Tag Archives: Winter Sports

World

Russia’s Wartime Crackdown Widens as Kremlin Demands Full Loyalty

Leave a comment

In late June, Russian security agents took physicist Dmitry Kolker from his hospital bed in the Siberian city of Novosibirsk, where he was being treated for stage-four pancreatic cancer, and whisked him on a four-hour flight to a Moscow prison on charges of treason.

Mr. Kolker, who at that point was being fed through a tube, died behind bars three days later.

Russian prosecutors say he was working in the interests of a foreign power. His lawyer, Alexander Fedulov, who said he hadn’t seen the charges before his client’s death, believes Russian authorities sought to demonstrate that no one’s loyalty is beyond suspicion in the Kremlin’s broadening crackdown.

The message, Mr. Fedulov said, is simple. “Wherever you are, whatever condition you may be in, we’ll do with you what we want just to make sure you stay loyal,” he said. “The criminal case against Kolker—it isn’t about Kolker, it’s for everyone else.”

Mr. Kolker’s arrest was part of a flurry of detentions in recent weeks that have targeted a swath of society, including scientists, a top economist and a professional hockey player.

Dozens have been arrested for speaking out against the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, including some of those arrested in recent weeks.

But in the case of others, the Kremlin appears to have targeted figures solely for appearing insufficiently patriotic at a time when the government of President Vladimir Putin is demanding unflinching support, say rights lawyers and political analysts. The harshness of some of the arrests is meant to put people on notice, they say.

Neither the Kremlin, the Prosecutor General’s Office nor the Investigative Committee, which probes major crimes in Russia, responded to requests for comment on the recent wave of arrests.

Dmitry Kolker, a prominent physicist shown at a concert in 2018, died from late-stage cancer after he was jailed on charges of treason.



Photo:

ALEXANDER FEFELOV/REUTERS

Mr. Kolker’s son Maxim said the last time he saw his father, who was a doctor of physics and mathematics at Novosibirsk State University, was when security agents were taking him away from his hospital room. He said it took the family more than two weeks after the scientist died to retrieve his body from a state hospital morgue.

The morgue of Moscow’s City Clinical Hospital No. 29 didn’t respond to a request for comment. Mr. Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters earlier this month that the Kremlin couldn’t comment on the case because it was “the prerogative of law enforcement agencies and the court.”

The arrests come months after Mr. Putin gave a speech on state television promising that patriotic Russian society would purify itself of “scum and traitors,” and “spit them out like a gnat that accidentally flew into their mouths.” The Kremlin has cast its war in Ukraine as a “special military operation” to free the country from the West’s control and prevent an assault on Russia.

Russian analysts and the country’s dwindling number of human-rights advocates say Moscow’s security services are taking a cue from Mr. Putin to root out anyone deemed disloyal to the Kremlin, and that the arrests suggest Russia is slipping into the kind of paranoia that gripped it during the Cold War, as the government seeks to squelch the smallest hint of resistance to Kremlin policies.

“Russia of course has every opportunity to return to Stalinist hell but it seems that for now Putin is content to tighten the screws just enough to dissuade would-be protesters and dissenters,” said Sergey Radchenko, a historian who specializes in the Cold War and professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies.

Russia’s lawmakers, meanwhile, are passing a raft of new wartime bills. On July 14, Mr. Putin signed into law bills that punish people who have access to government secrets and leave the country without permission with up to seven years in prison. Those found guilty of violating a new treason law that punishes Russians who “join the side of the enemy” risk 20 years behind bars.

The same day Mr. Kolker was arrested, police arrested

Vladimir Mau,

a prominent economist and rector of the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration, a university that produces cadres of officials in the Russian government. He was charged with two counts of fraud, including stealing 21 million rubles, equivalent to about $360,000, from the university, Russian state news agencies reported from the court hearing at the end of June.

Vladimir Mau, an economist shown during an interview with TASS last December, was charged with fraud in June. He denies the charges and is being held under pretrial house arrest.



Photo:

Sergei Karpukhin/Zuma Press

Mr. Mau, according to the news agencies, denied he was guilty. Mr. Mau’s lawyer, Alexei Dudnik, said he couldn’t comment further on the case because he and his client had been asked by the authorities to sign nondisclosure agreements. The website for Moscow’s Tverskoy district court says Mr. Mau is being held under pretrial house arrest.

Mr. Peskov told reporters earlier this month that the Kremlin wouldn’t comment on the case.

Mr. Mau had a stellar career as an economic adviser to the Russian government and was an adviser to former acting Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar when the latter was leading efforts to privatize Russian state industry following the fall of the Soviet Union.

By most accounts, Mr. Mau was in the Kremlin’s good books. Even on the eve of his detention he had been re-elected to the board of directors at state-owned energy giant Gazprom PJSC. And Mr. Putin in 2020 had personally praised Mr. Mau, who signed an open letter earlier this year from university rectors across the country supporting his invasion of Ukraine.

