Tokyo’s metropolitan government said new coronavirus infections surged to a record high Saturday as the city hosts the Olympic Games.The government reported 4,058 new cases, topping 4,000 for the first time.The new record was set one day after Japan, with a population of more than 126 million, extended a state of emergency for Tokyo through the end of August to contain the spread. The extension also applies to three prefectures near Tokyo and the western prefecture of Osaka.A new record for infections also was set nationwide Saturday. Public broadcaster NHK reported 12,341 new cases, 15% higher than the day before.Since the start of the pandemic, Japan has reported 914,718 confirmed cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and 15,197 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center.Protests related to the coronavirus pandemic occurred Saturday in countries including France, Italy and Israel.In France, more than 200,000 people protested around the country to voice opposition to President Emmanuel Macron’s recent COVID-19 measures, media reported.While most protests were peaceful, in Paris, where more than 14,000 people gathered, three police officers were injured in clashes with demonstrators, according to Reuters.The French government has instituted a mandatory coronavirus health pass in an effort to control the highly contagious delta variant of the coronavirus. It has pushed the number of COVID-19 cases in the country from a few thousand each day in early July to 24,000 new cases on Friday, health officials said.The health pass will be needed for people to be able to enter most public spaces, such as restaurants, museums and movie theaters. The pass, which takes effect Aug. 9, 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, the AP reported.France, a country of 67 million, was hit hard in the early stages of the pandemic and has recorded 6.1 million confirmed cases of the disease and 112,011 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.For a second week, thousands of protesters in Italy, also opposed to the use of a vaccine pass, demonstrated in cities including Rome, Milan and Naples.Protestors hold up a banner which reads ‘freedom’ in French during a demonstration in Paris, France, July 31, 2021. Demonstrators gathered in several cities in France on Saturday to protest the COVID-19 pass.In Tel Aviv, several hundred Israelis protested against new coronavirus restrictions and vaccines as the country sees a dramatic rise in COVID-19 cases because of the delta variant.On Saturday, the health ministry recorded 2,435 new COVID-19 cases, the highest number since March.To battle the outbreak, Israel rolled out a booster shot for older citizens, reimposed mask requirements indoors and restored “green pass” restrictions requiring vaccine certificates for entering enclosed spaces such as gyms, restaurants and hotels, according to Agence France-Presse.Nearly 60% of Israel’s 9.3 million people have gotten two shots, mostly with the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, according to AFP, but about 1 million Israelis still refuse to be vaccinated.Israel has had 871,343 confirmed cases of the coronavirus and 6,469 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins.Vietnam said Saturday it would extend travel restrictions in Ho Chi Minh City and 18 other southern cities and provinces for another two weeks to contain its worst outbreak to date, according to Reuters.A group waits to get a COVID-19 test, July 31, 2021, in North Miami, Fla.The extension begins Monday in a country that contained the virus for much of the pandemic but reports a total of 141,000 cases and more than 1,100 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins, 85% of which were reported in the last month.The White House announced on Friday that U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris would travel in August to Singapore and Vietnam.Symone Sanders, a White House senior adviser and chief spokesperson, said in a statement released Friday that Harris would engage with the leaders of both countries on issues of mutual interest, including the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic.The White House did not give specific dates for the trip.A weekend lockdown has been imposed in India’s southern state of Kerala as it grapples with about 20,000 new cases daily, Reuters reported. Federal authorities sent experts to the area to monitor developments in the state that accounts for more than 37% of the nearly 32 million cases reported by India’s health ministry.Australia’s third-largest city of Brisbane said it would begin a COVID-19 lockdown on Saturday, amid rising case numbers. Neighboring areas will also be subject to the stay-at-home orders.In London, a four-day “vaccine music festival” was under way Saturday. The event was to encourage people to take the COVID-19 vaccine. Already, more than 72% of people older than 18 in the United Kingdom have received two doses of vaccine, according to government figures reported by the AP.Great Britain, which recently lifted most of its COVID-19 restrictions, said starting Monday, fully vaccinated visitors from the European Union or the United States would no longer need to quarantine upon arrival.As of Saturday, there were 197.7 million cases of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus, and 4.2 million deaths globally, according to Johns Hopkins. The U.S. leads the world in number of COVID-19 cases, nearly 35 million cases, and 613,113 deaths, according to the university.Some information for this report comes from The Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters. 
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Mushrooming outbreaks of the highly contagious delta variant prompted China and Australia to impose stricter COVID-19 restrictions on Saturday as the WHO urged the world to quickly contain the mutation before it turns into something deadlier and draws out the pandemic.China’s most serious surge of coronavirus infections in months spread to two more areas Saturday — Fujian province and the sprawling megacity of Chongqing.More than 200 cases have been linked to a delta cluster in Nanjing city where nine cleaners at an international airport tested positive, with the outbreak spanning Beijing, Chongqing and five provinces as of Saturday.The nation where the disease first emerged has rushed to prevent the highly transmissible strain from taking root by putting more than 1 million people under lockdown and reinstituting mass testing campaigns.Worldwide, coronavirus infections are once again on the upswing, with the World Health Organization announcing an 80% average increase over the past four weeks in five of the health agency’s six regions, a jump largely fueled by the delta variant.First detected in India, it has now reached 132 countries and territories.”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 WHO’s emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference.He stressed that the “game plan” still works, namely physical distancing, wearing masks, hand hygiene and vaccination.But both high- and low-income countries are struggling to gain the upper hand against delta, with the vastly unequal sprint for shots leaving plenty of room for variants to wreak havoc and further evolve.In Australia, where only about 14% of the population is vaccinated, the third-largest city of Brisbane and other parts of Queensland state were to enter a snap COVID-19 lockdown Saturday as a cluster of the delta variant bubbled into six new cases.”The only way to beat the delta strain is to move quickly, to be fast and to be strong,” Queensland’s Deputy Premier Steven Miles said while informing millions they will be under three days of strict stay-at-home orders.’The war has changed’The race for vaccines to triumph over variants appeared to suffer a blow as the U.S. Centers for Disease Control released an analysis that found fully immunized 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 U.S. government agency said in a leaked internal CDC document “the war has changed” as a result of delta.An analysis of a superspreading event in the northeastern state of Massachusetts found three-quarters of the people sickened were vaccinated, according to a report the CDC published Friday.The outbreak related to July 4 festivities, with the latest number of people infected swelling to 900, according to local reports. The findings were used to justify a return to masks for vaccinated people in high-risk areas.”As a vaccinated person, if you have one of these breakthrough infections, you may have mild symptoms, you may have no symptoms, but based on what we’re seeing here you could be contagious to other people,” Celine Gounder, an infectious diseases physician and professor at New York University, told AFP.According to the leaked CDC document, a review of findings from other countries showed that while the original SARS-CoV-2 was as contagious as the common cold, each person with delta infects on average eight others, making it as transmissible as chickenpox but still less than measles.Reports from Canada, Scotland and Singapore suggest delta infections may also be more severe, resulting in more hospitalizations.Asked if Americans should expect new recommendations from health authorities or new restrictive measures, U.S. President Joe Biden responded, “in all probability,” before leaving the White House by helicopter for the weekend.He did not specify what steps could be taken.
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Small groups of students protested Myanmar’s military junta on Saturday in Mandalay and a human rights group accused the armed forces of crimes against humanity ahead of the six-month anniversary of the army’s takeover.Bands of university students rode motorbikes around Mandalay waving red and green flags, saying they rejected any possibility of talks with the military to negotiate a return to civilian rule.”There’s no negotiating in a blood feud,” read one sign.Myanmar’s army seized power on Feb. 1 from the civilian government led by Nobel laureate Aung San Suu Kyi after her ruling party won elections that the military argued were tainted by fraud.New York-based Human Rights Watch on Saturday said the armed forces’ violent suppression of protests of the coup and arrests of opponents included torture, murder and other acts that violate international humanitarian conventions.“These attacks on the population amount to crimes against humanity for which those responsible should be brought to account,” Brad Adams, the group’s Asia director, said in a statement.The spokesperson for the military authorities, Zaw Min Tun, could not be reached on Saturday to respond to Human Rights Watch allegations because his mobile phone was turned off.The Assistance Association for Political Prisoners activist group says at least 6,990 people have been arrested since the coup. The group says the armed forces have killed 939 people, a number the military says is exaggerated.The army has branded its opponents terrorists and says its takeover was in line with the constitution.The military took power in February after alleging fraud in the November 2020 election, which Suu Kyi’s party swept. The former electoral commission had dismissed the military’s accusations. 
