidents in two counties may end up being storm-related, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
Unlike last year’s Hurricane Ian, which hit the heavily populated Fort Myers area, leaving 149 dead in the state, Idalia blew into a very lightly inhabited area known as Florida’s “nature coast,” one of the state’s most rural regions that lies far from crowded metropolises or busy tourist areas and features millions of acres of undeveloped land.
That doesn’t mean that it didn’t do major damage. Rushing water covered streets near the coast, unmoored small boats and nearly a half-million customers in Florida and Georgia lost power. In Perry, the wind blew out store windows, tore siding off buildings and overturned a gas station canopy. Heavy rains partially flooded Interstate 275 in Tampa and wind toppled power lines onto the northbound side of Interstate 75 just south of Valdosta, Georgia.
Storm surge could rise as high as 16 feet (4.9 meters) in some places. Some counties implemented curfews to keep residents off roads.
Less than 20 miles (32 kilometers) south of where Idalia made landfall, businesses, boat docks and homes in Steinhatchee, Florida, were swallowed up by water surging in from Deadman’s Bay. Police officers blocked traffic into the coastal community of more than 500 residents known for fishing and foresting industries.
State officials, 5,500 National Guardsman and rescue crews were in search-and-recovery mode, inspecting bridges, clearing toppled trees and looking for anyone in distress.
Because of the remoteness of the Big Bend area, search teams may need more time to complete their work compared with past hurricanes in more urban areas, said Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Department of Emergency Management.
“You may have two houses on a 5-mile (8-kilometer) road so it’s going to take some time,” Guthries said.
The National Weather Service in Tallahassee called Idalia “an unprecedented event” since no major hurricanes on record have ever passed through the bay abutting the Big Bend.
On the island of Cedar Key, downed trees and debris blocked roads, and propane tanks exploded.
RJ Wright stayed behind so he could check on elderly neighbors. He hunkered down with friends in a motel and when it was safe, walked outside into chest-high water. It could have been a lot worse for the island, which juts into the Gulf, since it didn’t take a direct hit, he said.
“It got pretty gnarly for a while, but it was nothing compared to some of the other storms,” Wright said.
The system remained a hurricane as it crossed into Georgia with top winds of 90 mph (150 mph), after drenching Florida mostly to the east of Tallahassee, Florida’s capital. Forecasters said it would punish the Carolinas overnight as a tropical storm.
In Tallahassee, the power went out well before the center of the storm arrived, but the city avoided a direct hit. A giant oak tree next to the governor’s mansion split in half, covering the yard with debris.
In Valdosta, Georgia, Idalia’s fierce winds uprooted trees and sent rain flying sideways. Jonathon Wick said he didn’t take the approaching hurricane seriously until Wednesday morning, when he awoke to howling winds outside his home. After rescuing his young nephews from a trampoline in their back yard where the water rose to his knees, he brought them to his car and was climbing into the driver’s seat when a tree toppled right in front of the vehicle.
“If that tree would have fell on the car, I would be dead,” said Wick, who ended up getting rescued by another family member.
One man was killed in Valdosta when a tree fell on him as he was trying to clear another tree out of the road Wednesday, said Lowndes County Sheriff Ashley Paulk. Two others, including a sheriff’s deputy, were injured when the tree fell, Paulk said.
Idalia grew into a Category 2 system on Tuesday and then a Category 3 storm on Wednesday before peaking as a Category 4 hurricane.
At 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Tropical Storm Idalia was about 40 miles (65 kilometers) west of Savannah, Georgia, and 115 miles (180 kilometers) west-southwest of Charleston, South Carolina, the National Hurricane Center said. It was moving northeast at 21 mph (33 kph).
More than 30,000 utility workers in Florida were gathering to make repairs as quickly as possible in the hurricane’s wake. Airports in the region, including Tampa International Airport, planned to restart commercial operations either Wednesday afternoon or Thursday. By midday Wednesday, more than 900 flights had been canceled in Florida and Georgia, according to tracking service FlightAware.
Officials in Bermuda warned that Idalia could hit the island early next week as a tropical storm. Bermuda on Wednesday was being lashed by the outer bands of Hurricane Franklin, a Category 2 storm that was on track to pass near the island in the north Atlantic Ocean.
President Joe Biden called the governors of Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and South Carolina on Wednesday and told them their states had his administration’s full support, the White House said.
Associated Press writers Mike Schneider in St. Louis, Missouri; Curt Anderson in Orlando, Florida; Laura Bargfeld and Chris O’Meara in Tampa, Florida; David Fischer in Miami Beach; Russ Bynum in Savannah, Georgia; Jeff Amy and Jeff Martin in Atlanta; Lisa J. Adams Wagner in Evans, Georgia; Jeffrey Collins in Columbia, South Carolina; Kathy McCormack in Concord, New Hampshire; Christopher Megerian in Washington; and Julie Walker and David Koenig in Dallas contributed to this report.
