The International Olympic Committee and Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe have concluded the Tokyo 2020 Olympics must be postponed, and held no later than the summer of 2021, the IOC and Tokyo 2020 organisers said on Tuesday. After a call with IOC president Thomas Bach, Abe said the July 24-August 9 event would be rescheduled for the summer of 2021 at the latest, as proof of victory over the coronavirus.
Japan's Asahi Shimbun, an official partner of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, called for the Summer Games to be cancelled in an editorial
Brescia captain Daniele Gastaldello also expressed concern.
As an admirer of Japan for close to half a century, I care for Japan and expect Suga to respect the sentiment of his people and cancel the Olympics without further delay, says Rajaram Panda.
The International Olympic Committee (IOC) on Tuesday gave further unequivocal backing to this summer's Tokyo Olympics, urging athletes to prepare "full steam" despite the coronavirus threat. Multiple sports events around the world have been cancelled during the epidemic, which has killed more than 3,000 people in China and spread to more than 60 nations including Japan where infections are near 1,000 and 12 people have died.
Australia has been battling hundreds of huge bushfires for several weeks with the resultant thick smoke regularly casting a pall over the country's cities.
Always boil water or at least filter it before drinking to avoid all possible water borne diseases.
Here's the full text of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's address to a joint session of the United States Congress, delivered on Thursday.
Belgium under-21 international Gregory Mertens died on Thursday, three days after collapsing with heart failure during a match, a spokesman for his club, Lokeren, said.
'Our task is to organise Olympic Games and not to cancel Olympic Games. This is why we are working day and night to organise safe Olympic Games.'
Core to the planning is the rigidly-enforced closed loop that physically separates Games-related personnel from the local population
India will be hoping to repeat their success of two years ago when they registered their first-ever Test series win in Australia, while the hosts would be keen to avenge that loss.
Images from across Europe and parts of Asia show hot and bothered people dunking their feet in buckets of ice and wading into the sea as sweltering temperatures put some areas on red alert.
India's likely medium-term potential growth will almost certainly be markedly lower than that experienced in pre-pandemic years, warns Shankar Acharya, former chief economic advisor to the Government of India.
'...Where there is clearly no evidence of community transmission, letting life return to normal in those districts while continuing to rigorously control the spread of the infection.'
Pressure had been building on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its president, Thomas Bach, with some athletes and sporting bodies angry that a seemingly inevitable decision had taken so long.
Half of the Japanese public think the 2020 Olympics will take place this summer, a survey by the Yomiuri daily newspaper showed on Monday, despite most people opposing holding the Games during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Indian Wells tennis tournament was set to start on Tuesday, attracts the game's top players from both the men's and women's sides and drew a record 475,000 fans over its two-week run last year. It was cancelled over concerns about the spread of a coronavirus in Southern California.
Amid reports of the ongoing coal shortage in the country, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman stressed that there is no shortage and termed these as "absolutely baseless", saying India is a power surplus country. Sitharaman said that Power Minister R K Singh went on record just two days ago when he said absolutely baseless information is floating around that there is probably shortage of coal, shortage of other inventories which will lead to a sudden gap in the supply demand situation in the energy consumption. "Absolute baseless! There is no shortage of anything. In fact, if I recall the minister's statement, every power producing installation has the next four days' stock absolutely available within their own premises and the supply chain has not broken at all," Sitharaman said at Harvard Kennedy School on Tuesday.
The IOC has remained committed to staging the Tokyo Games as planned from July 24-Aug. 9, saying on Tuesday after a meeting with international sports federations that measures against the virus were delivering results.
This year's Wimbledon Championships have so far survived the cull of the world's most prestigious sporting events due to the coronavirus pandemic, but it seems only a matter of time before they are postponed or cancelled. With London in its first week of lockdown, All England Lawn Tennis Club (AELTC) officials are weighing up their limited options.
'The impact of economic shocks on the labour markets is usually on the young who delay their entry in response to a fall in job opportunities,' says Mahesh Vyas.
The Tokyo Olympics next July will be a "uniquely risky" event, demanding flexibility from organisers amid the uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic, particularly if a vaccine has not been rolled out by then, medical experts say. Japan and the International Olympic Committee made the unprecedented decision last month to delay the Games for a year, as the world battles the virus that has infected 2.3 million people and killed more than 150,000 globally. But questions persist whether the Games can go ahead 15 months from now, as a vaccine could still be at least a year away, according to the most optimistic estimates.
The final of the World Test Championship between India and New Zealand in June will be staged in a bio-secure bubble at the Hampshire Bowl in Southampton, the International Cricket Council said said on Wednesday.
HR Guru Mayank Rautela offers practical advice.
While Mumbai struggles with heavy rains for the past four days, torrential rain in Japan, unleashed floods and landslides resulting in the deaths of over 150 people. Rescuers in Japan are racing to find survivors after the country witnessed the country's worst weather disaster for 36 years.
A series of recent scandals engulfing officials working on the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Games
The England Cricket wrote, 'We CANNOT wait to have you back with us!'
'We know that he's a quality player and there's a good innings around the corner for him. He has been given the extra burden of being captain and that can be tough and something he's not used to.'
China has smothered most outbreaks within its borders, keeping new case numbers low.
Even as the death toll due to the searing heat wave mounts by the day across India, state governments are struggling to come up with ways to mitigate the suffering. The Municipal Corporation of Ahmedabad may have a lesson or two to offer.
Zika virus outbreak in Brazil does not pose enough of a threat to warrant cancelling or putting off the Olympic Games set to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August, a leading US health official said.
It is the first break in the four-year cycle for the summer Olympics since the 1940 and 1944 Games were cancelled because of World War Two.
Strict health protocols are in place during the first England-West Indies Test.
The disease could go down several paths. One possibility, the least likely, is that it will just disappear. The most likely is that it will have seasonal impact, says Devangshu Datta.
More than 100 medical experts, academia and scientists on Friday have called for the Rio Olympic Games to be postponed or moved because of fears that the event could speed up the spread of the Zika virus around the world. Their assessment counters the view of some leading experts of infectious disease who say that as long as the necessary precautions are taken there is no reason to cancel the Games. On Thursday, Dr. Tom Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, declared there was no public health reason to cancel or delay this summer's Games. In a public letter posted online, the group of 150 leading public health experts, many of them bioethicists, said the risk of infection from the Zika virus is too high. The letter was sent to Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, and urged that the Games, due to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August, be moved to another location or delayed.
The confinement hasn't ended even though he is back home from one but celebrated Indian hockey goalkeeper P R Sreejesh is not complaining as, at least, there are no mental demons to fight. The two-time Olympian said the more-than-two-month long stay at the Sports Authority of India's south centre in Bengaluru owing to the COVID-19 lockdown was beginning to weaken his and several other players' mind and he took to reading motivational books to keep himself going.
'If you don't have a strong political leadership, however much expertise a country may have, in pandemic preparedness or infectious disease, will not matter.' 'It's really about having strong political leadership, that is proactive, that prioritises taking the right action.' 'And if you don't have that, then you will have a much worse pandemic experience.'
Milos Raonic, the finalist at Wimbledon this year, and women's world number five Simona Halep of Romania have pulled out from next month's Rio Olympics due to fears over the Zika virus.
The leaders expressed their support, he told reporters around midnight in Tokyo after the G7 heads of state held an unprecedented meeting by video conference. At the G7 video conference, leaders committed to doing 'whatever is necessary' to battle the coronavirus pandemic and to work together more closely to protect public health, jobs and growth, and issued a statement promising to address the health and economic risks.
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