Critics have widely interpreted his arrest as punishment for less-than-unwavering loyalty to Mr. Putin. They cited reports by independent Russian media that he signed the public letter later than others and that first versions of the letter lacked his name, which appeared later. Those reports couldn’t be confirmed.

Mr. Mau had built a reputation as a so-called systemic liberal, someone who tried to constructively criticize the system from behind closed doors, according to former colleagues.

“The fact that a systemic liberal continued overseeing the country’s most important university for producing government elite was inconsistent with Putin’s regime,” said Dmitry Nekrasov, an economist who worked in the Kremlin until 2010 and with Mr. Mau. He said Mr. Mau’s arrest was inevitable.

Russian opposition figure Ilya Yashin, charged with ‘knowingly spreading false information’ about Russia’s army, flashes the V sign during a hearing on his detention.



Photo:

Kirill Kudryavtsev/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Tatiana Stanovaya, founder of R. Politik, an independent political consulting firm, said Russia’s siloviki, a collective term for the security services and law-enforcement agencies, are pursuing a clampdown on free thought in academia and education, leaving academics like Mr. Mau especially vulnerable to perceptions of disloyalty and being caught up in the dragnet.

“The time of systemic liberals is over,” she said. “This is the time of the siloviki. Right now everything is founded on the issue of security and the demand for dealing with anyone unfavorable.”

Ivan Fedotov, 25, a goalie on Russia’s silver-medal-winning hockey team at the Beijing Olympics this year, recently fell into that net. He was detained on charges of skipping mandatory military service. His detention came days after he quit his Russian hockey team, CSKA Moscow, and signed a contract with the Philadelphia Flyers of the National Hockey League. While Russian men must serve a year in the military by the time they turn 27, according to Russian law, professional athletes are typically allowed to bypass service by getting exemptions or playing for CSKA, the military’s club, according to Russian military analyst Pavel Luzin.

Mr. Fedotov’s whereabouts couldn’t be determined, but his lawyer, Alexei Ponomarev, told Russian state news agency TASS in early July that he was likely being held in Severomorsk, a town in the Arctic that requires official authorization to enter. Several days later, TASS reported that he would likely be sent to serve on the remote Novaya Zemlya archipelago in the Arctic Ocean. Mr. Ponomarev didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Ivan Fedotov, shown during the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games, was detained on charges of failing to undertake his military service.



Photo:

Antonin Thuillier/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Ruslan Shaveddinov, an ally of jailed opposition leader

Alexei Navalny,

was sent to Novaya Zemlya in 2019 on charges of skipping military service and spent a year serving there in what he calls punishment for his political activities. Mr. Shaveddinov said he believes the Russian authorities targeted Mr. Fedotov to send a message.

“It’s a clear signal to a wide audience that in this new confrontation with the West, these kinds of attempts to progress in America are viewed as treason,” Mr. Shaveddinov said.

Kremlin spokesman Mr. Peskov told reporters in early July that the case was about the law. “Our legislation dictates military duty,” he said.

Russia’s crackdown against critics of the war is likewise continuing. According to Damir Gainutdinov, head of the Net Freedoms Project, a Russian rights group, at least 72 people are now facing up to 10 years in prison on charges of disseminating false information about activities of the armed forces.

Pavel Chikov,

head of the

Agora

human-rights group, said that in total more than 200 people are facing prison sentences on various charges related to criticizing the war.

Earlier this month, Moscow city councilor Alexei Gorinov became the first to receive a prison sentence for disseminating false information about the Russian military when a court handed him a seven-year prison sentence. The judge said he committed the offense when he spoke out against a local council’s decision to hold children’s dancing and drawing competitions in Russia while children were dying in Ukraine.

Mr. Chikov said the sentence was so severe because Mr. Gorinov was the first person to plead not guilty to the charges. In three earlier cases, judges had handed out guilty verdicts, but the defendants were given a fine, correctional labor or a suspended sentence, after they had pleaded guilty, according to Mr. Chikov.

“It’s a strong message both to the public and to regional authorities,” said Mr. Chikov. “In Moscow’s view, seven years is the correct punishment.”

Ruslan Shaveddinov, an ally of jailed opposition leader Alexei Navalny, was sent to a remote Arctic Ocean archipelago in 2019 on charges of skipping military service and spent a year there in what he calls punishment for his political activities.



Photo:

Handout/Shutterstock

The latest opposition politician to face the charge of disseminating false information about the activities of Russia’s armed forces is

Ilya Yashin,

one of few anti-Kremlin activists who hadn’t fled Russia. He pleaded not guilty on July 13 to charges of spreading false information about alleged war crimes committed by Russian forces in the town of Bucha outside Kyiv on his YouTube channel in April.

One of his lawyers, Maria Eismont, said she has little hope he will avoid an extended sentence. “A lawyer now can only hold your hand while you are locked up,” she said.

In a handwritten letter passed through Ms. Eismont to The Wall Street Journal, Mr. Yashin said he had shown and cited a British Broadcasting Corp. report from Bucha on his YouTube channel and described his indictment as one that would “amaze the imagination of any civilized person.”

