Head of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee has on Monday announced that the postponed Olympic Games will now begin on July 23 and run until August 8, 2021 as the coronavirus pandemic made it impossible to plan for them properly this year. The Games were postponed last week and the delay is the first in the 124-year history of the modern Olympics. The postponement represents a huge blow for Japan, which invested $13 billion in the run-up to the event, and raised $3 billion from domestic sponsors. Yoshiro Mori, head of the Tokyo 2020 organizing committee, confirmed the new dates…

Russia was slapped Monday with a four-year ban from international sports events, including next summer’s Tokyo Olympics, over a longstanding doping scandal, although its athletes will still be able to compete if they can show they are clean competitors. The ruling by the World Anti-Doping Agency’s executive committee means that Russia’s flag, name and anthem will not appear at the Tokyo Games, and the country also could be stripped of hosting world championships in Olympic sports. The sanctions are the harshest punishment yet for Russian state authorities who were accused of tampering with a Moscow laboratory database. Russia’s anti-doping agency…