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 warni
She make allegations of sexual assault against a top official. peng shuai said the whole thick thing is a misunderstanding in front of the chinese olympic official which is not tamping down concern. sports analyst christine brennan and patrick mcenroe and also an espn commentator. christine, let s start with you. what do you make of this interview with peng shuai? so concerning and disappointing. the olympic committee has not done anything about what s right and the facts, the story, the world s biggest me too story and the ioc consistently ignored that piece. i even asked the ioc president thomas bach in a president here in beijing and why won t he speak, if peng shuai wants an
Jacket. the ioc insisting they are supporting her. i think we need also to listen to her and we need to read what she s saying. at the weekend, she told a french newspaper that the sexual assault allegation against a former senior chinese government leader was an enormous misunderstanding. her original social media post was deleted soon after it was posted, but now a series of photos emerging from the interview appearing to show a chinese olympic official accompanying her. the french newspaper calling the interview stage-managed and the women s tennis association saying that the interview does not alleviate its concerns. as we would do with any of our players, the wta ceo and chairman says, we have called for a formal investigation into the allegations by the appropriate authorities, and for the wta to meet with peng privately to discuss her situation. and this morning, continuing
She touched on allegations in a controlled interview published by a french sports newspaper yesterday, delivering her answers in front of a chinese olympic official. peng echoed comments she previously made to chinese language media saying there had been a huge misunderstanding in the outside world. the three-time olympian and former doubles player said her life was nothing special since that day and she deleted the post herself. she also denied she disappeared. the 36 year old also announced her retirement in the interview. the international olympic committee all worked to diffuse the situation, saying peng dined with them over the weekend but offered little details about the meeting, making no mention of the allegations. coming up, why the january 6th select committee appears to