TOKYO (Reuters) - Lamont Marcell Jacobs of Italy won the men’s 100 metres gold at the Tokyo Olympics on Sunday.
Fred Kerley of United States won the silver while Andre de Grasse of Canada took the bronze.
Reporting by Sudipto Ganguly; editing by xx
Sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya asks the IOC for help, accusing her national team of trying to remove her from Japan.
Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya has called on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) for assistance, alleging she had been removed from the national team and taken to Tokyo airport against her wishes to be returned home over her criticism of national coaches.
“I am asking the International Olympic Committee for help,” Tsimanouskaya said in a video on Sunday, posted on the Telegram channel of the Belarusian Sport Solidarity Foundation, a group that supports athletes jailed or sidelined for their political views.
“There is pressure against me. They are trying to get me out of the country without my permission. I am asking the IOC to get involved.”
Tsimanouskaya was due to compete in the women’s 200 metres on Monday. Tsimanouskaya, 24, said the coaching staff had come to her room on Sunday and told her to pack up. She was taken to the city’s Haneda airport before she could run in the 200 metres and 4×400 metres relay on Thursday.
She said she had been removed from the team due “to the fact that I spoke on my Instagram about the negligence of our coaches”.
The Belarusian Olympic Committee said in a statement that coaches had decided to withdraw Tsimanouskaya from the games on doctors’ advice about her “emotional, psychological state”.
The Belarusian Olympic Committee did not immediately respond to a request for additional comment.
Tsimanouskaya was due to compete in the women’s 200 metres on Monday [Aleksandra Szmigiel/Reuters]Tsimanouskaya had previously complained she was entered in the 4×400 metres relay after some members of the team were found to be ineligible to compete at the Olympics because they had not undergone doping tests properly.
“Some of our girls did not fly here to compete in the 4×400 m relay because they didn’t have enough doping tests,” Tsimanouskaya told Reuters news agency from the airport.
“And the coach added me to the relay without my knowledge. I spoke about this publicly. The head coach came over to me and said there had been an order from above to remove me.”
Tsimanouskaya added she was standing next to the Japanese police at the airport and she has reached out to a member of the Belarusian diaspora in Japan to retrieve her at the airport.
Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko has kept a tight grip on Belarus, a former Soviet state, since 1994.
Faced with mass street protests last year over what his opponents called rigged elections, he ordered a violent crackdown on protesters. Lukashenko denies the allegations of vote-rigging.
Unusually in a country where elite athletes often rely on government funding, some prominent Belarusian athletes joined the protests. Several were jailed, including Olympic basketball player Yelena Leuchanka and decathlete Andrei Krauchanka.
Others lost their state employment or were kicked off national teams for supporting the opposition.
Wildfires continued to rage near popular tourist destinations in Turkey on Sunday, a day after some hotels were evacuated and their guests taken to safety.
Five fires continued to burn near the coastal cities of Antalya and Mugla, the Minister of Forestry and Agriculture, Bekir Pakdemirli, tweeted Sunday, although he said that 107 fires were “under control.”
At least six people including two firefighters have died in the raging blazes which began in 32 provinces on Wednesday, roaring through forests and sending temperatures soaring.
Thousands were forced to evacuate as they encroached on settlements and tourist destinations.
"We are now left with the clothes we are wearing, me and my wife,” Mehmet Demir told Reuters after surveying the damage at his home near Antalya. Only bedsprings, a ladder, metal chairs and some kitchenware remained.
"The blaze spread through the highlands and raged suddenly," he said, adding, “There is nothing to do. This is when words fail."
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Panicked tourists were evacuated from hotels in Antalya and Mugla on Saturday as a fire swept down a hill towards the seashore.
Police water cannons were used to control the blaze. Helicopters and fire trucks were also used to assist.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Saturday visited some affected areas and inspected the damage from a helicopter.
Erdogan later told a news conference that the Turkish government would cover the rents for people affected by the fire and rebuild their homes.
Taxes, social security and credit payments would be postponed for those affected, he said, adding that small businesses would be offered credit with zero interest.
“We cannot do anything beyond wishing the mercy of God for the lives we have lost but we can replace everything that was burned," he said.
Heatwaves along the Mediterranean and Aegean coastal regions could be the cause of raging wildfires, according to Turkey’s meteorological authorities.
Wildfires are common in Turkey’s Mediterranean and Aegean regions during the dry summer months, but this week’s blaze is one of the worst in years.
A heat wave across southern Europe, fed by hot air from Africa, has led to wildfires across the Mediterranean, including in Italy and Greece.
Firefighters in Italy said on Saturday they were battling wildfires in the southern island of Sicily for the second day straight. People were forced to leave their homes, and the local airport temporarily shut down.
