They come bearing satellite TV. Brazil’s Batalhão de Operações Policiais Especiais, or BOPE, is an elite force of military police who often specialize in urban operations in Rio’s slums—or favelas. As the World Cup and the Olympics approach, BOPE forces are appearing more and more often. And their techniques are evolving.
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Not to be outdone by the sheer magnitude of the NSA’s PRISM program, Russia’s FSB security service is preparing to monitor every single communication made by competitors and spectators alike during the 2014 winter games in Sochi, according to a report by The Guardian.
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Gymnast bot has wowed us
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British firm Zaha Hadid Architects won their bid to create the new Tokyo-based national stadium back in November of 2012 – today they’ve announced it’ll be aimed for use in the 2020 Olympics. This beast of a piece of architecture will be able to seat 80,000 and will first be playing host to the 2019 […]
Tokyo was chosen as the host of the 2020 Olympics this weekend, based on a $5 billion bid that’s surprisingly slim compared to the money spent by other recent host cities. The crux of their proposal (besides that whole ice wall around Fukushima thing)? A plan to retrofit three major venues originally built for the 1964 Summer Games.
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Winning a gold medal is one of the highest achievements in sports, the beautiful round medallion rewards years of hard work and confirms an athlete’s status as the very best. Russia is going to sweeten the deal a bit in the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics (no, they’re not wrapping chocolate inside), with extra medals that have pieces of the meteorite that crashed in Russia earlier this year will be given to the gold medal winners.
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The 2020 Olympics will be held in either Istanbul, Madrid, or Tokyo, but no matter where they’re held, the logo will be boring. There’s a 66-percent chance the logo is going to be some stupid flower crap.
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The Winter Olympics are set to begin in 2014, which means the Olympic torch will once again be carried around the world before it finally lands in the Olympic Stadium in Russia to mark the beginning of the sporting event. However, the torch will take a trip to space where it will be taken on a spacewalk for the first time ever.
Two cosmonauts will be making the spacewalk along with the Olympic torch in order to celebrate the games that will be taking place in Russia. The torch walk is scheduled to begin on October 7 this year, and it will span 123 days and travel more than 34,000 miles. The torch will also be carried by 14,000 different people, which would be a record for Olympic torch walks.
The deputy head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, Vitaly Davydov, said that the torch that will be carried to space will be “the same as the torch at the Olympics,” although the torch will not be lit on its way to space, since open flames are prohibited from being carried inside a spaceship while traveling to the ISS.
The spacewalk with the torch is set to take place in November, and it’s expected to return back to Earth on November 12. Russian cosmonauts Oleg Kotov and Sergey Ryazansky are expected to perform the space walk with the torch. Other places that the torch is scheduled to go to is Mount Elbrus (the highest peak of Europe), the bottom of Lake Baikal, and the North Pole.
[via Russian Times]
2014 Olympic torch to be carried in space is written by Craig Lloyd & originally posted on SlashGear.
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We can’t get enough of these tiny but impressive robot gymnasts who flip through the air and stick their landings. We’re probably only seeing the one time it lands upright in about 100 attempts, but who cares? They’re only going to get better and better. And one day the summer Olympics might actually be worth watching. Give that robot the wood medal. (Because it’s not programmed to recognize the value of gold.) [YouTube via Automaton] More »
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