
Olympic flame which will be used for the London 2012 torch relay has been lit during a ceremony in Olympia, Greece. The flame was kindled by a “high priestess” who captured the morning sun’s rays in a parabolic mirror. The ceremony came amid political and economic turmoil in Greece, the home of the Ancient Olympics, where a week-long leg of the relay will be held. The flame flie…

Volodymyr Gerashchenko, a senior Ukrainian Olympic official, has been suspended after a BBC investigation showed he was willing to unofficially sell 2012 tickets for cash. Volodymyr Gerashchenko, of Ukraine’s National Olympic Committee (NOC), told a reporter posing as a UK tout he would have up to 100 tickets to sell. It is a criminal offence, punishable by fines of up to £20,000 ($32,000),…

he torch on British soil. After criss-crossing every region of the UK, the flame will be used to light the cauldron in Stratford’s Olympic Stadium at the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on 27 July. At Thursday’s handover ceremony, crowds in the stadium stood beneath multi-colored umbrellas as the national anthems of the UK and Greece were sung by a British school choir and a Gree…

The biggest McDonald’s restaurant on the planet has been built in London, right in the middle of the Olympic park. The vast two-storey restaurant will serve up to 1,200 customers an hour and sell $5 million of fast food during Olympic Games. At 3,000 sq ft the building, next to the Olympic Stadium, is bigger than the current largest McDonald’s, in Moscow. The Russian restaurant will regain its ti…

…o cheat,” says John Hoberman. He believes the more money you offer, especially in poorer countries, the greater the chance an athlete will be tempted to dope. How much for a gold medal at London 2012 Olympics: • Singapore – $800,000 • Kazakhstan – $250,000 • Kyrgyzstan – $200,000 • Uzbekistan – $150,000 • Russia – $135,000 • Tajikistan – $63,000 • US ̵…
Aug 4 2012 | Posted in
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…m’s training camp • On Tuesday, Heathrow is set for its busiest day for Olympics so far as it prepares to handle about 217,000 passengers, including some 1,200 athletes and coaches and more than 3,000 other Games-related arrivals • Motorists have faced long queues on routes where pre-Olympics modifications have been made to road layouts • And the Olympic torch is travelling from Kingston, in…
Jul 24 2012 | Posted in
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ic Games begin on 29 August 20012 and close on 9 September 2012. During the London 2012 Olympic Games top sportsmen and women from across the world will be competing in 26 sports which break down into 39 disciplines. There are 20 sports in the Paralympic schedule in the London 2012 Games. An Olympic Park has been created on 2.5sq km of land in east London from former industrial land that has been…

alleges, during a two-month investigation in which reporters posed as Middle Eastern ticket touts, it found corruption involving people representing 54 separate countries. More than one million London 2012 tickets were distributed abroad among all the nations taking part in the Games, but the IOC has strict rules to try to combat touts. National Olympic committees must ensure that their allocation…
Jun 17 2012 | Posted in
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London’s Olympic Stadium will welcome the athletics events later in the day, ensuring the Olympic Park’s busiest day since the Games opened a week ago. More than 200,000 people will be at the park, prompting warnings for those not attending the Games to avoid the area. The Central Line, which serves the Olympic Park in Stratford, is suspended from Liverpool Street to Leytonstone. It f…
Aug 3 2012 | Posted in
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…8221; he said. The completed steel sculpture, known as ArcelorMittal Orbit, stands at the heart of the Olympic Park After the Olympics, the public won’t be able to access the Orbit until Easter 2014 – when the South Plaza is opened up. Ticket prices have not been announced for the full opening from 2014. Members of the media were given a sneak preview of the experience on Friday morni…

The official Olympic flag has arrived in the Brazilian city of Rio de Janeiro, the host city of 2016 Games. Rio Mayor Eduardo Paes waved the flag after stepping off the plane with other officials and Brazilian athletes who competed in London. The flag was handed to Eduardo Paes on Sunday in London before the flame at the Olympic Stadium was extinguished. The move marks the official start of Rio…
Aug 14 2012 | Posted in
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sing ceremony as a “mashed-up symphony”. Kim Gavin said it would showcase “British creativity in the arts” and take people on a musical journey from Elgar to Waterloo Sunset in 30 tracks. The director explained that while the national flags would process in, the athletes would come in together as “friends” rather than country-by-country as in the opening ceremon…
Aug 12 2012 | Posted in
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…sponse to the lunar insertion into the organization’s trademarked logo. The five interlocking rings represent the five parts of the world involved in the global games. The symbol was designed in 1912 by Baron Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games. …
Aug 5 2012 | Posted in
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A cyclist has been killed in a crash with what police are describing as an “Olympic bus” on the border of the Olympic Park in Hackney, eastern London. The man, believed to be aged 30, was injured just before 19:45 BST at the junction of Ruckholt Road and East Cross Road, Hackney. Police and an air ambulance attended but the man was pronounced dead at the scene about half an hour later…

