Residents in east London are due to have missiles placed on their roofs this week to protect the Olympic Games from airborne terrorist attacks.

Military planners at the Ministry of Defence have decided to fit high-velocity rockets with a range of 5km to several apartment blocks close to the Olympic Park. This weekend they informed the occupants of the Lexington Building apartment complex in Bow that a missile battery would be installed this week.

The weapons are capable of shooting down aircraft and can counter "pop-up strikes" by helicopters, according to the MoD. During the Games, they will be controlled around the clock by 10 unarmed soldiers, who might be guarded by armed police.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2012/apr/29/london-rooftops-missiles-olympic-games

The London 2012 Olympics could be the "wettest summer Games ever", according to Metro, but spectators will not be offered refunds if events are called off. Organisers say that postponing events would be the "absolute last resort" but admitted that if it happened fans, paying up to £2,012 for seats, would only be offered replacements for rescheduled events. Forty per cent of seats at the Olympic Stadium are uncovered and organisers have ordered 250,000 ponchos to sell to spectators. Five meteorologists have also joined the team at the Olympic control centre.

Read more: http://www.theweek.co.uk/olympics/london-2012/47908/no-olympic-refunds-if-weather-means-events-are-postponed#ixzz20N9ZGN1h

Tony Blair is to take his most active part in the Labour party since retiring from frontline politics, contributing ideas and experience to Ed Miliband's policy review.

Blair, who stepped down as prime minister five years ago, will be giving advice on the Olympic legacy and in particular how to "maximise both its economic and its sporting legacies", Miliband said last night.

The role reflects Blair's part in the successful 2005 bid to host the Games and his sporting foundation, one of the key charitable causes in his retirement.

Blair will be reunited with leftwinger Jon Cruddas, a former aide, who was brought in by Miliband to head the policy review. Cruddas spoke recently of "reforming the band" – bringing together leading lights of New Labour – in support of Miliband.

The controversial move – perhaps especially within the Labour party – was announced at a fundraising event when Miliband and Blair symbolically shared a platform to make speeches.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jul/11/labour-adviser-tony-blair

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LONDON — Less than three weeks before the start of the 2012 Olympics, British officials and athletes around the globe are bracing for a dark threat to the London Games: English weather.

In a city universally besmirched as climatically challenged and about which Jane Austen once wrote, “In London, it is always a sickly season,” early Olympics forecasts are cloudy, with a chance of chaos. As Britain copes with its wettest quarter since records began in 1910, officials have set up meteorological war rooms at the Olympic Park in East London as well as in other British host locations, including Eton and Weymouth.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/london-olympics-cloudy-with-a-chance-of-chaos/2012/07/11/gJQAtwoadW_print.html

Hey don't be so pessimistic... The chance of rain or good hot weather is about 50/50.... Goodness, the weather might beat all records, either of rain, of miserable days in succession (a hard one to beat in London) or the highest temperatures ever there...

I believe the first medals went to the drones...

Teachers, schoolchildren and off-duty members of the armed forces will be brought in to fill empty seats at Olympic venues in response to widespread public anger at television pictures showing hundreds of the best seats at supposedly sold-out events left unoccupied.

The empty seats have antagonised not just members of the public, but team officials too. Yesterday the head of the British Olympic Association, Lord Moynihan, called for feasibility of a "30-minute rule" – whereby any seat not occupied within half an hour of a session starting would be made available to the public – to be urgently examined. "We need every seat filled," he said. "We owe it to the team, we owe it to British sports fans."