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The United States seized a Singapore-owned oil tanker Friday that was used to make illegal oil deliveries to North Korea, the Justice Department said.A New York federal judge issued a judgment of forfeiture authorizing the United States to take ownership of the M/T Courageous, which is currently in Cambodia.The ship, which has a capacity of 2,734 tons, was purchased by Singaporean national Kwek Kee Seng, who remains at large, according to a Justice Department statement.”Kwek and his co-conspirators engaged in an extensive scheme to evade … U.S. and U.N. sanctions by using vessels under their control to covertly transport fuel to North Korea,” the statement said.From August to December 2019, the Courageous would illegally stop transmitting its location information. Satellite imagery showed that during that time, the tanker engaged in ship-to-ship transfers of more than $1.5 million worth of oil to a North Korean ship.The Justice Department has accused Kwek of trying to hide the scheme by using shell companies, lying to international shipping authorities and falsely identifying the Courageous to avoid detection.Kwek has been charged with conspiracy to evade economic sanctions on North Korea and money laundering conspiracy.Cambodian authorities seized the tanker in March 2020 on a U.S. warrant and have held the Courageous there since.The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York filed a civil forfeiture action against the tanker on April 23.Relations between Washington and Pyongyang are strained, with North Korea’s foreign minister in June ruling out any talks with the United States, saying such dialogue would “get us nowhere.”Negotiations between the two countries have long been stalled over the international sanctions imposed on the nuclear-armed state and what North Korea should give up in return for having them lifted.
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will next month travel to Singapore and Vietnam, “two critical Indo-Pacific partners,” the White House confirmed on Friday.Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc first announced the visit on Thursday, as he met in Hanoi with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, the first Biden administration Cabinet official to visit Vietnam.White House Senior Adviser and Chief Spokesperson Symone Sanders said in Friday’s statement Harris “will engage the leaders of both governments on issues of mutual interest, including regional security, the global response to the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and our joint efforts to promote a rules-based international order.”“This upcoming visit continues that work – deepening our engagement in Southeast Asia,” said Sanders. “Vice President Harris will be the first vice president to ever visit Vietnam.” The White House did not give specific dates for the trip.Vietnam Announces US VP Harris VisitAnnouncement comes during meetings with defense secretary Austin, Biden’s first cabinet member to visit Hanoi Defense Secretary Austin’s traveled to Vietnam this week in the midst of the crippling COVID-19 pandemic and just days after the U.S. shipped 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam. The delivery raises the total number of vaccines the U.S. has given the Southeast Asian nation to 5 million.“We look forward to continuing to help in a number of ways … no strings attached,” Austin told Phuc. “It is what friends do to help friends in emergencies.”Countering ChinaAustin also sought to deepen ties with Hanoi amid increased Chinese military activity in the South China Sea.“It’s a part of the world where China continues to be very aggressive in the space, so it was important for the secretary to get here,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Thursday.Hanoi has been increasingly vocal about its opposition to Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Chinese vessels are accused of harassing oil and gas developers of Vietnam’s coast, hindering their energy development.In the past, the U.S. has provided Vietnam with Coast Guard cutters to help bolster its ability to defend against Chinese aggression in waters claimed by both countries.Despite China and Vietnam’s communist ties, Beijing has emerged as a new antagonist of Hanoi, while the U.S.-Vietnam relationship has flourished, according to Murray Hiebert of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.“It’s amazing how far these two countries have come in the last 40 years or so. The U.S. is Vietnam’s biggest trading partner. It’s a major investor, and it has some of the closest military-to-military ties with any country in Southeast Asia,” Hiebert said.Human rights concernsHowever, members of the Biden administration have said Washington’s relationship with Hanoi will remain limited until Hanoi makes progress on human rights issues.U.S. defense officials said Austin brought up the issue of human rights during his talks with Vietnam’s president, prime minister and minister of national defenseAccording to Kirby, the U.S. defense secretary said “that good friends and partners should be able to have open and honest discussions with one another about these difficult, fairly sensitive issues.”Austin and his defense counterpart signed a memorandum of understanding Thursday that expands support to Vietnam’s efforts to locate and identify Vietnamese killed or missing during the Vietnam War.A senior defense official told reporters the Vietnamese search will be aided by a database created by Harvard and Texas Tech University.White House Correspondent Steve Herman contributed to this report.
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The first person convicted under Hong Kong’s national security law has been sentenced to nine years in prison after being found guilty of terrorism and secession in a watershed ruling that could act as a benchmark for the city’s revamped judicial setting.Leon Tong Ying-kit, a former waiter at a restaurant, was sentenced on Friday following his conviction Tuesday after a 15-day trial. The 24-year-old was found guilty of driving his motorcycle into police officers during a street protest in July of 2020 while carrying a flag saying, “Liberate Hong Kong, revolution of the times.” Ina break with past practice, the case was heard by three specially enlisted judges with no jury.Eric Yan-ho Lai, a Hong Kong Fellow at Georgetown University, pointed out that according to the text of the national security law, acts of secession deemed to be serious would face a jail sentence of not less than five years. A terrorism act that was deemed serious would warrant a sentence that exceeds 10 years.The law analyst said Tong’s sentencing indicates that the three-judge panel views secessionist acts, such as bearing a flag in a public scene, as a serious crime in Hong Kong.Writing on the Wall? Hong Kong’s Security Law’s Far-reaching RisksActivist says, ‘I believe that no one person or political party in Hong Kong can clearly know where the red-line of the National Security Law is’He tweeted, “No doubt, in the eyes of the establishment, the decision of sentencing creates a strong deterrent effect to political dissents. But for ordinary citizens, this amplifies a chilling effect that we didn’t sense before, even in colonial times…”Andrew Powner of the Hong Kong-based law firm Haldanes, said in an email to VOA that the panel took into account Tong’s actions, which led to his guilty verdict earlier this week.“The judgment was case specific and he was convicted because the offenses involved: (a) driving a motorbike at speed into police officers, (b) injuring the police officers, (c) driving through and swerving to avoid various police roadblocks, (d) whilst prominently displaying a flag with the slogan used by the protest movement, (e) previous social media exchanges allegedly setting out his intentions, and (f) taking place during the course of an unauthorized assembly on 1st July 2020.”Powner stated that the circumstances involved in Tong’s advocating secession led to the case being ruled serious by the presiding judges and that the sentencing is in line with Hong Kong’s national security law guidelines.“The judges have also, I believe, correctly applied the totality principle, taking into account the seriousness of both offenses and deciding to apply a reduction with part concurrent sentences, rather than applying consecutive sentences.”Consecutive sentences would have seen Tong face more than 14 years behind bars, instead of nine. But Powner added that Tong might only serve six years if he can show good behavior, reducing a third of his sentence because he still has the right to apply for early release under the security law.Tong’s lead defense lawyer, Clive Grossman SC, had requested the sentence be no more than 10 years during Tuesday’s verdict proceedings.Lawyer for Hong Kong Protester Asks Court for Shorter TermHe could get a life sentence; lawyer asks for no more than 10 yearsOn Friday in Hong Kong’s High Court, Tong had little reaction to the sentencing as members of his family looked on. Outside the building, crowds gathered at a footbridge inside the nearby Pacific Place Mall, hoping to catch a glimpse of the defendant as he left. Police officers soon arrived, dispersing crowds by cordoning off lookout areas and warning them of social distancing laws.Local media reported Grossman confirmed the defense team is set to appeal both the verdict and the sentencing. VOA contacted Tong’s defense team members but they declined to comment.The conviction of Tong for secession is the first of its kind under the security law, but it might not be the last.Last week five members of the General Union of Hong Kong Speech Therapists were arrested for allegedly “conspiring to publish seditious materials” after publishing several children’s books. Authorities claim the books, which revolve around sheep, incite hatred toward the government. Two of the members have since been denied bail.And Hong Kong authorities recently arrested a 40-year-old man after his laundry rack was spotted holding a flag stating “Liberate Hong Kong, Revolution of Our Times,” the same slogan as the flag Tong carried. This has led to increased fear about how certain phrases can be interpreted as sedition in the city.Georgetown’s Yan-ho Lai added that future security law cases that carry secession charges would see more serious sentences.“It reflects that judges see the offense of inciting secession is serious in nature, while that of a terrorist act not so. It tells the world that showing a flag with words that are “capable of inciting secession” at [a] public scene becomes a serious crime in Hong Kong.“For future NSL cases, the sentences would be much more severe if their offenses are not limited to giving public speeches,” the law analyst told VOA.Under the “one country, two systems” agreement signed by Britain and China in 1997, after the city was transferred back to Chinese rule, Beijing promised that Hong Kong would retain a “high degree of autonomy’” until 2047.  After 2019’s pro-democracy protests, Beijing implemented the national security law for Hong Kong that took effect on June 30, 2020. Among other things, it prohibits secession, subversion, terrorism and collusion with foreign forces, and its details can be broadly interpreted.  Under the law, Hong Kong has seen at least 117 people arrested and at least 60 charged, including media mogul Jimmy Lai and high profile activists Joshua Wong and law professor Benny Tai.
