When Maryland voted to legalize slot machines, officials opted to acquire the games of chance themselves so that the state would be responsible for the integrity of the gambling. It’s not looking like a winning bet. Read full article > >

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Maryland faces millions in costs after paying more for slot devices than expected

General admission tickets to the Olympic Park during Games time will be sold, organisers confirm.

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Olympic Park tickets to be sold

Danny Boyle reveals the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony will be called Isles of Wonder, in an annoucement six months ahead of the Games.

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Olympic ceremony title revealed

London 2012 organisers are to take control of the Olympic Village site in a ceremony to mark six months until the Games begin.

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Olympic Village site handed over

The London 2012 Organising Committee (Locog) is investigating claims over pay and conditions at a factory in China where toy mascots for the Games are made.

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2012 mascot factory claims probed

The London 2012 Organising Committee (Locog) is investigating claims over pay and conditions at a factory in China where toy mascots for the Games are made.

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2012 mascot factory claims probed

The cabinet will meet later at the main site of the London Olympics, to mark 200 days until the Games begin.

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Olympic park meeting for cabinet

Joseph Herscher, a 26-year-old computer programmer and kinetic artist, turned his Brooklyn apartment into a laboratory where he builds real-world Rube Goldberg machines.

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Man Embraces Useless Machines, and Absurdity Ensues

Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt rejects suggestions that the London 2012 Games should be an “austerity” Olympics.

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Hunt rejects ‘austerity Olympics’

Next July 1 will be one of the most thrilling days of Maryland track and field coach Andrew Valmon ’s life. It could also be one of the worst. It will be the final day of the U.S. Olympic track and field trials in Eugene, Ore., when Valmon will learn the composition of the U.S. Olympic men’s squad that he will coach at the Summer Games in London . Read full article > >

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Maryland athletics budget cuts put Olympic track coach Andrew Valmon in awkward position

How do you make people forget a red-glowing bird’s nest as an architectural centerpiece? Endless rows of multicolored lights streaking through a gleaming, decked-out Olympic Park? How do you follow a government-run Olympic Games in which no expenses were spared – especially when you don’t have expenses to spare? ¶ If you are Sebastian Coe, the famous former British miler who is now heading the committee in charge of next summer’s London Games , you don’t try to top the 2008 Games in Beijing . Instead, you attack the Olympic challenge like you did all of those gritty middle-distance contests in the late 1970s and early ‘80s. They required tactics as much as pure speed, and sometimes weren’t quite as fast as expected, or as pretty. ¶ “It’s been a very similar mind-set to that I had as an athlete,” said Coe, who set five world records and won two Olympic gold medals. “We were never afraid to do it differently. We were never afraid to challenge orthodoxy. That’s not the same as running headlong into risk . . . it’s just being prepared to see things slightly differently.” ¶ In just under 10 months, the world will be the judge of whether Coe, 55, succeeded in getting London to the finish line in good time, and with the appropriate aplomb. Read full article > >

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2012 Olympics: Amid economic uncertainty, London aims for a different experience

Details of the route of the London 2012 Olympic torch relay through Scotland are unveiled by the games organisers.

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Scottish Olympic relay revealed

When the Washington Capitals host the Florida Panthers on Tuesday, they’ll aim to win five straight games to open a season for the first time in franchise history. Their franchise player, meantime, will be aiming for his first breakout performance of 2011-12. Alex Ovechkin has just one goal, one assist, a plus-minus rating of minus-2 and 15 shots on goal through the season’s first four games. Read full article > >

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Caps’ Alex Ovechkin works to break out from slow start

MILWAUKEE — October began with a basic premise, established as much by lore as by fact, that starting pitching wins championships. Send to the mound Koufax in his prime, Gibson in Games 1, 4 and 7, or Schilling and Johnson back-to-back in the desert, and show up at the end to collect your hardware. Never mind that it didn’t hold true every year. When it happened that way, it was generally memorable. Read full article > >

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2011 NLCS Game 6: St. Louis Cardinals bash Milwaukee Brewers to reach World Series

As the Detroit Tigers prepared to play the New York Yankees in Game 4 of the American League Division Series last Tuesday night at Comerica Park, a handful of Detroit Lions players made their way to their seats and were immediately gripped by versions of the same thought: This was the atmosphere all professional athletes crave. This was what it means to bring a city together. This was what it felt like to play on a national stage — one that doesn’t fall on Thanksgiving day, with the Lions playing the role of the turkey. ¶ “It was crazy,” wide receiver Calvin Johnson said. “People were waving towels and stuff. The game hadn’t even started, but it was already bonkers in there.” ¶ Not far away, veteran wide receiver Nate Burleson and running back Mo Morris were sounding jealous tones, lamenting the Lions’ own hype deficit in recent years – the local television blackouts and the national invisibility: “Sometime our games aren’t even shown on the highlights on ESPN,” Burleson said, shaking his head. ¶ But all the Lions had to do to remember how far they have come and what lies in store for them was to look over their left shoulders. Next door to the baseball stadium, Ford Field, the Lions’ own 65,000-seat coliseum, sat dark at that moment. But in a matter of days it would be the center of the NFL universe. Read full article > >

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At 4-0, Lions are making history and winning hearts in Detroit