Novak Djokovic's father decided to stay away from the 21-time Grand Slam champion's semifinal after getting embroiled in a flap involving spectators who brought banned Russian flags to Melbourne Park, Tennis Australia said Friday.
In a release e-mailed to reporters about 2 1/2 hours before Djokovic was scheduled to face Tommy Paul for a berth in the men's singles final, tournament organizers said Srdjan Djokovic "has issued a statement confirming that he will not attend" the match.

Weeks of historic rainfall in California won't be enough to end a severe drought, but it will provide public water agencies serving 27 million people with much more water than the suppliers had been told to expect a month ago, state officials announced.
The Department of Water Resources said public water agencies will now get 30% of what they had asked for, up from the 5% officials had previously announced in December. That's because for the first three weeks of January nine atmospheric rivers dumped an estimated 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow on California. It was enough water to increase storage in the state's two largest reservoirs by a combined 66%.

European clubs looking for last-minute deals in the January transfer window could find some future stars among Brazil's current crop of young soccer talents.
The focus on Brazilian players is always big during transfer periods and the spotlight only intensified after Real Madrid's signing of teenage sensation Endrick on a deal reportedly worth nearly 60 million euros ($65.3 million).

Israel's defense minister signaled Friday that the military would stop its airstrikes if Palestinian militant groups halted rocket attacks, a day after the deadliest Israeli raid in decades raised the prospect of a major flare-up in fighting.
After a limited exchange of Palestinian rockets and Israeli airstrikes on Gaza overnight, residents of Jerusalem were on edge Friday morning as they waited to see what comes next.

U.S. special operations forces have killed a senior Islamic State group official and 10 other terrorist operatives in remote northern Somalia, the Biden administration announced Thursday.
The operation carried out on Wednesday targeted Bilal al-Sudani, a key financial facilitator for the global terrorist organization, in a mountainous cave complex.

The warm glow of Svalbard Kirke's lights gleams on the mountain slope from where the church stands over this remote Norwegian Arctic village, cloaked in the polar night's constant darkness.
A century after it was founded to minister to the coal miners who settled Longyearbyen, the Lutheran house of faith is open 24/7, serving as a beacon for the community navigating a drastic change in its identity.

The days of Barcelona fans jeering Ousmane Dembélé are long gone.
There were only cheers from the crowd at the Camp Nou after the France forward led the hosts to the semifinals of the Copa del Rey on Wednesday.

Real Sociedad, a football team based near the French border in northern city of San Sebastian, has been one of the revelations of the Spanish league season.
A revelation that has been building for some time.

Thousands of workers in Cyprus, including government employees, teachers and builders walked off the job Thursday for an island-wide, three-hour work stoppage to protest what they claim is employers' backpedaling on a deal for inflation-linked pay increases.
Some 14 trade unions representing a diverse range of workers from bus drivers to airport staff responded to a call by union bosses to stage the brief strike as a warning to employers and government mediators that they won't accept any rollbacks on what they say they're lawfully entitled to.

The U.S. economy expanded at a 2.9% annual pace from October through December, ending 2022 with momentum despite the pressure of high interest rates and widespread fears of a looming recession.
Thursday's estimate from the Commerce Department showed that the nation's gross domestic product — the broadest gauge of economic output — decelerated last quarter from the 3.2% annual growth rate it had posted from July through September. Most economists think the economy will slow further in the current quarter and slide into at least a mild recession by midyear.
