Georgian strong man Lasha Talakhadze broke his own world record to retain the title in the men’s heaviest weight class at the Tokyo Olympics on Wednesday with a combined lift of 488 kg. Talakhadze, who won a gold at the 2016 Rio Games in the same category, lifted 223 kg for the snatch and 265 kg for the clean and jerk to also break his own world records in the two categories. “I feel pretty good — I have just gained a second Olympic gold medal and of course I have also set another world record,” Talakhadze said through an interpreter. “We were for a long time looking forward to the Olympics and to win this gold.” Lasha Talakhadze of Georgia holds his national flag as he celebrates the gold medal he won at the men’s +109kg weightlifting event, at the 2020 Summer Olympics in Tokyo, Japan, Aug. 4, 2021.His total was 47 kilos more than Iran’s Ali Davoudi, who took silver in the men’s +109 kg class. Syria’s Man Asaad took the bronze with 424 kg. Talakhadze dominated the field from the beginning. He was the last lifter to start both the snatch and the clean and jerk, and made three consecutive attempts for each. In his third snatch, Talakhadze initially called for 221 kg, one kilo shy of his world record. Crowds cheered when he increased the weight to 223 kg — and made the lift. He chose to lift 265 kg in his third clean and jerk, one kilo more than his world record, without hesitation. The sound of camera shutters echoed throughout the arena as he made the attempt and succeeded again. Talakhadze, who becomes the first Georgian athlete to win multiple Olympic gold medals in any sport, aims to compete in the Paris Games in 2024. The sport is facing the risk of removal from the Games over persistent doping issues. Talakhadze said that offenders should get what they deserve but that the sport should be included in the Paris Games. “Those who deserve punishment should be punished and weightlifting should remain in the program,” he said.
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Day: August 4, 2021
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is aiming to give full approval to Pfizer’s COVID-19 vaccine by early September, according to The New York Times. The two-dose vaccine, which Pfizer developed in collaboration with German-based BioNTech, was granted emergency use authorization by the FDA last November.
It is one of just three COVID-19 vaccines in the U.S. stockpile, along with the two-shot vaccine from Moderna and the single-dose version developed by Johnson & Johnson. The newspaper says the FDA is accelerating its normal timetable to grant full approval to the two-dose vaccine as the United States undergoes a new surge of coronavirus infections and hospitalizations caused primarily by the highly contagious Delta variant of COVID-19. The recent surge of new infections is mainly among people who have not gotten vaccinated. The Times quotes recent polls by the Kaiser Family Foundation, a health care research group, which found that three of every 10 unvaccinated people in the U.S. said they more likely would take a fully approved vaccine.
The surge has prompted a growing number of public and private entities to issue mandatory vaccinations for all of its employees, including an order last week by U.S. President Joe Biden for all employees of the federal government.FILE – A health care worker from Humber River Hospital’s mobile vaccination team administers the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the Church of Pentecost Canada in Toronto, Ontario, May 4, 2021.Pfizer applied for full authorization of its COVID-19 vaccine back on May 7, while Moderna filed for full approval on June 1. Johnson & Johnson said it plans to apply for full approval later this year. In Australia, authorities in New South Wales state Wednesday announced 233 new cases of confirmed COVID-19 infections in the state capital Sydney, the epicenter of the nation’s current surge of new infections. They also reported two new deaths, including a woman in her 80s who died Tuesday, and a man in his 20s who died at his home in Sydney, making him one of the youngest people in Australia to die from the disease.
The unvaccinated man had been in isolation at his home for 13 days when his condition suddenly deteriorated. New South Wales state Premier Gladys Berejiklian said the man’s death shows “again how this disease is lethal, how it affects people of all ages.” The current outbreak has been traced to a Sydney airport limousine driver who tested positive for the Delta variant after transporting international air crews in late June. At least 16 people have died in this latest surge. The city of 5 million residents remains under a strict lockdown until August 28.
