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First set: *Sabalenka 2-2 Pegula (* – denotes next server). A second double fault already for Pegula, but she forces Sabalenka to stretch for an impossible shot on the next point, then notches her first ace. Her next serve is almost as good, but Sabalenka returns to start a marvelous point – Pegula tries an audacious drop shot, Sabalenka scrambles to cover, Pegula laces a hard shot, Sabalenka hits back, and Pegula’s lob attempt is just a hair long.

After all that, though, Pegula whips through two points, and we’re still on serve.

Police say one 30-year-old died at the scene on the Hume highway and the other, also 30, was airlifted to hospital but died soon afterwards

Two women have died after being hit by a car while trying to help an injured kangaroo on a busy freeway in Melbourne’s north.

Victorian police said emergency services had been called to reports two females were struck by a car on the Hume Freeway just after 7.30pm.

Bryan Hooper’s first-degree murder conviction vacated after woman confessed to 1998 killing of Ann Prazniak

A Minnesota man wrongly convicted of murder who spent nearly three decades in prison after being falsely implicated by a woman who has since confessed to the crime has been released.

State district court judge Marta Chou had vacated Bryan Hooper Sr’s first-degree murder conviction the day before. He was released on Thursday morning from Stillwater correctional facility, a Great North Innocence Project spokesperson said.

Not wanting kids isn’t especially unusual, advice columnist Eleanor Gordon-Smith writes. It might help to frame the conversation as what you’re saying yes to rather than what you’re refusing

• Read more Leading questions

I know that I don’t want to have any children, and that to not offer this up early in any relationship would make me a hypocrite. But I have become convinced that the reason I never meet anyone is because I am forthright about my opinion about children. How can I meet someone without having to be a liar or a hypocrite?

Eleanor says: If it’s your job to figure out when to share this, it’s also a partner’s job to figure out when to ask. Wanting kids isn’t like monogamy or working for a living, where until instructed otherwise people can basically assume that’s your plan. More people than ever are deciding they don’t want kids. The fact that you’re one of them is not shocking, confronting or even especially unusual. If that’s a dealbreaker for a partner, they need to share their preference as much as you need to share yours.

Trump had told Mike Johnson that he would not spend $4.9bn in congressionally approved foreign aid

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The Trump administration must release billions of dollars in foreign aid approved by Congress, including money that Donald Trump said last week he will not be spending, a federal judge has ordered.

US District Judge Amir Ali in Washington ruled on Wednesday that the move by the Republican administration was probably illegal and issued a preliminary injunction ordering the release of $11.5bn that is set to expire at the end of the month.

• Breach to win 50th cap and has never lost with England

• Alex Matthews captains team aiming to win to seal Pool A

Jess Breach said England want to be “the predator” and not prey for other teams at the Women’s Rugby World Cup after she was named to win her 50th cap against Australia in the Red Roses’ final pool game.

Australia need to beat the hosts on Saturday or pick up a bonus point to secure a quarter-final spot; beyond that it will come down to points ­difference and how the earlier USA v Samoa game pans out. ­Messaging in the England camp this week has been about flipping the script to being viewed as the hunters.

Move puts on hold federal judge’s order last month to close Florida immigration facility

An appellate panel on Thursday put on hold an order to wind down operations at the “Alligator Alcatraz” immigration center in the Florida Everglades, allowing its construction and operation to continue.

Last month a federal judge in Miami had ordered the closure of the Trump administration’s notorious immigration jail within 60 days, and ruled that no more detainees were to be brought to the facility while it was being wound down.

• Club affected by Premier League and Uefa financial fair play

• ‘It’s crazy. We’re going to have to deal with what we’ve got’

Ezri Konsa has said that football’s spending regulations “killed” Aston Villa during a difficult summer transfer window. The club, who have started the season badly with one point from three games and no goals scored, were hemmed in by the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules and the equivalent in Uefa competition.

Villa paid out one major fee – £30.5m to Nice for Evann Guessand – and made only four further first-team additions, Marco Bizot being followed in on deadline day by Victor Lindelöf, Harvey Elliott and Jadon Sancho. The club were open to selling Emiliano Martínez only for there to be no buyer and moved Jacob Ramsey to Newcastle for £39m despite Unai Emery preferring to keep him. As a homegrown player, Ramsey counted as pure profit on the books.

