F.B.I. and Justice Department Open Criminal Investigation in Chinese Doping Case
The F.B.I. and Justice Department have opened a criminal investigation into how antidoping authorities and sports officials allowed elite Chinese swimmers who had tested positive for a banned substance to escape punishment and win a slew of medals — including three golds — at the last Olympics, according to two people briefed on the matter and swimming’s international governing body.
The decision to move forward with a criminal investigation is a dramatic escalation by the United States against the Chinese, world antidoping authorities and the Olympic movement, and will mean the shadow of an F.B.I. investigation will hang over the Summer Games, which are scheduled to begin later this month in Paris.
Eleven of the swimmers who tested positive — and who have never been suspended for doping — are again members of the Chinese Olympic team. Several are favorites to win medals in Paris.
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Why More French Youth Are Voting for the Far Right
In the 1980s, a French punk rock band coined a rallying cry against the country’s far right that retained its punch over decades. The chant, still shouted at protests by the left, is “La jeunesse emmerde le Front National,” which cannot be translated well without curse words, but essentially tells the far right to get lost.
That crude battle cry is emblematic of what had often been conventional wisdom not only in France, but also elsewhere — that young people frequently tilt left in their politics. Now, that notion has been challenged as increasing numbers of young people have joined swaths of the French electorate to support the far-right National Rally, a party once deemed too extreme to govern.
The results from Sunday’s parliamentary vote, the first of a two-part election, showed young people across the political spectrum coming out to cast ballots in much greater numbers than in previous years. A majority of them voted for the left. But one of the biggest jumps was in the estimated numbers of 18-to-24-year-olds who cast ballots for the National Rally, in an election that many say could reshape France.
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