Macron arrives in Tokyo for Olympic opening ceremony Today 10:31 am JST Today | 03:02 pm JST TOKYO
French President Emmanuel Macron arrived in Tokyo on Friday to attend the opening ceremony of the pandemic-postponed Olympics, which is taking place under strict virus rules.
Paris will host the next edition of the summer Games in 2024, and Macron s meetings in Tokyo will include talks with International Olympic Committee chief Thomas Bach.
The French president is one of just a handful of foreign dignitaries in town for the opening ceremony, after organisers stripped back the usually lavish affair and limited attendance.
Only around 950 people will be in the stands, including US First Lady Jill Biden, who arrived in Tokyo on Thursday night.
Already a heavy hitter in Brussels, Big Pharma s clout has only grown during the pandemic. And it has a list of demands.
The scramble to secure shots, complete with threats and export bans, has put drugmakers in the limelight like never before and emphasized the strategic importance of the industry. As coronavirus vaccine-makers posted fat profits, CEOs acquired a direct line to the EU and to heads of state. Internal Market Commissioner Thierry Breton boasted in March that he made the rounds calling pharma top executives every morning to check progress on vaccine production.
And now, as the European Commission pushes to overhaul EU rules for the industry, drugmakers want to see a return on that political capital.
From CNN s Alyssa Kraus and George Ramsay
The Tokyo 2020 Olympics kicked off Friday with the Opening Ceremony almost a year to the day from their intended start date in July 2020.
In March 2020, the International Olympic Committee agreed to postpone the Games until 2021 due to concerns over Covid-19. The event was originally set to begin on July 24, 2020 and end on Aug. 9, 2020. The IOC president and the Prime Minister of Japan have concluded that the Games . must be rescheduled to a date beyond 2020 but not later than summer 2021, to safeguard the health of the athletes, everybody involved in the Olympic Games and the international community, a statement from the International Olympic Committee and the Tokyo 2020 Organising Committee read.
The Olympics opening ceremony starts tonight, but here s a side of Tokyo you won t see
After years of planning and setbacks, the Tokyo Olympics officially starts today with the opening ceremony, but it all feels very remote to the people who live here. 23 July 2021
The list of those not attending the Tokyo Olympics opening ceremony tells you a lot about how Japan feels about the games.Â
Senior officials from major sponsors like Panasonic, Fujitsu, Asahi and a host of others will skip the ceremony.
Toyota also bailed on the event and said it won t run any TV advertisements linked to the Games in Japan out of sensitivity to the COVID-19 situation .
Sommerurlaub in Gefahr? Sorge wegen Delta-Variante
Die Delta-Variante des Coronavirus, die als besonders ansteckend gilt, breitet sich weltweit aus. Auch Immunologen in Deutschland warnen, dass sie spätestens im Herbst die dominierende Variante in der Bundesrepublik sein könnte. Beschreibung anzeigen Brüssel. In vielen Urlaubsländern stecken sich jetzt junge Menschen mit der Delta-Variante an. Die Zahlen gehen nach oben. Ein Europa-Überblick. );}
Die Landkarte zur Corona-Lage in Europa färbt sich wieder rot. Es ist das Signal, mit dem die
Covid-Experten der Europäischen Union Alarm geben: Portugal, Spanien, die Niederlande, Luxemburg, Malta und Zypern haben die Mediziner der EU-Gesundheitsbehörde ECDC erneut als rot markiert, die Lage dort wird als „besorgniserregend“ eingestuft.