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S.Korean TV apologises over opening ceremony broadcast

S.Korean TV apologises over opening ceremony broadcast

JUN-MIN PARK and MITCH PHILLIPS A South Korean TV network has apologised after using inappropriate images and captions to describe countries during the Tokyo 2020 opening ceremony on Friday. The broadcaster, MBC, used images of pizza to describe Italy, an upheaval for Haiti, Chernobyl for Ukraine, salmon for Norway, when athletes from those countries entered the stadium for the opening ceremony. In its captions broadcasting the ceremony, the network referred to the Marshall Islands as "once a nuclear test site for the United States", and Syria as the country that has "a civil war going on for 10 years". In…
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Olympics-Naomi Osaka lights flame as Tokyo’s ‘games of hope’ open

Olympics-Naomi Osaka lights flame as Tokyo’s ‘games of hope’ open

ANTONI SLODKOWSKI, ELAINE LIES and KIYOSHI TAKENAKA JAPANESE tennis star Naomi Osaka on Friday lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the formal start of Tokyo 2020, in an opening ceremony shorn of glitz and overshadowed by a pandemic but celebrated as a moment of global hope. Organisers also paid tribute to medical workers as athletes from across the world paraded into an almost empty stadium, their smiles hidden behind masks for the first time. Normally a star-studded display teeming with celebrities, the ceremony was low-key, with fewer than 1,000 people in attendance, strict social distancing rules and signs calling on…
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Scandal-hit Tokyo looks to final torchbearer to mend battered image

Scandal-hit Tokyo looks to final torchbearer to mend battered image

TIM KELLY BATTERED by scandal on the eve of the opening ceremony, Tokyo 2020 organisers have the chance to patch up the Games' image when they reveal who will carry the Olympic flame for the final few steps to light the stadium's cauldron. The identity of the final torchbearer is one of the Games' most closely held secrets yet speculation has swirled for months around well-known athletes such as former Seattle Mariners baseball player Ichiro Suzuki and Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels, the latest Japanese player to woo the United States. One sports figure who might be able…
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