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| Matteo Renzi |
Italian PM
Matteo Renzi said that
Italy "will bid with a different city for 2028 if Rome's mayor rejects the capital's candidacy for the
2024 Olympics." Renzi said, "The decision is up to the city and we'll accept that, it's either yes or no." But Renzi added, "If the city decides no, it means that for 2028 we'll bid with another city" (
AP, 9/1).
The World Health Organization said that "no Zika infections were reported in Brazil during the Olympics, either among athletes or visitors." The int'l health agency "convened experts this week to decide whether the Zika virus remained a public health emergency." They voted yes "in part because new infections had been reported in Singapore and Guinea-Bissau." One "bright spot was the Olympics." Brazil "presented data that the experts said had convinced them that no infections had occurred." Dr. David Heymann, a professor of infectious disease epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said, "They gave us very convincing data" (N.Y. TIMES, 9/2).
The Japanese government "decided to double the number of personnel serving in an intelligence-gathering unit aimed at preempting and preventing terror attacks, as Tokyo gears up to host the Olympics and Paralympics in 2020." The unit, under the control of the office of PM Shinzo Abe, "will be expanded to around 80 people from the existing roughly 40 following the decision at a cabinet meeting" (JAPAN TODAY, 9/4).
The Int'l Paralympic Committee said that "it will not allow individual Russian competitors to participate at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games as neutral athletes." More than 175 Russian athletes "submitted requests to compete there, despite the court of arbitration for sport upholding Russia’s exclusion from the Games in the wake of a damning report into the country’s state-run doping programme" (PA, 9/1).
