of the delta variant. china is attempting to stick to a zero covid strategy ahead of its lunar new year celebrations and the beijing winter olympics. wildfires rip through parts of colorado in the united states destroying hundreds of homes and forcing tens of thousands to evacuate the area. and mourners in south africa have been paying their respects to the late archbishop desmond tutu. hello and welcome. before we move to today s news let s go to beijing and the ceremony there welcoming in the new year.
and we find out what these adelie and gentoo penguins in antarctica have to tell us about global warming. hello and welcome. we begin in beijing where the winter olympics torch relay has just got under way. over the next three days, 1,000 people will carry the torch past chinese landmarks, including the summer palace and great wall. it s a scaled down event with very few spectators because of coronavirus restrictions. but despite the government s commitment to a zero covid strategy, the omicron variant is spreading. the beijing olympics organiser says 32 new cases have been detected among games related personnel in the last 2a hours. let s go to beijing and our china correspondent
the russians took a page from the east germ playbook and have been doping athletes for decades. russian doping story probably went back to the 50s. recently, since 2014, they ve upped their game and we know that the lab and the director of medical services were all in a systematic loop. reporter: the russian government has consistently denied involvement in doping and has blamed several coaches for that. so far there has not been a gold medal ceremony for her team that already won gold in the olympics and if she wins the singles competition this week, there won t be a ceremony then either, the ioc said. they ll wait until more information comes out and all of this has been further litigated, wolf. brian todd reporting for us. thank you very much. let s go to beijing right now. cnn sports analyst, usa today sports columnist christine brennan is joining us live from beijing. you broke this story. you say this is a dark day in
chinese president xi jinping says western sanctions will be detrimental to the entire world. he voiced his opinion during a virtual summit with the french president and german chancellor on tuesday saying sanctions will affect not only russia but also the world s finance, energy, transportation and supply lines. notably president xi again refused to condemn russia s intervention of ukraine. natasha bertrand is live in brussels. let s go to beijing.
that is forward-looking. like, when you heard president biden speak about the things that they are going to be sharing together, it s about defense, it s about this new submarine for the australians. it s about cyber, it s about ai. these are all forward-looking efforts. it s not about wars of the past, traditional warfare. i also think it s significant that the uk hasn t really been present in the indo-pacific for the greater part of the last decade or so. after world war ii, the uk really left. so this brings them back, and it brings them back alongside the u.s. and the australians. let s go to beijing new bureau chief who s live inside the u.s. capitol. it s still very early there. what do you expect the chinese government s response will be to this announcement if they did not already know it was coming? this is obviously not going to sit well with them.