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As Australia prepares for a census, administrators are trying to address significant undercounting of Indigenous communities.Australia holds a census every five years, giving the government a crucial snapshot of the population to help state and federal authorities direct billions of dollars in public funding, including health care spending.Aboriginal Australians, though, have historically been underrepresented. At the last census, in 2016, officials estimated Indigenous people were undercounted by more than 17%. Some have refused to complete the survey, while others were not aware of the census or could not be contacted.John Hill, a remote area team manager at the Australian Bureau of Statistics, described the problem to the Australian Broadcasting Corp, saying, “That is really nearly one in every five Aboriginal and Torres Strait islander people were missed out, so that is not that good. If government bodies and service providers do not have accurate figures on what is out there, then there is very little chance people will get the services that they need.”This year, radio advertising about the census will be translated into 19 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander languages.In 2016, it was estimated that there were almost 800,000 people from the two main Indigenous groups in Australia, representing 3.3% of the total population.A 1967 referendum changed the Australian constitution to include all Indigenous people in the census for the first time. Prior to that vote, some Aboriginal Australians were counted in separate surveys but not included in the national population count.This year’s census will not include specific questions related to the coronavirus pandemic but is still expected to provide data on how people have been affected.There are concerns that Australians from non-English-speaking backgrounds may have trouble filling in the form because of restrictions on assistance at libraries and from volunteers because of COVID-19 lockdowns in Sydney and surrounding regions.The census is compulsory and will take place Aug. 10. People who fail to complete the form could be fined up to $160 per day.
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The United States is “deeply concerned” over the harassment and intimidation of foreign correspondents covering deadly floods in China, a State Department spokesperson said Thursday.   His remarks came less than 24 hours after Beijing accused the BBC of broadcasting “fake news” about last week’s devastating flooding in the central province of Henan, and as the British broadcaster said its journalists had been subjected to hostility.    “The United States is deeply concerned with the increasingly harsh surveillance, harassment, and intimidation of US and other foreign journalists in the People’s Republic of China (PRC), including foreign journalists covering the devastation and loss of life caused by recent floods in Henan,” State Department spokesperson Ned Price in a statement.   “The PRC government claims to welcome foreign media and support their work, but its actions tell a different story,” Price said.    Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian had earlier on Thursday called the BBC a “Fake News Broadcasting Company” that has “attacked and smeared China, seriously deviating from journalistic standards.”    The BBC has said its reporters covering the deluge had been subjected to online vitriol, while other outlets had been harassed on the ground in “attacks which continue to endanger foreign journalists.”   The BBC reported on last week’s floods in the city of Zhengzhou which left 14 people dead, and more than 500 commuters trapped when the city’s subway system flooded during rush hour just as sensitivity towards any negative portrayal of China mounts.   Reporters from AFP were forced by hostile Zhengzhou residents to delete footage and were surrounded by dozens of men while reporting on a submerged traffic tunnel.   Zhao on Thursday said foreign correspondents “enjoy an open and free reporting environment in China.”   But press freedom groups say the space for overseas reporters to operate is tightening, with journalists followed on the streets, suffering harassment online and refused visas.    In his statement Thursday, Price urged China to not curtail press access to the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics.    “We call on the PRC to act as a responsible nation hoping to welcome foreign media and the world for the upcoming Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games,” his statement said.     
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U.S. Vice President Kamala Harris will soon travel to Vietnam, Vietnamese President Nguyen Xuan Phuc said Thursday.Phuc said he looked forward to Harris’s “upcoming” visit as he met with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in the Presidential Palace, without providing further details.U.S. officials traveling with Austin did not confirm the visit and referred VOA to the White House.Austin, the first Biden administration Cabinet official to visit Vietnam, arrived in the midst of the crippling COVID-19 pandemic and just days after the U.S. shipped 3 million doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Vietnam. The delivery raises the total number of vaccines the U.S. has given the Southeast Asian nation to 5 million.“We look forward to continuing to help in a number of ways … no strings attached,” Austin told Phuc. “It is what friends do to help friends in emergencies.”He also sought to deepen ties with Hanoi amid increased Chinese military activity in the South China Sea.“It’s a part of the world where China continues to be very aggressive in the space, so it was important for the secretary to get here,” Pentagon press secretary John Kirby told reporters Thursday. Hanoi has been increasingly vocal about its opposition to Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. Chinese vessels are accused of harassing oil and gas developers of Vietnam’s coast, hindering their energy development. In the past, the U.S. has provided Vietnam with Coast Guard cutters to help bolster its ability to defend against Chinese aggression in waters claimed by both countries.Despite China and Vietnam’s communist ties, Beijing has emerged as a new antagonist of Hanoi, while the U.S.-Vietnam relationship has flourished, according to Murray Hiebert of the Center for Strategic and International Studies.“It’s amazing how far these two countries have come in the last 40 years or so. The U.S. is Vietnam’s biggest trading partner. It’s a major investor, and it has some of the closest military-to-military ties with any country in Southeast Asia,” Hiebert said.However, members of the Biden administration have said Washington’s relationship with Hanoi will remain limited until Hanoi makes progress on human rights issues. Pentagon Chief Seeks to Nudge Ties with Vietnam as Human Rights Concerns LingerThere is a perception in Asia that China is making countries chose between it and the United StatesU.S. defense officials said Austin brought up the issue of human rights during his talks with Vietnam’s president, prime minister and minister of national defenseAccording to Kirby, the U.S. defense secretary said “that good friends and partners should be able to have open and honest discussions with one another about these difficult, fairly sensitive issues.”Austin and his defense counterpart signed a memorandum of understanding Thursday that expands support to Vietnam’s efforts to locate and identify Vietnamese killed or missing during the Vietnam War.A senior defense official told reporters the Vietnamese search will be aided by a database created by Harvard and Texas Tech University.
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Japan’s Aaron Wolf and Shori Hamada grabbed gold medals in their respective judo finals Thursday, taking the host nation’s tally to eight golds from the sport at the Tokyo Games and matching their record haul from Athens 2004.Wolf, 25, and world champion in 2017, threw South Korean Cho Gu-ham to secure a dramatic ippon victory that ended more than five minutes of grueling Golden Score sudden-death overtime in the men’s -100kg final.It was the first time in 21 years that a Japanese judoka had dominated the -100 kg category at the Olympics.Wolf, whose mother is Japanese and whose father is from the United States, raised his fist in victory and burst into tears when he won the final. He later said he had used painkillers on both his bad knees the previous day.”What I’ve done up until now paid off finally, so I felt the surge of emotion,” he told reporters.
“I was just brought up as Japanese in the low city area of Tokyo. Japanese athletes of mixed parentage are increasing, so I hope that will help diversity among Japanese as a whole.”Earlier, Wolf overcame Uzbekistan’s Mukhammadkarim Khurramov to make it to the quarter-finals, where he defeated Israel’s Peter Paltchik.In the semi-finals, Wolf beat Georgian Varlam Liparteliani, the world number one and Rio silver medalist, with a dynamic o-uchi-gari throw to score a waza-ari victory.South Korea’s Cho won silver, while the bronze medals went to Jorge Fonseca of Portugal and Niiaz Iliasov of the Russian Olympic Committee.In the women’s -78 kg division final, 2018 world champion Hamada defeated French world number one Madeleine Malonga with a quick and solid pin to win the gold medal.Earlier, Hamada, 30, had pinned Beata Pacut of Poland for an ippon victory in the elimination round of 16, then downed Aleksandra Babintseva of the Russian Olympic Committee via a sliding lapel choke to reach the semi-finals.Hamada, ranked second in her division, triumphed over German Anna-Maria Wagner with a cross armlock for an ippon victory in the semi-finals.The bronze medals went to Wagner and Mayra Aguiar of Brazil. 
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As the U.S economic recovery continues, many Americans want to buy new cars and trucks. But finding them is hard amid a global semiconductor shortage. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more on how COVID-19 continues to affect supply and demand in the automotive industry.