Australia has been largely successful in containing the spread of COVID-19 through aggressive lockdown efforts, posting just 35,089 total confirmed cases and 927 deaths, according to the Johns Hopkins Coronavirus Resource Center. But it has proved vulnerable to fresh outbreaks due to a slow rollout of its vaccination campaign, with only 15% of its citizens fully vaccinated. And authorities in China have announced that all 11 million citizens in Wuhan will undergo mandatory testing as an outbreak of the Delta variant spreads across the country, with cases confirmed in more than 35 cities. The central Chinese city, where the novel coronavirus first emerged in late 2019 before spreading across the globe, reported three new cases Monday. The new outbreak has been traced to Jiangsu province, where officials say the Delta variant was introduced last month at the airport in Nanjing, the provincial capital. Authorities have suspended all domestic flights from Nanjing and nearby Yangzhou. A separate outbreak in the city of Yangzhou has been traced to infected passengers who traveled across the border from Myanmar. The latest figures from Johns Hopkins show 199.5 million people around the globe have been infected since the start of the pandemic, including 4.2 million deaths. The United States leads the world with 35.2 million total cases, with India in second place with 31.7 million infections, followed by Brazil with 19.9 million. The U.S. leads COVID-19 deaths with 614,295, followed by Brazil with 558,432 and India with 425,757. Information from The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse contributed to this report.
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A Belarusian Olympic sprinter who said she faced punishment if she returned to her country departed Japan Wednesday on a flight bound for Austria. Krystsina Tsimanouskaya was scheduled to land in Vienna Wednesday afternoon. She is then expected to travel on to Poland, where the government has offered her a humanitarian visa. Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki posted Tuesday on Facebook that he had spoken with Tsimanouskaya and that she should be able to live in Poland without obstacles. Polish authorities granted Tsimanouskaya a humanitarian visa to seek political asylum on Monday after she alleged her team’s officials were trying to force her to fly home to Belarus against her wishes.Belarusian sprinter Krystsina Tsimanouskaya arrives at the Polish embassy in Tokyo, Japan, Aug. 2, 2021. Tsimanouskaya told officials in Tokyo she feared she would not be safe in Belarus from the autocratic government of President Alexander Lukashenko. “They made it clear that upon return home I would definitely face some form of punishment,” she told The Associated Press in a Tuesday videocall interview. “There were also thinly disguised hints that more would await me.” Her departure from Tokyo comes days after she provoked backlash in state-run media in Belarus by criticizing how official were managing the Belarusian Olympians. On her Instagram account, Tsimanouskaya said she was put on the country’s 4×400 relay team even though she has never raced in the event. The Belarus National Olympic Committee has been led for more than 25 years by Lukashenko and his son, Viktor. U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the Lukashenko government was trying to force Tsimanouskaya to leave the Games “simply for exercising free speech.” Some information in this report came from the Associated Press, Agence France-Presse and Reuters.
