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Three athletes positive for Covid inside Beijing Olympic bubble

AFP

Three athletes attending training events for the Beijing Winter Olympics have tested positive for Covid-19, Chinese officials said Thursday, with the country on high alert against the coronavirus ahead of the Games.

Beijing 2022 organisers have left nothing to chance with the games set to start in February, restricting entry to the capital and insisting on daily virus tests for thousands of athletes who will be kept within a “closed-loop” bubble.

One of the athletes, a foreign luger, tested positive at the airport when entering the country and was sent to a quarantine hotel along with another infected teammate as they had no symptoms, officials said last week.

But a third person has now tested positive — another luger and a close contact of the earlier cases, Zhao Weidong, an Olympics organising committee member, said on Thursday.

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The latest patient is asymptomatic and has also been transferred to a quarantine facility for “medical observation,” Zhao said at a press conference.

Authorities are continuing to “test people, materials and the environment, as well as conducting health monitoring and disinfecting the environment,” Zhao added.

China is gearing up to tackle one of the largest challenges to its zero-Covid strategy as thousands of athletes are expected to descend on Beijing for the games, which will be held from February 4 to 20.

City authorities this week imposed strict new rules on inbound travellers, requiring all visitors to Beijing to show a negative Covid test result from the past 48 hours and cancelling flights from higher risk areas within the country.

China has kept its domestic case numbers far lower than in most countries, through mass testing, aggressive lockdowns and border controls that left some families separated and many unable to return to work from outside the country.

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The Olympics will test the country’s ability to ward off the pandemic, with organisers promising nearly empty stadiums and banning spectators from outside China.

All participating athletes and venue staff must be vaccinated, while tens of thousands of workers in higher-risk industries across the city are being tested multiple times a week.

The Beijing Winter Games organisers have said the coronavirus is the biggest challenge in the lead-up.

The event is also facing boycott calls from international campaigners over human rights concerns in China’s Xinjiang region as well as in Hong Kong and Tibet.

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FBI Most Wanted Fugitive Arrested in Mexico and Deported to U.S.

Authorities in Mexico announced Thursday that Samuel Ramírez Jr., a U.S. citizen accused of murdering two women and listed among the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, was arrested in the northern state of Sinaloa.

Ramírez Jr., 33, was detained Tuesday in Culiacán just 1 hour and 13 minutes after being added to the Federal Bureau of Investigation Ten Most Wanted list, the agency said in a statement.

The suspect, who was born in California, has already been deported to the U.S. state of Washington, where he faces charges related to the fatal shooting of two women at a bar in Federal Way in May 2023.

A court issued an arrest warrant for Ramírez in November last year, and the FBI initially offered a $25,000 reward for information leading to his capture, later increasing the amount to up to $1 million.

“To protect individuals’ privacy and ensure continued cooperation from the public, the FBI does not confirm the identity of those who provide information,” the agency said in its statement.

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UN experts warn Nicaragua runs vast transnational network to monitor exiled dissidents

Nicaragua maintains an “extensive” transnational network to monitor and intimidate opposition figures living in exile, affecting “hundreds of thousands” of people, the United Nations Group of Human Rights Experts on Nicaragua warned on Tuesday.

In a statement, the experts said their report “details an extensive transnational architecture of surveillance and intelligence used to monitor, intimidate and attack the hundreds of thousands of Nicaraguans living abroad.”

The report, which will be presented on March 16 to the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, states that the structure maintained by the government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo includes the army, the police, migration authorities and diplomatic missions.

According to the statement, “the government has arbitrarily stripped 452 Nicaraguans of their nationality, left thousands more exiled in a situation of de facto statelessness, and prevented many from returning to Nicaragua.”

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Trump: ‘We Think It’s True’ Amid Claims Iran’s Supreme Leader Was Killed

U.S. President Donald Trump said on Saturday that he believes multiple reports claiming the death of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during the U.S. and Israeli offensive against the Islamic Republic are likely true, though he stopped short of confirming the news.

“We have a feeling that the information is correct,” he said, according to NBC News. “I don’t want to say anything definitive until I see it, but we think that’s the case. And many of their leaders have disappeared,” he added.

Earlier, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said there were “many indications” that Khamenei had died in an attack on his residential compound.