News Headlines - 24 July 2020

▽Doctors accused of murdering ALS patient who wanted to die : The Asahi Shimbun

Kyoto prefectural police concluded that the death of a patient with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) could not be regarded as euthanasia and arrested two doctors on suspicion of murder on July 23.

▽Moon's disapproval rating tops support rate | NHK WORLD

Gallup Korea's survey that was conducted from Tuesday to Thursday shows that Moon's approval rating stands at 45 percent, down one point from last week. His disapproval rating rose five points to 48 percent.
Moon's approval rating had soared to 71 percent in May, thanks to his handling of the country's coronavirus outbreak. But the figure is below the disapproval rate for the first time in about four months.

▽Fireworks color Japan skies 1 yr to Olympics, lift mood amid pandemic

Fireworks lit up the skies across Japan on Friday to mark one year to go until the start of the postponed Tokyo Olympics and lift the country's mood amid the new coronavirus pandemic.
The fireworks were set off for a minute and a half from 8 p.m. Junior Chamber International Japan said it organized the event in the hope that the fireworks would be a signal for the rebirth of Japan, overcoming the stagnation caused by the virus.

▽Tokyo Olympics: Coronavirus risk raises questions over 2021 Games - BBC News

Prof Iwata is particularly concerned looking at what is going on in the US, the country that more than any other pays for the Olympics... There is one seemingly simple solution: push the Tokyo Games back another year to 2022. It is far more likely the pandemic will have run its course by then. But that has been ruled out by the Japanese government. From his home in Montreal the longest-serving member of the International Olympic Committee, Dick Pound, told me it is now 2021 or bust... According to Dick Pound, this is a non-starter... "Japan would have to decide, do they want the Games to go ahead or are the risks too much? In which case Japan would probably propose, and the IOC would accept, cancellation."

▽Why we aren't wearing masks in Sweden - UnHerd

Mortality is hardly an afterthought - so why is Sweden’s mortality rate so high? At around 550 per million of population, it sits just under the UK and Italy but far above neighbouring Norway and Denmark. Dr Tegnell offers a collection of reasons: with its larger migrant populations and dense urban areas, Sweden is actually more similar to the Netherlands and the UK than it is to other Scandinavian countries; he believes the Swedish counting system for deaths has been more stringent than elsewhere; also, countries are at different points in the epidemic cycle so it is too early to compare totals... His belief is that, in the final account, the Infection Fatality Rate will be similar to the flu: “somewhere between 0.1% and 0.5% of people getting infected, maybe … And that is not radically different to what we see with the yearly flu.”