A 19th-century settlement founded by Chinese miners and said to have hosted outlaw Black Bart was devastated by fire

Shortly after lightning sparked dozens of wildfires in California’s Sierra Nevada foothills this week, author Stephen Provost received news that devastated him.

Fire was sweeping through Chinese Camp, a Gold Rush-era town that a group of Chinese miners founded in the 19th century after they were driven out of a nearby settlement. The town’s almost 100 residents were forced to evacuate and news reports showed flames consuming historic buildings.

Tesla CEO’s absence is marked departure from his constant presence at the White House in early days of Trump 2.0

When Donald Trump hosts leaders from the biggest US tech companies at a lavish Rose Garden dinner on Thursday night, there will be one notable absence. Elon Musk, once inseparable from Trump and a constant, contentious presence in the White House, will not be in attendance.

The dinner, which will include Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Apple’s Tim Cook and OpenAI’s Sam Altman, is exactly the type of event where Musk would have sat at Trump’s right hand only a few months ago. Instead, the Tesla CEO stated on his social media platform X that he was invited but could not make it. He said he planned to send a representative. He spent the day on X posting a familiar stream of attacks on immigration and trans people.

Toronto film festival: the star fails to make much of an impression in a slight and unpolished project filmed in Warsaw over the Brat summer of 2024

The singer Charli xcx is, by her own admission, a workaholic – no sooner had she released Brat, the most dominant pop album and aesthetic of 2024, than she began work on its sequel, dropped just four months later. Insouciant and party-centric as her image may be, the pop star born Charlotte Aitchison is a sharp student of pop culture; she knows the audience demand for pop stars’ constant reinvention. The next career phase, it seems, is acting, with no less prodigiousness than music; the 33-year-old has seven films in the pipeline as a supporting or lead actor.

Charli is neither the full star nor the anchor of Erupcja (Eruption), directed by Pete Ohs, but she will inevitably be the reason most English speakers hear of it. Filmed over a few weeks in Warsaw, Poland, in August 2024, in the heat of Brat summer, Erupcja seems, on paper, like a sensible step for a pop star making her first foray into movies. Ohs is an unconventional, independent film-maker, who has dabbled in different genres – supernatural horror, sci-fi – and films chronologically, writing collaboratively as he goes. Charli spent the better part of a decade bridging pop music’s underground and mainstream. Slight, contained, relatively undemanding of its actors or its audience, it’s a safe trial run.

Erupcja is screening at the Toronto film festival and will be released at a later date

• 2nd ODI: South Africa, 330-8, bt England, 325-9, by 5 runs

• Visitors secure series despite Archer’s late cameo

It has been a South African summer at Lord’s. After the World Test Championship triumph in June came a second to savour at the home of cricket: a narrow five-run win under lights that sealed their first one-day international series victory on English soil for 27 years.

As the tourists kept the celebrations in check – this was never going to top the final at the same venue three months ago – England reflected on a fifth ODI series defeat from their last six. They improved on Tuesday’s Headingley howler, even if it would have been hard to have played any worse.

Officials to investigate claims of mortgage fraud against Cook, who has refused to accept firing by Donald Trump

The US justice department has initiated a criminal investigation into mortgage fraud claims against Federal Reserve governor Lisa Cook, according to new reports, as a lawsuit she filed against Donald Trump over her firing makes its way through court.

Lawyers with the justice department have issued subpoenas for the investigation, according to the Wall Street Journal.

South-east of country rocked as rescuers struggle to find survivors of first quake

A magnitude 6.2 earthquake has shaken Afghanistan as the death toll from the devastating quake on Sunday rose to more than 2,200.

It struck south-eastern regions on Thursday night, according to the Helmholtz Centre for Geosciences in Germany. It was not immediately clear how much damage there was.

Health secretary defends his leadership as Democrats attack his vaccine policy and demand his resignation

• US politics live – latest updates

The US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, faced the Senate finance committee in a tense and combative hearing on Thursday, during which lawmakers questioned his remarks expressing vaccine skepticism, claims that the scientific community is deeply politicized and the ongoing turmoil plaguing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

In a hearing lasting more than three hours and ostensibly about the Trump administration’s healthcare agenda, Kennedy defended his leadership at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), claiming that his time at the agency will be focused on “unbiased, politics-free, transparent, evidence-based science in the public interest”.

Royal Canadian Mounted Police said the suspect who attacked Hollow Water First Nation has also died

One person has been killed and six others injured in a mass stabbing in an Indigenous community in central Canada, according to federal police who said that the the suspect also died in the incident.