“I was locked up for a report by the BBC,” he wrote. “This is the new reality in my country.”

Write to Evan Gershkovich at evan.gershkovich@wsj.com and Thomas Grove at thomas.grove@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

US

Chinese Agent Proposed Violent Means to End Dissident’s Congress Run, DOJ Says

Leave a comment

A Chinese spy hired a private investigator to use violence if necessary to end a candidate’s run for Congress, instructing him to “beat him until he cannot run for election,” prosecutors alleged as they unsealed a series of complaints accusing Chinese agents of harassing dissidents living in the U.S.

A man working as an agent of the Chinese government also plotted to appear at another dissident’s house pretending to represent an international sports committee in a bid to get his passport and that of a family member, prosecutors said. The dissident isn’t named but was confirmed by a person familiar with the investigation as Arthur Liu, the father of American figure-skating Olympian Alysa Liu, who has said he fled China after organizing student protests in 1989.

Altogether, prosecutors presented three cases in Brooklyn charging five people, three of whom are in custody and two of whom are at large.

While U.S. authorities have long accused the Chinese government of using illegal tactics to threaten political rivals and dissidents world-wide, law-enforcement officials said Wednesday the efforts had grown more brazen in recent years, reaching even into the U.S. political process.

“Authoritarian states around the world feel emboldened to reach beyond their borders to intimidate or exact reprisals against individuals who dare to speak out against oppression and corruption,” Matt Olsen, the assistant attorney general for national security, said at a press briefing on the cases.

The Chinese Embassy in Washington didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Qiming Lin, the alleged Ministry of State Security agent who targeted the candidate, told the investigator: “Whatever price is fine. As long as you can do it.” According to a transcript of their conversation that prosecutors included in charging documents, Mr. Lin, who is in China, said: “We don’t want him to be elected,” adding, “we will have a lot more—more of this [work] in the future…Including right now [a] New York State legislator.”

The candidate, who is running for a New York seat in the U.S. House of Representatives, isn’t named in the complaint but matches the description of

Yan Xiong,

a student leader in the Tiananmen Square pro-democracy protests of 1989 who later fled China, served in the U.S. military and became a citizen.

Mr. Lin suggested a variety of ways the investigator could end the would-be congressman’s candidacy, including by manufacturing derogatory information about him or arranging for him to be in a car accident, prosecutors said. “Car accident, [he] will be completely wrecked [chuckles], right?” Mr. Lin said, according to prosecutors. In another conversation, the agent allegedly said: “You go find a girl for him, see if he would take the bait.”

The private investigator, who wasn’t identified, reported the efforts to the Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to the charging document.

Mr. Yan, a Democrat, is among several candidates vying to succeed Rep.

Lee Zeldin

in Long Island’s First Congressional District. Mr. Zeldin, a Republican, isn’t seeking re-election and is running in New York’s gubernatorial primary later this year.

Representatives for Mr. Yan didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Representatives for Alysa and Arthur Liu also didn’t respond to a request for comment. The complaint alleges that the surveillance and harassment campaign against Mr. Liu included looking to pay a reporter to let an agent tag along on an interview and ask his own questions, put a GPS tracker on his car, and get his Social Security number.

The complaint said investigators had also secured an international sports committee ID card bearing the name of an actual representative and an image of one of the agents. The plan to get Mr. Liu’s passport and that of a family member, the complaint said, was discussed in November 2021 and involved going to the Lius’ house with the identification card under the guise of checking if they were prepared to travel.

The 16-year-old Alysa Liu competed at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, finishing seventh in the women’s competition.

The three men accused of targeting Mr. Liu are two New Yorkers, Fan Liu and Matthew Ziburis, as well as a Chinese national they allegedly worked for, Qiang “Jason” Sun. The three allegedly engaged in other operations against several dissidents, including trying to bribe an Internal Revenue Service employee for access to one of their tax returns. They are also accused of stalking and surveilling an artist who made a sculpture depicting Chinese President

Xi Jinping

as a coronavirus molecule.

In a third case, a former Chinese dissident living in Queens, Shujun Wang, was accused of using his status within the Chinese community to report to the Ministry of State Security on people the Chinese government considers threatening, including Hong Kong pro-democracy activists, advocates for Taiwanese independence, and Uyghur and Tibetan activists—both in the U.S. and abroad. At least one high-profile Hong Kong democracy activist on whom the defendant reported was subsequently arrested by Chinese officials, prosecutors said.

“The Chinese Communist Party is not the only entity engaged in these practices, but their level of aggressiveness is unique,” said FBI assistant director for counterintelligence Alan Kohler Jr., who added that the actions often targeted Chinese Americans.

Fan Liu and Messrs. Wang and Ziburis appeared in a federal court in Brooklyn on Wednesday afternoon. During his appearance, Mr. Liu denied the allegations through a Chinese interpreter. A judge set his release at $1 million bond.

The judge set Mr. Wang’s release at $300,000 bond. Mr. Ziburis’s bond was set at $500,000. The three defendants had their travel restricted, and a judge ordered Messrs. Liu and Wang to not enter the Chinese consulate in New York or other Chinese government facilities in the U.S.

