Saturday, February 7, 2026

The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics opened Friday with a multi-site ceremony at San Siro stadium featuring performances by Mariah Carey, Andrea Bocelli, and Lang Lang, with 2,900 athletes parading at venues across the Italian Alps.^[1]

South Africa launched its first locally produced foot-and-mouth disease vaccine in 20 years, with the Agricultural Research Council releasing an initial batch of 12,900 doses and planning to scale production to 20,000 doses per week by March.^[2]

South Africa began the first human clinical trials of an African-led HIV vaccine, with 20 HIV-negative volunteers enrolled at Cape Town's Desmond Tutu HIV Foundation in a study led by the South African Medical Research Council and researchers from eight African nations.^[3]

Iran and the United States held indirect talks in Oman on Friday focused on Tehran's nuclear program, with both sides agreeing to continue negotiations despite ongoing tensions.^[4]

Samsung Electronics reported record-breaking quarterly operating profit of 20 trillion won ($13.8 billion) for Q4 2025, more than tripling from a year earlier, driven by soaring AI-related demand for memory chips and high-bandwidth memory products.^[5]

Ski mountaineering will make its Olympic debut at the 2026 Winter Games, the first winter sport added to the program since 2002, with skeleton, luge, ski jumping and moguls also gaining new events.^[6]

New Zealand named snowboarder Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and freeski athlete Ben Barclay as flagbearers for the Milan-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, with 17 athletes representing the country across snowboarding, freestyle skiing and alpine skiing.^[7]

North Korea inaugurated a major greenhouse farm in Sinuiju, built in areas devastated by flooding in 2024, as the country prepares for its upcoming Workers' Party congress.^[8]

About 35,000 people attended Waitangi Day commemorations in New Zealand, including about 700 paddlers participating in traditional waka celebrations at the Treaty Grounds.^[9]

A new study published in PLOS Biology found that two-day-old newborns can predict rhythmic patterns in music but not melody, suggesting rhythm perception may be hard-wired in the human brain from birth while melody is gradually learned through exposure.^[10]