Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
Olympic teams were urged Friday to contact the IOC about getting more vaccines ahead of the 2022 Beijing Winter Games, which will be held in the country where the coronavirus outbreak started.
The International Olympic Committee first announced a vaccine rollout program with Chinese authorities for athletes and officials in March. Chinese vaccines were bought by the IOC and also made available for delegations heading to the Tokyo Olympics from countries which had approved them for use.
In May, vaccine developers Pfizer and BioNTech donated doses of their product to Tokyo Olympic teams. That scheme and potentially others could be added for Beijing, the IOC said Friday.
About 100 countries are likely to compete at the Beijing Olympics, which open Feb. 4. There were 205 national teams in Tokyo. Vaccination is encouraged but not mandatory.
"I would like to encourage those National Olympic Committees who require additional vaccine doses … to inform our NOC relations department as soon as possible so that we can put the necessary arrangements in place," IOC president Thomas Bach said Friday in a letter to Olympic teams.
Health officials in China said this week that more than 1 billion people, or 72% of the country's 1.4 billion citizens, have been fully vaccinated.
Still, the Beijing Games are expected to be organized within the same health security limits that applied for the Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics.
Bach noted the "excellent cooperation that we are enjoying with our Chinese partners and friends, as well as the relevant Chinese health authorities."
Though Bach's letter referred to "the athletes of these Olympic Games that will send this message of the unifying power of sport to the world." It did not acknowledge global concerns about human rights issues in China.
Activists have tried to brand it the "Genocide Games" because of China's detention of Muslim minority Uyghur people in prison camps in Xinjiang province.
Bach has consistently said the IOC is a politically neutral sports organization which cannot address issues that not even the United Nations has solved.
His letter was published on the day Beijing organizers unveiled their Games slogan "Together for a Shared Future."
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.