Temperatures in Greece and nearby countries in southeast Europe are expected to climb to more than 107 degrees Monday in many cities and towns, and are expected only to ease later in the week.
The Associated Press and Reuters contributed.
The pandemic has killed more than four million people and shows no sign of slowing.
China and Australia ramped up Covid-19 curbs Saturday as Delta variant cases surged and tens of thousands rallied in France against restrictions designed to stop the pandemic.
The Delta variant, which was first identified in India, is forcing governments to reimpose tough measures, while other nations are reconsidering plans to open their economies.
The variant has spread to 132 countries and territories. The pandemic has killed more than four million people and shows no sign of slowing.
"Delta is a warning: it's a warning that the virus is evolving but it is also a call to action that we need to move now before more dangerous variants emerge," the World Health Organization's emergencies director Michael Ryan told journalists.
China's outbreak now spans 14 provinces, the most widespread in several months, challenging the country's early success in tackling the disease after it was first detected in the city of Wuhan in late 2019.
China has put more than one million people under lockdown and reinstituted mass testing campaigns.
"The main strain circulating at present is the Delta variant... which poses an even greater challenge to virus prevention and control work," Mi Feng, spokesman for the National Health Commission (NHC), said.
In Australia, where only about 14 percent of the population has been vaccinated, the third-largest city of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland entered a snap lockdown Saturday after six new cases were detected.
"The only way to beat the Delta strain is to move quickly, to be fast and to be strong," said Queensland's Deputy Premier Steven Miles, announcing three days of strict stay-at-home orders for millions.
'Crippling the economy'
The stop-start imposition of restrictions is taking its toll on weary populations.
"This government is... crippling the economy and also destroying our country's democracy," Karmun Loh, taking part in a protest in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, told AFP.
France meanwhile, has endured months of curfews and lockdowns only to enter a new era of "health passes" in July. Entry to cafes, restaurants and cultural venues are to be restricted to the vaccinated or those who can show they have been vaccinated or have a negative test.
More than 200,000 people protested across France Saturday for a third straight week, with angry confrontations.
Police in Paris used tear gas and water cannon and made several arrests.
"Macron resign", demonstrators shouted in the southern city of Marseille, referring to President Emmanuel Macron.
"I am neither a guinea pig nor a QR code," one protester wrote on a placard.
The French authorities meanwhile have reimposed restrictions in some of its overseas territories, where cases are surging, most recently in Martinique, La Reunion and French Polynesia.
Bangladesh eased curbs however despite a Delta surge, prompting hundreds of thousands of garment workers to rush back to major cities after the government said export factories could reopen from Sunday.
"Police stopped us at many checkpoints and the ferry was packed," said factory worker Mohammad Masum, 25, who left his village before dawn and walked more than 30 kilometres to get to the ferry port.
Africa deaths rising
In Africa, official figures put the daily death toll at 1,000 a day on average over the last seven days: 17 percent up on the previous week and the highest recorded since the pandemic began.
Here, as elsewhere, the official numbers are underestimates, as the World Health Organization has pointed out.
Rwanda however ordered the lifting of a lockdown on the capital Kigali and eight other districts even though Covid cases are still on the rise with the new measures running from August 1-15.
And Niger, one of the world's poorest countries, took delivery of 302,400 doses of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine donated by the United States.
'The war has changed'
Millions of Americans could meanwhile find themselves homeless starting Sunday as a nationwide ban on evictions expires.
President Joe Biden this week urged Congress to extend the 11-month-old moratorium, after a recent Supreme Court ruling meant the White House could not do so.
But Republicans balked at Democratic efforts to extend the eviction ban through mid October, and the House of Representatives adjourned for its summer vacation.
The latest analysis from the US Centers for Disease Control found that fully immunised people with so-called breakthrough infections of the Delta variant can spread the disease as easily as unvaccinated people.
While the jabs remain effective against severe disease and death, the US government agency said in an internal document leaked Friday that "the war has changed" as a result of Delta.
(This story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
Thousands of people protested France's special virus pass with marches through Paris and other French cities on Saturday. Most demonstrations were peaceful, but sporadic clashes with riot police marked protests in the French capital.
Some 3,000 security forces deployed around Paris for a third weekend of protests against the pass that will be needed soon to enter restaurants and other places. Police took up posts along the Champs-Elysees to guard against an invasion of the famed avenue.
With virus infections spiking and hospitalizations rising, French lawmakers have passed a bill requiring the pass in most places as of Aug. 9. Polls show a majority of French support the pass, but some are adamantly opposed. The pass requires a vaccination or a quick negative test or proof of a recent recovery from COVID-19 and mandates vaccine shots for all health care workers by mid-September.