Producers: Kane Farabaugh, Adam Greenbaum. Videographer: Kane Farabaugh.
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Face mask requirements are returning to the United States in some communities and workplaces, along with directives for mandatory coronavirus vaccinations, in a new push to curb the easily transmissible delta variant of the infection that has already killed more than 611,000 Americans.

On the Independence Day holiday earlier this month, U.S. President Joe Biden heralded the strides the country had made in combating the coronavirus. But now he said he was seriously considering requiring that the more than 2.1 million federal workers be vaccinated, and that he would adhere to face mask rules when he visited parts of the country where the virus was surging.

The U.S. is now recording more than 60,000 new coronavirus cases each day, the government said, up from fewer than 12,000 a day in late June.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi, the leader of the Democratic-controlled U.S. House of Representatives, has reimposed a mask requirement in the chamber.

The western state of Nevada, where the popular Las Vegas gambling mecca is located, is reimposing mask rules for indoor gatherings, as is the Midwestern city of Kansas City, Missouri. A major newspaper, The Washington Post, said it would require that all its journalists be vaccinated before returning to the office in mid-September.

The requirements follow new guidance from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which said Tuesday that new data suggested even vaccinated people could pass on the virus if they became infected. The CDC said masks should be worn inside public places in communities that have seen a dramatic increase in COVID-19 cases in recent weeks. COVID-19 is the disease caused by the coronavirus.

“I know this is not a message America wants to hear,” CDC Director Rochelle Walensky told CNN on Wednesday. “With prior variants, when people had these rare breakthrough infections, we didn’t see the capacity of them to spread the virus to others, but with the delta variant, we now see that you can actually now pass it to somebody else.”

She stressed that vaccines against the coronavirus were preventing greater levels of hospitalization and death. But millions of Americans remain skeptical of the vaccines and are refusing to get inoculated, or are saying  they are unlikely to do so.

Walensky said unvaccinated people were accounting for “a vast majority” of new infections. Two-thirds of the vaccine-eligible population of people 12 years and older in the U.S. have received at least one dose. Still, the government said slightly less than half of the U.S. population of more than 328 million people had been fully vaccinated.

“We can halt the chain of transmission,” Walensky said Wednesday on “CBS This Morning.” “We can do something if we unify together, if we get people vaccinated who are not yet vaccinated. If we mask in the interim, we can halt this in just a matter of a couple of weeks.”

With the new federal guidance, numerous state and municipal governments across the U.S. are reconsidering or rescinding their earlier easing of mask rules.

The CDC also called on school systems across the country to require masks for students, teachers and visitors as they start the new school year in August and September. But some states in the South have passed laws banning masks in schools, leaving it unclear as to how they may react to the new CDC guidance.

Some information in this report came from The Associated Press.
 
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In just under six months Myanmar has become one of the worst jailers of journalists in the world, with at least 32 currently detained, a media freedom watchdog said Wednesday. 

The targeting of media since the February 1 coup marks a “drastic reversal” of positive inroads made by the Southeast Asian country toward greater freedom of expression since the end of its last period of military rule, the Committee to Protect Journalists said in a special report. 

Since Myanmar’s army toppled the elected civilian government and arrested its de facto leader Aung San Suu Kyi, over 900 people have been killed and 5,400 arrested, charged or detained including dozens of journalists, according to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners (Burma). 

As well as arrests, authorities have periodically imposed internet blackouts, revoked media licenses and issued warrants for reporters, a move that CPJ says is driving critical reporters underground or into self-imposed exile.

“As of July 1 at least 32 journalists were being held behind bars either on false news related charges or uncharged altogether,” Shawn Crispin, CPJ’s senior Southeast Asia representative, told VOA. “This is repression unlike I think probably we’ve seen anywhere in the world over the last six months. This is a worse situation than China. This is a worse situation than in Turkey.”

