AFP

Serena Williams aims to extend her emotional farewell tour at the US Open on Friday as China’s Wu Yibing targets a mammoth upset against men’s champion Daniil Medvedev.

After knocking out world number two Anett Kontaveit on Wednesday, Williams has fans daring to dream of a fairytale 24th Grand Slam title as she prepares to retire from the sport.

The 40-year-old tennis icon will crank up the hysteria further on Friday if she beats Australia’s Ajla Tomljanovic on the Arthur Ashe Stadium court to reach the last 16.

Williams, who didn’t play for a year before returning to singles tennis at Wimbledon in June, has been careful to dampen down expectations in what is likely to be her final tournament, dismissing her chances of victory as “fan fantasy.”

But the manner of her second round win over Kontaveit, when she reeled off a series of vintage winners to clinch the decisive third set, has left many wondering if the fantasy may yet become reality.

“There are a lot of very strong girls there in the draw but I think if she plays really good tennis, I think she always has a chance to win,” was Kontaveit’s verdict.

Certainly, Williams’ path to what would be a record-equalling 24th Grand Slam singles final has been blown open by the early demise of several higher-ranked rivals.

Three of the top four seeds have already fallen, as well as both of last year’s finalists, 2021 champion Emma Raducanu and Canada’s Leylah Fernandez.

Williams herself says she is playing without pressure, liberated from the customary expectation that accompanied her Grand Slam campaigns through the years.

“I don’t have anything to prove, I don’t have anything to win. I have absolutely nothing to lose,” Williams said.

Williams’ campaign will also be boosted by the fact that she is no longer expending energy in the doubles.

The veteran and elder sister Venus were eliminated in the first round on Thursday.

Elsewhere in the women’s draw on Friday, Tunisia’s fifth-seeded Ons Jabeur made it to the fourth round at the 10th attempt with a 4-6, 6-4, 6-3 victory over 31st seed Shelby Rogers.

“I know that I don’t play the best on hard court, but it’s always amazing to see how I’m improving, how I’m pushing my limits,” Jabeur said. 

“I just don’t want to stop here … I’m just gonna keep fighting and keep pushing and breaking records here.”

Jabeur will face 18th seed Veronika Kudermetova in the last 16. The Russian blew past Hungary’s Dalma Galfi 6-2, 6-0.

– David v Goliath –

In the men’s draw, Chinese youngster Wu would create one of the biggest shocks in Open history with an upset in his ‘David & Goliath’ meeting with world number one Medvedev.

The charismatic 22-year-old has been quietly accumulating milestones in New York, becoming the first man from China to win a Grand Slam singles match in 63 years in the opening round, before becoming the first Chinese man ever to reach the third round of the US Open with Wednesday’s win over Nuno Borges.

Wu, winner of the US Open junior crown in 2017, hardly played for three years prior to this season due to injury and the Covid-19 pandemic.

In March, his world ranking stood at 1,869, but he has rapidly ascended to 174th since then.

“I think there’s more to come,” Wu said after his second round defeat of Borges. 

“I feel like I have this level to play here in the Grand Slam. Hopefully I keep health, keep playing more Grand Slams.”

Wu has been part of a successful contingent of Chinese players at the US Open. 

Four Chinese women have reached the third round of the tournament, another Grand Slam first, and one of them, Zhang Shuai advanced to the fourth round on Friday with a 6-2, 6-4 win over Canada’s Rebecca Marino.

US actress and activist Jane Fonda announced Friday that she has cancer, and has begun chemotherapy in her battle against the disease.

The 84-year-old Oscar winner, a prominent supporter of the Democratic Party, vowed to fight the “very treatable” illness.

“I’ve been diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma and have started chemo treatments,” she wrote on her verified Instagram account.

“This is a very treatable cancer. 80 percent of people survive, so I feel very lucky. 

“I’m also lucky because I have health insurance and access to the best doctors and treatments.”

Fonda, an avowed environmentalist and social campaigner, said her position was more fortunate than that of many others in her situation.

“Almost every family in America has had to deal with cancer at one time or another and far too many don’t have access to the quality health care I am receiving and this is not right,” she wrote.