Lawyers for all three defendants didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

Friction between Beijing and Washington is running high, including over China’s reluctance to distance itself from Russia and its invasion of Ukraine. U.S. authorities have stepped up efforts in recent years to prosecute a range of allegedly illegal activities by the Chinese government in the U.S. In 2020, the FBI arrested five people on charges of helping Beijing harass and threaten fugitives in the U.S. In a separate case that year, a New York City police officer was arrested for allegedly helping the Chinese consulate spy on the local Tibetan community.

The Justice Department last month ended a Trump-era initiative to counter national-security threats from China after it led to a series of failed prosecutions of academics that sowed broad distrust in the higher-education community. At the time, Justice Department officials had said they planned to continue pursuing other cases involving allegations of wrongdoing on the part of the Chinese government, including those that targeted Chinese dissidents living in the U.S.

—Louise Radnofsky contributed to this article.

Write to Aruna Viswanatha at Aruna.Viswanatha@wsj.com, Kate O’Keeffe at kathryn.okeeffe@wsj.com and James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Sports

The Winter Olympics As We Know Them Could Be Over

Leave a comment

An athlete from Team France passes snowless hills as he takes part in a training session Zhangjiakou National Biathlon Centre on February 7, 2022 in Zhangjiakou, China. The Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics are held entirely on artificial snow.
Photo: Carl Court (Getty Images)

Maddie Phaneuf, an Olympic biathlete (she does a combination of cross-country skiing and rifle shooting) from Upstate New York has watched this year’s Winter Games with mixed enthusiasm. She’s saddened—but not surprised—that the event has had to use fake snow, as snowfall is becoming harder to predict around the world.

It’s become more and more obvious to Phaneuf that finding the right amount of snow for sports like hers is more complicated than it used to be. As a professional athlete, she has traveled to compete and train in places like the Dolomites in Italy, snowy ranges known for their long winters, only to find a completely different environment.

“You’re imagining these places to be amazing winter wonderlands that have so much snow, and you get there and there’s just green grass, and there’s just a ribbon of white snow that’s all manmade,” she said. “It’s obviously hard to see that as a professional athlete, where that’s your livelihood to race on that.”

The climate crisis is changing winter weather around the world. What was once a predictable season of cold weather and snow is now a hodgepodge of extreme snowfall and dry spells. This year’s Winter Olympic Games have worried both climate advocates and winter sport athletes. Beijing has experienced dangerously high levels of pollution, and venues are using artificial snow for outdoor sports—this year’s games are in fact using all fake snow. Seeing this, athletes, scientists, and outdoor sporting enthusiasts are concerned that it will become harder and harder to stage future Winter Olympics.

Mario Molina is the executive director of Protect Our Winters (POW), a nonprofit that promotes progressive climate policy. They aim to turn outdoor enthusiasts into climate advocates by using their personal experiences and love for winter sports as motivation. “We encourage the outdoor community, which is [more than] 35 million people that recreate [with] outdoor sports every year, and we try to get the message out there to participate in the civic process by calling their elected officials,” Molina said. “And we get out the vote in favor of climate-friendly candidates.”

POW also works with professional athletes and winter sports influencers like Phaneuf, who are seeing their careers changed by shortening winters and erratic snowfall, to engage others who are worried about the future of winter sports. The organization partners with climate and weather experts as part of their outreach and education as well.

To sound the alarm on a potentially snow-less future, POW released “Slippery Slopes: How Climate Change is threatening the 2022 Winter Olympics.” The report pointed to research from the University of Waterloo that found that, “out of the 21 cities to have hosted the Winter Olympics up to 2022, only Sapporo in Japan would have the necessary conditions to host them again in a safe and fair way by the end of the 21st century if there is not a drastic reduction in greenhouse gasses.”

A snow machine makes artificial snow for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics on January 2, 2022 in Zhangjiakou, Hebei province, northern China.
Photo: Kevin Frayer (Getty Images)

Thomas Painter is a snow hydrologist who works with Airborne Snow Observatories Inc, a California-based organization that collects data on the snow melt flowing out of major water basins in the Western United States. He explained that the climate crisis is making it harder to predict reliable snowfall for parts of the world that used to have regular snowy winters.

“We are moving towards more precipitation falling as rain that used to fall as snow… There’s enormous volatility, and so I think that’s going to make the decision on where we even continue to have the Winter Olympics,” he said.

That’s not to say that snow storms aren’t happening—we’ve seen major snow and ice storms this year. But a changing climate is going to make winter more about feast or famine, where there are large snowfall events followed by long stretches of time with no snow at all. Painter pointed to a variety of factors like rapidly melting glaciers, droughts all over the world, and changing atmospheric rivers that used to ensure predictable rain and snowfall.

Molina pointed out how some sports can be replicated indoors; events like figure skating are already held at indoor rinks. But athletes like Phaneuf need to train and compete along stretches of land.