Those two countries usually account for the highest numbers of imprisoned journalists, according to CPJ’s census carried out each December. But Crispin said the data on those currently held in Myanmar make the country a close third. For comparison, last December Myanmar had only one journalist in jail.

At the height of the repression in June, CPJ documented at least 45 journalists behind bars. Myanmar later freed some of those. But for those still detained, conditions are dire with reports of torture and overcrowding. 

The CPJ said the full number being held may be higher, with many media organizations reluctant to identify their contributors for fear of reprisals.

“It seems pretty clear that the junta regime is aiming to eliminate free press altogether,” Crispin said, describing the current environment as an “humanitarian crisis for journalists.”

Local media have borne the brunt of repression but international news outlets have been restricted and at least four foreign journalists detained. Three of those—American reporter Nathan Maung, and correspondents from Poland and Japan—were later released. 

But Danny Fenster, the American managing editor for English-language local publication Frontier Myanmar, has been in custody for over 65 days.

Fenster, who is being held in Yangon’s Insein prison, told his lawyer he has the coronavirus but has not been provided with medical assistance. A court hearing scheduled for Wednesday was pushed back and his family have limited contact or updates on his wellbeing. 

The journalist, originally from metro Detroit, had been working in Myanmar for a couple of years. He was arrested on May 24 at Yangon airport, when he tried to fly home for a family visit.

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said Tuesday the Myanmar military’s refusal to respect rights is “flatly unacceptable” and called for the release of those detained.

Shaky record

Media freedom record under Suu Kyi’s elected government was far from flawless. Two Reuters reporters who reported on abuses against the Rohingya Muslim minority were imprisoned for over 500 days. 

But under the junta, CPJ’s Crispin says, Myanmar has used expanded laws around false news and incitement to target journalists as it seeks to “black out the news” of the deadly crackdown on pro-democracy campaigners.

“We found that many news outlets that were free to operate under Aung San Suu Kyi’s civilian government are now effectively operated underground. That means they have to close the bureaus,” he said, adding that many report from safe houses or while on the run. 

American journalist Maung told VOA his team at Kamayut Media knew they could face danger at any time. 

On March 9 around 40 armed soldiers raided their news outlet, and arrested Maung and his colleagues. 

“They interrogated me for the first four days, they didn’t give me water for three days,” Maung told VOA. 

The journalist said his captors kept him handcuffed, blindfolded and in stress positions.

“The first few days when I was being tortured I thought I could be killed anytime,” Maung said.  

His colleague Hanthar Nyien suffered too. CPJ’s report says Nyien was forced to kneel on an ice block, burned with cigarettes, and threatened with rape to force the journalist to hand over the code to unlock his smartphone.

The prison guards later learned that Maung was American, and he was released after 98 days. Nyien remains in custody.

“My body is in the United States but my mind everyday stays with my friends in the prison,” Maung said.

Myanmar’s military council has not directly responded to VOA’s queries on the treatment of detainees, but a spokesperson said the questioning of suspects is “in accordance with the rule and regulations.”

In a seemingly unrelenting crackdown “it’s hard to find positive strength in what’s happening right now in Myanmar for free press,” Crispin said. “They really are trying to erase the opening that allows the free press to take hold.”

But print outlets have pivoted to news shared over Facebook, and citizen journalists are risking arrest, bullets and tear gas to record the actions of the security forces.

A number of journalists have sought sanctuary in neighboring countries including Thailand and India.

“The junta can’t stop the internet, they can’t shut down Facebook…they can’t shut down information,” said one Myanmar reporter. 

The journalist, who is in hiding outside the country, asked for their identity and location to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.

“We don’t want to settle here. We want to keep working and reporting for Burma. We’re illegal here. We don’t have any document, so they [the authorities here] can arrest us and deport us back to Burma any day. We have to be low profile and very cautious,” the journalist said.

Crispin urged neighboring countries to provide a safe haven for journalists in hiding.

“It’s our hope that they will be allowed sanctuary in neighboring countries that would make it a little safer for them to report the news,” he said.
…

The Taliban will lose the international legitimacy they gained through their negotiations in Doha if the group does not fulfill its obligation to negotiate with the Afghan government for a political settlement to the conflict, the head of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Afghanistan said Wednesday in Kabul. 

“If there is no movement at the negotiating table, and instead human rights abuses and, worse still, atrocities occur in districts they control, the Taliban will not be seen as a viable partner for the international community,” Deborrah Lyons said while addressing a meeting of the Joint Coordination and Monitoring Board (JCMB), created in 2006 for coordination between the Afghan government and the international community. 

The Taliban have been officially talking to a team of Afghans that includes government representatives since September last year but there has been little movement in that discussion. 

Earlier this month, a high-level delegation of Afghans led by Abdullah Abdullah, the head of Afghanistan’s High Council for National Reconciliation (HCNR), went to Doha to meet the Taliban negotiation team in an effort to boost the process, with little success. 

The Taliban promised to negotiate with an Islamic Republic of Afghanistan (IRoA) team, as the Afghan team is called, in a deal it signed with the United States in February 2020 that paved the way for the withdrawal of foreign forces from Afghanistan. 

However, only parts of that deal were met. Other parts that included meaningful intra-Afghan negotiations for a political settlement, and a permanent and comprehensive cease-fire as a result of that settlement, are yet to materialize. 

On the contrary, the level of violence in Afghanistan has surged since the announcement that foreign troops are withdrawing from Afghanistan. In the last several months, the Taliban have made swift territorial gains and surrounded several cities, even if they have not captured a city yet.   

Lyons said the Taliban had “inherited responsibility” for the areas they have taken over. 

“The world is watching closely how they are acting, especially towards civilian populations, women and minorities,” she said. 

At the meeting attended by Afghan President Ashraf Ghani and Abdullah, Lyons also pointed to the humanitarian crisis unfolding in the wake of the increased violence. 

“Eighteen million Afghans today are facing dire humanitarian needs. That is twice the number of the same category last year. It represents half the country,” she said. 

The crisis, which includes millions of people internally displaced due to violence, has been exacerbated by waves of COVID-19 and a persistent drought. 

According to the U.N., civilian casualties this year are 50% higher, compared to the same period last year. Half of all those killed or wounded are women and children. 
 
…

The Biden administration is throwing its support behind congressional legislation that would require companies to report major data breaches by hackers, including the ransomware attacks that are increasingly targeting U.S. critical infrastructure.

“The administration strongly supports congressional action to require victim companies to report significant breaches, including ransomware attacks,” Richard Downing, a deputy assistant attorney general at the U.S. Department of Justice, told members of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Tuesday.

“In particular, such legislation should require covered entities to notify the federal government about ransomware attacks, cyber incidents that affect critical infrastructure entities, and other breaches that implicate heightened risks to the government, the public or third parties,” Downing said.

The announcement came as members of Congress are advancing more than a dozen bills in response to a recent escalation in ransomware attacks, while the administration has taken a whole-of-government approach to respond to what it sees as a public safety, economic and national security threat.

Emphasizing that information sharing is critical between companies and the government, Judiciary Committee Chairman Dick Durbin said there is “general bipartisan support” for congressional action in response to the cybersecurity threat.

“And I hope it leads — I think it will — to specific legislation to deal with this,” said Durbin, a Democrat.