Non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma is a kind of cancer that starts in the lymphatic system, a part of the body’s immune defenses, and can develop into widespread tumors.

According to the Mayo Clinic, symptoms can include: swollen lymph nodes, abdominal pain or swelling, chest pain, coughing or trouble breathing, as well as persistent fatigue and fever.

“In most instances, doctors don’t know what causes non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma,” the clinic says on its website.

“It begins when your body produces too many abnormal lymphocytes, which are a type of white blood cell.”

Usually those cells die, and the body creates new ones to replace them — but in non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma, they don’t, even as the body keeps making more.

“This oversupply of lymphocytes crowds into your lymph nodes, causing them to swell,” the clinic’s website states.

– Climate activism –

Fonda vowed that her treatment will not impede her environmental campaigning, and urged action on fossil fuel use, which she linked to cancer.

“I’m doing chemo for six months and am handling the treatments quite well and, believe me, I will not let any of this interfere with my climate activism.

“We’re living through the most consequential time in human history because what we do or don’t do right now will determine what kind of future there will be.

“I will not allow cancer to keep me from doing all I can, using every tool in my toolbox.”

She pointed to November midterm elections which could determine whether US President Joe Biden’s Democrats lose control of both houses of Congress, saying they were “beyond consequential.”

As a result, “you can count on me to be right there together with you as we grow our army of climate champions,” she wrote.

Fonda first appeared on screen in 1960, and scored Academy Awards for best actress for “Klute” (1971) and “Coming Home” (1978).

She has five other Oscar nominations in her career, four of them for best lead actress.

As well as anti-war activism during the US-Vietnam war that saw her dubbed “Hanoi Jane” and blacklisted in Hollywood, she was also a major figure in the home fitness video craze of the 1980s.

Fonda continues to work, and appears as the voice of an elegant dragon who is the CEO of a luck-making operation in the Apple TV+ animated movie “Luck.” 

She also stars in the popular, long-running Netflix hit “Grace and Frankie.”

Fonda comes from a family of famous stars; her father Henry was a legend of the big screen appearing as the hold-out juror in “12 Angry Men,” and winning best actor for “On Golden Pond” (1981).

Her brother Peter was a seminal figure in 1960s counterculture, whose turn in “Easy Rider” is a touchstone of Hollywood history.

Up to 400,000 visitors are expected to flock to the Florida coast on Saturday, hoping to catch a glimpse — and hear the roar — of NASA’s rocket launch to the Moon.

If the uncrewed Space Launch System (SLS) lifts off successfully, it will be not only awe-inspiring but historic for NASA, marking the first of its Artemis missions plotting a return to the Moon.

The Kennedy Space Center will be closed to the public, but spectators on local beaches will be able to see the most powerful vehicle that NASA has ever launched climb into the sky.

“I remember being a little kid and some of the (Apollo) lunar landings,” Alberto Tirado told AFP on Cocoa Beach, the day before the rocket’s scheduled launch.

“So I want to feel that power and what they felt in the 1960s.”

On Monday, when a first launch attempt had to be scuttled at the last moment due to technical issues, local Brevard County authorities had expected between 100,000 and 200,000 visitors.

Don Walker, the county’s communications director, says that though Monday’s numbers have yet to be finalized, they estimate “double that amount on Saturday.”

“We are ‘guesstimating’ the launch viewing crowd to number between 200,000 to 400,000 people,” Walker told AFP.

For comparison, SpaceX’s first manned launch in 2020 — amid the pandemic — drew 220,000 people.

The fact that the launch is scheduled for a weekend, with Monday also a US holiday, means that the crowd is likely to be much larger, said Meagan Happel with the Space Coast Office of Tourism.

As on Monday, traffic is expected to get heavy “three to four hours” before the launch, Happel told AFP.

Liftoff is currently scheduled for 2:17 pm (18:17 GMT) on Saturday, with the potential for up to a two-hour delay if necessary.

Hotels along the coast have been fully booked for several weeks, and there are only a limited number of parking spaces near the best viewpoints.

