CENTRE COURT, THE ALL ENGLAND CLUB — Amanda Anisimova has arrived.

The former teen sensation, who spent several years in the tennis wilderness following the sudden death of her father and coach when she was 17, upset the world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka 6-4, 4-6, 6-4 under a broiling sun on Centre Court Thursday to make her first Grand Slam final at Wimbledon. She also becomes the first American finalist at Wimbledon since Serena Williams in 2019.

In a duel of power, periods of inconsistency and tight games at important times, Anisimova kept her nerve when the match was on the line to keep Sabalenka from making the only major final she has never played. She came alive with just enough belief, just when Sabalenka looked to be clawing her way back— as she had done so many times during this tournament and during this match.

“I knew that I was going to really have to go for it,” Anisimova said when it was over. “Her level just kept increasing and getting better and better throughout the match. So to be able to come on top, I knew that I wasn’t just going to win off of her mistakes.”

For Sabalenka, it was another tough upset loss at the hands of an American seizing an opportunity in the final stages of a Grand Slam. She has played three Grand Slams since becoming the world No. 1 for a second time last fall, having spent two months at the top of the sport in 2023.

She now finds herself in a curious position. Her consistency at majors — 11 semifinal-or-better finishes at her past 12 — is remarkable. But her record when things get tight in those late stages is unspooling. She is now 3-9 in deciding sets of semifinals and finals at the Grand Slams.

She lost to Madison Keys in the Australian Open final, and to Coco Gauff last month in the French Open final. She looked across the net Thursday and saw another talented American woman — there are loads of them these days. Sabaleka came up just short once more.

This one was different than a month ago, when she blew up on the court, yelling at herself and her box as the match against Gauff slipped away. Then she exploded in her post-match news conference, arguing that Gauff had not won the match. She had lost it, in part because of the windy conditions. She said Iga Świątek, the player she had beaten in the semifinal, would have beaten Gauff that day.

On Centre Court Thursday, as Anisimova got closer to the win, Sabalenka mostly kept her cool.

“We all can lose control over our emotions, it’s absolutely normal,” Sabalenka said in her news conference.

“Every time when I was really that close in that match today to completely lose it and start… I don’t know… yelling, screaming, smashing the rackets, I keep reminding myself that’s not an option, and it’s not going to help me to stay in the match and to fight for my dream.”

She hugged Anisimova at the net and was magnanimous in her comments about her after. She did admit that Anisimova had “pissed her off,” when she reacted to the chair umpire telling her she had celebrated a shot too early by saying that she was doing what Sabalenka does “all the time” by extending her grunt through the ball.

“She was more brave today,” Sabalenka said.

“When I was just, like, trying to stay in the point, she was playing more aggressive.

“Sometimes I was just stopping my arms, making mistakes which I shouldn’t be making. I think I should have been a little bit more brave today and remember that I’m on the top of the ranking, and I can do that. I think at some point at the match I forgot about that.”

When she did, Anisimova was there to become the protagonist in a stirring narrative that is still unfolding.

For the 23-year-old Floridian, the win was the next high watermark in a remarkable journey over the past year. Last June, as she muddled through her comeback from nearly a year of battling injuries and burnout, Anisimova fell in the final round of Wimbledon qualifying.

During the next year, each time she achieved an encouraging result, playing deep into tournaments in Washington, D.C. and Canada and even winning in Doha in February for her first WTA 1,000 title, just below the level of a Grand Slam, her body would abandon her. She struggled with injuries to her back and hip that prevented her from practicing, training and competing as much as she liked.

In April, she hired a physiotherapist named Shadi Soleymani to take charge of her health and fitness, and she has been on the upswing ever since.

For a few minutes, it appeared that Sabalenka had turned the match. She drew even as Anisimova finally faltered on serve at 3-3 in the second set, missing two forehands and double-faulting to give Sabalenka her first service break of the afternoon. Anisimova made a gallant effort to get back in the set as Sabalenka tried to serve it out. However, Sabalenka snuffed out those efforts with a couple of massive serves, the last one clanking off Anisimova’s strings and frame.

On to a third set they went, with Sabalenka starting it just as she had finished the last, breaking a faltering Anisimova at love. And then, seemingly out of nowhere, Sabalenka went off the boil, her forehands going wide and long at the absolute worst time. One let Anisimova break right back for 1-1. With a sitter at the net, she pounded another just long, and all of a sudden Anisimova had a 3-1 lead.

The American had kept her opponent’s variety out of the contest for most of the match, with Sabalenka playing just nine points at the net through three sets when it was done. However, the world No. 1 brought it to the party at the end, trying to bring Anisimova to the net as she had done in Paris at the last major. Then, she fileted Anisimova in the front of the court. Here, Anisimova responded in kind, hitting drop shots of her own, refusing to let Sabalenka draw her into a battle she thought she would win easily.