The violence occurred in Hollow Water First Nation, a remote community with about 1,000 residents, 217km (135 miles) north of Manitoba’s provincial capital, Winnipeg, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police told AFP.

French president says allies would either deploy ‘reassurance force’ troops to Ukraine, or be present in the area on land, sea or in the air

Twenty-six nations have pledged to provide postwar security guarantees to Ukraine, including an international force on land and sea and in the air, Emmanuel Macron said after a summit at which European leaders sought to pin down Donald Trump on the level of support he is willing to give Kyiv.

“The day the conflict stops, the security guarantees will be deployed,” the French president told a press conference at the Élysée Palace in Paris, standing alongside Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Michael H Schill led the institution for three years, during which Trump administration slashed nearly $800m

The president of Northwestern University said Thursday that he was stepping down amid a turbulent period marked by clashes with Republican lawmakers and steep federal funding cuts under the Trump administration that forced widespread layoffs.

Michael H Schill, who has led the institution for three years, has been under heavy scrutiny in conservative circles this year. The Trump administration slashed nearly $800m in research funding after sustained criticism from Republicans.

• Briton has struggled in uncompetitive Scuderia car

• ‘It’s been an emotional rollercoaster … but that’s life’

Lewis Hamilton has described his time at Ferrari as an “emotional rollercoaster” as he prepares to drive for the Scuderia at their home grand prix in Monza for the first time this weekend.

Hamilton, who observed bluntly that he had no expectation his first season would prove so “volatile”, has struggled with an uncompetitive car as well as having to adapt to a new team, having enjoyed enormous success in the previous 12 years with Mercedes.

Residents recall smoke, screams and a mountain of bodies at site of ‘one of the biggest tragedies in our recent history’

António Azevedo was in central Lisbon early on Wednesday evening, waiting to gather enough tourists for a ride in his tuk-tuk, when he heard what sounded like dozens of glass containers being dropped into rubbish trucks.

The driver looked around Restauradores Square but saw no trucks, only smoke rising from the lower station of the Elevador da Glória funicular railway, 100 metres from where his vehicle was parked.

The pair, born 16 years apart, will have met at every single major when they enter Arthur Ashe Stadium on Friday

Carlos Alcaraz took his final leave from Rod Laver Arena this year consumed by frustration. Losing at the Australian Open, the first grand slam tournament of the year, was painful enough, but Alcaraz’s disappointment was particularly down to how he had lost.

Novak Djokovic had visibly begun to struggle with a leg injury early in their four-set quarter-final, but instead of focusing on his own game, Alcaraz found himself staring across the net and thinking too much about his opponent’s condition rather than about what he needed to win. While the Spaniard’s focus wavered, Djokovic’s difficulties inspired his most offensive, decisive tennis, and he willed himself to a miraculous victory.

• 20-year-old USWNT winger agrees five-year contract

• Chelsea have until 11pm BST to complete club-record deal

Chelsea are on the verge of signing the United States winger Alyssa Thompson from Angel City on the Women’s Super League’s transfer deadline day, for an upfront fee understood to be just shy of $1.5m (£1.1m), which sources say could climb close to a world-record sum with potential add-ons.

The 20-year-old completed a medical on Thursday in London, after boarding a flight from Los Angeles late on Wednesday night, amid extensive negotiations between the two clubs. All parties are increasingly confident the move will be finalised in time for the 11pm BST transfer deadline.

Airborne particles cause toxic clumps of proteins in brain that are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, study indicates

Fine-particulate air pollution can drive devastating forms of dementia by triggering the formation of toxic clumps of protein that destroy nerve cells as they spread through the brain, research suggests.

Exposure to the airborne particles causes proteins in the brain to misfold into the clumps, which are hallmarks of Lewy body dementia, the second most common form of dementia after Alzheimer’s disease.

• Korean rival returns Jones’ 1988 medal in surprise

• Park Si-hun: ‘It belongs to you’ at Florida reunion

• Bout’s judging remains infamous Olympic scandal

Roy Jones Jr has been handed the Olympic gold medal he was controversially denied in 1988 in an extraordinary act of sportsmanship by the South Korean fighter who beat him.

Hall of Fame boxer Jones shared a video on Wednesday from two years ago that showed Park Si-hun visiting the American’s ranch in Pensacola, Florida to present him with the light middleweight gold medal.