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Russian athletes headed for Rio at the Sheremetyevo airport in Moscow, Russia, July 28, 2016 [Xinhua]The International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced Thursday that 271 Russian athletes have been allowed to participate in the Rio Games which will officially open on Friday.
“The result from the IOC Review Panel is as follows: 271 athletes will form the team entered by the Russian National Olympic Committee (ROC) from the original entry list of 389 athletes,” the IOC said in a press release.

Putin spoke with two-time Olympic pole-vaulting champion Yelena Isinbayeva, the most high-profile of the 67 track and field athletes banned from the games, standing beside him at the Kremlin, Moscow on 27 July 2016. Fighting back tears, Isinbayeva told the Russian athletes: “Show them what you’re able to do — for yourself and for us too.” [Image: PPIO]
After 108 Russians were banned from next month’s Olympics in Brazil, Russian President Vladimir Putin hit out at the “campaign targeting” Russian athletes.

Children play games in a favela in Santa Marta in Rio De Janeiro of Brazil, May 26, 2010 [Xinhua]The World Health Organization (WHO) on Tuesday declared Brazil free of measles, after no case of the disease was registered in the last year.
The eradication of measles is the conclusion of work spanning several years. Brazil saw no domestic cases of measles from 1985 to 2000, although it broke out in 2013 in the northeastern states of Pernambuco and Ceara, Merceline Dalh-Regis, president of the WHO’s international committee for the eradication of measles, said in a statement.

With its working age population declining as the elderly population increases, China scrapped its one-child policy in 2015, allowing all couples to have a second child [Xinhua]China’s working age population would fall more than 23 per cent to around 700 million by the year 2050, according to data released Friday by a human resource official.
China’s working age population, those aged 16 to 59, has been on the decline since 2012, and it is expected to reach 830 million in 2030, Li Zhong, spokesperson of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, told a press conference.

The 2nd anti-drug Working Group meeting of Heads of Drug Control Agencies of BRICS in New Delhi on 8 July 2016 [Image: Press Information Bureau, India]BRICS heads of drug control agencies have met in New Delhi on Friday to coordinate the counter-narcotics efforts of member countries.
“Today, the drug business generates the highest illegal fund flows and leads to narco-terrorism, which poses a serious threat to global security and endangers peace, health and stability across the regions,” Indian Minister for Home Affairs Rajnath Singh said at the meet.

Of the total population, a majority (44.9 million) are black Africans, followed by colored (4.9 million), whites (4.5 million), and Indians/Asians (1.4 million) [Xinhua]South Africa’s population has increased to 55.7 million in 2016 from 51.8 million in 2011, representing an increase of over three million, according to statistics released on Friday.

A man walks past a poster of the “Monster Hunt” (R) at a cinema in Shenyang, capital of northeast China’s Liaoning Province [Xinhua]China’s box office revenues grew 51 per cent in the first quarter of this year, China National radio said on Sunday.
The state-run CNR data said ticket sales in the first three months of 2016 amounted to 14.5 billion yuan (1.57 billion pounds).
China boasts of about 31630 movie screens. The country added 8035 new screens in 2015.
Chinese films accounted for almost three-quarters of the country’s box office in the first quarter.

IOC President Thomas Bach said Friday that no countries intend to pull out of the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro over concerns of Zika [Xinhua]Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff on Saturday vowed her country would host a successful Olympic Games this year despite the outbreak of the Zika virus. Rousseff has enlisted the support of the World Health Organisation.
“We are aware of one thing. There will be Olympic Games and we are focused on that goal,” said Rousseff during a speech in Rio de Janeiro, where the state is waging war against the virus.

Data released by the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) shows that China consumed 162,000 tons of antibiotics in 2013, or more than half of the global total [Xinhua]The urgent need to boost investment in development of new vaccines and other alternatives to antibiotics is the focus of a latest report released Thursday by a British government-commissioned review of the superbug threat.
The Review on Antimicrobial Resistance (AMR), chaired by British Treasury Minister Jim O’Neill, was announced by UK Prime Minister David Cameron in July 2014.

Zika infections in pregnant women have been linked to a condition known as microcephaly: infants born with undersize heads [Xinhua]China has confirmed an imported case of Zika virus, the country’s first, in a man who has recently been to Venezuela, said the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC). World health officials are grappling with the expanding outbreak of the mosquito-borne virus that may cause birth defects when pregnant women are infected.