TOKYO -- The Tokyo Olympics have finally opened after a long journey filled with controversy, and an unprecedented one-year postponement because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proceedings officially began with Friday's opening ceremony at the National Stadium , a mostly subdued affair mixed with joyous moments like a high-tech drone show, and capped by tennis star Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic cauldron.

Key events to watch on Sunday, July 25 (Tokyo time)

Tennis (first round)

• 11 a.m

TOKYO -- Artificial intelligence is transforming the landscape of drug discovery and development. The technology is helping to slash the time and money needed to develop new drugs for COVID-19 and other serious diseases by quickly identifying promising drug candidates.

In the case of COVID-19, the application of AI helped one company come up with a treatment that was approved in the U.S. in a lightning-fast nine months.

British AI startup BenevolentAI identified baricitinib, a drug developed by Elli Lily for the treatment

TOKYO -- Japan's Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga and French President Emmanuel Macron agreed to strengthen security ties to achieve a free and open Indo-Pacific region, when the two leaders met in Tokyo on Saturday.

The two leaders held a 15-minute conference, followed by a one-on-one lunch meeting that lasted about 80 minutes. The occasion was their second face-to-face summit after the G7 summit in June in the U.K.

The joint statement released after the meetings

TOKYO -- The Tokyo Olympics have officially begun, following Friday's opening ceremony. These Games are an unprecedented event as no spectators are allowed into most of its sports venues. Organizers fear that without such restrictions the Games could turn into a coronavirus superspreader event.

The extraordinary conditions and mixed emotions were reflected in the preparations in the final run-up to the ceremony and people on the street in Tokyo, which Nikkei Asia captured on video between July 21 and 23.

OSAKA -- Kintetsu Department Store will open its first duty-free shop overseas on the tropical Chinese island of Hainan, President Takuji Akita told Nikkei, bringing the Japanese shopping experience straight to Chinese consumers' doors with an eye on post-pandemic growth.

Japanese retailers relied heavily on inbound tourists to drive earnings until COVID-19 struck. But " b akugai in Japan won't recover to where it was before," Akita said, using a buzzword meaning "explosive buying" that is often associated with foreign

TOKYO -- Japanese automakers face a multibillion-dollar hit to earnings this fiscal year from rising prices of lithium, copper and other materials crucial to the shift away from polluting cars.

The effect of higher materials costs on operating profits stands to reach about 1 trillion yen ($9 billion) for Japan's six leading car companies, led by Toyota Motor, according company disclosures and estimates by Goldman Sachs Japan. This amounts to about 30% of their total profit forecasts -- and U.S. automakers

Alicia Garcia-Herrero is Asia-Pacific chief economist at Natixis and a senior research fellow at Bruegel, a Brussels-based think tank.

The COVID pandemic has certainly not slowed down Europe's quest to save the planet from global warming.

After further tightening its net emission target by 2030 from 40% to at least 55% compared to 1990 levels to achieve climate neutrality target by 2050, on July 14 the European Commission released its long-awaited Fit

TOKYO -- The Tokyo Olympics have finally opened after a long journey filled with controversy, and an unprecedented one-year postponement because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The proceedings officially began with Friday's opening ceremony at the National Stadium , a mostly subdued affair mixed with joyous moments like a high-tech drone show, and capped by tennis star Naomi Osaka lighting the Olympic cauldron.

Key events to watch on Sunday, July 25 (Tokyo time)

Tennis (first round)

• 11 a.m

TOKYO -- Gone are the days when UFO stories were dismissed as crackpot pseudoscience. Today, they are an emerging field of public policy debate.

A recent U.S. report on unidentified flying objects, or what the intelligence community calls unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), has brought these mysterious sightings into the realm of serious discussion on national security.

The world's powers need to take note. Japan and European allies of the U.S. should work on sharing information on UAP to learn more about them