Artemis 1 is a test flight without any astronauts on board.

The Orion capsule, after separating from the SLS rocket, will spend about six weeks in space and travel at one point nearly 40,000 miles (64,000 km) past the Moon — farther than any human-grade vehicle has ever gone.

It is the Orion that will then take future astronauts back to the Moon — including the first woman and the first person color to walk on its surface — in 2025 at the earliest.

Midterm elections in America are traditionally all about the current president — whose party rarely comes out well. Joe Biden has another plan for this November: to turn the vote into a referendum on Donald Trump and his “extremist” politics.

The 79-year-old Democrat — still unpopular though his poll numbers have been creeping back up — has a catchphrase that says it all: “Don’t compare me to the Almighty. Compare me to the alternative.”

In other words — whatever his shortcomings may be, they pale in comparison to the dangers of electing Trump’s brand of Republican.

In a prime-time speech Thursday night in Philadelphia, Biden lashed out with rare virulence against Trump and those who embrace his “Make America Great Again” ideology, labeling them a threat to democracy.

“Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” he thundered, warning that the former president’s most ardent backers — those behind last year’s assault on the US Capitol — “thrive on chaos.”

“They live not in the light of truth but in the shadow of lies,” he said.

– 74 million people –

Following up Friday on his speech — intended to energize voters with two months to go until the midterms — Biden insisted he was not tarring all Trump voters, who numbered more than 74 million in 2020, with the same brush.

“I don’t consider any Trump supporter to be a threat to the country,” he told reporters at the White House. “When people voted for Donald Trump, and support him now, they weren’t voting for attacking the Capitol. They weren’t voting for overruling an election.”

With control of Congress in the balance come November, Biden appealed directly in his speech to mainstream Republicans to join forces with Democrats and repudiate Trump’s brand of politics — which holds sway over much of his party.

The New York Times summed up the strategy like this: “If Americans are asked whether they support Mr. Biden, they may say no.

“If they are asked whether they support him over Mr. Trump, they may say yes. At least, that is the theory in the White House.”

In that spirit, the White House laid the symbolism on thick in staging Biden’s speech — delivered near the spot where the US Constitution was adopted more than two centuries ago, with dramatic deep red lighting, and two Marines posted behind the commander-in-chief.

The military overtones for what was ostensibly a political speech ahead of the midterms raised eyebrows in conservative circles and beyond.

A White House spokesman, Andrew Bates, pushed back on Twitter, saying Biden’s “accurate warnings are the opposite of ‘political.'”

But the fact remains that by steering the conversation heavily towards themes such as the defense of democracy or abortion rights, Biden is undercutting the Republicans’ preferred talking points on crime and the economy.

– Polarization –

The Republican leadership has accused Biden of sharpening national divisions with his rhetoric — and is trying to make that an angle of attack.

But some of the party’s fierier members are upping the ante — like the pro-Trump lawmaker Marjorie Taylor Greene who shared a video doctored to make Biden look like Adolf Hitler.

For Wendy Schiller-Kalunian, a political scientist at Brown University, the Democratic strategy comes fraught with risks.

The November midterms will determine whether the president’s party loses control of both the Senate and House of Representatives, whether it manages to hold onto the upper house, or defies the odds by clinging onto both chambers of Congress.

“One of the key groups of voters in this year’s midterm election are suburban Republican women, and independent men,” who tend to lean right, Schiller-Kalunian explained.

“So if Biden makes this all about Trump and the danger of Republican control of Congress, that may backfire and inspire these suburban voters to support their own ‘team,'” she said.

Samuel Goldman, a political science professor at George Washington University, argues meanwhile that “undecided voters make decisions on the basis of concrete issues, particularly the economy.”

In that light, Goldman believes Biden’s main priority is to “fire up Democratic partisans.”

And he says Biden’s speech highlighted a dilemma common to all American presidents: to be both the head of state, rising above the fray to speak to all citizens, and the leader of a party seeking victory at the ballot box.

“Due to ideological polarization, media fragmentation, and declining trust in institutions, it’s getting harder and harder to play both roles at the same time,” Goldman said.