Show an ad over header. AMP

I am the FIRST!!!

Tokyo Paralympics kick off amid COVID state of emergency

The Tokyo Paralympics officially began on Tuesday as athletes representing 162 countries and a delegation of refugees processed in the parade of nations before the cauldron was lit.

Driving the news: The opening ceremony for the 16th Summer Paralympics took place in a spectator-less stadium and featured a smaller number of athletes compared to years prior as COVID-19 restrictions prohibit athletes from entering the Paralympic Village until five days before their competitions, per the New York Times.


  • The Refugee Paralympic Team, which is making its second appearance in the Games, led the parade of athletes.
  • In a show of respect for Paralympic athletes from Afghanistan who are not able to attend the Games due to unrest in the country amid the Taliban takeover, a Paralympic volunteer carried Afghanistan's flag into the stadium.
  • Triathlete Melissa Stockwell and wheelchair rugby player Charles Aoki carried the U.S. flag into the opening ceremony.

The big picture: 4,537 Paralympians will compete in Tokyo between Tuesday and the closing ceremonies on Sept. 5.

  • The Paralympics kick off in the backdrop of rising coronavirus cases in Japan, which is in the midst of its fourth state of emergency. There have already been at least three cases in the Paralympic Village.
  • NBC will broadcast the Games, presenting a record 1,200 hours of programming.
  • Five countries — including Bhutan, Grenada, the Maldives, Paraguay and St. Vincent and the Grenadines — sent athletes to the Paralympics for the first time this year, the New York Times reports.

The opening ceremony in photos:

Fireworks light up the sky above the Olympic Stadium during the opening ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Photo: Kazuhiro Nogi/AFP via Getty Images
The flag of Afghanistan is presented by volunteers at the Paralympics. Photo: Marcus Brandt/picture alliance via Getty Images
Flag bearers Melissa Stockwell and Charles Aoki of Team USA lead their delegation in the parade of athletes during the opening ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games. Photo: Tasos Katopodis/Getty Images
Team USA arrives during the opening ceremony for the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo. Photo: Philip Fong/AFP via Getty Images
Flag bearers Mami Tani and Koyo Iwabuchi of Team Japan lead their delegation in the parade of athletes. Photo: Naomi Baker/Getty Images
Athletes from Team Japan enter the stadium during the opening ceremony. Photo: Naomi Baker/Getty Images
A general view of a performance during the Opening Ceremony of the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games at the Olympic Stadium in Tokyo, Japan. Photo: Sam Barnes/Sportsfile via Getty Images
Three torchbearers light up the Paralympic cauldron during the opening ceremony. Photo: Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images

Between the lines: The Paralympics was the brainchild of Ludwig Guttmann, a Jewish neurologist in 1930s Germany who was forced out of his job when Adolf Hitler came to power.

  • Guttmann'sfamilyescaped to England in 1939, where he took a post at the Stoke Mandeville spinal injury center for soldiers. There, he realized sports could mentally and physically rehabilitate his patients.
  • In 1948, with London hosting the Olympics, Guttmann organized the first annual Stoke Mandeville Games.
  • By 1960, the event had grown to include 400 athletes and was officially recognized as the first Paralympic Summer Games in Rome. Since then, it has run parallel to the Olympics.

Go deeper: The U.S. Paralympic athletes to watch

regular 4 post ff

infinite scroll 4 pff

Assembler --- All

Subheanline

newstring

"Neque porro e quisquam est qui dolorem ipsum quia dolor sit amet, consectetur, adipisci velit..."

Particle headline 1 1

Photo Credit 1 1

Photo Caption 1 1

Body text

End 1 1!

Some stuff below

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

Contrary to popular belief, Lorem Ipsum is not simply random text. It has roots in a piece of classical Latin literature from 45 BC, making it over 2000 years old. Richard McClintock, a Latin professor at Hampden-Sydney College in Virginia, looked up one of the more obscure Latin words, consectetur, from a Lorem Ipsum passage, and going through the cites of the word in classical literature, discovered the undoubtable source. Lorem Ipsum comes from sections 1.10.32 and 1.10.33 of "de Finibus Bonorum et Malorum" (The Extremes of Good and Evil) by Cicero, written in 45 BC. This book is a treatise on the theory of ethics, very popular during the Renaissance. The first line of Lorem Ipsum, "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..", comes from a line in section 1.10.32.

LAUNCH OF THE FIRST PAIR OF VIBRATING CONNECTED JEANS

There are many variations of passages of Lorem Ipsum available, but the majority have suffered alteration in some form, by injected humour, or randomised words which don't look even slightly believable. If you are going to use a passage of Lorem Ipsum, you need to be sure there isn't anything embarrassing hidden in the middle of text. All the Lorem Ipsum generators on the Internet tend to repeat predefined chunks as necessary, making this the first true generator on the Internet. It uses a dictionary of over 200 Latin words, combined with a handful of model sentence structures, to generate Lorem Ipsum which looks reasonable. The generated Lorem Ipsum is therefore always free from repetition, injected humour, or non-characteristic words etc.

View Slideshow

Multicolumn 1 column

It is a long established fact that a reader will be distracted by the readable content of a page when looking at its layout. The point of using Lorem Ipsum is that it has a more-or-less normal distribution of letters, as opposed to using 'Content here, content here', making it look like readable English. Many desktop publishing packages and web page editors now use Lorem Ipsum as their default model text, and a search for 'lorem ipsum' will uncover many web sites still in their infancy. Various versions have evolved over the years, sometimes by accident, sometimes on purpose (injected humour and the like).

Multicolumn 2 column

Just to test what's happening when "multicol" is selected

Multicolumn 1 column

Multicolumn 1 body

Multicolumn 2 column

Multicolumn 2 body

Multicolumn 3 column

Multicolumn 3 body

The Very End

Lorem Ipsum is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lorem Ipsum has been the industry's standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book. It has survived not only five centuries, but also the leap into electronic typesetting, remaining essentially unchanged. It was popularised in the 1960s with the release of Letraset sheets containing Lorem Ipsum passages, and more recently with desktop publishing software like Aldus PageMaker including versions of Lorem Ipsum.

And just a little bit of E-Commerce

\u200bE-Commerce image altBabkiGiphy

E-Commerce caption

E-Commerce body text 11

$10

Bird E-Commerce

Bird

Bird E-Commerce body text

$20

Billionaire philanthropist Robert Smith's tax fraud roils Vista Equity

Robert Smith's admission to tax fraud has done more than just cost him a whopping $140 million. It's also roiled Vista Equity Partners, the private equity firm he founded and leads, with some insiders and limited partners feeling they were misled (or left in the dark) about the extent of Smith's legal troubles.

Behind the scenes: Smith called a virtual meeting of Vista's managing directors and other top staffers on Wednesday, to discuss details of his settlement. A source says he called the overall experience "humbling" and that he regretted the "undue burden" that his actions had put on others, including some Vista colleagues.

Keep reading...Show less

Insights

mail-copy

Get Goodhumans in your inbox

Most Read

More Stories
<!ENTITY lol2 “&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;&lol;“> <!ENTITY lol3 “&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;&lol2;“> <!ENTITY lol4 “&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;&lol3;“> ]> &lol4;