Athlete is expected to head to Poland later after seeking protection at its embassy amid fears she would be punished if she returned home
Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya has left Japan on a Vienna-bound plane after she refused to fly home earlier this week.
The 24-year-old, who had sought refuge at the Polish embassy in Tokyo, had been expected to take a flight direct to Warsaw but switched at the last minute, an airport official told reporters.
Continue reading...Officials said the three tried to avoid authorities after returning from abroad, sparking a social media flurry
Japan has carried out a threat to publicly shame people not complying with coronavirus border control measures, releasing the names of three people who broke quarantine rules after returning from overseas.
The health ministry said the three Japanese nationals named had clearly acted to avoid contact with authorities after recently returning from abroad.
Continue reading...Latest updates: Covid deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 23 July up 50%; Indonesia’s health workers struggle under weight of new cases
More than 200 areas across England and Wales had at least twice as many deaths than average during the first Covid, according to analysis by the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The figures come as the number of coronavirus deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 23 July has reached 327, the highest figure recorded for three months.
Ivermectin may combat Covid infection and reduce infectiousness, a new Israeli study suggests.
The Jerusalem Post reports that the widely used anti-parasite drug was tested in a small randomised control trial, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, and saw 22% more patients who received ivermectin test negative for the virus by day six than the placebo group.
Continue reading...Yakei took top spot after roughing up Sanchu, the alpha male who had been leader of ‘troop B’ on the island of Kyushu for five years
In a rarely seen phenomenon in the simian world, a nine-year-old female known as Yakei has become the boss of a 677-strong troop of Japanese macaque monkeys at a nature reserve on the island of Kyushu in Japan.
Yakei’s path to the top began in April when she beat up her own mother to become the alpha female of the troop at the Takasakiyama natural zoological garden in Oita city. While that would have been the pinnacle for most female monkeys, Yakei decided to throw her 10kg weight around among the males.
Continue reading...Health experts say surge in cases amid Olympics could overload hospitals unless action taken
Health experts in Japan have warned that a recent surge in coronavirus cases in Tokyo, six days into the Olympics, could put hospitals under severe strain unless young people stop socialising at night and get vaccinated.
Tokyo reported 3,865 daily coronavirus cases on Thursday, up from 3,177 on Wednesday, as rising infections in the capital cast a shadow over the Olympics. Wednesday was the first time cases in Tokyo had exceeded 3,000 since the start of the pandemic.
Continue reading...Ashmolean Museum, Oxford
A seductive encounter with past and present at the Olympic city shows that Tokyo practically invented modern art
Love hotels and cross-dressers make Tokyo’s nightlife eye-popping – and that’s just in 18th-century woodblock prints. The Ashmolean’s seductive overview of the Olympic city’s art sets these classics alongside images of contemporary Tokyo to create a thrilling and informative encounter with one of the world’s great art capitals.
Past and present meet for a sultry encounter in the night. A wall is lit up by Mika Ninagawa’s intensely coloured photos of blue- and pink-haired clubbers. They are so now – yet close by in the same gallery is a painted scroll from the 1600s that is just as provocative. It depicts the pleasure quarter of Edo, as Tokyo was then called, which became Japan’s capital when the Tokugawa shoguns united the country in the 17th century. It was famous for its pleasure quarter, “the floating world”, and the new art genre it inspired – ukiyo-e, “pictures of the floating world”. In the scroll, samurai warriors are seen visiting courtesans. But samurai were banned from the pleasure quarter so they wear straw hats pulled down to hide their faces. The comically phallic swords peeping out from their robes give them away.
Continue reading...Viewers complain after rights-holder Discovery puts majority of events behind paywall
The BBC has faced a series of complaints about the lack of live Tokyo Olympics coverage on its channels, after viewers failed to realise the International Olympic Committee has sold the majority of UK television rights to pay-TV company Discovery.
During the London 2012 and Rio 2016 Olympics the BBC was able to offer dozens of free livestreams of different sports, revolutionising how British viewers watched the games and providing much-needed publicity to niche events that would not normally have enjoyed their moment in the public eye.
Continue reading...As Covid cases rise, vaccination lags and costs soar, most Japanese people are extremely cynical about the Games
The Olympic Games begins in Tokyo on Friday, just as Covid-19 blights the city for the fourth time – and a year after the Games were originally scheduled to begin.
Despite the latest alarming spike in coronavirus infections and hospitalisations across the city’s metropolitan area, Japan’s prime minister, Yoshihide Suga, has reiterated his resolve to go ahead with the Games, declaring at a session of the International Olympic Committee held on 20 July that “the Games can be held successfully, with the efforts and wisdom of the people”.
Continue reading...More Olympic athletes confirmed to have Covid; Seoul considering new restrictions amid one of worst outbreaks to date
In the UK, a record 618,903 alerts were sent to users of the NHS Covid-19 app in England and Wales in the week to July 14 telling then they had been in close contact with a person who had tested positive for coronavirus, according to NHS figures.
Angela Merkel has urged Germans to get vaccinated amid a worrying rise in cases, telling the nation: “The more we are vaccinated, the freer we will be.”
“We all want our normality back,” the German chancellor, who is preparing to step down later this year, said. “The more we are vaccinated, the freer we will be.”
