ASUNCION — An early goal from Neymar and a late second from Lucas Paqueta gave Brazil a 2-0 win against Paraguay in a World Cup qualifier in Asuncion on Tuesday, giving them a sixth straight victory in South America’s preliminaries.

JOEL Embiid scored a playoff-career-high 40 points and grabbed 13 rebounds Tuesday as the host Philadelphia 76ers evened their Eastern Conference semifinal series with a 118-102 victory over the Atlanta Hawks in Game 2.

DONOVAN Mitchell scored 32 of his 45 points in the second half as the Utah Jazz rallied to defeat the Los Angeles Clippers (112-109) Tuesday night in Salt Lake City to take a 1-0 lead in the Western Conference semifinals.

THE Philippine national men’s football team lost to China, 0-2, as it resumed its second round joint 2022 International Federation of Association Football (FIFA) World Cup and 2023 Asian Football Confederation (AFC) Asian Cup Qualifiers bid  on early Tuesday (Manila time) in the United Arab Emirates.

PARIS — Iga Świątek held off a fierce challenge from Ukraine’s Marta Kostyuk to advance into the quarterfinals of the French Open with a (6-3, 6-4) victory on Monday.

KEVIN Durant scored 32 points in three quarters and the Brooklyn Nets did not miss a beat without James Harden, cruising to a 125-86 rout of the Milwaukee Bucks on Monday in Game 2 of the Eastern Conference semifinals in New York.

US men’s basketball coach Gregg Popovich should not be counting on LeBron James and Anthony Davis for this summer’s Olympic team, according to a report on Monday that the Lakers stars will skip the Tokyo Games.

THE NBA fined Daryl Morey, the Philadelphia 76ers’ president of basketball operations, $75,000 for violating the league’s anti-tampering rule on Monday.

Yuka Saso could have given up after an even-par third round found her surrendering the lead she took the day before. The United States Women’s Open was proving to be more exacting than she previously figured, with her penultimate 18 yielding four bogeys for her, including one on the same last hole she birdied in her first two forays. Her sputtering finish at the famed Lake Course of The Olympic Club in San Francisco, California, put her one back of the popular and surging Lexi Thompson heading into the final round.

SAN FRANCISCO — Yuka Saso battled back from a horrid start to best Japan’s Nasa Hataoka in the third hole of a sudden death playoff to win the 76th US Women’s Open golf championship at the Olympic Club in San Francisco on Sunday.

TRAE Young had 35 points and 10 assists and the fifth-seeded Atlanta Hawks upset the top-seeded and host Philadelphia 76ers (128-124) in the opening game of the Eastern Conference semifinals on Sunday afternoon.

PARIS — Serena Williams’ wait for a record-equalling 24th Grand Slam singles title goes on after the American was beaten (6-3, 7-5) by an inspired Elena Rybakina in the French Open fourth round on Sunday.