World number one continues her march for a third Australian Open title with a 6-3, 6-0 win over American teen sensation Jovic.

Aryna Sabalenka has handed 18-year-old ‍American Iva ‍Jovic a comprehensive 6-3, 6-0 defeat in the quarterfinals of the Australian Open to remain on course for her third title at Melbourne Park.

The world number one, champion in 2023 ​and 2024 and runner-up last year, made quick work of the teen tennis sensation at a sweltering Melbourne Park on Tuesday.

Sabalenka will now meet ‍either Coco Gauff or Elina Svitolina for a place in Saturday’s title match.

“These teenagers have been testing me in the last couple of ‍rounds,” said ⁠Sabalenka, who defeated 19-year-old Canadian Victoria Mboko in the previous round.

“Don’t look at the score, it wasn’t easy at all. She played incredible tennis, pushed me to one step better level. It was a tough battle.”

Sabalenka made a blistering start, racing into a 3-0 lead ​in the opener, and Jovic was ‌made to work by the Belarusian to hold her serve in the fourth game to gain a foothold in the set.

The teenager, appearing in her ‌first Grand Slam quarterfinal, used her speed around the court to frustrate her more ‌experienced opponent, although Sabalenka eventually closed ⁠out the first set in less than an hour.

The 27-year-old was even more dominant in the second set, firing a cross-court winner beyond ‌Jovic to break serve in the opening game.

That put the four-time Grand Slam champion firmly in command, and she would ‍go on to convert another pair of break points to move ominously into the last four.

Sabalenka said she would not stop until she has got the trophy in the bag in Melbourne.

“I think [for] every player, when they get to the tournament, it’s trophy or nothing,” she said. “The mentality is the same, and it’s always in the back of your mind that obviously you want to win it.”

“But I’m trying to shift my focus on the right things and taking it step by step and just trying my best in each match, each point, each game, each set.”

Sabalenka’s match was played under an open roof on Rod Laver Arena in 38C (100F) heat, but it was not a worry for the world number one.

On a 10-match win streak after victory at the lead-up Brisbane International, she called her second-set performance “amazing”.

“I knew that I have to step in and show the level and the class,” she said.

“I think it really helped me kind of just go for my shots and help me to trust my game.”

Defeat brought an end to a breakthrough tournament for Jovic, the youngest player in the women’s top 100 and seeded 29.

She stunned the seventh seed and two-time Grand Slam finalist Jasmine Paolini and blitzed past experienced Yulia Putintseva for the loss of just one game to announce herself to the world.

But Sabalenka was a bridge too far.

“I think Aryna played very well. I could have done some things differently, but that’s tennis,” she said after the loss.

“I think it’s amazing what she’s done for herself in her career.

“It’s very inspiring,” she added of the four-time Grand Slam winner.

“I think the way she’s been able to use all the negative things – I know her story quite well.

“All the negative things that have happened to her on court and in her personal life as well, and turned them into motivation and fuel to be better, is amazing.

“I hope to get more chances to play against her, and she was very nice at the end of the match as well.”

Technology giant Meta is to trial premium subscriptions for Instagram, Facebook and WhatsApp users in the coming months.

The new offerings would give access to features including expanded artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities.

Under the plan, access to the platforms’ core services would remain free to use.

The firm also plans to test subscriptions for features, such as its Vibes video generation app, which the firm says “can bring your ideas to life with new AI visual creation tools”.

Meta announced Vibes in September as part of the latest version of the Meta AI app.

It also aims to use Manus, a Chinese-founded AI firm it bought in December for a reported $2bn (£1.46bn), in its subscription plans, according to TechCrunch, which first reported the story.

The company will also continue to offer standalone Manus subscriptions to businesses.

At the time, Meta said the deal would help improve its own AI by giving people access to “agents” – tools which can do complex things with minimal user interaction such as planning trips or making presentations.

“Manus’s exceptional talent will join Meta’s team to deliver general-purpose agents across our consumer and business products, including Meta AI,” it said in a blog post.

Based in Singapore after relocating from China, Manus has sought to set itself apart from rival AI developers with what it claims can be a “truly autonomous” agent.