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Judge holds Giuliani liable in Georgia election workers’ defamation case for withholding information
WASHINGTON (AP) — A federal judge on Wednesday held Rudy Giuliani liable in a defamation lawsuit brought by two Georgia election workers who say they were falsely accused of fraud, ruling that the former New York city mayor gave “only lip service” to complying with his legal obligations while trying to portray himself as the victim in the case.
U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell said the punishment was necessary because Giuliani had ignored his duty as a defendant to turn over information requested by election workers Ruby Freeman and her daughter, Wandrea’ ArShaye Moss, as part of their lawsuit.
The decision moves the case toward a trial in Washington that could result in Giuliani being ordered to pay significant damages to the women, in addition to the tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees he’s already being directed to pay.
The workers’ complaint from December 2021 accused Giuliani, one of Donald Trump’s lawyers and a confidant of the former Republican president, of defaming them by falsely stating that they had engaged in fraud while counting ballots at State Farm Arena in Atlanta.
In a statement Wednesday, the women said they had endured a “living nightmare” and an unimaginable “wave of hatred and threats” because of Giuliani’s comments.
“Nothing can restore all we lost, but today’s ruling is yet another neutral finding that has confirmed what we have known all along: that there was never any truth to any of the accusations about us and that we did nothing wrong. We were smeared for purely political reasons, and the people responsible can and should be held accountable,” they said.
The ruling compounds the legal jeopardy for Giuliani at a time when he and Trump are both among 19 defendants charged this month in a racketeering case related to efforts to overturn the 2020 election in Georgia. It also creates the potential for a massive financial penalty for Giuliani as the case proceeds to a federal trial in Washington, where a jury would determine damages he may be liable for.
He will have a “final opportunity” to produce the requested information, known under the law as discovery, but could face additional sanctions if he fails to do so. In the meantime, Howell said, Giuliani and his business entities must pay more than $130,000 in attorneys’ fees.
Howell expressed skepticism at Giuliani’s claims that he cannot afford to reimburse the plaintiffs in the case, noting that he recently listed his apartment in Manhattan for $6.5 million and was reported to have flown via private plane to Atlanta to surrender to charges there. He has pleaded not guilty.
“Donning a cloak of victimization may play well on a public stage to certain audiences, but in a court of law this performance has served only to subvert the normal process of discovery in a straight-forward defamation case, with the concomitant necessity of repeated court intervention,” Howell wrote.
Howell said that aside from an initial document production of 193 pages, the information Giuliani had turned over consisted largely of “a single page of communications, blobs of indecipherable data” and “a sliver of the financial documents required to be produced.”
“Perhaps, he has made the calculation that his overall litigation risks are minimized by not complying with his discovery obligations in this case,” Howell said. “Whatever the reason, obligations are case specific and withholding required discovery in this case has consequences.”
The judge said “Giuliani has given only lip service to compliance with his discovery obligations.”
Giuliani has blamed his failure to produce the requested documents on the fact that his devices were seized by federal investigations in 2021 as a part of a separate Justice Department investigation that did not produce any criminal charges.
Ted Goodman, a political adviser to Giuliani, said in a statement that the judge’s ruling “is a prime example of the weaponization of our justice system, where the process is the punishment. This decision should be reversed, as Mayor Giuliani is wrongly accused of not preserving electronic evidence that was seized and held by the FBI.”
Last month, Giuliani conceded that he made public comments falsely claiming the election workers committed ballot fraud during the 2020 election, but he contended that the statements were protected by the First Amendment.
That caveated stipulation, Howell said, has “more holes than Swiss cheese” and suggested Giuliani was more interested in conceding the workers’ claims than actually producing meaningful discovery in the case.
“Yet, just as taking shortcuts to win an election carries risks — even potential criminal liability — bypassing the discovery process carries serious sanctions, no matter what reservations a noncompliant party may try artificially to preserve for appeal,” she said.
Moss had worked for the Fulton County elections department since 2012 and supervised the absentee ballot operation during the 2020 election. Freeman was a temporary election worker, verifying signatures on absentee ballots and preparing them to be counted and processed.
Giuliani and others alleged during a Georgia legislative subcommittee hearing in December 2020 that surveillance video from State Farm Arena showed the election workers committing election fraud.
As those allegations circulated online, the two women said, they suffered intense harassment, both in person and online. Moss detailed her experiences in emotional testimony before the members of Congress investigating the Capitol insurrection. The Jan. 6 committee also played video testimony from Freeman during the hearing in June 2022.
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