Briefly

JAPAN

Cost of putting off Games put at $1.9b

This year's postponement of the Tokyo Olympics because of the coronavirus cost about 200 billion yen ($1.9 billion), organizers have estimated, the Yomiuri newspaper reported on Sunday, citing people involved with the event. The International Olympic Committee and the Japanese government were forced to put off the Games for a year in March as the virus spread. The Games cost 1.35 trillion yen before the postponement, the newspaper reported. The organizing committee will decide on a breakdown of the burden of the delay in December, the newspaper said.

UNITED STATES

Trump loses another election case in court

Pennsylvania's highest court threw out a lower court's order preventing the state from certifying dozens of contests on its Nov 3 election ballot in the latest lawsuit filed by Republicans attempting to thwart President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the battleground state. The state Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision made public on Saturday night, said the lawsuit underlying the three-day-old court order was filed months after the expiry of a time limit in Pennsylvania's expansive year-old mail-in voting law allowing for challenges to it.

NIGERIA

Suspected extremists kill at least 40 farmers

Suspected members of the Islamic militant group Boko Haram killed at least 40 rice farmers while they were harvesting crops in Borno state, northern Nigeria, officials said. The attack was staged on Saturday in a rice field in Garin Kwashebe on the day residents of the state were casting votes for the first time in 13 years to elect local government councils, though many did not go to cast their ballots. The farmers were reportedly rounded up and summarily killed by armed insurgents. Malam Zabarmari, a leader of a rice farmers association in Borno state, confirmed the massacre to The Associated Press.

Agencies Via Xinhua