Protestors march waving French flags during a demonstration in Paris, France, Saturday, July 31, 2021. Demonstrators gathered in several cities in France on Saturday to protest against the COVID-19 pass, which grants vaccinated individuals greater ease of access to venues. (AP Photo/Adrienne Surprenant)
FRENCH PROTESTERS REJECT BILL REQUIRING VACCINE PASSES
Across the Alps, thousands of anti-vaccine pass demonstrators marched in Italian cities including Rome, Milan and Naples for the second consecutive week. Milan demonstrators stopped outside the city’s courthouse chanting "Truth! "Shame!" and "Liberty!" while in Rome they marched behind a banner reading "Resistance." Those demonstrations were noisy but peaceful.
For anti-vaccine pass demonstrators in France, "liberty" was the slogan of the day. The marches drew some 204,000 people around the country. Some 14,250 people hostile to the pass protested in Paris, several thousand more than a week ago.
Hager Ameur, a 37-year-old nurse, said she resigned from her job, accusing the government of using a form of "blackmail."
"I think that we mustn’t be told what to do," she told The Associated Press, adding that French medical workers during the first wave of COVID-19 were quite mistreated. "And now, suddenly we are told that if we don’t get vaccinated it is our fault that people are contaminated. I think it is sickening."
EIFFEL TOWER REOPENS; COVID PASSES REQUIRED AS OF NEXT WEEK
Tensions flared in front of the famed Moulin Rouge nightclub in northern Paris during what appeared to be the largest demonstration. Lines of police faced down protesters in up-close confrontations during the march. Police used their fists on several occasions.
As marchers headed eastward and some pelted police with objects, police fired tear gas into the crowds, plumes of smoke filling the sky. A male protester was seen with a bleeding head and a police officer was carried away by colleagues. Three officers were injured, the French press quoted police as saying. Police, again responding to rowdy crowds, also turned a water cannon on protesters as the march ended at the Bastille.
A calmer march was led by the former top lieutenant of far-right leader Marine Le Pen who left to form his own small anti-EU party. But Florian Philippot's new cause, against the virus pass, seems far more popular. His contingent of hundreds marched Saturday to the Health Ministry.
Among those not present this week was Francois Asselineau, leader of another tiny anti-EU party, the Popular Republican Union, and an ardent campaigner against the health pass, who came down with COVID-19. In a video on his party’s website, Asselineau, who was not hospitalized, called on people to denounce the "absurd, unjust and totally liberty-killing" health pass.
French authorities are implementing the health pass because the highly contagious delta variant is making strong inroads. More than 24,000 new daily cases were confirmed Friday night — compared to just a few thousand cases a day at the start of the month.
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The government announcement that the health pass would take effect on Aug. 9 has driven many unvaccinated French to sign up for inoculations so their social lives won’t get shut down during the summer holiday season. Vaccinations are now available at a wide variety of places, including some beaches. More than 52% of the French population has been vaccinated.
About 112,000 people have died of the virus in France since the start of the pandemic.
US officials are increasingly pessimistic on the prospects of returning to the 2015 nuclear deal with Iran, The New York Times reported Saturday.
The US is indirectly involved in Iran’s talks with world powers to revive the deal that gave Iran some relief from international sanctions in exchange for limits on its nuclear program.
Officials expect the new government in Tehran, set to enter office on Thursday, to take a tougher approach that could doom chances of reaching an agreement.
“There’s a real risk here that they come back with unrealistic demands about what they can achieve in these talks,” Robert Malley, the top US negotiator, told the paper.
Another key issue of concern in Washington, the report said, is that after months of increased uranium enrichment to near-weapons grade levels, Iranian scientists are gaining crucial technical knowledge that will render the terms of the 2015 accord insufficient to curb Tehran’s nuclear ambitions.
“At that point, we will have to reassess the way forward,” Malley said. “We hope it doesn’t come to that.”
In addition, while Iran has been insisting that any US return to the deal be accompanied by a mechanism that will prevent it from quitting again, American officials believe it will be impossible, politically, to pass such a restriction through Congress, which is highly skeptical of the accord in the first place.
The ability to snap back sanctions on Iran if it fails to comply with aspects of the deal is crucial to keeping it palatable to US lawmakers, they said.
TV cameras in front of the ‘Grand Hotel Vienna’ where closed-door nuclear talks take place in Vienna, Austria, Sunday, June 20, 2021. (AP/Florian Schroetter)
On Thursday US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said nuclear talks with Iran “cannot go on indefinitely” but that Washington was “fully prepared” to continue negotiations.
The deal was torpedoed in 2018 by then US president Donald Trump, who unilaterally withdrew from the agreement and imposed punishing sanctions.
“We’re committed to diplomacy, but this process cannot go on indefinitely… we look to see what Iran is ready to do or not ready to do and remain fully prepared to return to Vienna to continue negotiations,” Blinken said during a visit to Kuwait. “The ball remains in Iran’s court.”
Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s government had been holding talks with major powers in Vienna since April on bringing Washington back into the agreement. But talks have been frozen until he hands over to President-elect Ebrahim Raisi.
Raisi’s ultraconservative camp, which deeply distrusts the United States, has repeatedly criticized Rouhani over the 2015 deal.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said on Wednesday that experience has shown “trusting the West does not work,” referring to the US withdrawal from the deal and its fallout.
Raisi has said his government will support talks that “guarantee national interests,” but will not allow negotiations for the sake of negotiations.
File: Russia’s envoy to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), Mikhail Ulyanov, stands in front of the Grand Hotel Vienna where closed-door nuclear talks with Iran take place, in Vienna, Austria, Wednesday, June 2, 2021. (AP Photo/Lisa Leutner)
One of the major criticisms of the 2015 deal raised by Trump was its failure to address Iran’s ballistic missile program or its alleged interference in regional affairs.
But Tehran has always rejected bringing non-nuclear issues into the agreement, which is known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Khamenei also criticized the US for refusing to “guarantee that [it] will not violate the agreement in the future” by pulling out unilaterally, as Trump did in 2018.
Trump’s successor Joe Biden has signaled his readiness to return to the nuclear deal and has engaged in indirect negotiations with Iran alongside formal talks with the agreement’s remaining parties, Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia.
Israel’s Kan news reported Sunday that Jerusalem has warned US officials in recent days that Iran is closer than ever to attaining nuclear weapons.
Ebrahim Raisi, who went on to win Iran’s presidential election, waves after casting his vote at a polling station in Tehran, Iran, on June 18, 2021. (Ebrahim Noroozi/AP)
Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, Defense Minister Benny Gantz and other Israeli officials have addressed the issue with their American counterparts recently, issuing an “unusual warning,” according to the report.
“Something has to happen with the negotiations with Iran,” a senior diplomat told Kan. “This ‘limbo’ cannot be a time when Iran is quickly advancing toward becoming a nuclear threshold state.”
Israel has long opposed the nuclear deal and Biden’s stated intentions to reenter the treaty.
“We would like the world to understand that the Iranian regime is violent and fanatical,” Bennett said last month. “It selected the ‘Hangman of Tehran’ as its president — a man who is willing to starve his own people for years in order to have a military nuclear program. That is a regime that one should not do business with.”
Bennett added that Israel “will continue to consult with our friends, persuade, discuss, and share information and insights out of mutual respect. But at the end of the day, we will be responsible for our own fate, nobody else.”
Agencies contributed to this report.
BMX freestyle made its debut at the Olympics and the finals didn't disappoint. American Hannah Roberts entered the event as the favorite. Roberts had an impressive first run that set the tone for the field's second run, with a score of 96.10. Despite the impressive run by Roberts, Great Britain's Charlotte Worthington put together a show-stopping final run that clinched the first ever gold medal in BMX freestyle.
Nine riders entered the final looking to medal. Unlike the seeding round, where both runs were averaged. Riders only needed one good run that would count for their score in the event.
Roberts had to wait for her eight competitors to ride first, but it was worth the wait. The 19 year old wasted no time. She started with a with a 360 bar spin then a tail whip to start with a bang. She then added a back flip bar spin and remained clean throughout her whole ride with a great amount of speed. The judges acknowledged the difficulty, giving her a 96.10, the highest score given in the two days of competition so far and close to seven points higher than anyone else.
Entering her final ride, Worthington was in last place after crashing. She had attempted to land the first ever 360 backflip by a woman in competition. She literally had nothing to lose and it was reflected in her run. She landed trick after trick -- including the backflip. It was undeniable how good her run was and after a long wait the judges rewarded her with a score of 97.50, taking her from last to first in the standings.
Going into her final run, Perris Benegas sat in 5th place and needed better than a 89.2 to reach the podium. She packed in trick after trick in her final run, including a suicide no hander, clean 360s, among her impressive combinations. Ultimately, it wasn't enough as she came up just short with an 88.50, moving her into fourth place.
Swiss rider Nikita Ducarroz had a solid first run, looking effortless. The judges rewarded her with a score of 89.2 that was good enough to stand for the bronze after Benegas came up just short.
With the podium all but settled, all that remained was Roberts' final run to determine who would win what color medal. In a shocking move, Roberts came off her pedals and called it. Roberts won silver and Worthington the gold.
Charlotte Worthington of Team Great Britain competes in the during the Women's Park Final, run 2 of the BMX Freestyle on day nine of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at Ariake Urban Sports Park on August 01, 2021 in Tokyo, Japan.
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By David Gritten BBC News Reuters Qatar's foreign ministry said the Israeli prime minister's reported remarks were ...
