The Covid Olympics
Japan’s attempt to hold an Olympics in a pandemic is a test of how much normalcy is possible and safe.
The actress Momoko Kikuchi with the Olympic torch in Fukushima in March.Credit.Philip Fong/Agence France-Presse Getty Images
May 5, 2021, 6:26 a.m. ET
Japan has contained Covid-19 far better than most other large countries. But it now faces the challenge of holding the Olympics this summer and welcoming athletes from around the world without causing new outbreaks.
The status of the Games has become a political issue in Japan, with polls showing most residents favoring either postponement or cancellation. Many people are frustrated with how Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga, in his first year in office, is handling the situation.
Your Monday Briefing
April 11, 2021
Good morning. We’re covering Russia’s hidden Covid deaths, China’s crackdown on Alibaba and post-election violence in Uganda.
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Graves from 2020 and 2021 at a cemetery on the outskirts of Samara, Russia.Credit.Emile Ducke for The New York Times
Russia’s hidden Covid deaths
At least 300,000 more people died last year during the coronavirus pandemic than were reported in Russia’s most widely cited official statistics.
Not all of those deaths were necessarily from the virus. But demographers see “excess deaths” as the most accurate way to assess the virus’s overall toll. By that measure, the pandemic killed about one in every 400 people in Russia, compared with one in every 600 in the U.S. For much of the last year, Russia has appeared more focused on the public-relations and economic aspects of the pandemic than on fighting the virus itself, but the deaths are an open secret.
The New Taiwan Tensions
China is getting more aggressive. Would the U.S. go to war to protect the island?
Figures of nationalist soldiers are part of a display on Lieyu Island. The Chinese city of Xiamen lies across the water.Credit.An Rong Xu/Getty Images
April 9, 2021Updated 9:46 a.m. ET
When Henry Kissinger secretly traveled to Beijing in 1971 to negotiate the re-establishment of diplomatic ties between the U.S. and China, he came bearing multiple requests about the Vietnam War, nuclear arms, the Soviet Union and more. Kissinger’s Chinese counterpart, Zhou Enlai, had only one focus: Taiwan.
An âOld Menâs Clubâ Dominates Japan. The Young Just Put Them on Notice.
Change may come slowly in Japanese society, but social media has offered an outlet for a younger generation stifled by a rigid hierarchy.
Momoko Nojo, a student at Keio University in Tokyo, and one of the authors of the petition that called for systemic change in the wake of sexist remarks by the president of the Tokyo Olympic organizing committee.Credit.Noriko Hayashi for The New York Times
TOKYO â For a moment, it looked as if the most powerful people in Japan were three 20-something women.