By Rosa de Acosta, Matias Grez, Patrick Sung Cuadrado, CNN

(CNN) — It’s late spring, heading into the summer and that can only mean one thing: the French Open is back and tennis fans around the world rejoice at the news of the return of the iconic clay court grand slam.

Heading into the 125th edition of the tournament, which kicked off on Sunday, fans suffered a big blow as two-time reigning champion Carlos Alcaraz said he would not be competing in the main draw for the first time since 2020 due to a wrist injury. Then a heat wave fell over Europe, causing high temperatures at the tournament which have affected the players. Most notably, the conditions seemed to play in a part in world No. 1 Jannik Sinner’s shock loss to Juan Manuel Cerúndolo.

The results have left the door open for other contenders. Will Casper Ruud or Sasha Zverev lift the trophy for the first time? Or will Novak Djokovic finally win his elusive 25th grand slam?

With still more than a week to go, here’s everything you need to know about one of the world’s oldest tennis tournaments:

A history beginning in the 19th century

Starting out as the “French Clay-Court Championships” in 1891 – allowing only players from France to compete – the French Open was officially created in 1925 when foreign players were first invited.

In 1927, a new arena was purpose built for France’s defense of its 1927 Davis Cup title and named after Roland Garros – not a sportsman, but a pioneering French aviator who was killed in World War I.

The French Open is one of tennis’ four grand slam tournaments along with Wimbledon, the US Open and the Australian Open – and the only one played on clay.

But are the courts really made of clay? The answer is not much.

Clay makes up just a small part of the tennis court, with 1-2 millimeters of crushed red bricks giving them their famous red hue.

Playing on clay is considerably different to playing on grass or hard courts.

Clay is more physically demanding as it is the slowest of the three surfaces, producing longer rallies, more running and more shots.

Grueling five-set matches on clay can push players close to their physical limits.

Matches on clay are also sometimes referred to as chess matches, where a well-placed shot can set up a winner two or three shots later.

Clay also has considerably more friction than grass or hard courts, allowing the ball to grip to the dust and bounce much higher, in particular shots with heavy topspin.

Even for a player as accomplished as Novak Djokovic, one of the sport’s all-time greats, clay continues to be a tricky surface to master.

“It’s a very demanding surface,” Djokovic said after winning his first clay court match post completing the “Golden Slam” at the Paris Olympics.

“We all know how tricky it is to play on clay; compared to the other surfaces, you always have to expect an extra one or two shots, balls coming back.”

While Roland Garros is considered the pinnacle of the clay season, there are many other ATP (Associatio

Por CNN en Español

EE.UU. e Irán logran acuerdo preliminar sobre el estrecho de Ormuz y el diálogo nuclear, pero Trump no lo ha ratificado. Cohete de Blue Origin explota durante una prueba en tierra. La incansable lucha de una hija para liberar a su padre de Alligator Alcatraz. Esto es lo que debes saber para comenzar el día. Primero la verdad.

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Los colombianos acuden a las urnas para elegir al próximo presidente. Los candidatos mayor opción son el oficialista Iván Cepeda y los opositores Abelardo de la Espriella y Paloma Valencia. Las encuestas anticipan una posible segunda vuelta. Está en juego la continuidad del proyecto político de Gustavo Petro o un giro hacia la derecha. Este domingo sigue la cobertura en vivo de CNN en Español con minuto a minuto, análisis en tiempo real y transmisión en directo con Fernando Ramos, Fernando del Rincón y Juan Carlos López.

• Enfrentamientos entre grupos armados en Guaviare dejaron al menos 48 muertos, dice Ejército de Colombia

Funcionarios estadounidenses anunciaron que se ha alcanzado un acuerdo preliminar en las conversaciones entre Estados Unidos e Irán, aunque el presidente Donald Trump no lo ha ratificado debido a la tensa situación que se vive en Medio Oriente.

Blue Origin informó este jueves que un cohete New Glenn presentó una anomalía mientras realizaba una prueba de encendido en tierra. Un video registrado durante la noche desde la Estación de la Fuerza Espacial de Cabo Cañaveral, en Florida, parece mostrar la explosión del vehículo en la plataforma de lanzamiento.

Con el inminente cierre del controversial centro de detención de ICE en Florida Alligator Alcatraz, cientos recluidos aún que siguen sin saber si serán liberados, deportados o trasladados a otros establecimientos. Uno de ellos, que estuvo retenido allí durante seis meses, fue liberado gracias al incansable trabajo de su hija.