Dutch Olympic athletes are facing government fines because they delayed finishing their degrees. About 50 of the athletes competing at the London 2012 Games are still at university or college. For many of them, Olympic training commitments have interrupted their studies meaning they will be forced to pay thousands of euros in penalties. Dutch law states that each student must pay standard tuition…
Jul 7 2012 | Posted in
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…ale of contacts can result in civil penalties of up to $11,000 per violation. Consumers should only buy decorative contact lenses from an eye care professional or a seller who asks for a prescription. 3. You need to see an eye care professional (an ophthalmologist or optometrist) to get your eyes measured in order to properly fit the contact lenses. Lenses that are not properly fitted may scratch…

…seed, beat the third-seeded Russian on the same Centre Court where she took home her fifth Wimbledon championship last month. Since losing to a 17-year-old Maria Sharapova at the 2004 Wimbledon final, 30-year-old Serena Williams has now beaten Sharapova eight consecutive times. Serena Williams and Maria Sharapova have won all four Grand Slam titles during their careers but both were going for thei…
Aug 4 2012 | Posted in
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hree minutes for the first time since King George VI’s funeral. Lord’s cricket ground has turned away spectators trying to get in to watch archery amid confusion over ticketing. The London 2012 website advertised the event’s preliminary rounds as “unticketed”, which some members of the public interpreted as open to the public. But Olympic organizer LOCOG said it had n…
Jul 27 2012 | Posted in
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2012 Olympics stadium has been officially opened by nine-year-old Niamh Clarke-Willis at a ceremony in east London. Niamh Clarke-Willis joined LOCOG head Lord Sebastian Coe to hit a button which launched balloons into the sky above the venue for this summer’s Games. Around 40,000 members of the public were at the Olympic Stadium in Stratford to witness the opening, which included a laser li…

A new scandal has broken after the news the US athletes at the forthcoming London Olympics will wear stylish uniforms designed in the US – but made in China. The news prompted a rare outbreak of bipartisan agreement, with Republican and Democratic leaders highly critical of the US Olympic Committee. “I think the Olympic committee should be ashamed of themselves,” Senate majority…

An international research team has succeeded in taking an amazing image of a newly synthesized molecule called olympicene. The molecule – just over a billionth of a metre across – gets its name because its five linked rings resemble the Olympic symbol. It was first made by collaborators at the University of Warwick in the UK. They teamed up with IBM researchers, who in 2009 pioneered…

…andant of the Marine Corps”. Indeed, male Marines are informed never to carry an umbrella from the earliest phases of training. Regulation MCO P1020.34F of the Marine Corps Uniform Regulations chapter 3, rules out any use or carrying of an umbrella while a Marine is in uniform. However, female Marines “may carry an all-black, plain standard or collapsible umbrella at their option during inclement…

…are rather proud of the diversity of our city £nothingleftwingaboutit,” he tweeted in reply. Aidan Burley lost his job as a parliamentary private secretary after media reports of the party on December 3 last year in a restaurant in the French Alpine resort of Val Thorens, at which one guest is alleged to have dressed in an SS uniform and others are said to have chanted Nazi slogans. The Cannock Ch…
Jul 28 2012 | Posted in
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Nadzeya Ostapchuk, women’s shot put Olympic gold medalist, has been stripped of her title after failing a doping test, the International Olympic Committee has announced. Belarusian Nadzeya Ostapchuk, 31, threw 21.36 m with her third attempt to win in the Olympic Stadium last week. But Nadzeya Ostapchuk has now been disqualified after officials said metenolone was found in a urine sample she…
Aug 13 2012 | Posted in
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Chinese Olympic delegation has begun an investigation into allegations two badminton players “deliberately lost” their match, state media says. Doubles players Yu Yang and Wang Xiaoli are among eight players charged by the Badminton World Federation (BWF) with “not using one’s best efforts to win”. Four players from South Korea and two from Indonesia have also been c…
Aug 1 2012 | Posted in
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