competitive and already looking ahead to the next five years. we head into this election period, then, with both rounds of the french presidential election in april with a particularly divided and fractious political landscape. and even as those covid-19 figures have yet to peak, the omicron wave still hasn't peaked here in france with growing pressure on hospitalizations and also on the government to try and get to the bottom of this, to get to the end of this ahead of the poll. laura and christine? >> thank you for that in paris. laura? now to the stark warning from an official with the beijing winter olympics. athletes can be punished for any speech or protest that violates chinese law. cnn's kristie lu stout joins us live on this story from hong kong. the laws here are very broad and very vague. a lot of speech could be covered. >> reporter: a lot of speech could be covered here, and now we're hearing of a warning against such speech. look, a chinese olympic official is now warning against violations of the olympic