More than 50 mayors from cities around the world signed an agreement in support of the Paris 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid, uniting behind the city and its vision for a compact, sustainable and shared Games. Spanning all continents, the 54 global cities -- 35 of them capitals -- supporting Paris 2024 represent a diverse range of cultures, races and religions. Among the cities to sign the letter of support are six Olympic host cities: Athens, Barcelona, Mexico City, Montreal, Munich and Sydney (Paris 2024).
Swim Ireland CEO Sarah Keane, 43, will take over from Pat Hickey as president of the Olympic Council of Ireland. Keane won the majority of the 43 votes to "take the reigns from Hickey." Hickey, 71, stepped aside as OCI president temporarily last year, "following his arrest for alleged ticket touting" at the Olympics. Thursday's election was the first time since the '80s that a new president was elected to the OCI (IRISH MIRROR, 2/9).
A panel of a nonpartisan parliamentary group on sports said on Thursday that "it will aim to pass Japan's first anti-doping bills ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Games, a bill that will make sports doping as illegal." The panel is "looking to present related bills to the current ordinary Diet session," laws that would come into effect in April '18. The bills are "set to ban not just the use of prohibited substances but also offering them to athletes and manipulation of test samples" (KYODO, 2/9).
