TOKYO
Come July, Takahiro Katsumi’s home city of Saitama is on deck to host some of the Summer Olympics’ most prominent events, including basketball, soccer and golf.
It’s an alarming prospect for Katsumi, a 48-year-old translator whose wife is battling lung cancer. He worries that Japan’s healthcare system, already strained from high infection and death rates in a fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, would be overwhelmed if Olympic visitors trigger another surge leaving his wife even more vulnerable.
To Katsumi, forging ahead with the Tokyo Olympics is an unreasonable risk that will leave the Japanese public shouldering the regret and consequences after the athletes and the world’s spotlight have come and gone.
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The maker of Marlboro and other cigarette brands has a new mission: getting the world’s 1 billion smokers to quit smoking.
You read that right. Philip Morris International is trying to persuade customers to switch to its heated tobacco products, which it claims are safer alternatives because they are smoke-free. Eventually, the company hopes, governments will regulate cigarettes out of existence altogether.
Given Big Tobacco’s long history of distortions and misleading the public, some skepticism is in order. Although the FDA has authorized the commercialization of Philip Morris’ IQOS electronic device and is allowing it to be marketed as “a modified risk tobacco product” with “reduced exposure,” the agency said further scientific research was needed. It also added this warning: “It is important to note that these products are not safe.”
Decade after Fukushima disaster, residents try to recover latimes.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from latimes.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Tokyo Olympic Organizing Committee President Seiko Hashimoto said Wednesday that she wants to reach a decision regarding whether foreign fans will be allowed to attend Olympic events in Tokyo by the end of the month.