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Experts say South Africa is seeing growing drug addiction among young people during the pandemic. A medical research center found that some teenagers are abusing cough syrup that contains the drug codeine. Franco Puglisi looks at the drug addiction problem and efforts to rehabilitate youth in this report from Johannesburg.Camera: Franco Puglisi Produced by: Barry Unger
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Ghanaian lawmakers are facing backlash over a bill before Ghana’s parliament that aims to make gay rights advocacy illegal.Eight lawmakers are sponsoring the bill, which was introduced in parliament Monday. The bill would impose a maximum 10-year prison sentence on people who support and advocate for same-sex and gay rights. Individuals or groups would also not be allowed to provide social or medical support to LGBTQ+ people. Word of the bill had spread in recent weeks even before it was officially presented, prompting outrage among many Ghanaians. Kwasi Prempeh, the head of the Ghana Center for Democratic Development, which defends gay rights, told VOA the bill is a distraction. “We’re in almost a post-COVID situation and there are a lot of challenges to deal with,” Prempeh said. “This is not the kind of distraction we need at this time. And unfortunately, it is being foisted on us by these crusaders who really will not stop.” Prempeh added that even if the bill is passed, it will be legally challenged. “In parliament it may well pass, but I doubt very much it will survive executive scrutiny, hopefully not,” Prempeh said. “If it does get presidential assent, I’m almost certain that it will be challenged judicially.” But opposition lawmaker Sam George, who is leading the effort to pass the bill, said it is not aimed at infringing on the sexual preference of individuals as long as they do not force it on others. “I don’t care what you do in the confines of your room or the privacy of your home,” George said. “But when you want to make that a way of life, when you then want to demand that the rest of us accept your perversion and when you want to demand that the rest of us accept to your way of life and target our children, then we’re not going to allow you to do that.” FILE – A police officer stands guard before the bail hearing of 21 people who were detained by police and accused of unlawful assembly and promoting an LGBTQ agenda, in Ho, Volta region, Ghana, June 4, 2021.In January, police raided Ghana’s first LGBTQ+ community center in Accra. Twenty-one gay rights advocates are now on trial after having been arrested at a workshop for allegedly championing LGBTQ+ rights. The head of LGBTQ+ Rights Ghana, Alex Kofi Donkor, described the bill as backward and wants the international community to pressure the government to withdraw it. “This is simply absurd and simply unacceptable in the 21st century,” Donkor said. “I think this is the time that organizations and countries that believe in human rights begin to speak out about this hate bill that is being introduced in Ghana. Ghana needs to be called out on the international level.” In coming weeks, the Constitutional and Legal Committee of Ghana’s parliament plans to consult the general public for possible amendments.
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The state of Florida is experiencing a hospital crisis because of a surge in the number of patients with COVID-19. These patients are younger and sicker than patients infected with the original virus, and they are largely unvaccinated. Most of them have the Delta variant that is sweeping through the southern U.S., where vaccination rates remain low. At a media briefing August 3, doctors belonging to the Infectious Disease Society of America called for more COVID testing and more vaccinations — both in the U.S. and in other countries. The Delta variant was first detected in India, but it is rapidly spreading around the world. Rachael Walensky, head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has called the current wave “an epidemic of the unvaccinated.” She called this variant “one of the most infectious respiratory viruses we know of.” The Delta variant can infect even those who have been vaccinated. Dr. Ricardo Franco, a member of the society, said Delta makes up 89% of new COVID infections at the University of Alabama hospital. He added that 97% of hospitalized patients are not vaccinated against the virus, and that the Delta variant is twice as transmissible as the original virus.Covid-19 restrictions stay in place in the subway system in New York City, Aug. 2, 2021. Covid restrictions are still in force as cases caused by variants are on the rise. “The key here is that the overwhelming majority of infections are occurring among the unvaccinated. Data from COVID trackers show that a vaccinated person is eight times less likely to get infected by Delta compared to an unvaccinated person. He is 25 times less likely to be hospitalized and, if hospitalized, 25 times less likely to die from COVID-19,” Franco said. “The conclusion here is that vaccination is working through this Delta wave,” he continued. “More importantly, unvaccinated people are actually benefitting from greater herd immunity [and] protection in high vaccination counties than in low vaccination counties.” Franco said herd immunity should become more effective as more people get vaccinated. But since fewer tests are being performed than in the earlier stages of the pandemic, less is known about who has the variant and where it is spreading. Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel from the University of Pennsylvania also briefed reporters. “We have to stop being U.S.-focused alone,” Emanuel said, “because these variants, in the case of Delta, arose overseas and came here, and so getting the world vaccinated is a top priority and has to be a top priority. We don’t know where a new one [variant] is going to evolve.” Until the virus is stopped, Emanuel said, the best protection is wearing a mask in public places indoors, and even when outdoors, avoiding large crowds.
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