Olympics-Stranded Japanese honeymooners end up as Cape Verde's team ambassadors

Cape Verde: Japanese couple Rikiya and Ayumi Kataoka had their honeymoon wrecked by the coronavirus pandemic, but their resourcefulness in enforced exile in Cape Verde has won them appointments as ambassadors for its Olympic team.

The Kataokas had completed a third of their round-the-world trip when a suspension in long-haul flights stranded them for five months in the archipelago of 10 tiny islands off the coast of West Africa. Unable to resume their journey to Europe and then home to Japan and unwilling to head to the African mainland, where virus cases are spiking, they had to trade their skills with domestic businesses to earn funds in the absence of work visas.

But Cape Verde's Olympics officials were so intrigued by the ties the couple had built with locals that they decided to include the Kataokas in their team heading to the rearranged games in Tokyo next July. "They want me to be an ambassador of the Olympic team," Rikiya, 30, told Reuters via Zoom, speaking from the island of Sal.

Cape Verde, who have never won an Olympic medal despite participating in every summer Games since 1996, hope to take three or four athletes to Tokyo. Not only will the Kataokas be useful for their local knowledge but the islands' officials hope the recognition helps repay the couple for their work in promoting the islands, where their plight turned them into minor celebrities. "We felt the urge of giving back," said Leonardo Cunha, the islands' chef de mission for Tokyo.

Miles from home with dwindling funds, the Kataokas could easily have panicked, but Rikiya, who occasionally works as a videographer back home, made social media videos, tagging hotels and restaurants, in exchange for lodging and food.

Japan: Anti-Olympics protest in Tokyo on day of planned Opening Ceremony

Tokyo, Japan: Several dozen protesters in masks gathered in front of Japan's National Stadium on Friday, July 24, the day the Olympic Games should have begun, to protest against holding them next year given the danger of the novel coronavirus.

The Games were postponed in March as COVID-19 swept the world and the government is determined that they go ahead next year. But there's growing opposition in Japan to holding the Games, even next year, over doubts that a big sporting event can be held safely.

A recent poll by Kyodo News found that fewer than a quarter of respondents were in favour of holding the Games as scheduled next year, a dramatic turnaround from the excitement during Tokyo's successful campaign to host the Olympics back in 2013. At the time, support among Tokyo residents for hosting the Games was as high as 70%, a crucial component in Tokyo's pitch to the International Olympic Committee (IOC).

The shift in public opinion comes as the Japanese capital sees a new surge in coronavirus cases after the government lifted a state of emergency.Tokyo reported a record 366 new infections on Thursday, July 23. Organisers of Friday's protest questioned whether Japanese companies, which raised a record $3.1 billion in sponsorship for the Games, should remain involved when they are under increasing pressure from an economic downturn caused by the virus.

The IOC has estimated the postponement will cost the committee $800 million. There has been no estimate for how much the postponement will cost Japan.

Organisers announce schedule for rearranged Tokyo 2020 Games

Tokyo, Japan: Next year's Tokyo Olympics will follow an almost identical competition schedule as the one planned for this year before the event was postponed due to the novel coronavirus pandemic, organisers said on Friday, July 17.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) and Japanese government decided in March to postpone the Games until 2021 and organisers have been working to rearrange an event almost a decade in the making. The new date for the opening ceremony at the newly-built National Stadium- July 23, 2021- had already been announced but the full schedule was pending final approval until Friday when the Tokyo 2020 organising committee made a presentation to the IOC Session in Lausanne. The Games had been set to begin on July 24 this year.

"Today we are able to report that we have confirmed both the competition schedule and the use of all venues originally planned for this year, including the venue for the athletes village and the main press centre," said Tokyo 2020 CEO Toshiro Muto. The new schedule means women's softball will kick off competition at 9 a.m. (0000 GMT) in Fukushima on July 21, two days before the Games officially open, with all events taking place a day earlier than the 2020 schedule.

There have also been some minor changes to session times. The Games are set to be the biggest ever in terms of events, with a record 339 medals available, before the closing ceremony on Aug. 8. One of the biggest hurdles for organisers was securing the 42 venues needed for the Games as many had already been booked for 2021. However, Muto said all the venues have been secured.

The marathon and race walking events will remain in the northern city of Sapporo after being controversially moved out of Tokyo because of the anticipated scorching summer heat.The next challenge for Tokyo organisers is developing measures to help prevent a COVID-19 outbreak from occurring during the Games and how much the delay will cost Japanese taxpayers.