Without regular snowfall and long winters, it’s harder for areas to maintain a “base” of snow so that equipment like skis and snowboards aren’t regularly damaged by rocks and other elements. Many ski resorts try to have a base of about 20 inches of snow before opening; areas designated for cross country skiing only need a few inches if the area is grassy in the spring. If there are a lot of rocks on the ground, there needs to be several inches of snow. Without that thick layer, skiers and snowboarders can easily be injured by tripping.

When there isn’t enough snow, some competition organizers have to bring in snow from other areas. Distance sports like Phaneuf’s don’t belong indoors, but current conditions have caused many competitions to be canceled or relocated due to a lack of adequate snow.

“I’ve had experiences where we’ve been to races and the only snow that could provide for us was extremely dirty and full of rocks. And as soon as you just ski, one-kilometer loop or two kilometers, your skis are just totally damaged… full of scratches and dents,” she said.

When there isn’t local snow to be moved around, venues and events have turned to artificial snow. Beijing had to utilize entirely man-made snow in order to host the games. Using fake snow has become increasingly common in other previous Olympics. Fake snow was used in the 1980 Winter Olympics in Lake Placid. It also made up more than half of the snow during the 2014 Sochi games, and about 90% of the snow at Pyeongchang in 2018 came from snow machines, Vox reported.

Fake snow doesn’t work with sporting equipment the same way that natural snow would. Artificially made snow may look like the fallen stuff, but when put under a microscope, the structure is very different. Real snow is made of snowflakes and isn’t as densely packed, while fake snow is often composed of frozen water droplets that become tightly packed, creating harder surfaces and unsafe landings.

POW’s “Slippery Slopes” report outlined the experiences of several athletes, who explained that competing or training on fake snow increases the risk of “bad landings.” Scottish freestyle skier Laura Donaldson—who competed at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002—pointed out in POW’s report that fake snow can really suck for professional sports.

“Jump take-offs can be excessively icy and slippery, bad take-offs directly contribute to bad landings. It is dangerous for an athlete if take-offs and landings are formed from sheets of ice,” Donaldson said in the report. “If Freestyle super pipes are formed from snow-making machines in a poor season, the walls of the pipe are solid…This is dangerous for athletes, some have died.”

Phaneuf is one of many athletes and former Olympians who have worked with organizations like POW and have traveled to Washington D.C. to lobby for better climate legislation so that professionals like herself and others employed in the outdoor industry can keep their livelihoods.

“I selfishly want to continue seeing the Olympics… It’s also hard to see these communities and the next generation of skiers not being able to grow up with this bountiful snow and a real winter,” she said.

Painter sees the survival of the Olympics as a symbol of how much effort international leaders and communities have put in to lower emissions and to protect snowy environments while we still have them. “Sounds kind of like a serious first world problem,” he said. “[Water issues cause] geopolitical strife… regional conflict… I think that if we’re still having Olympiads in at the end of this century, then we will have finally done something right.”

Read original article here

World

A Uyghur Skier Became the Face of China’s Winter Olympics. The Next Day, She Vanished From the Spotlight.

Leave a comment

By Saturday, the 20-year-old cross-country skier,

Dinigeer Yilamujiang,

had given the slip to an eager global press, her lackluster finish in her Olympic debut barely mentioned in the Chinese media.

The catapulting of Ms. Yilamujiang into the global spotlight, followed by a low-key retreat, marked a remarkable 24-hour whirlwind for the hitherto-unknown athlete.

On Friday night, as Chinese leader

Xi Jinping

and Russian President

Vladimir Putin

watched from the VIP booth at the Beijing National Stadium, Ms. Yilamujiang was the surprising—and immediately contentious—choice for what acclaimed Chinese film director and opening ceremony maestro Zhang Yimou had promised would be “a bold and unprecedented way of lighting the Olympic flame.”

In the end, it was less about how Ms. Yilamujiang carried the flame—hand in hand with Zhao Jiawen, a Chinese athlete in the Nordic combined—as it was about her identity.

Torch bearers Dinigeer Yilamujiang and Zhao Jiawen carried the Olympic flame during the opening ceremony.



Photo:

Cao Can/Zuma Press

Ms. Yilamujiang is a Uyghur, a member of the Turkic minority group native to China’s northwestern region of Xinjiang that has become the main focus of allegations in the U.S. and the West about Chinese human rights violations.

The decision to choose Ms. Yilamujiang, rather than a more accomplished or widely known athlete, and to pair her with a member of China’s Han majority, was interpreted as Mr. Xi’s act of defiance against the global pressure campaign and decried as “offensive” by overseas Uyghur human rights groups.

Ms. Yilamujiang’s selection for such a prestigious task was notable for another reason: She was set to make her Olympic sporting debut 18 hours after her star turn.

It didn’t go particularly well. By the first checkpoint of Saturday’s race, Ms. Yilamujiang had fallen behind more than half of the field of 65 competitors, eventually finishing 42 places behind the eventual gold medalist, Norway’s

Therese Johaug.