Unlike many chatbots which need to be repeatedly asked for things before a user can get their desired response, Manus says its service can plan, execute and complete tasks independently in accordance with instructions.

A Lebanese minister condemns the latest Israeli killing and calls on the international community to ‘take action’.

A television presenter who worked for Lebanon’s Al-Manar TV station has been killed in an Israeli attack on the southern Lebanese city of Tyre, according to the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah.

The killing on Monday of presenter Ali Nour al-Din, who worked for the Hezbollah-affiliated Al-Manar, portends “the danger of Israel’s extended escalations [in Lebanon] to include the media community”, Hezbollah said in a statement.

Al-Manar TV confirmed that the attack in Tyre killed al-Din, “who previously worked at Al-Manar channel as a presenter of religious programmes”.

Al-Din also served as the main preacher in Al-Hawsh, in the suburbs of Tyre, Hezbollah said, calling his killing a “treacherous assassination”.

Lebanese Minister of Information Paul Morcos condemned the Israeli strike, saying on social media that such attacks were “sparing neither journalistic nor media crews”.

“We declare our solidarity and condolences to the media family, and call on the international community to fully assume its responsibilities and take urgent action to put an end to these violations and ensure the protection of media professionals in Lebanon,” the minister said.

Prior to al-Din’s killing on Monday, at least six Lebanese journalists had been killed in Israeli attacks on Lebanon since 2023, according to a tally by the Committee to Protect Journalists. Other monitors put the death toll of Lebanese journalists at 10.

Earlier on Monday, Lebanon’s Ministry of Health said in a statement that one person was killed in an Israeli air strike in Tyre, although it did not immediately announce the name of the victim. The ministry added that a separate Israeli strike killed two other people in Kfar Rumman near the city of Nabatieh.

The Israeli military later admitted to the killing of al-Din, whom it referred to as a Hezbollah member, and said it struck two other people in the Nabatieh areas of southern Lebanon.

Israel and Hezbollah agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 to end more than a year of fighting, which saw Israel carry out air strikes across Lebanon that severely weakened the armed group.

Despite the ceasefire, Israel has kept up regular attacks on targets in Lebanon and has maintained troops in five locations in southern Lebanon.

Since the ceasefire, Israeli strikes have killed more than 350 people in Lebanon, according to the AFP news agency, while Lebanese authorities have been facing growing pressure from the United States and Israel to disarm Hezbollah.

On Monday, Hezbollah called on supporters to gather in its strongholds across Lebanon to express support for its ally Iran, which the group said was facing “American-Zionist sabotage and threats”.

The call came as a US aircraft carrier strike group arrived in the Middle East and US President Donald Trump continued to threaten Tehran with an attack.

In a televised address to supporters, Hezbollah chief Naim Qassem warned that any attack on Tehran would also be an attack on Hezbollah, adding that any new war on Iran would ignite the region.

Qassem also warned against any attempt to assassinate Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, adding that Hezbollah considered such a threat “directed at us as well”.

Tehran has warned the US that an attack would be met with a “regret-inducing response” that could affect the entire Middle East region.

France’s National Assembly has backed a bill that would ban social media access for under-15s, a proposal supported by President Emmanuel Macron.

Lawmakers in the lower house on Monday agreed key elements of the bill, before voting 116-23 in its favour. Next, the bill will go to the upper house, the Senate, for approval.

If it is passed, young teenagers would not be able to use networks such as Snapchat, Instagram and TikTok.

The French move is part of a growing trend of restricting social networks for children, triggered by increasing evidence of the damage they can cause to mental health. A similar law was passed in Australia late last year.

After the National Assembly passed the bill in an overnight session from Monday to Tuesday, Macron called it a “major step”.

Writing on social media, he called for the government to accelerate the next steps, “so that this ban takes effect as early as next school year”. The new school year begins on 1 September in France.

“Our children’s brains are not for sale,” he wrote.

Laure Miller, an MP behind the bill, told Le Monde: “With this law we will set down a clear limit in society.”

“We are saying something very simple: social networks are not harmless,” she added.

“These networks promised to bring people together. They pulled them apart. They promised to inform. They saturated us with information. They promised to entertain. They shut people away.”

Last month, Macron said: “We cannot leave the mental and emotional health of our children in the hands of people whose sole purpose is to make money out of them.”