From there, destiny seemed to take over. As Anisimova tried to survive a tight game at 4-2, she cracked a forehand down the line that might have missed. It ticked the net and dropped into the front of the court for the game. She pumped her fist, foregoing the usual apology for good luck. It was that kind of match, with Sabalenka having complained about an early celebration from Anisimova on a winner.

On her first match point, Anisimova missed on her vaunted backhand on a ball right in her slot. She missed again on the same shot to allow Sabalenka a last chance to do what she has done all year and retrieve a seemingly lost position. Instead, the world No. 1 gave her three opportunities to win, one earned by a stunning Anisimova short slice — the kind Sabalenka would so normally put into play.

Sabalenka played two without fear, but Anisimova returned the favor on the third, blasting a forehand to the postage stamp on the most high-stakes point of her career to date.

She turned to her box with a look of disbelief, though really, this is where she was supposed to be all along.

In tennis though, as in most sports, there is no “supposed to” or “destiny” without hard work and smart decisions.

When her father and main tennis guru, Konstantin, died of a sudden heart attack at 52 in 2019, Anisimova took a brief break, but she largely played through her grief. She spent the next two seasons tumbling down the rankings, before she climbed back to the top 30 in 2022.

By early in 2023, tennis had became too much.

That’s when she made the smart decision to take a break, to figure out whether she wanted to play any more. She took college courses. She pursued her interests in art, as she put the rackets away and stopped doing the main thing she had done since she was a small girl, one of countless young Russians whose parents had emigrated to America and watched Maria Sharapova’s father turn her into a champion and millionaire many times over. Anisimova even looked a bit like her, nearly six-feet tall with a long blond ponytail flowing behind her visor.

By 2024, she was ready to give tennis a go again. The comeback happened in fits and starts, often stalled by that series of recurring injuries. She worked with a coach and a trainer, but until she found Soleymani earlier this year, she never had someone keeping watch over her nutrition, her sleep habits, and searching for the reasons she kept getting injured.

First Soleymani helped her get healthy, increasing her strength and flexebility down her problematic left side that seemed to be at the root of her back and hip problems. Then she was able to train hard enough to get fitter and stronger. Then the wins began to pile up, and the confidence that she could play long matches day after day returned.

All of that has been on display this week. She survived a three-set battle against Londa Nosková in the fourth round. She overcame her jitters and a resurgent Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova to prevail in a marathon second-set tiebreak in the quarterfinal.

Then, on Thursday, she played some of her best tennis at the end, as the match stretched past the two-hour mark on a day that felt far more like Florida than London and had multiple fans requiring medical attention in the sun-splashed seats of Centre Court.

She stayed cool enough to find a way into her first Grand Slam final, in this case, the biggest one of all. As each match point slipped away, her nerves rose. Then she saw the forehand in her strike zone and thumped it.

Now she gets Swiatek on Saturday, a five-time Grand Slam champion also playing in her first Wimbledon final.

“Obviously I haven’t been in a Grand Slam final before, but I’ve experienced a lot of moments similar and a lot of high-stakes matches,” Anisimova said of what lies ahead.

“I always tell myself ahead of the game to enjoy every moment, not really concentrate on the finish line or the outcome, and just to really stay in the present. So I’ll just keep telling myself that.”

Another good decision.

(Photo: Julian Finney / Getty Images)

The cause of death for actor Julian McMahon has been revealed.

McMahon, known for his starring roles in Nip/Tuck, Charmed, FBI: Most Wanted and the 2000s Fantastic Four movies, died from lung metastasis as a result of head and neck metastatic cancer, according to a Cremation Approval Summary Report from the Pinellas County Medical Examiner’s Office in Florida, obtained by People.

The report revealed the manner of death was ruled as natural.

McMahon died July 2 in Clearwater, Florida, his wife Kelly McMahon announced July 4 in a statement to Deadline.

“With an open heart, I wish to share with the world that my beloved husband, Julian McMahon, died peacefully this week after a valiant effort to overcome cancer,” she said. “Julian loved life. He loved his family. He loved his friends. He loved his work, and he loved his fans. His deepest wish was to bring joy into as many lives as possible. We ask for support during this time to allow our family to grieve in privacy. And we wish for all of those to whom Julian brought joy, to continue to find joy in life. We are grateful for the memories.”

McMahon began acting career in his native Australia, on the short-lived 1989 Aussie daytime soap The Power, the Passion. He segued to Australia’s long-running Home and Away, where he appeared from 1990-91 before making his feature acting debut as a lead opposite Elliott Gould in the 1992 Australian-American movie Wet and Wild Summer! 

