Incoming IOC president to open talks on Russia’s potential return to Olympics

Published

1 day ago

March 21, 2025

admin

The incoming IOC president has revealed to Sky News she is against banning countries from the Olympics over wars and will open talks on Russia’s potential return to the Games.

Only Russians competing as neutrals were allowed to take part in Paris 2024 as Moscow was punished for launching the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Kirsty Coventry will be the first female president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and its first African leader.

The former Olympic swimmer, who won two gold medals for Zimbabwe, has said she sees inconsistencies in the current approach of singling out Russia while there are conflicts on her own continent.

Asked a day after her election if she was against banning countries from the Olympics over conflicts, Ms Coventry told Sky News: “I am, but I think you have to take each situation into account.

“What I would like to do is set up a taskforce where this taskforce tries to set out some policies and some guiding frameworks that we as the movement can use to make decisions when we are brought into conflicts.

“We have conflicts in Africa and they’re horrific at the moment. So this is not going away, sadly.

“So how are we going to protect and support athletes?

“How are we going to ensure that all athletes have the opportunity to come to the Olympic Games?

“And our responsibility is also to ensure once those athletes are all there, that they’re safe and that we protect and support them during the Olympic Games.

“So there’s a fine balance. But ultimately I believe that it’s best for our movement to ensure that we have all athletes represented.”

Analysis:
New IOC president will have to deal with Trump, Putin and transgender issue

US President Donald Trump has also apparently discussed with Russian leader Vladimir Putin the idea of using sports to heal relations with Russia.

While the next Summer Olympics are not until 2028 in Los Angeles, there are fewer than 11 months until the Winter Games in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo.

So will Russia be back by then?

“We’re going to have that discussion with a collective group …with the taskforce,” she said.

Gender eligibility

This interview was taking place a day after her election to the highest job in sport – seeing off six rivals, including Sebastian Coe.

World Athletics – led by Lord Coe – has been exploring whether to introduce swab tests to assess gender eligibility.

A key athletics meeting next week is due to discuss the issue amid concerns about fairness over athletes with differences of sex development and transgender women competing in women’s sport.

The IOC has previously called a return to sex testing a “bad idea”, but Ms Coventry is not ruling it out as she has talked about protecting the female category.

“This is a conversation that’s happened and the international federations have taken a far greater lead in this conversation,” she said.

“What I was proposing is to bring a group together with the international federations and really understand each sport is slightly different.

“We know in equestrian, sex is really not an issue, but in other sports it is.

“So what I’d like to do again is bring the international federations together and sit down and try and come up with a collective way forward for all of us to move.”

Future Olympic hosts

Looking ahead there are the 2036 Olympics to be awarded.

And Ms Coventry pledged IOC members will get more of a say after behind-the-scenes deals under Thomas Bach seeing Paris (2024), LA (2028) and Brisbane (2034) uncontested decisions.

The IOC presidential campaign has raised when Africa and the Middle East will host the Olympics for the first time, as well as potential interest from India to host the Games in 2036.

“There’s a few slight adjustments that I’d like to make in terms of involvement of the IOC members – that was something very clearly related to me in this campaign,” Ms Coventry said.

“But new regions and embracing new regions … will be a part of what I would like to see.

“I think if we can embrace new regions across the entire movement, it opens this up for so many different opportunities, including revenue growth, including being able to reach new audiences.”

Zimbabwe rights concerns

There has been scrutiny over Ms Coventry’s role in Zimbabwe’s government as sports minister given concerns – raised by the UK government – about whether the country is violating human rights and clamping down on political freedoms.

“I have always been a very proud Zimbabwean and when I was asked to step into this role (as a minister in 2018), I took time to really consider it,” she said.

“I knew that it would come with different thoughts and feelings, but I wanted to try and create change in my country. I wanted to try and make things better for athletes in my country and we’re doing that.

“We’re working on strengthening pieces of legislation that have never been there before. And these are things that I don’t believe I would have been able to achieve on the outside.”

IOC agenda

Ms Coventry officially starts in June as the first female IOC president.

“It shows that we are moving and we’re changing and we’re global and we’re diverse and we represent everybody,” she said.

And how will her presidency be judged a success? The rules allow her to serve until 2037 if she is re-elected for a final four-year term after being given an initial eight-year mandate.

She said: “I want to ensure that we can find these young, talented athletes from around the world and we can give them an opportunity to be identified and to have training and be connected to the best coaches in the world and that’s all going to be driven by embracing technology.

“And I think that is going to be really a game changer in the next few years.”

World

Pope Francis to be discharged from hospital tomorrow but needs two months of rest, say doctors

Published

7 hours ago

March 22, 2025

admin

Pope Francis to be discharged from hospital tomorrow but needs two months of rest, say doctors

Pope Francis is to be released from hospital tomorrow after receiving treatment for double pneumonia, but doctors insist he will also need at least two months of rest.

The 88-year-old pontiff has been at Gemelli Hospital in Rome for more than five weeks since being admitted for a severe respiratory infection on 14 February.

Dr Sergio Alfieri, the head of the team taking care of the Pope, told reporters: “Tomorrow [Sunday] the Holy Father will be discharged, that means he will return to the Santa Marta [his residence within the Vatican]”.

“During his hospitalisation, his clinical conditions presented very critical episodes, during which the Holy Father was in danger of losing his life.”

Dr Alfieri said the pontiff was now in a “stable clinical condition” but he would continue taking medication orally “for quite a long time”.

“It’s very important that he follow a period of convalescence and rest for at least two months,” he added.

The Vatican previously said he would appear from the window of his 10th floor hospital room on Sunday to offer a blessing.

A photo released by the Vatican last week showed the leader of the Catholic church celebrating Sunday mass in a hospital chapel.