• Perdió su permiso por una demora en DACA y pasó de la oficina a vender burritos

El Gobierno de Trump ha instruido discretamente a los fiscales federales en Miami que eviten llevar a cabo investigaciones penales contra la presidenta encargada de Venezuela, Delcy Rodríguez, un objetivo de larga data de la Administración para el Control de Drogas de Estados Unidos (DEA, por sus siglas en inglés), según funcionarios actuales y anteriores de las Read more

By Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

New York (CNN) — In New York’s Hudson Valley, the artist Anicka Yi has erected columns bursting with mercurial microbial life, in hues of acid green and coffee, arranged like an archaeological dig at Storm King Art Center. Some 60 miles away, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, two of her jellyfish-like flying machines take to the air on the fourth floor of the recently reopened New Museum, tentacles gently opening and closing as they drift overhead. And, earlier this month, one of her radiolaria-inspired sculptures, an oceanic unicellular organism made large with fiber optic strands and motors, hung suspended at the art fair Frieze New York, hypnotically curling its arms.

For better or worse, we are living in a time when our relationships to both machine and microbe are heightened — and perhaps wondering which might take us out for good first. But Yi has ruminated on these interconnections for more than two decades, making visible (and, sometimes, odorous) the systems around us that are microscopic, impermanent, or technologically abstract, often questioning our discomfort with them. She’s swabbed bacteria from successful women to create perfume, placed thousands of ants in an observable circuit-board-shaped colony, and created ecosystems for machines to learn within.

The South Korean-born, Brooklyn-based artist explained from her sunlit studio in Greenpoint that she’s fortunate to have reached the point in her career where her works have formed a larger universe.

“I hope that people who are familiar with my practice can thoughtfully weave these works together and see the broader syntax that I’m aiming for,” she said. “It takes time to develop that kind of scope and depth — (ideas) need to age and season and marinate, and you can’t do that as a young artist.”

Yi’s studio is filled with the remnants of her works. Glass biomorphic prototypes sit on shelves next to a collection of fragrances, with a bottle of Chanel No. 5 mixed in among her own proprietary scents. Cocoon-like lanterns lay open on a table. Samples of dyed and embroidered kelp are kept and numbered in bags on a board. A lone prototype from her Storm King commission stands in one corner, murky with the soil and water from the grounds of the sculpture park.

Yi has conjured a scene of ephemerality in “Message from the Mud,” through these column-dwelling microorganisms that are sensitive to light and heat and will only be displayed through the sculpture park’s summer season. The structures sit in a shallow pond at the center of excavated earth, like a ruined archaeological discovery from long ago.

“It’s a great way to encapsulate something about this deep history and deep time that Storm King stands on, and that goes so far beyond human time,” she said.

Uncertain outcomes

Like Yi’s previous endeavors making “living paintings” from bacterial cultures, the structure for “Message from the Mud” utilizes Winogradsky columns — small, self-contained ecosystems invented by the Russian-Ukrainian microbiologist Sergei Winogradsky a century and a half ago. Inside the columns, microbes and algae establish different zones over time, creating vividly hued layers. In Yi’s, they form from the local soil and pond water she’s included, in addition to some added ingredients, such as shredded newspapers for carbon, eggshells for calcium, and diatomaceous earth.

The other ingredient is time, she explained, “so they’ve just been cooking for two years.” That’s taken place in a heated onsite barn under UV lights. Unlike the artist’s precise algorithmic-based works, her Winogradsky columns are based on uncertainty. Without the right environmental variables, the microbial neighborhoods will simply die off — and Yi has also thought through all the left-field scenarios that could have jeopard

By CNN Staff, CNN

(CNN) — As negotiations between the United States and Iran edge toward a possible agreement, Tehran is increasingly signaling that any return to war would look very different from the last.

US officials said Thursday that a tentative agreement had been reached in talks between Tehran and Washington and was awaiting President Donald Trump’s approval. Yet even as negotiators reported progress, the military confrontation showed little sign of disappearing. The US launched its second round of strikes on Iran in a matter of days this week, while skirmishes continued Thursday evening in the Strait of Hormuz.

Iranian officials have used the negotiations to project confidence that they retain significant military options should diplomacy fail. The Revolutionary Guards said any renewed conflict would spread “far beyond the region,” threatening “crushing blows” and “utter ruin” in places opponents “cannot even imagine.”

The warnings come after a war that saw Iran target US bases, Israeli cities and critical infrastructure in Gulf Arab states, while effectively shutting shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and triggering a global energy shock.

