Decked out with a new buzz cut, the world no 2 was in sparkling form against towering Reilly Opelka of the US.

Carlos Alcaraz is sporting a new buzz cut at the US Open, and while the cropped style is drawing a mixed reaction online, the Spaniard’s spectacular tennis is leaving no room for discussion as he dismantled Reilly Opelka 6-4, 7-5, 6-4 to reach the second round.

Having ditched his tousled pretournament look, the second seed made an impressive start on Monday in his quest to secure a second Grand Slam title of the year.

“I’ve got to ask the people if they like the new haircut or not. Did you like it, guys? I think they like it,” Alcaraz said on court in response to a question about whether he was moving faster on court with his new look.

“Today was a really difficult one,” he added.

“He really is a great and a really tough player with that serve. I couldn’t get the rhythm I wanted to get in the match, but I’m really happy with everything.

“The return was one of the best things today. I tried to play my best tennis, tried to be focused on the serve. Overall, I had a really great performance today.”

The 22-year-old, who won the first of his five major trophies in New York three years ago, looked every bit like championship material against the 2.11-metre (6 feet 11 inches) Opelka as he broke for a 3-2 lead and clinched the opening set with ease.

Alcaraz wobbled on serve for the first time in the second set when he sent down consecutive double faults, but Opelka failed to convert both his break point opportunities.

After breaking Opelka in the 11th game, Alcaraz held to love for a 2-0 lead and turned up the heat in the ninth game of the third set, breaking again thanks to a foot fault and a wayward serve by his opponent.

“Nothing depends on you. It always depends on him,” Alcaraz said about the difficulty of playing the towering Opelka.

“The way he serves, the way he plays from the baseline, you just have to be focused, put as many returns as you can in and try to be in the rally and win the points he lets you win.

“It’s just difficult when you play someone who doesn’t let you play your game. It was a very difficult first round.”

Alcaraz held to love to complete the victory and set up a second-round encounter with Italian Mattia Bellucci, who went through after his Chinese opponent, Shang Juncheng, retired during their encounter earlier in the day.

President Donald Trump has said he will immediately remove Federal Reserve official Lisa Cook from her position, a major escalation in his battle against the US central bank.

In an announcement made on his social media platform Truth Social, Trump posted a letter addressed to Cook in which he informed her of his decision to remove her from the bank’s board of governors with immediate effect.

He said there was “sufficient reason” to believe she had made false statements on mortgage agreements, and cited constitutional powers which he said allowed him to remove her.

In response, Cook has said Trump has no authority to fire her and she will not resign.

“President Trump purported to fire me ‘for cause’ when no cause exists under the law, and he has no authority to do so,” Cook said in a statement.

“I will not resign. I will continue to carry out my duties to help the American economy as I have been doing since 2022,” she added.

“We will take whatever actions are needed to prevent [Trump’s] attempted illegal action,” Cook’s lawyer, Abbe David Lowell, said.

The Federal Reserve has not yet commented on the president’s announcement, which he made late on Monday.

Trump has put increasing pressure on the Fed – especially its chair Jerome Powell – in recent weeks over what he sees as the central bank’s unwillingness to lower interest rates. He has repeatedly floated the possibility of firing Powell.

His decision to fire Cook, who is one of seven members of the Fed’s board of governors and the first African American woman to serve in the role, is believed to be unprecedented in the central bank’s 111-year history.

It is also likely to raise legal questions, with experts suggesting the White House will need to demonstrate – potentially in court – that it had sufficient reason to fire her.

According to Trump’s letter, Cook signed one document attesting that a property in Michigan would be her primary residence for the next year.

“Two weeks later, you signed another document for a property in Georgia stating that it would be your primary residence for the next year,” the president said.

“It is inconceivable that you were not aware of your first commitment when making the second,” he wrote.

The president had called for her resignation last week over the allegation of mortgage fraud, which was first made in a public letter from housing finance regulator, Bill Pulte, a Trump ally, to Attorney General Pam Bondi.

The housing finance regulator called the letter a “criminal referral” and urged the justice department to investigate. It is not clear whether an investigation has been opened.

Cook told the BBC in a statement last week that she learned of the allegations from the media, and the matter stemmed from a mortgage loan application she made four years ago before she joined the central bank.

“I have no intention of being bullied to step down from my position because of some questions raised in a tweet,” she said.

“I do intend to take any questions about my financial history seriously as a member of the Federal Reserve and so I am gathering the accurate information to answer any legitimate questions and provide the facts.”

If Cook or the Fed resist Trump’s decision to oust her, experts suggest it could trigger a standoff between the central bank and the White House. The Fed gained independence from the US government in 1951.

Trump has expressed increasing animosity at Powell, calling him a “numbskull” and a “stubborn moron” because he did not support the president’s calls for rapid, large cuts to borrowing rates.

But last week, Powell boosted expectations that there will be an interest rate cut in September. Speaking to central bankers gathered in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, he also argued that the inflationary impact of Trump’s tariffs could prove temporary.

The US dollar weakened against major world currencies in Asia trading on Tuesday as investors bet that Cook’s replacement would be likely to push for more interest rate cuts.