Last week, a bipartisan group of senators introduced the Cyber Incident Notification Act of 2021, a bill that would require federal agencies and contractors as well as critical infrastructure operators to notify the government within 24 hours of a cyber breach that “poses a threat to national security.” To encourage information sharing, the bill would grant limited immunity to companies that report a breach.

“We shouldn’t be relying on voluntary reporting to protect our critical infrastructure,” Democratic Senator Mark Warner, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee and one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said in a statement last week. “We need a routine federal standard so that when vital sectors of our economy are affected by a breach, the full resources of the federal government can be mobilized to respond to and stave off its impact.” 

The bill’s Republican co-sponsors include Senators Marco Rubio, vice chair of the Intelligence Committee, and Susan Collins, a senior member.

Once seen as a financial crime, ransomware attacks have grown in both number and severity over the past year and a half. Testifying before Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the attacks have surged by 300% over the past year. This year alone, Mayorkas said, ransomware attacks have resulted in economic losses of $300 million.

In May, a ransomware attack on Colonial Pipeline, the operator of the largest fuel pipeline in the country, disrupted its operations for several days, setting off fuel shortages and panic buying. In June, meat processor JBS USA said it paid $11 million to cybercriminals following a ransomware attack that disrupted its operations.

Legislative proposals such as the Warner bill seek to address what law enforcement officials have long identified as a major impediment to their ability to respond to a ransomware attack: a reluctance by businesses to notify law enforcement about cyber breaches.

Companies are not currently required to disclose when they have been attacked by ransomware criminals. Fearing loss of operations or reputational harm, most victims choose not to report. The FBI estimates that about 25% to 30% of such incidents get reported, according to Bryan Vorndran, assistant director of the FBI’s cyber division.

The FBI has long encouraged victims of ransomware attacks to notify law enforcement, saying such information sharing can help it better understand and respond to the threat. Now, it wants notifications made mandatory.

“Because far too many ransomware incidents go unreported, and because silence benefits ransomware actors the most, we wholeheartedly believe a federal standard is needed to mandate the reporting of certain cyber incidents, including most ransomware incidents,” Vorndran testified.

“The scope and severity of this threat has reached the point where we can no longer rely on voluntary reports alone to learn about incidents,” Vorndran said.

In addition to ransomware attacks above a to-be-determined threshold, Downing said, the Justice Department wants mandatory notifications for two other types of breaches: supply chain attacks that could give outsiders access to critical U.S. infrastructure and government systems, and attacks involving high-value trade secrets related to critical infrastructure.

“Of particular significance, entities should be required to report any ransom demand; the date, time and amount of ransom payments; and addresses where payments were requested to be sent,” Downing said.

While supporting mandatory breach notifications, Downing and other officials opposed calls to make ransom payments illegal. Jeremy Sheridan, an assistant director for the U.S. Secret Service, told lawmakers that banning ransomware payments “would further push any reporting to law enforcement into obscurity.”

Jeff Seldin contributed to this report.

 
…

When Olympic diver Tom Daley announced in 2013 that he was dating a man and “couldn’t be happier,” his coming out was an act of courage that, with its rarity, also exposed how the top echelons of sport weren’t seen as a safe space by the vast majority of LGBTQ athletes.

Back then, the number of gay Olympians who felt able and willing to speak openly about their private lives could be counted on a few hands. There’d been just two dozen openly gay Olympians among the more than 10,000 who competed at the 2012 London Games, a reflection of how unrepresentative and anachronistic top-tier sports were just a decade ago and, to a large extent, still are.

Still, at the Tokyo Games, the picture is changing.

A wave of rainbow-colored pride, openness and acceptance is sweeping through Olympic pools, skateparks, halls and fields, with a record number of openly gay competitors in Tokyo. Whereas LGBTQ invisibility used to make Olympic sports seem out of step with the times, Tokyo is shaping up as a watershed for the community and for the Games — now, finally, starting to better reflect human diversity.

“It’s about time that everyone was able to be who they are and celebrated for it,” said U.S. skateboarder Alexis Sablone, one of at least five openly LGBTQ athletes in that sport making its Olympic debut in Tokyo.

“It’s really cool,” Sablone said. “What I hope that means is that even outside of sports, kids are raised not just under the assumption that they are heterosexual.”

The gay website Outsports.com has been tallying the number of publicly out gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer and nonbinary athletes in Tokyo. After several updates, its count is now up to 168, including some who petitioned to get on the list. That’s three times the number that Outsports tallied at the last Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016. At the London Games, it counted just 23.

“The massive increase in the number of out athletes reflects the growing acceptance of LGBTQ people in sports and society,” Outsports says.

Daley is also broadcasting that message from Tokyo, his fourth Olympics overall and second since he came out.

After winning gold for Britain with Matty Lee in 10-meter synchronized diving, the 27-year-old reflected on his journey from young misfit who felt “alone and different” to Olympic champion who says he now feels less pressure to perform because he knows that his husband and their son love him regardless.

“I hope that any young LGBT person out there can see that no matter how alone you feel right now you are not alone,” Daley said. “You can achieve anything, and there is a whole lot of your chosen family out here.”

“I feel incredibly proud to say that I am a gay man and also an Olympic champion,” he added. “Because, you know, when I was younger I thought I was never going to be anything or achieve anything because of who I was.”

Still, there’s progress yet to be made.

Among the more than 11,000 athletes competing in Tokyo, there will be others who still feel held back, unable to come out and be themselves. Outsports’ list has few men, reflecting their lack of representation that extends beyond Olympic sports. Finnish Olympian Ari-Pekka Liukkonen is one of the rare openly gay men in his sport, swimming.

“Swimming, it’s still much harder to come out (for) some reason,” he said. “If you need to hide what you are, it’s very hard.”

Only this June did an active player in the NFL — Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Carl Nassib — come out as gay. And only last week did a first player signed to an NHL contract likewise make that milestone announcement. Luke Prokop, a 19-year-old Canadian with the Nashville Predators, now has 189,000 likes for his “I am proud to publicly tell everyone that I am gay” post on Twitter.

The feeling that “there’s still a lot of fight to be done” and that she needed to stand up and be counted in Tokyo is why Elissa Alarie, competing in rugby, contacted Outsports to get herself named on its list. With their permission, she also added three of her Canadian teammates.

“It’s important to be on that list because we are in 2021 and there are still, like, firsts happening. We see them in the men’s professional sports, NFL, and a bunch of other sports,” Alarie said. “Yes, we have come a long way. But the fact that we still have firsts happening means that we need to still work on this.”

Tokyo’s out Olympians are also almost exclusively from Europe, North and South America, and Australia/New Zealand. The only Asians on the Outsports list are Indian sprinter Dutee Chand and skateboarder Margielyn Didal from the Philippines.

That loud silence resonates with Alarie. Growing up in a small town in Quebec, she had no gay role models and “just thought something was wrong with me.”

“To this day, who we are is still illegal in many countries,” she said. “So until it’s safe for people in those countries to come out, I think we need to keep those voices loud and clear.”
…

Four journalists have been arrested on propaganda charges in Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Tuesday.

They were arrested in the city of Kandahar after traveling to the disputed border town of Spin Boldak to interview commanders of the Taliban, which has been clashing with Afghan security forces, according to the Afghan media watchdog known as Nai.

The watchdog said the location of the journalists on Tuesday was unknown.