Last week, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi warned that any future retaliation would “feature many more surprises,” while Iran’s military threatened to open “new fronts” using “new tools.” Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s top negotiator, said the armed forces had used the ceasefire period to rebuild their capabilities “at the highest level.”

Experts say much of the rhetoric is intended to deter further attacks. But they also warn that Tehran retains significant escalation options should diplomacy collapse.

Should war resume, here are some ways Iran could respond:

A new blockade

Iran cannot prevail against the US and Israel via conventional military means, so it has pursued deterrence by inflicting global economic pain through a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical maritime chokepoint. Emboldened by its success, Tehran may now seek to disrupt another vital maritime corridor.

By activating its regional proxy, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran could orchestrate the closure of the Bab al-Mandeb Strait, blocking another vital artery connecting major trade routes between Europe, Asia and the Arab world. Such a move would compound the worldwide economic pressure.

In 2023, more than 10% of the world’s seaborne oil trade passed through the Bab al-Mandeb Strait. After the Houthis created maritime insecurity in the region near Yemen in 2024, that share nearly halved for oil and fell to near zero for liquefied natural gas, according to the US Energy Information Administration.

“A simultaneous crisis in Bab al-Mandeb and the Strait of Hormuz would be far more serious, potentially affecting both Red Sea trade and Persian Gulf energy flows, which would raise oil prices, freight rates, and inflationary pressure worldwide,” Umud Shokri, an energy strategist and senior visiting fellow at George Mason University told CNN.

In recent years, the Houthis have demonstrated their ability to disrupt maritime navigation near Bab al-Mandeb by attacking, seizing and sinking vessels passing through its waters. But creating a blockade similar to the one in the Strait of Hormuz would be “much harder,” Shokri said.

“Bab al-Mandeb is not directly controlled by Iran, and any sustained closure would likely trigger a strong international naval

By Clare Duffy, CNN

New York (CNN) — Four months after TikTok’s US assets were spun off into a new joint venture to avert a ban, Sen. Ed Markey says Americans still don’t have enough information about whether the deal addresses national security concerns related to the popular video app.

Markey, a Massachusetts Democrat, on Friday sent letters to TikTok US and Oracle claiming the spin-off deal violated “the spirit, if not the letter” of a 2024 law meant to protect Americans on TikTok. The letters demand information about the group’s relationship to TikTok’s Chinese parent company ByteDance.

The letters could reignite lingering questions about the yearslong effort to secure TikTok’s future in the United States while protecting American users.

CNN has reached out to TikTok and Oracle for comment.

President Donald Trump, during his first term, vowed to ban the app. In 2024, then-President Joe Biden signed a law requiring that the US version of the app be spun off from ByteDance or be banned in the United States. Lawmakers feared that China could steal US users’ data or manipulate the content they see on the app. But during his second term, Trump repeatedly delayed enforcement of the law as he sought a deal to transfer control of the app’s US operations to American ownership.

One day before the ban was set to go into effect in January, a deal was finalized to transfer control of TikTok’s US user data and most of its US operations to a joint venture half owned by a consortium of investors comprised of Oracle, private equity firm Silver Lake and Emirati-backed investment firm MGX. Existing ByteDance investors held just over 30% of the joint venture, and 19.9% was retained by ByteDance, according to the group.

The joint venture is led by CEO Adam Presser — who previously oversaw efforts to secure US TikTok users’ data — and overseen by a board consisting of investor representatives as well as TikTok CEO Shou Chew.

But critics questioned if the arrangement fully addressed the core national security concerns that motivated the TikTok ban legislation in the first place because ByteDance was set to retain control of some of the US app’s operations. The TikTok ban-or-sale law prohibited “any cooperation with respect to the operation of a content recommendation algorithm” between ByteDance and a new potential American ownership group.

The joint venture said it planned retrain TikTok’s algorithm on US user data and moderate content for US users and that Oracle would oversee storage of Americans’ data. However, the ByteDance-controlled global TikTok entity would continue to manage e-commerce, advertising and marketing on the new US platform. And the new joint venture said it would continue to license the TikTok algorithm from ByteDance before retraining and reviewing it, something Chinese officials had previously suggested could help to ensure the deal would be approved by Beijing.

“President Trump managed to keep TikTok online only by ignoring the law’s central goal and relying on vague, unproven safeguards to address the legitimate risks to national security,” Markey said in his Friday letter to TikTok US. “Congress and the American people need to understand if and how this deal protects against Chinese influence over TikTok’s