Under the new text, the state media regulator would draw up a list of social media networks that are deemed harmful. These would be simply banned for under 15-year-olds.

A separate list of supposedly less harmful sites would be accessible, but only with explicit parental approval.

Another clause would ban the use of mobile telephones in senior schools (lycées). The ban is already in effect in junior and middle schools.

If the law is passed, France will need to agree on the mechanism for age-verification. A system is already in place that requires over 18 year-olds to prove their age when accessing online pornography.

In Europe, Denmark, Greece, Spain and Ireland are also considering following the Australian example. Earlier this month, the UK government launched a consultation on banning social media for under 16s.

The basis of the proposed French law is a text drawn up late last year by Miller, who chaired a parliamentary committee enquiry into the psychological effects of TikTok and other networks.

Separately, the government was told to draw up its own legislation, after Macron decided to make the issue a centrepiece of his last year in office.

The president has been sidelined from domestic politics since the Assembly elections which he called in 2024 resulted in a hung parliament.

The social media ban has been a rare chance to court public favour.

For a time the cause risked falling victim to bickering between Macron and his one-time prime minister Gabriel Attal (Miller is an MP from Attal’s party). But in the end the government appears to have rallied behind the Miller bill.

The bill is expected to pass before the upper house, the Senate, in the next month. Macron said he had asked the government of Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu to use a fast-track procedure to get the legislation on the books by September.

Without resort to the fast-track (which permits a single reading as opposed to two in each of the two houses), the law would have little chance of getting past the legislative backlog created by Lecornu’s difficulties in passing a budget.

The bill has already had to be redrafted to take account of questions raised by the Council of State, the body which previews draft legislation to ensure it conforms with French and European law.

A 2023 law which proposed a similar ban on social media for young teenagers proved inoperable after courts decided it broke European law.

Carney has been under pressure from the opposition to lower prices of food and other essentials for lower-income people.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced a multibillion-dollar package as part of a series of measures aimed at lowering the costs of food and other essentials for low-income families.

On Monday, Carney announced a five-year 25 percent boost to the Goods and Services Tax (GST) credit that starts this year.

The GST credit, which is being renamed the Canada Groceries and Essentials Benefit, will provide additional, significant support for more than 12 million Canadians, Carney said in a statement.

The government will also provide a one-time top-up equivalent to a 50 percent increase this year to eligible residents.

“We’re bringing in new measures to lower costs and make sure Canadians have the support they need now,” Carney said.

The measures would cost the government 3.1 billion Canadian dollars ($2.26bn) in the first year and between 1.3 billion Canadian dollars ($950m) and 1.8 billion Canadian dollars ($1.3bn) in each of the following four years, he told reporters at a news conference, according to the Reuters news agency.

While overall consumer price inflation in Canada has eased and came in at 2.4 percent for December, “food price inflation remains high due to global and domestic factors, including supply chain disruptions, higher US tariffs from the trade war and climate change/extreme weather”, Tony Stillo, director of Canada Economics at Oxford Economics, told Al Jazeera.

The government is also setting aside 500 million Canadian dollars ($365m) from the Strategic Response Fund to help businesses address the costs of supply chain disruptions without passing those costs on to Canadians, and will create a 150 million Canadian dollar ($110m) Food Security Fund under the existing Regional Tariff Response Initiative for small and medium enterprises and the organisations that support them.

Changing landscape

“The global landscape is rapidly changing, leaving economies, businesses, and workers under a cloud of uncertainty. In response, Canada’s new government is focused on what we can control: building a stronger economy to make life more affordable for Canadians,” Carney said.

The new measures were unveiled on the day Parliament resumes after its winter break.

Opposition parties have urged Carney to reduce prices of daily goods, especially as sections of the economy have come under pressure from United States President Donald Trump, who has slapped 35 percent tariffs on the country as well as separate tariffs on steel, aluminium and lumber, leading to job losses in those sectors.

Over the weekend, Trump escalated his threats and said he would impose a 100 percent tariff on Canada if it makes a trade deal with China. Carney has been working on diversifying Canada’s exports away from the US, its biggest trading partner and to which nearly 80 percent of its exports went last year, including by increasing business with other markets like China.