Continue reading...US army special forces veteran Michael Taylor was sentenced to two years and his son Peter for one year and eight months
A Tokyo court has handed down the first sentences related to Carlos Ghosn’s arrest and escape from Japan, imprisoning US army special forces veteran Michael Taylor for two years and his son Peter for one year and eight months for helping the former Nissan chairman flee to Lebanon.
“This case enabled Ghosn, a defendant of serious crime, to escape overseas,” Hideo Nirei, the chief judge, said while explaining the judgment. “One year and a half has passed, but there is no prospect of the trial being held.”
Continue reading...Ryûsuke Hamaguchi reaches a new grandeur with this engrossing adaptation about a theatre director grappling with Chekhov and his wife’s infidelity
Ryûsuke Hamaguchi’s mysterious and beautiful new film is inspired by Haruki Murakami’s short story of the same name – and that title, like Murakami’s Norwegian Wood, is designed to tease us with the shiny wistfulness of a Beatles lyric. Hamaguchi’s previous pictures Asako I and II and Wheel of Fortune and Fantasy were about the enigma of identity, the theatrical role play involved in all social interaction and erotic rapture of intimacy. Drive My Car is about all this and more; where once Hamaguchi’s film-making language had seemed to me at the level of jeu d’esprit, now it ascends to something with passion and even a kind of grandeur. It is a film about the link between confession, creativity and sexuality and the unending mystery of other people’s lives and secrets.
Yûsuke (Hidetoshi Nishijima) is a successful actor and theatre director who specialises in experimental multilingual productions with surtitles – he is currently working in Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and is preparing to play the lead in Chekhov’s Uncle Vanya. He has a complex relationship with his wife Oto (Reika Kirishima), a successful writer and TV dramatist who has a habit of murmuring aloud ideas for erotic short stories, trance-like, while she is astride Yûsuke having sex, including a potent vignette about a teenage girl who breaks into the house of the boy with whom she is obsessed.
Continue reading...The International Olympics Committee president, Thomas Bach, mistakenly referred to Japanese people as 'Chinese' during a Tokyo 2020 press conference in Japan. The gaffe was not translated by interpreters at the conference. He corrected himself quickly, but the mistake was reported in Japanese media, prompting a backlash on social media
Continue reading...U-turn deals blow to Japan’s hopes of using Games to showcase recovery from 2011 tsunami
The Fukushima prefecture of Japan will bar spectators from the Olympic events it hosts this summer owing to rising Covid-19 infections, its governor said on Saturday, reversing a position announced two days earlier by organisers.
The decision deals another blow to Japan’s hopes of using the Olympics to showcase its recovery from a devastating earthquake and tsunami that hit the northern coast in 2011, destroying a nuclear power station in Fukushima in the worst nuclear accident since Chernobyl.
Continue reading...Family of Nottingham woman say they have received ‘the worst news imaginable’ from police
A British teacher who was missing in Japan for more than a week has been found dead.
The family of Alice Hodgkinson, 28, confirmed they had received the “worst news imaginable” from police in Japan.
Continue reading...Japanese prime minister says Tokyo’s fourth state of emergency will begin on Monday
Olympic organisers have decided to ban spectators from the Tokyo Games after Japan’s prime minister declared a state of emergency in the host city.
The news was confirmed by the Olympic minister, Tamayo Marukawa, following talks between the government, organisers and Olympic and paralympic representatives - although he left open the possibility that some venues outside Tokyo could still have fans.
Continue reading...Kurt Campbell says Beijing assessing world’s response to Hong Kong crackdown to understand potential reaction on Taiwan
A senior US official has warned China not to seek emboldenment from its Hong Kong crackdown to move against Taiwan, as Japan’s deputy leader said it would defend Taiwan against an attack.
Kurt Campbell, coordinator for Indo-Pacific affairs on the US national security council, told a forum on Tuesday the US had tried to send a “clear message of deterrence across the Taiwan Strait” and any attempt by China to move on Taiwan would be “catastrophic”.
Continue reading...A woman attempted to extinguish the torch’s flame in Japan with a squirt gun – and she’s far from the first to stage a protest during the torch relay
Are you kind of, sort of, not really into the fact that the Olympics are still going to happen later this month in Tokyo despite the coronavirus pandemic and the fact that the vast majority of our planet’s 7.8 billion people remain unvaccinated, with alarming outbreaks cropping up worldwide?
If so, you’ve got a friend in Kayoko Takahashi.
Continue reading...Number rose after officials in Atami checked residential registers rather than relying on reports of missing people following mudslide
Officials in Japan have dramatically raised their estimate of the number of people still missing after a mudslide ripped through a seaside town at the weekend.
Reports said three people had died in the disaster, which occurred after days of torrential rain in Atami, a famous hot spring resort about 60 miles (90 km) south-west of Tokyo.
Continue reading...More than 1,000 rescuers have arrived in Atami, a Japanese town hit by a landslide on Saturday that killed two people. The rescuers climbed on to cracked roofs and searched cars thrown on to engulfed buildings, as more rain lashed the area.
About 20 people are still missing after the huge landslide, which was caused by days of heavy rain that swept away homes in central Japan. Television footage showed a torrent of mud crushing some buildings and burying others in Atami, a resort town south-west of Tokyo, while residents ran as it crashed over a hillside road
Continue reading...A huge landslide has swept away homes and left 19 people missing at a popular resort town in central Japan after days of heavy rain, local officials say.
Television footage on Saturday showed a torrent of mud obliterating some buildings and burying others in Atami, south-west of Tokyo, with people running away as it crashed over a hillside road.