Jewish & World News

The cost of the Winter Olympics in Russia next year will exceed $50 billion, a government official said Monday in Moscow, making the Games one of the most expensive in history. The government and private investors will share the cost, the bulk of which is being spent upgrading infrastructure in the host city of Sochi on Russia’s Black Sea, Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Kozak was quoted as saying Monday by Russian news agencies.

The next Olympics may appear far in the distant future, but Carlos Arthur Nuzman, president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee, is hard at work preparing for the 2016 Games in Rio de Janeiro. All across the vast South American city famous for its sea, sand and samba, construction crews are busy digging tunnels, laying foundations for buildings and prettifying neighborhoods in anticipation of an event set to take place four years from now.

Amid the outrage over the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) refusal to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Palestinian murder of Israeli team members at the Munich Olympics, American Friends of Magen David Adom (AFMDA) is working to raise $1.1 million for 11 life support ambulances in Israel in memory of the victims.

Most Britons believe the London Olympics have delivered good value for money, according to a poll published Saturday, as the hosts revel in Britain's best performance at the Games for more than a century. Some 55 percent of the British population think the Games are "well worth" the £9 billion ($14 billion, 11.5 billion euro) pricetag, cheering the nation up as it battles recession, according to the Guardian/ICM poll.

Prime Minister David Cameron said on Thursday that Britain's Olympic cycling glory has driven France "mad", and rejected claims of cheating by pointing out that the riders' wheels are made across the Channel. "We've got a system that seems to be delivering. It's driving the French mad," Cameron told BBC radio in an interview.

The world must “never forget” the terrorist attacks that killed Israeli athletes at the Munich Olympics, David Cameron has said. On the 40th anniversary of the attack, the British Prime Minister led tributes to the 11 men who lost their lives on “one of the darkest days in the history of the Olympic Games”.

A German Olympic rower who left the London games prematurely has denied claims her boyfriend is a neo-Nazi and insisted she will continue in the sport. The allegation last week prompted Nadja Drygalla (23) to depart the Olympic village on Friday having already completed her participation in the games.

Jewish Australian kayaker Jessica Fox won a silver medal at the Olympic Games. Fox, the daughter of French Olympian Myriam Jerusalmi, who won bronze at the Atlanta Games in 1996, trumped her mother by winning silver in the slalom (K1) on Aug. 2 in London.

An Israeli sprinter lost his bid to make the semifinals in the Olympic 400m dash after his shoes were stolen. Donald Sanford failed to qualify for the 400m after running Saturday in borrowed shoes.

The sister of an Israeli athlete murdered at the Munich Olympics said Mitt Romney's failure to press for a moment of silence on the 30th anniversary of the killings was painful. Barbara Berger, whose brother, David, was on the Israeli wrestling team in 1972, wrote in Haaretz on Wednesday that families of the 11 victims of a Palestinian terrorist attack at the Munich Olympics would continue to advocate for a formal moment of silence at the Olympics, despite the refusal of the International Olympics Committee to allow such a moment this year, the massacre's 40th anniversary.

London Mayor Boris Johnson got stuck midair on a zip line Wednesday during a celebration for 2012 Olympic Games. ITV, the British partner of NBC News, reported that Johnson had to be pulled the remainder of the way by people on the ground.

Sally Becker saved hundreds of lives in Bosnia and Kosovo during the 1990′s and was chosen as one of the 8 people to carry the Olympic flag during last Friday’s opening ceremony at the London Olympics. “I’ve been waiting for someone to tap me on the shoulder and say ‘this is a big mistake,’” she told The Algemeiner.

Germans have leapt to the defence of Walther Tröger, an honorary member of the International Olympic Committee, after it was suggested he gave a ‘Nazi’ salute at the London 2012 opening ceremony. As his team paraded around the stadium Mr Tröger was caught on video repeatedly extending his left arm back and forth prompting a few awkward stares from members of the crowd.

The German government had advance warning of the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, Der Spiegel reported online on Sunday. A few weeks before the massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes were killed by the Palestinian terrorist organization Black September, the report indicates that German intelligence and the German foreign ministry received information indicating that a terror operation was being planned at the Olympics. A few days before the Olympics, an Italian paper reported the same threat.

Complaining that the Olympic movement is still ignoring their pain, Israelis marked the 40th anniversary of the Munich massacre on Sunday with a modest service in the atrium of a London apartment block. Prayers were read for the 11 murdered Israelis, wreaths were laid for them and a plaque unveiled about four miles (six kilometers) from the Olympic Stadium.

Next week in London, athletes from around the world will go for the gold. But as it turns out, the Olympic gold medal is mostly made of silver. Weighing in at 412 grams -- or roughly the weight of a can of green beans -- the gold medal is made up of only 1.34%, or about 6 grams of gold. The rest is comprised of 93% silver and 6% copper.

The British Broadcasting Corporation, which won the rights to broadcast the London Games, failed to list Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on its Olympics website. According to Yedioth Ahronoth, the site offered information about all the participating countries, including their athletes and capitals, but Israel's profile made no mention of a capital city at all. The profile page for the Palestinian Olympic team, however, mentioned "east Jerusalem" as its capital.

Olympic athletes, including some from Team USA, had a bad start to the London Games Monday after bus drivers taking them to the competitors’ village in east London got lost. Kerron Clement, US 400m hurdler and Beijing silver medallist, claimed he spent four hours on a bus after the driver got lost after collecting them from Heathrow airport.

President Shimon Peres on Tuesday cancelled his trip to London for the opening of the Olympic Games. The cancellation is not related to the International Olympic Committee's refusal to have a minute's silence in memory of the eleven Israeli athletes who were murdered by Palestinian terrorists during the 1972 Olympics in Munich. The opening ceremony of the London Olympics will take place on a Friday evening. There are no hotels within walking distance of the stadium. Peres, who is a good walker, would not have mind walking the extra mile if there was a hotel at the end of it – but there isn't, aside from which it would place a most unenviable burden on his security detail.

Shocked London Olympics workers fled after an excavator struck a Nazi bomb left over from World War II. Construction crews from the 2012 Games raced away Wednesday amid fears the relic could explode. The scare halted work to clear a site for four temporary indoor basketball courts in east London. It resumed four hours later after police were called and the 2.2-pound (one-kilogram) bomb was taken away.