Afterward, Ms. Yilamujiang and the three other Chinese athletes competing in the event slipped away, leaving more than a dozen Chinese and foreign journalists waiting for more than an hour in frigid temperatures.

Dinigeer Yilamujiang competed in the cross-country skiathon, finishing 43rd.



Photo:

Aaron Favila/Associated Press

Ms. Yilamujiang’s escape, if that’s what it was, appeared to be in contravention of International Olympic Committee rules that require all athletes to pass through a “mixed zone” where they can—but aren’t obliged to—answer journalists’ questions.

The IOC confirmed in an emailed response to questions that mixed-zone rules remain in place despite the pandemic, but it declined to comment on Ms. Yilamujiang’s no-show. Ms. Yilamujiang couldn’t be reached for comment through China’s National Olympic Committee, which didn’t reply to requests for comment.

The 20-year-old from Xinjiang’s northern Altay prefecture is one of six athletes from the Chinese region competing in the Winter Games, and the only one of Uyghur heritage.

With the opening ceremony, Ms. Yilamujiang became an overnight celebrity in China, touted as a symbol of national unity.

“That moment will encourage me every day for the rest of my life,” Ms. Yilamujiang told China’s official news agency Xinhua on Sunday, it reported. “I was so excited when I found out we were going to place the torch. It’s a huge honor for me!”

Xinhua said she and her partner represented Chinese athletes born in the 2000s and symbolized an inheritance of sporting traditions and the Olympic spirit across generations. It made no mention of her ethnicity.

State-run media had earlier published videos on social media of Ms. Yilamujiang’s family back home in Xinjiang, beaming with pride.

“China has done everything it can for me, and what is left for me to do now is to train hard and bring glory to the country,” Ms. Yilamujiang was quoted as saying in an article published by the Communist Party-run Xinjiang Daily. The article also highlighted her personal story, as a teenage talent groomed by her father—himself a decorated skier and national cross-country ski coach.

In a separate video posted by the newspaper, Ms. Yilamujiang’s mother praised Beijing: “Thanks to the country for giving my daughter such an important mission.”

To human rights activists overseas, the choice of Ms. Yilamujiang for the opening ceremony was a pointed rebuttal by Mr. Xi.

The Chinese government has targeted the Xinjiang region’s mostly Muslim ethnic minorities with mass-detention internment camps and omnipresent surveillance as part of a yearslong campaign of forcible assimilation.

China has described its actions as necessary measures to fight terrorism and protect national security.

The Beijing Olympics are the first Winter Games to rely entirely on artificial snow. WSJ examines the logistics of snowmaking and what it may mean for future host cities. Photo: Lisi Niesner/Reuters

Concerns over China’s human rights record, and especially its ethnic-assimilation efforts in Xinjiang, have clouded the run-up to the Games, and overshadowed other aspects of the opening ceremony.

In a news briefing on Saturday, Beijing Olympic organizers declined questions about Ms. Yilamujiang’s selection, preferring to discuss instead the opening ceremony’s snowflake motif.

They told the Journal in separate emailed comments that there were stringent selection criteria for torchbearers, each of whom boasted outstanding achievements. The IOC declined to answer specific questions on her selection.

Though Ms. Yilamujiang wasn’t available to answer journalists’ questions after Saturday’s race, China’s state-run broadcaster did have an exclusive interview, in which she expressed incredulity at having been entrusted with the role of torchbearer.

“Since the country gave me such an important mission, I had to fulfill it,” Ms. Yilamujiang said in the interview, which was broadcast Sunday but which appeared to have been taped prior to her race.

Ms. Yilamujiang’s silence on her ethnic identity was a contrast with fellow athlete Adake Ahenaer, a speedskater from Xinjiang who was also making her Olympic debut.

“As an ethnic minority fighting in our home court, to represent my country and represent my ethnic group, gave me honor,” Ms. Adake told reporters after competing in the women’s 3,000-meter speedskating event on Saturday, where she came in 17th. “This honor is indescribable.”

The 22-year-old Ms. Adake, a member of China’s Kazakh minority, another of the country’s 56 officially recognized indigenous groups, said she got emotional seeing her close friend Ms. Yilamujiang appear on television as one of the surprise final torchbearers.

“She is representative of us young athletes in her spirit,” she said. Asked what she thought of Western media reports about Xinjiang, Ms. Adake sighed audibly.

—Laine Higgins contributed to this article.

What to Know About the Beijing Winter Olympics

Write to Liza Lin at Liza.Lin@wsj.com and Elaine Yu at elaine.yu@wsj.com

Copyright ©2022 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8

Read original article here

Technology

4 of the best TVs, according to home theater designers and electronics reviewers

Leave a comment


Getty Images

February is packed with sports action — like the Winter Olympics and the Super Bowl — and all that appointment viewing may also have us eyeing television upgrades.  Set makers such as Sony, Samsung and LG are running a race of their own: Who can build the biggest screen with the most dazzling, high-resolution picture and the thinnest frame?  With so many choices on the market today, we asked a home theater consultant and delved into professional reviews to find some of the best smart TVs you can buy now — at prices starting at $580.