Muto said decisions would be made on these issues in the autumn.

"We will be having a full-fledged discussion over COVID-19 countermeasures," he said. "But, as an example, the topics and themes we may discuss are immigration control, enhanced testing structures and the establishment of treatment systems and measures against COVID-19 in the areas of accommodation and transport."

Stringent norms for news channels for Olympics telecast

Broadcasters are not allowed to use words such as Olympic or London 2012 to brand or position their shows 

New Delhi: Television news channels in India cannot go overboard with their coverage of the London 2012 Olympic Games thanks to News Access Rules of the London Organizing Committee for the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games, or LOCOG. A reminder of these rules was sent by the News Broadcasters Association (NBA) to its members two days ago.

The news channels in India will not be able to show pictures of “breaking news” even when Indian athletes win gold medals as the live telecast rights of the Games rest with the state-owned Doordarshan and the private sports broadcaster ESPN. “We are not allowed to show the events at the Games till three hours after the official broadcasters finish telecasting them,” said an executive of the Hindi news channel Aaj Tak. The channels will have to make do with file footage of the participants in such cases, said the executive who did not want to be named as he is not authorized to speak to the media.

That is not all. The news channels that have invested in creating programmes—studio discussions or special features —around the Games are not allowed to use words such as Olympic or London 2012 to brand or position their shows. To circumvent the diktat, channels which have already lined up former Olympic participants and winners for their talk shows are giving them fancy names such as London Dreams, India Mange Gold, Go for Glory and London Mahakumbh, among others. There is no restriction on the use of London 2012 or Olympic Games in the regular news bulletins.

The guidelines also prevent television channels from using Olympic material for these shows. Olympic material includes “sounds or images of any Olympic event, wherever and whenever broadcast and however sourced, including sporting action, opening and closing ceremonies, medal ceremonies or other activities which occur at Olympic venues,” according to the rules.

Editors of several news channels agreed that the rules are restrictive and impede commercial exploitation of a prime property. “Most news channels have spent money on lining up sportsmen and women and wooed advertisers to come on board for Olympics programming. The (rule on) limited use of footage and other restrictions is likely to affect monetization of the Games,” said Ashutosh, managing editor of IBN7, the Hindi news channel from the Network18 bouquet, who goes by only one name.

Sudhir Chaudhary, the newly appointed business head and editor of Zee News, said that although the guidelines were limiting, the channel had planned both live reporting and studio shows for its audience. “The issue on coverage of sports events crops up repeatedly. NBA is attempting to resolve these,” he said, without elaborating. “NBA needs to resolve the sports coverage issue permanently. We understand that the channels which hold the rights to these events pay big money, but sports is news as well. They should be more liberal with their guidelines,” said Vinod Kapri, managing editor, India TV.

For now, the channels must follow the guidelines, however stringent they may be as LOCOG and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) will monitor compliance for the duration of the Olympic Games.

Besides, when the news channels signed up for accreditation to cover the Games, they accepted these rules automatically. For instance, the non-rights holders or channels that are not the official broadcasters can use a maximum of six minutes of Olympic material per day, in accordance with the News Access Rules. Besides, the six minutes footage cannot appear in more than three news programmes in a day and its duration cannot exceed two minutes in any one news programme.

Incidentally, the rules apply to all forms of broadcasting, television (free-to-air and pay television, cable, satellite, video on demand, including digital channels, digital multi-channels and services such as “news active” or ”sports active”), radio, Internet, mobile platforms and other interactive or electronic media.

Vinay Tewari, managing editor at CNN-IBN, said the rules are not new. The same rules applied for the Beijing Games as well. “True, the Olympic rings cannot share the screen space with, say, an advertiser on our channel, but the restriction is to prevent ambush marketing by brands that are not the official sponsors,” he said. CNN-IBN has signed up eight former Olympians, including Carl Lewis, as experts on its shows. The channel will produce four live shows a day once the Olympic Games are inaugurated.

In the absence of the rules, some Indian news channels would have definitely stepped over the line, said the top editor of a news channel who spoke on condition of anonymity.

“The stringent guidelines are good. Our news channels have been commercially exploiting properties for which other channels have paid big sums of money. Fair use rules had to kick in.” They have.