Olympic boxing qualifier in China scrapped over virus: report
Tokyo:A boxing qualifier for the Tokyo Olympics scheduled for next month in China's Wuhan will be cancelled over the outbreak of a new virus, Japan's Kyodo news agency said Wednesday.
Citing organisers, Kyodo said the qualifiers would be rescheduled and moved from Wuhan, where the outbreak of the new strain of coronavirus is believed to have begun.
There was no independent confirmation from the organisers, and Japan's boxing federation said it was waiting to hear from the International Olympic Committee on the reported cancellation.
Kyodo said the IOC was expected to announce a new host and schedule for the qualifiers.
Boxing has struggled in the run-up to the 2020 Games, and was almost excluded from the Olympic programme after a series of scandals.
The amateur boxing body AIBA was stripped of the right to organise the Olympic competition and replaced with a special taskforce. Other measures have been introduced to rebuild trust in the sport, including a more transparent judging system.
The reported cancellation comes as China said the new strain of coronavirus has killed nine people and infected at least 440 others in the country.
Cases have also been reported outside China, in countries including the United States, South Korea, Japan and Thailand.
The coronavirus has caused alarm for its similarity to SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome), which killed nearly 650 people across mainland China and Hong Kong in 2002-2003.
Several countries have already stepped up monitoring measures for visitors coming from China, and the World Health Organisation will hold an emergency meeting Wednesday on whether to declare a rare global public health emergency over the virus.
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8 dead, dozens wounded in Russian strike on Ukraine's Odesa port
Kyiv (AP): Eight people were killed and 27 wounded in a Russian missile strike on port infrastructure in Odesa, southern Ukraine, late on Friday, Ukraine's Emergency Service said on Saturday morning.
Some of the wounded were on a bus at the epicentre of the overnight strike, the service said in a Telegram post. Trucks caught fire in the parking lot, and cars were also damaged.
The port was struck with ballistic missiles, said Oleh Kiper, the head of the Odesa region.
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Elsewhere, Ukrainian forces hit a Russian warship and other facilities with drones, Ukraine's General Staff said in a statement on Saturday.
The nighttime attack on Friday hit the Russian warship “Okhotnik,” according to the statement posted to the Telegram messaging app.
The ship was patrolling in the Caspian Sea near an oil and gas production platform. The extent of the damage is still being clarified, the statement added.
A drilling platform at the Filanovsky oil and gas field in the Caspian Sea was also hit. The facility is operated by Russian oil giant Lukoil. Ukrainian drones also struck a radar system in the Krasnosilske area of Crimea, which Russia illegally annexed from Ukraine in 2014.