Here are the key events on day 1,279 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, August 26:

Fighting

• An 82-year-old woman was killed and three people were injured in a Russian attack on Kupiansk city, in Ukraine’s Kharkiv region, Governor Oleh Syniehubov said.
• Russian attacks killed one person and injured three others in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, Governor Vadym Filashkin said.
• Russian drones and artillery fire injured a rescue worker and damaged a fire truck in the Nikopol region of Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, according to Governor Serhiy Lysak.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person and injured two others in the Russian-occupied Ukrainian region of Luhansk, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported.
• TASS also reported that Russian forces shot down 151 Ukrainian drones and four aerial bombs, and destroyed two missile launchers, in one day.
• One person was killed and two others injured in Ukrainian attacks on the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Kherson region, the Russian-appointed governor, Vladimir Saldo, wrote in a post on Telegram.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces captured the settlement of Zaporizke in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region.

Peace talks

• Germany will take part in providing security guarantees for Ukraine alongside European partners, but the talks are at an early stage and must be shaped by Kyiv, German Vice Chancellor Lars Klingbeil said on Monday, while visiting the Ukrainian capital.
• Asked why Russia President Vladimir Putin appears reluctant to sit down for peace talks with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, US President Donald Trump told reporters it is “because he doesn’t like him”.
• “The one I thought would be the easiest, frankly, was Russia and Ukraine. But it turns out there are some big personality conflicts,” Trump said.
• Putin spoke on the phone with Iranian leader Masoud Pezeshkian and discussed his meeting with Trump in Alaska, the Kremlin press service said, according to the RIA Novosti news agency.
• “Masoud Pezeshkian expressed support for the ongoing diplomatic efforts aimed at a peaceful resolution of the Ukrainian crisis,” the Kremlin said.

Ukraine aid

• Speaking at a news conference with Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Store in Kyiv, Zelenskyy said that Ukraine aims to raise “no less than $1bn every month”, towards buying weapons from the United States to be used in the war.
• Polish President Karol Nawrocki vetoed a bill that would have extended financial support to Ukrainian refugees, potentially also jeopardising Ukraine’s use of Starlink, according to Polish Deputy Prime Minister Krzysztof Gawkowski.
• “This is the end of the Starlink Internet, which Poland provides to Ukraine, which is waging war. This is also the end of support for storing Ukrainian administration data in a safe place,” Gawkowski, who is from a different political party than Nawrocki, wrote on X. Russia launched a full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Mexican drug lord, Ismael ‘El Mayo’ Zambada, has entered a guilty plea to two drug smuggling and conspiracy charges in a court in New York, bringing an end to one of the longest and most notorious criminal careers in the history of organised crime.

Zambada was not just any drug lord.

He was the founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, for years the biggest and most powerful criminal organisation in Mexico – with an astonishing global reach.

Last year, he pleaded not guilty to a raft of drug smuggling, gun-running and money laundering offences. But now, he has changed his plea before a federal judge in Brooklyn.

In doing so, he officially accepted his role in creating the vast criminal network which has sent huge amounts of cocaine and other drugs into the US since he co-founded the cartel at the end of the 1980s.

The Associated Press reported that in court Zambada apologised for his actions.

“I recognise the great harm illegal drugs have done to the people in the United States and Mexico,” he said through a Spanish-language interpreter, the AP reported. “I apologise for all of it, and I take responsibility for my actions.”

Local Mexican media has also said that Zambada admitted “the organisation that I headed fed corruption in my country by paying police, military commanders and politicians who allowed us to operate freely.”

The step comes weeks after US prosecutors confirmed they would not be seeking the death penalty against the 77-year-old Mexican kingpin.

Zambada was arrested in Texas last year following an extraordinary double-cross by the sons of his former ally, the jailed co-founder of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquín ‘El Chapo’ Guzmán.

El Chapo was sentenced to life imprisonment in the same court in 2019.

After his arrest, the cartel splintered into two main factions: one led by El Mayo, and its rival, led by Guzman’s sons, known as ‘Los Chapitos’. The conflict between the two sides continues to rage, particularly in the state of Sinaloa itself.

In late July 2024, Zambada was allegedly lured to a meeting with one of El Chapo’s son, Joaquín Guzmán López.

Initial reports suggested Guzmán López then duped his rival into boarding a light aircraft, but Zambada later claimed he was ambushed and overpowered by Los Chapitos, and forcibly removed to Texas.

US law enforcement officials were waiting for the aircraft when it landed near El Paso and both men were immediately taken into custody.

By entering a guilty plea, Zambada is expected to receive a more lenient sentence. In his late 70s and reportedly in poor health, he may have reasoned that it was futile to continue to claim his innocence, especially given Guzmán’s conviction and life sentence in 2019.

“El Mayo will spend the rest of his life behind bars. He will die in a US federal prison where he belongs,” US Attorney General Pam Bondi told reporters.

It was confirmed last year that both the Guzmán sons – Joaquín and his younger brother, Ovidio – were negotiating plea bargains with the US government.

In May, 17 members of the Guzmán family were escorted into the US by officials. Last month, Ovidio pleaded guilty in Chicago to multiple charges of drug smuggling and involvement in a continuing criminal enterprise.

At his height, Zambada was probably the most powerful drug lord in the world.

More shadowy than other kingpins – particularly El Chapo whose escapes from prison in 2001 and 2015 made headlines around the world – Zambada was no less ruthless or calculating.

For some five decades, he successfully evaded arrest or capture. During that time he oversaw the transport of vast quantities of heroin, cocaine and methamphetamine into the US via land, sea and air.

Now, in a US courtroom, one of the most enduring names in global drug trafficking has accepted his role at the top of the one of the biggest and most sophisticated criminal networks in the world.

He is due to be sentenced in January 2026.