An Interior Ministry spokesman said the journalists have been charged with spreading propaganda for the Taliban after ignoring a warning from the government’s intelligence agency not to enter the area.

“The government of Afghanistan respects and is extremely committed to freedom of expression, but any propaganda in favor of the terrorist and the enemy, as well as against the interests of the country, is a crime,” interior ministry spokesperson Mirwais Estanikzai said.

Taliban spokesman Mohmmad Naeem denounced the arrests and argued the journalists were simply trying to “follow the events and try to reveal the facts.”

The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee called on the government to release the journalists “as soon as possible and to refer the case to the Media Complaints Commission to ascertain whether any violation has taken place or not.”

International rights group Amnesty International also called for release of the journalists, tweeting it is “concerned” about their detention.

The Afghan Journalists Safety Committee identified the journalists as Bismillah Watandoost, Qudrat Soltani, and Moheb Obaidi, employees of the local radio station Mellat Zhagh, and Sanaullah Siam, a cameraman of the Xinhua News Agency.
…

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After years of strained relations between Jordan and Israel over the Palestinian issue, analysts say a new dynamic dominates their relationship with the end of Benjamin Netanyahu’s premiership and they point to some positive momentum. 

Jordanian political commentator Osama Al Sharif says that just a month after a new Israeli coalition government was formed in June, ending 12 years of Netanyahu rule, the two sides reached several initiatives helping to normalize relations.  

Their foreign ministers have concluded fresh deals on water and trade, he told the Jordan Times newspaper, whereby Jordan will buy an additional 50 million cubic meters of water as the kingdom battles a severe drought. This is besides the “30 million cubic meters Israel provides annually under the 1994 peace treaty,” noted Al Sharif. 

The Israelis “also agreed to increase Jordanian exports to the West Bank from $160 million to $700 million annually,” Al Sharif said. Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid called Jordan “an important neighbor and partner,” saying Israel “will broaden economic cooperation for the good of the two countries.” 

King Abdullah, in a recent interview with CNN’s Fareed Zakaria, said he met both Israeli and Palestinian leaders following the 11-day war with Gaza, which he called a “wake-up call” for both sides, urging a return to the negotiating table.  

“I think we have seen in the past couple of weeks, not only a better understanding between Israel and Jordan, but the voices coming out of both Israel and Palestine that we need to move forward and reset that relationship. This last war with Gaza, I thought was different. Since 1948, this is the first time I feel that a civil war happened in Israel. I think that was a wake-up call for the people of Israel and the people of Palestine to move along. God forbid, the next war is going to be even more damaging,” Abdullah said.

Bruce Riedel, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington, told VOA that he shares the king’s concerns, if the Israeli-Palestinian stalemate continues and another war with Gaza were to erupt.

“As long as the U.S. remains committed to the two-state solution and talking to the Palestinian Authority, that’s to the minimal needs of the kingdom. It’s a frustrating situation because we know the status quo is not sustainable. Another round of violence like we saw earlier this year is only a matter of time,” Riedel said.  

Commentator Al Sharif also warns that “while ties with Israel can only improve after years of turbulence, trouble could be lurking ahead.” 

“Jordan cannot compromise on the two-state solution, nor can it accept Israeli actions” in East Jerusalem, he said, whether at the Al Aqsa Mosque or in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. 

Al Sharif warned that any future attacks on Jerusalem “will force the Jordanian monarch to react” as the custodian of the city’s Muslim and Christian holy sites. 
…

On a military aircraft high above the Pacific Ocean en route to Singapore, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin swore in one of the Biden administration’s leading experts on China as the newest assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security.
 
For the past six months, Ely Ratner led the department’s China task force, which reviewed where the Pentagon stood in its efforts on Beijing. Austin called it “magnificent piece of work” that fueled future policy plans.  
 
“I’m excited about having Ely firmly in the seat in this position,” Austin said during the ceremony Sunday held at about 9,100 meters (30,000 feet) in a plane traveling at 988 kph (614 mph).  
 
Ratner is a longtime aide to President Joe Biden, according to Politico, serving as a staff member when Biden was in the Senate. From 2015 to 2017, he was deputy national security adviser to then-Vice President Biden after working in the office of Chinese and Mongolian affairs at the State Department.  
 
Ratner was confirmed by the Senate on Thursday, along with five other national security team appointees.
 
On Austin’s trip, the first to Southeast Asia by a top member of the Biden administration, the secretary will visit Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines. It is Austin’s second trip to the Asia-Pacific region.
 
He is scheduled to deliver a keynote address on Tuesday at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’ Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. He likely will touch on his stated pursuit of a “new vision of integrated deterrence” of Chinese aggression across the region.
 
…

Staging an Olympics during the worst pandemic in a century? There’s a widespread perception that it couldn’t happen in a better place than Japan.

A vibrant, open democracy with deep pockets, the host nation is known for its diligent execution of detail-laden, large-scale projects, its technological advances, its consensus-building and world-class infrastructure. All this, on paper, at least, gives the strong impression that Japan is one of the few places in the world that could even consider pulling off the high-stakes tightrope walk that the Tokyo Games represent.

Some in Japan aren’t buying it.

“No country should hold an Olympics during a pandemic to start with. And if you absolutely must, then a more authoritarian and high-tech China or Singapore would probably be able to control COVID better,” said Koichi Nakano, a politics professor at Sophia University in Tokyo.

The bureaucratic, technological, logistical and political contortions required to execute this unprecedented feat — a massively complicated, deeply scrutinized spectacle during a time of global turmoil, death and suffering — have put an unwelcome spotlight on the country.

Most of all, it has highlighted some embarrassing things: that much of Japan doesn’t want the Games, that the nation’s vaccine rollout was late and is only now expanding, and that many suspect the Games are being forced on the country because the International Olympic Committee needs the billions in media revenue.

The worry here isn’t that Tokyo’s organizers can’t get to the finish line without a major disaster. That seems possible, and would allow organizers to claim victory, of a kind.

The fear is that once the athletes and officials leave town, the nation that unwillingly sacrificed much for the cause of global sporting unity might be left the poorer for it, and not just in the tens of billions of dollars it has spent on the Games.

The Japanese public may see an already bad coronavirus situation become even worse; Olympics visitors here have carried fast-spreading variants of the virus into a nation that is only approaching 25% fully vaccinated.

The Tokyo Olympics are, in one sense, a way for visitors to test for themselves some of the common perceptions about Japan that have contributed to this image of the country as the right place to play host. The results, early on in these Games, are somewhat of a mixed bag.

On the plus side, consider the airport arrivals for the thousands of Olympics participants. They showcased Japan’s ability to harness intensely organized workflow skills and bring them to bear on a specific task — in this case, protection against COVID-19 that might be brought in by a swarm of outsiders.

From the moment visitors stepped from their aircraft at Narita International Airport, they were corralled — gently, cheerfully, but in no uncertain terms firmly — into lines, then guided across the deserted airport like second-graders heading to recess. Barriers, some with friendly signs attached, ensured they got documents checked, forehead temperatures measured, hands sanitized and saliva extracted.

Symmetrical layouts of chairs, each meticulously numbered, greeted travelers awaiting their COVID-19 test results and Olympic credentials were validated while they waited. The next steps — immigration, customs — were equally efficient, managing to be both crisp and restrictive, but also completely amiable. You emerged from the airport a bit dizzy from all the guidance and herding, but with ego largely unbruised.