The Vatican said in a statement that Pope Francis wanted to come to the hospital window around noon (11am UK time) on Sunday to give a greeting and blessing.

One senior cardinal said on Friday it could take time for the Pope to “relearn to speak” after using oxygen during his hospital stay.

Dr Sergio Alfieri addressed this, during a news conference on Saturday, pointing out that when someone has double pneumonia “the lungs are damaged”.

“They [lungs] have been damaged and breathing muscles have been strained. One of the first things that happens is that our voice diminishes… like when you use your voice too much”. But he insisted that, in time, the voice would return to normal.

Despite the Pope’s discharge from hospital, there has been no update about his plans to meet the King and Queen.

They are due to make a state visit to the Vatican on 8 April.

But doctors confirmed on Saturday they had prescribed two months of convalescence and had advised him against taking any meetings with large groups or that take special effort.

Doctors at the facility recently said he is no longer in a critical condition – having been diagnosed with a complex bacterial, viral and fungal respiratory tract infection and then double pneumonia.

It marks the most serious health crisis of his 12-year papacy and the longest he has been out of public view since his election as pontiff in 2013.

World

‘Two killed and eight injured’ as Israel strikes Lebanon in response to cross-border rocket fire

Published

10 hours ago

March 22, 2025

admin

'Two killed and eight injured' as Israel strikes Lebanon in response to cross-border rocket fire

Two people have been killed and eight others injured in southern Lebanon following Israeli airstrikes, the Lebanese health ministry was reported as saying.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered strikes against dozens of “terrorist” targets in response to “rocket fire” at Israel from Lebanon on Saturday morning.

It was the heaviest exchange of fire since a US-brokered truce between Israel and the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah came into effect last November.

The Israeli military said it had intercepted three rockets launched from a Lebanese district about four miles north of the border towards the Israeli town of Metula. It was the second time since December that rockets were fired into Israel from Lebanon.

Hezbollah denied responsibility for the attack, saying it had “no link” to the launches and that it remained committed to the ceasefire. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack.

The fresh violence has sparked concern about whether the fragile ceasefire could hold.

According to Lebanese state news agency NNA, citing Lebanon’s health ministry, two people were killed and eight wounded by Israeli attacks.

NNA reported a spate of Israeli airstrikes and artillery barrages in the country’s war-battered south, including border towns and hilltops around five miles inside Lebanese territory.

The strikes also come a day after Israel said it would carry out operations in Gaza “with increasing intensity” until Hamas frees the 59 hostages it holds – 24 of whom are believed alive.

Hezbollah began launching rockets, drones and missiles into Israel the day after Hamas’s 7 October 2023 attack.

The Israel-Hezbollah conflict then broke out into a war last September as Israel carried out massive waves of airstrikes and killed most of the militant group’s senior leaders.

The fighting has killed more than 4,000 people in Lebanon and displaced about 60,000 Israelis.

Under the ceasefire reached in November, Israeli forces agreed to withdraw from all Lebanese territory by late January.

The deadline was extended to 18 February by agreement between Lebanon and Israel.

However, since then, Israel has remained in five locations in Lebanon, across from communities in northern Israel, and has carried out dozens of airstrikes on southern and eastern Lebanon, saying it attacked Hezbollah.

Lebanon has appealed to the UN to pressure Israel to fully withdraw from the country.

Lebanon’s Prime Minister Nawaf Salam has asked the Lebanese military to take all necessary measures in the south, but in a statement said the country did not want to return to war.

The United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) said it was alarmed at the possible escalation of violence and urged all parties to avoid jeopardising the progress made, saying further escalation could have serious consequences for the region.

World

Sudan’s military retakes more key government buildings in capital as it consolidates gains

Published

10 hours ago

March 22, 2025

admin

Sudan's military retakes more key government buildings in capital as it consolidates gains

Sudan’s military has consolidated its gains in the capital, taking more key government buildings a day after it seized control of the presidential palace.

The ongoing conflict in Sudan erupted in April 2023 when a power struggle between the leaders of the military and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) boiled over into open fighting in Khartoum and other cities.

At the start of the war, the RSF took over multiple government and military buildings in the capital, including the presidential palace, also known as the Republican Palace, and the headquarters of the state television. The force also occupied people’s houses.

Brigadier General Nabil Abdullah, a spokesperson for the Sudanese military, said troops have now expelled the RSF from the headquarters of the Central Bank of Sudan and other government and educational buildings in the area.

The military also retook the headquarters of the National Intelligence Service and Corinthia Hotel in central Khartoum.

Hundreds of RSF fighters were killed as they tried to flee the city, while Lieutenant Colonel Hassan Ibrahim, from the military’s media office, was also killed in the attack, the military said.

The RSF has not yet commented.

A drone attack on the palace on Friday – believed to have been launched by the RSF – killed two journalists and a driver with Sudanese state television, according to the ministry of information.

On Friday, social media videos showed military soldiers inside the palace. A Sudanese military officer wearing a captain’s epaulettes made the announcement in a video and confirmed the troops were inside the compound.

The Republican Palace was the seat of government before the war began, but now appears to be partly in ruins.

The military is now likely to try to retake the Khartoum International Airport, only a short distance from the palace, which has been held by the RSF since the start of the war, with video showing soldiers on a road leading to the airport.

Analysis: Sudan’s recaptured palace is a significant sign of return to order

The war has killed more than 28,000 people – although other estimates suggest this is higher. It has also forced millions to flee their homes and left some families desperately resorting to eating grass to survive, with famine sweeping through parts of the country.

The fighting has resulted in atrocities including mass rape and ethnically motivated killings, with war crimes and crimes against humanity taking place, according to the United Nations and international rights groups.