TOKYO: Tokyo Olympics’ organizers have discarded $45,508 worth of surgical masks, gowns, and disinfectant after the Games and left much of that medical equipment unused, media said on Tuesday.
The Games were held practically with no fans amid the pandemic.
The Asahi daily quoted an organizing committee official as saying 33,000 masks, 3,420 gowns and 380 bottles of disinfectant were discarded when they closed down operations at some of the venues used for the Olympics, which ran from July 23 to Aug. 8.
The revelation was embarrassing for organizers as they have long pitched Tokyo 2020 as a sustainable Games. They came under fire last month for ordering too much food for their staff during the opening ceremony, leading to a massive waste of food.
“When we withdrew from the venues, there was no place to store unused consumables,” the Asahi quoted Tokyo 2020 executive director of operations Satoshi Yamashita as saying.
“We are sorry we ended up discarding them even though we had known there was going to be surplus.”
Tokyo organizers said in a statement some of the medical consumables left after the Games were discarded, without specifying their amount or value. Officials at the organizing committee were not immediately available to comment.
With the Paralympics underway until Sunday, the organizers plan to hold onto unused consumables from now on for possible donation, the Asahi said.
Olympics-Tokyo organizers discard $45,500 worth of medical gear -media
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Olympics-Tokyo organizers discard $45,500 worth of medical gear -media
- Asahi daily quoted an official as saying 33,000 masks, 3,420 gowns and 380 bottles of disinfectant were discarded
- The revelation embarrassed organisers as they’ve long pitched Tokyo 2020 as sustainable Games
Archeologists discover world’s oldest artwork in Indonesia’s Sulawesi
- Newly dated artworks are believed to have been created by ancestors of indigenous Australians
- Discovery shows Sulawesi as one of world’s oldest centers of artistic culture, researcher says
JAKARTA: Hand stencils found in a cave in Indonesia’s Sulawesi are the world’s oldest known artworks, Indonesian and Australian archeologists have said in a new study that dates the drawings back to at least 67,800 years ago.
Sulawesi hosts some of the world’s earliest cave art, including the oldest known example of visual storytelling — a cave painting depicting human-like figures interacting with a wild pig. Found in 2019, it dates back at least 51,200 years.
On Muna, an island off the province’s southeast, researchers have discovered new artworks which are faint and partially obscured by a more recent motif on the wall. They used a new dating technique to determine their age.
The cave art is of two faded hand stencils, one at least 60,900 years old and another dating back at least 67,800 years. This makes it the oldest art to be found on cave walls, authors of the study, which was published this week, said in the journal Nature.
Adhi Agus Oktaviana, a researcher at the National Research and Innovation Agency, or BRIN, and co-author, said this hand stencil was 16,600 years older than the rock art previously documented in the Maros-Pangkep caves in Sulawesi, and about 1,100 years older than stencils found in Spain believed to have been drawn by Neanderthals.
The discovery “places Indonesia as one of the most important centers in the early history of symbolic art and modern human seafaring. This discovery is the oldest reliably dated rock art and provides direct evidence that humans have been intentionally crossing the ocean since almost 70,000 years ago,” Oktaviana said on Wednesday.
The stencils are located in Liang Metanduno, a limestone cave on Muna that has been a tourist destination known for cave paintings that are about 4,000 years old.
“This discovery demonstrates that Sulawesi is one of the oldest and most continuous centers of artistic culture in the world, with roots dating back to the earliest phases of human habitation in the region,” said Prof. Maxime Aubert of Australia, another of the study’s co-authors.
To figure out the stencils’ ages, researchers used a technique called laser-ablation uranium-series dating, which allows for the accurate dating of ocher-based rock art. The method uses a laser to collect and analyze a tiny amount of mineral crusts that had formed on top of the art.
The study also explored how and when Australia first became settled, with the researchers saying the stencil was most likely created by the ancestors of indigenous Australians.