But there have also been conspicuous failures.

After the opening ceremony ended, for example, hundreds of people in the stadium were crammed into a corrallike pen, forced to wait for hours with only a flimsy barricade separating them from curious Japanese onlookers, while dozens of empty buses idled in a line stretching for blocks, barely moving.

Japan does have some obvious advantages over other democracies when it comes to hosting these Games, such as its economic might. As the world’s third-largest economy, after the United States and China, it was able to spend the billions needed to orchestrate these protean Games, with their mounting costs and changing demands.

Another advantage could be Japan’s well-deserved reputation for impeccable customer service. Few places in the world take as much pride in catering to visitors’ needs. It’s an open question, however, whether that real inclination toward hospitality will be tested by the extreme pressure.

A geopolitical imperative may be another big motivator. Japanese archrival China hosts next year’s Winter Games, and many nationalists here maintain that an Olympic failure is not an option amid the struggle with Beijing for influence in Asia. Yoshihide Suga, the prime minister, may also be hoping that a face-saving Games, which he can then declare successful, will help him retain power in fall elections.

And the potential holes in the argument that Japan is the perfect host nation for a pandemic Games?

Start, maybe, with leadership. It has never been clear who is in charge. Is it the city of Tokyo? The national government? The IOC? The Japanese Olympic Committee?

“This Olympics has been an all-Japan national project, but, as is often pointed out, nobody has a clear idea about who is the main organizer,” said Akio Yamaguchi, a crisis communications consultant at Tokyo-based AccessEast. “Uncertainty is the biggest risk.”

Japan has also faced a problem particular to democracies: a fierce, sometimes messy public debate about whether it was a good idea to hold the Games.

“After the postponement, we have never had a clear answer on how to host the Olympics. The focus was whether we can do it or not, instead of discussing why and how to do it,” said Yuji Ishizaka, a sports sociologist at Nara Women’s University.

“Japan is crucially bad at developing a ‘plan B.’ Japanese organizations are nearly incapable of drafting scenarios where something unexpected happens,” Ishizaka said. “There was very little planning that simulated the circumstances in 2021.”

Another possibly shaky foundation of outside confidence in Japan is its reputation as a technologically adept wonder of efficiency.

Arriving athletes and reporters “will probably realize that Japan is not as high-tech or as efficient as it has been often believed,” Nakano said. “More may then realize that it is the utter lack of accountability of the colluded political, business and media elites that ‘enabled’ Japan to hold the Olympics in spite of very negative public opinion — and quite possibly with considerable human sacrifice.”

The Tokyo Games are a Rorschach test of sorts, laying out for examination the many different ideas about Japan as Olympic host. For now, they raise more questions than they answer.
 
…

Robert Parris Moses, a civil rights activist who endured beatings and jail while leading black voter registration drives in the American South during the 1960s and later helped improve minority education in math, has died. He was 86.  
 
Moses worked to dismantle segregation as the Mississippi field director of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement and was central to the 1964 “Freedom Summer” in which hundreds of students went to the South to register voters.
 
Moses started his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding in 1982 the Algebra Project thanks to a MacArthur Fellowship. The project included a curriculum Moses developed to help poor students succeed in math.
 
Ben Moynihan, the director of operations for the Algebra Project, said he spoke with Moses’ wife, Dr. Janet Moses, who said her husband had died Sunday morning in Hollywood, Florida. Information was not given as to the cause of death.
 
Moses was born in Harlem, New York, on January 23, 1935, two months after a race riot left three dead and injured 60 in the neighborhood. His grandfather, William Henry Moses, had been a prominent Southern Baptist preacher and a supporter of Marcus Garvey, a Black nationalist leader at the turn of the century.  
 
But like many black families, the Moses family moved north from the South during the Great Migration. Once in Harlem, his family sold milk from a Black-owned cooperative to help supplement the household income, according to “Robert Parris Moses: A Life in Civil Rights and Leadership at the Grassroots,” by Laura Visser-Maessen.
 
While attending Hamilton College in Clinton, New York, he became a Rhodes Scholar and was deeply influenced by the work of French philosopher Albert Camus and his ideas of rationality and moral purity for social change. Moses then took part in a Quaker-sponsored trip to Europe and solidified his beliefs that change came from the bottom up before earning a master’s in philosophy at Harvard University.
 
Moses didn’t spend much time in the Deep South until he went on a recruiting trip in 1960 to “see the movement for myself.” He sought out the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Atlanta but found little activity in the office and soon turned his attention to SNCC.
 
“I was taught about the denial of the right to vote behind the Iron Curtain in Europe,” Moses later said. “I never knew that there was (the) denial of the right to vote behind a Cotton Curtain here in the United States.”  
 
The young civil rights advocate tried to register Blacks to vote in Mississippi’s rural Amite County where he was beaten and arrested. When he tried to file charges against a white assailant, an all-white jury acquitted the man and a judge provided protection to Moses to the county line so he could leave.
 
He later helped organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, which sought to challenge the all-white Democratic delegation from Mississippi. But President Lyndon Johnson prevented the group of rebel Democrats from voting in the convention and instead let Jim Crow southerners remain, drawing national attention.
 
Disillusioned with white liberal reaction to the civil rights movement, Moses soon began taking part in demonstrations against the Vietnam War then cut off all relationships with whites, even former SNCC members.
 
Moses worked as a teacher in Tanzania, Africa, returned to Harvard to earn a doctorate in philosophy and taught high school math in Cambridge, Massachusetts.  
 
Later in life, the press-shy Moses started his “second chapter in civil rights work” by founding in 1982 the Algebra Project.  
Historian Taylor Branch, whose “Parting the Waters” won the Pulitzer Prize, said Moses’ leadership embodied a paradox.  

“Aside from having attracted the same sort of adoration among young people in the movement that Martin Luther King did in adults,” Branch said, “Moses represented a separate conception of leadership” as arising from and being carried on by “ordinary people.”

 
…

Madrid’s tree-lined Paseo del Prado boulevard and the adjoining Retiro park have been added to UNESCO’s World Heritage list.

The UNESCO World Heritage Committee, holding an online meeting from Fuzhou, China, backed the candidacy on Sunday that highlighted the green area’s introduction of nature into Spain’s capital. The influence the properties have had on the designs of other cities in Latin America was also applauded by committee members.

“Collectively, they illustrate the aspiration for a utopian society during the height of the Spanish Empire,” UNESCO said.

The Retiro park occupies 1.2 square kilometers in the center of Madrid. Next to it runs the Paseo del Prado, which includes a promenade for pedestrians. The boulevard connects the heart of Spain’s art world, bringing together the Prado Museum with the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and the Reina Sofía Art Center.

The boulevard dates to the 16th century while the park was originally for royal use in the 17th century before it was fully opened to the public in 1848.

“Today, in these times of pandemic, in a city that has suffered enormously for the past 15 months, we have a reason to celebrate with the first world heritage site in Spain’s capital,” said Madrid Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida.

The site is No. 49 for Spain on the UNESCO list.

Also on Sunday, the committee added China’s Emporium of the World in Song-Yuan, India’s Kakatiya Rudreshwara Temple, and the Trans-Iranian railway to the World Heritage list.

World Heritage sites can be examples of outstanding natural beauty or manmade buildings. The sites can be important geologically or ecologically, or they can be key for human culture and tradition.

 
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