Great for a very large room

Sony X95J 85″ TV: BRAVIA XR Full Array LED 4K Ultra HD Smart Google TV with Dolby Vision HDR and Alexa Compatibility

$1,798 for a 65″ – $3,798 for an 85″

Tim Duffy, who designs and outfits home theaters and other high-end home entertainment systems for clients in Southern California, has this 85” Sony in his living room, and praises Sony’s overall fit, finish and build. “The build quality is the best,” he says. “They seem to just have very, very few problems.”

The Bravia offers Dolby’s proprietary technologies for surround sound (Dolby Atmos) and picture enhancement (Dolby Vision HDR). It also works with the “big three” in voice control — Alexa, Siri and Google Assistant — for anyone wanting to give the remote a rest. For cord cutters, there is a NextGenTV tuner built in to capture high-definition digital video and audio.

If you want an OLED TV

LG OLED C1 Series 65″ Alexa Built-in 4k Smart TV

$1,796.99

Duffy praises the image quality of LG’s organic light emitting diode (OLED) televisions — “organic” because the eight million, individually self-lighting pixels that comprise the screen are made of carbon. And he’s not alone. Three of Consumer Reports’ top 5 TVs for 2021-2022 are LG OLEDs, and Wirecutter has named the C1 LG OLED C1 Series 65” Alexa Built-in 4k Smart TV ($1,796 from Amazon) the overall best OLED TV.

LG’s large screen OLED line leans into home TV viewing as a personal movie theater experience, with Dolby surround sound and image enhancing technology built in, and a “filmmaker mode” that (temporarily) switches off some picture-smoothing features that can make movies look less natural.

Budget pick

Hisense 55″ Class U7G Series Quantum 4K ULED Android TV

$599.99

This Google-friendly TV was Wirecutter’s pick for the best 4K LCD for the money, with the site lauding its “great image quality, superb gaming features, and the Android TV interface,” while noting it has “a narrower viewing angle and fewer screen sizes than some other TVs.”

Hisense’s U7G series TVs boast the highest available image refresh rate, at 120 Hz (meaning 120 individual images per second) to reduce blur and freezing — a feature usually reserved for more expensive televisions. The Google-made Android TV interface uses Google Assistant for voice commands but also supports Alexa, and can play content beamed from thousands of phone apps — Android or Apple — that have Google Cast or Chromecast enabled.

Best flat screen if you want beautiful home design

SAMSUNG 65-Inch Class Frame Series – 4K Quantum HDR Smart TV with Alexa Built-in

$1,497.99

The kitchen television in Duffy’s house is a 65-inch Samsung picture frame model that he loves for the same reason his clients do: It looks like part of the home’s design, and not like an occupying appliance. “Architectural” is how Duffy describes it. “I would put them anywhere in my house where they’re going on a bare wall,” he says, adding that of the 11 sets a new client of his is having installed throughout his house, eight will be Samsung picture frame sets.

A wall-mountable, customizable frame with differently colored and textured pieces is included to help match the television to its decor. And when it’s off, the Frame’s screen-saving “Art Mode” lets you display selected artworks, or photographs of your own on the TV’s vivid 4K canvas.

Read original article here

World

Omicron’s Spread Prompts Canceled Holiday Events, Tightened Restrictions

Leave a comment

More places in Europe and the U.S. were tightening restrictions, canceling holiday gatherings and bracing for a surge in new Covid-19 cases, as officials worked to boost testing and healthcare capacity amid the rising risk from the Omicron variant.

The coronavirus’s Omicron variant has been detected in 89 countries, and Covid-19 cases of the variant are doubling every 1.5 to 3 days in places with community transmission, the World Health Organization said Saturday. The variant is spreading rapidly even in countries with high levels of immunity in the population, the WHO said.

The Dutch government imposed lockdown measures, with all nonessential shops, bars and restaurants closed until mid-January.

Paris canceled its traditional New Year’s Eve festivities on the Champs-Élysées. London Mayor

Sadiq Khan

declared a “major incident” in the British capital following what he said was the largest daily rise in cases in the city since the pandemic began, with 26,000 new cases recorded in the latest 24 hours.

Tables in a London restaurant were empty Saturday after the mayor announced the largest daily rise in infections since the pandemic began.



Photo:

Peter Nicholls/Reuters

President Biden on Tuesday plans to deliver remarks on the status of the country’s fight against Covid-19, as the U.S. sees rising cases, White House press secretary

Jen Psaki

said in a tweet Saturday.

Mr. Biden will announce new steps the administration is taking to help communities and issue a stark warning of what the winter will look like for Americans that remain unvaccinated, she said. “We are prepared for the rising case levels,” she said in the tweet.

Harvard University will move to mostly remote learning and work for the first three weeks of January, “prompted by the rapid rise in Covid-19 cases locally and across the country, as well as the growing presence of the highly transmissible Omicron variant,” university administrators said Saturday in a letter to the Harvard community, writing, “Please know that we do not take this step lightly.”

