Superstar Osaka lights flame as Japan's Covid-hit Olympics open

Japan's global superstar Naomi Osaka on Friday lit the Olympic cauldron to mark the start of Tokyo 2020, in an opening ceremony shorn of glitz and overshadowed by a pandemic but defined by hope, tradition and gestures of diversity.

Postponed by a year due to the coronavirus, the Games are being held without spectators in a city under a Covid-induced state of emergency, as many other parts of the globe also still struggle with a resurgence of cases.