INTERNATIONAL:  With a month to go before the start of the Beijing Winter Olympics, Chinese president Xi Jinping on visited the Games venue and inspected ongoing preparations for the 2022 Olympic and Paralympic Winter Games.

The 2022 Games, which open on Feb. 4, are set to take place as the world grapples with the highly transmissible Omicron variant, although China, which has a zero-tolerance COVID policy, reported a handful of Omicron cases.

Organizers said on Wednesday that the "closed loop" bubble, in which participants can only leave if they are exiting the country or undergoing quarantine, was activated as planned on Tuesday. The loop restricts Games-related personnel to certain zones in and around Olympics venues to avoid any contact and risk of transmission with the local population. Overseas participants will fly directly into and out of the closed loop.

More than 2,000 international athletes are set to come to China for the Games, plus 25,000 other "stakeholders," a large number from overseas. Organizers did not say how many of those people would be in the closed loop.