Covid-19 related warnings on the big screen ahead of the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Japan. Picture date: Friday July 23, 2021. TOKYO — If sports is a microcosm of life, then the Tokyo Olympics organisers must be hoping that the sporting extravaganza would somehow burst into life when the Games cauldron is lit at the Opening Ceremony tonight .
A handful have unfortunately succumbed, such as Britain's world No.1 skeet shooter Amber Hill and American teen tennis sensation Coco Gauff. You can imagine how devastated they must have been to be denied the opportunity to compete right at the 11th hour. You could almost forgive the residents for not giving a thought about the Olympics. Their lives are now shrouded by the COVID-19 pandemic, as they try to adjust to a fourth State of Emergency in the metropolis, which will last until after the Games.With new daily cases in Tokyo skyrocketing to nearly 2,000 – after going as low as 376 just last month – keeping themselves and their loved ones safe is probably their paramount concern, amid the low vaccination rates in Japan.
On Monday, a music composer for the Opening Ceremony quit after it emerged he had bullied classmates with disabilities at school. Then on Thursday - a day before the ceremony - came another shocker: the ceremony's director was fired over a joke he made about the Holocaust as a comedian in 1998. Such stubborn self-certainty has pushed the Olympics past drug scandals, terrorist attacks and overspending hosts in previous Games. Yet those troubles were confined within the Games, while the indifference due to the pandemic is on a global scale, with Tokyo merely a reflection.
All for an opportunity to show the world what physical feats can be accomplished with such persistent dedication. They are similar to the runners on the street, or the kids enjoying home runs on the baseball fields – they just take such passion to the extreme.
Being cancer-stricken and begging CPF Board to repay overdue debt; that which in any case cannot be done as the money had been commingled and funneled to private entity Temasek Holdings for Ho Ching to wager on unviable, untenable and ultimately, invariably doomed gambles
Muhammad Qasim does not claim that he is Mahdi, or that his dreams mean wahi (revelation). But a growing number of people from across the world are calling him the Imam Al-Mahdi. Why are these dreams so important?
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