Stanford University will start the winter quarter online and is requiring students to get a Covid-19 vaccine booster by the end of January.

CNN is closing its offices to nonessential employees, the network’s president,

Jeff Zucker,

told employees in a memo Saturday, as Covid-19 cases rose at the network and nationwide.

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul announced the launch of 40 new pop-up vaccination sites across the state. “The winter surge is in full force, but we are not defenseless,” she said, after announcing Friday that Covid-19 infections hit a daily record there. New York set another record in daily cases reported Saturday.

NBC’s “Saturday Night Live” said that it would have no live audience for its taping this week and that the show would go on with a limited cast and crew.

A demonstration in London against Covid-19 measures on Saturday.



Photo:

Andy Rain/Shutterstock

The National Hockey League on Saturday paused games for the Boston Bruins and Nashville Predators after also recently temporarily stopping play for the Calgary Flames, Colorado Avalanche and Florida Panthers.

In Canada, the government of Prince Edward Island said it was pausing indoor group sports and recreational activities starting Saturday.

Rhode Island will reinstate a partial indoor-mask mandate starting Monday. In Maryland,

Gov. Larry Hogan

said rising hospitalizations there were “triggering a new round of actions,” including reducing nonurgent medical surgeries.

Holiday cancellations ranged from an annual church dinner in Austin, Minn., to a popular living nativity event in Santa Fe, N.M. The United Christian Church in Lincolnville Center, Maine, sent an email to its congregation Saturday morning saying it has canceled its in-person Christmas Eve service and will move it to a remote event because of the surge of Covid cases there.

“It’s a very difficult decision to make,” the Rev. Elizabeth Barnum, the church’s pastor, said. “One of the most meaningful services of the year is our 200-year-old meeting house filled with church members and community members and people coming home for the holidays. But we are also called to keep our community healthy and to support our overwhelmed healthcare system.”

A drive-up Covid-19 testing site in San Juan, Puerto Rico, on Saturday.



Photo:

Ricardo Arduengo/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

The scramble for testing continued as many people rushed to get peace of mind before attending holiday get-togethers. Roxanna Garcia, who is 36 years old and plans to travel to Honduras next week to visit family, said she visited four New York City drugstores Friday night before finding a rapid Covid-19 test in stock. Seeking extra confirmation of her negative result, she went to Queens Hospital in New York to get a PCR test early Saturday morning and said the line was around the parking lot.

“It’s obviously good that people are taking precautions and getting tested,” said Ms. Garcia, who is a nurse. “But it did feel like, it’s two years into this and we still can’t seem to find a more streamlined way of getting tested?”

A federal appeals court Friday reinstated Biden administration rules that require many employers to ensure that workers are vaccinated or tested weekly for Covid-19. A divided panel of the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals dissolved a stay issued by another court that had blocked the rules. The majority, in a 2-to-1 ruling, said legal challenges to the administration’s vaccination-and-testing requirements were likely to fail.

Demonstrators in Paris protesting new vaccine mandates on Saturday as countries across Europe reimposed tough measures to stem a new surge in Covid-19 cases.



Photo:

Francois Mori/Associated Press

In New York, the Christmas Spectacular Starring the Radio City Rockettes canceled the remainder of its season Friday, citing increasing challenges from the pandemic. A number of Broadway shows canceled performances in recent days because of Covid-19 cases among cast members. Organizers of New Year’s Eve festivities at Times Square said they would go ahead with an outdoor celebration among fully vaccinated revelers.

—Daniel Michaels, Sarah Toy and Brent Kendall contributed to this article.

Write to Jennifer Levitz at jennifer.levitz@wsj.com and Julie Wernau at Julie.Wernau@wsj.com

Copyright ©2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved. 87990cbe856818d5eddac44c7b1cdeb8



Read original article here

Sports

Comcast’s NBCUniversal to Shut Down Sports Cable Channel NBCSN by Year-End

Leave a comment

NBCUniversal is shutting down its sports cable channel NBCSN at the end of the year and migrating much of its programming to its sister general entertainment network USA, the company said.

The premium properties on NBCSN are the National Hockey League and Nascar auto racing, both of which will start to transition to USA Network this year. Some content will remain on both channels until NBCSN officially turns off the lights. NBCUniversal informed staffers of the plan Friday afternoon in a company memo.

“We’re absolutely committed more than ever to live sports as a company, and having such a huge platform like USA Network airing some of our key sports content is great for our partners, distributors, viewers and advertisers alike,” said NBC Sports Group Chairman Pete Bevacqua.

By putting high-profile sports on USA Network, NBCUniversal—a unit of Comcast Corp. —is hoping to solve two problems with one move: Get rid of an underperforming asset and boost an already powerful one. The Premier Soccer League will also have matches on USA.

NBCSN has struggled to compete against bigger rivals such as Walt Disney Co. ’s ESPN and Fox Corp.’s Fox Sports cable network. While it has a large national reach, its ratings pale in comparison to its competition. Fox Corp. and Wall Street Journal parent News Corp share common ownership.

Read original article here