He then moved to Hollywood, where he was cast in NBC’s Another World in 1993. He went on to primetime as a series regular on the network’s crime drama Profiler for its four-season run. His then joined WB’s popular supernatural drama Charmed. His first series lead came in Ryan Murphy’s hit plastic surgery drama Nip/Tuck, which ran on FX for six seasons and earned him a Golden Globe nomination. More recently he starred in CBS’ FBI: Most Wanted as team leader Jess LaCroix from the FBI’s Most Wanted Unit for three seasons before his surprise March 2022 exit.

In features, he is best known for his starring role as Dr. Doom in Tim Story’s two Fantastic Four movies, the 2005 Fantastic Four and the 2007 sequel Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer. 

His final role was on Netflix’s murder mystery series The Residence.

LONDON (AP) — Years of American-led investment into AIDS programs has reduced the number of people killed by the disease to the lowest levels seen in more than three decades and provided life-saving medicines for some of the world’s most vulnerable.

But in the last six months, the sudden withdrawal of U.S. money has caused a “systemic shock,” U.N. officials warned, adding that if the funding isn’t replaced, it could lead to more than 4 million AIDS-related deaths and 6 million more HIV infections by 2029.

A new UNAIDS report released Thursday said the funding losses have “already destabilized supply chains, led to the closure of health facilities, left thousands of health clinics without staff, set back prevention programs, disrupted HIV testing efforts and forced many community organizations to reduce or halt their HIV activities.”

It also said that it feared other major donors scaled back their support, reversing decades of progress against AIDS worldwide — and that the strong multilateral cooperation is in jeopardy because of wars, geopolitical shifts and climate change.

A ‘lifeline’ removed

The $4 billion that the United States pledged for the global HIV response for 2025 disappeared virtually overnight in January, when U.S. President Donald Trump ordered that all foreign aid be suspended and later moved to shutter the U.S. AID agency.

Andrew Hill, an HIV expert at the University of Liverpool who is not connected to the United Nations, said that while Trump is entitled to spend U.S. money as he sees fit, “any responsible government would have given advance warning so countries could plan,” instead of stranding patients in Africa where clinics were closed overnight.

The U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, was launched in 2003 by U.S. President George W. Bush, the biggest-ever commitment by any country focused on a single disease.

UNAIDS called the program a “lifeline” for countries with high HIV rates, and said that it supported testing for 84.1 million people, treatment for 20.6 million, among other initiatives. According to data from Nigeria, PEPFAR also funded 99.9% of the country’s budget for medicines taken to prevent HIV.

U.N. Assistant Secretary-General Angeli Achrekar, a UNAIDS deputy executive director who was PEPFAR’s principal deputy coordinator until January 2023, said the program is under review by the Trump administration though Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued a waiver “to continue life-saving treatment.”

““The extent to which it will continue in the future, we don’t know,” she told a video news conference with U.N. reporters in New York. “We are cautiously hopeful that PEPFAR will continue to support both prevention and treatment services.”

A gap impossible to fill

In 2024, there were about 630,000 AIDS-related deaths worldwide, per a UNAIDS estimate — the figure has remained about the same since 2022 after peaking at about 2 million deaths in 2004.

Even before the U.S. funding cuts, progress against curbing HIV was uneven. UNAIDS said that half of all new infections are in sub-Saharan Africa.

Tom Ellman of Doctors Without Borders said that while some poorer countries were now moving to fund more of their own HIV programs, it would be impossible to fill the gap left by the U.S.

“There’s nothing we can do that will protect these countries from the sudden, vicious withdrawal of support from the U.S.,” said Ellman, head of the group’s South Africa medical unit.

Experts also fear another significant loss — data.

The U.S. paid for most HIV surveillance in African countries, including hospital, patient and electronic records, all of which has now abruptly ceased, according to Dr. Chris Beyrer, director of the Global Health Institute at Duke University.

“Without reliable data about how HIV is spreading, it will be incredibly hard to stop it,” he said.

A new drug revives hope

The uncertainty comes in the wake of a twice-yearly injectable that many hope could end HIV. Studies published last year showed that the drug from pharmaceutical maker Gilead was 100% effective in preventing the virus.

At a launch event Thursday, South Africa’s health minister Aaron Motsoaledi said the country would “move mountains and rivers to make sure every adolescent girl who needs it will get it,” saying that the continent’s past dependence upon US aid was “scary.”

Last month, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the drug, called Yeztugo, a move that should have been a “threshold moment” for stopping the AIDS epidemic, said Peter Maybarduk of the advocacy group Public Citizen.

But activists like Maybarduk said Gilead’s pricing will put it out of reach of many countries that need it. Gilead has agreed to sell generic versions of the drug in 120 poor countries with high HIV rates but has excluded nearly all of Latin America, where rates are far lower but increasing.

“We could be ending AIDS,” Maybarduk said. “Instead, the U.S. is abandoning the fight.”

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Associated Press writer Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed to this report.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP receives financial support for global health and development coverage in Africa from the Gates Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.

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A previous version of this story was corrected to show that the name of the drug is Yeztugo, not Sunlenca.