With waves, smiles and streamers, but no cheers, the Olympic torch relay kicked off Thursday, beginning a four-month countdown to the postponed 2020 summer Games in Tokyo, the first ever organized during a deadly pandemic.
 
Casting a pall over celebrations already scaled back because of coronavirus measures, North Korea launched two short-range ballistic missiles before the relay began in Fukushima, an area hit hard by the 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disaster.
 
“For the past year, as the entire world underwent a difficult period, the Olympic flame was kept alive quietly but powerfully,” Tokyo 2020 President Seiko Hashimoto said at an opening details ⇒

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