The dismal record of mega event evictions, media manipulation, lying and overspends continues. Sochi is striving hard to compete with Delhi and Beijing as the most brutal event in recent years.

Stories of environmental disasters continue to surface with a new report that Sochi lacks sites to dispose of garbage and construction waste. At the moment waste is dumped on a site which frequently sees blazes and the waste is said to be polluting the Pitkha River, which runs into the Black Sea. Environmentalists are also protesting at development plans which threaten the landscape of parts of the North Caucasus which are protected as natural UNESCO World Heritage Sites.

Just a few miles up the Lea Valley in Edmonton, Olympics TOP partners (ie top level sponsors) have a factory. This report of the current strike is reposted from Harringey Solidarity Network

From: Heritage Games, cleaning up the debris, Hazards Centre, 2010

Beginning from July 2010 there has been a glare of floodlights on the Commonwealth Games in Delhi. In the early weeks media hounds began enquiring into the state of preparedness with photographs of inchoate ditches and rubble, loose masonry and cement, incomplete roofs and walls. Then the first rains came and, as everything began leaking and the water gathered, the focus changed to the impediments to traffic and the inconvenience to the public.

Campaigners have urged London 2012 to ensure London's diverse communities are highlighted at the Games. Peter Tatchell declared: "London's diverse communities should be an identifiable, visible highlight of the opening and closing ceremonies." John Graham-Cumming suggested that the 2012 marathon could be called the Turing Marathon after the wartime code-breaker and computer inventor Alan Turing, who narrowly missed out on running for Britain in the marathon at the 1948 Olympics and who committed suicide after being convicted under laws against homosexuality. 2012 is the centenary of his birth. Mr Graham-Cumming said: "celebrating Turing doesn't mean focusing on just that one aspect of his life; it means recognising a mental and physical athlete, a mathematician and marathon runner, and a man to whom we owe so much."

Gord Hill, of no2010.com notoriety, has his new comic book reviewed (2nd item down) in The Dominion

So with 6 years to go for poor Rio, just 2 years being loudly trumpeted here, and the BBC carrying a story today of displacement plans affecting