Old News Is Better Than No News

Kind of a slow news weekend in Sochi, so I'll hit a few news items from the last few weeks that I haven't touched on yet.

• Earlier this month, the Jugba-Lazarevskoye-Sochi natural gas pipeline opened, at a cost of just over $1 billion.  This is one of the good things about development; the citizens of Sochi certainly deserve access to piped gas, especially when they live in one of the largest natural gas-exporting nations in the world.  Should they have had to give up their quiet little resort town to Olimpstroy to get it?  Wait, don't answer that.
• National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman "continues to drag out" his decision on whether NHL players will compete for Olympic medals in Sochi, at least according to the Toronto Globe and Mail.  That's a misleading headline for a number of reasons, not least of which simply because Bettman isn't dragging anything out; he doesn't need to make any decision on this for a while.  The NHL and its commissioner/owners have a number of concerns about sending their players to play in the Olympics: the league and the owners are not compensated for sending the players to play, increased risk of injury, the safety of its players in the Caucasus and, most importantly, shutting down the league for 3 weeks in February, just after the Superbowl, when the NHL is the only pro game in town and the regular season is starting to get good.  Not to mention Bettman has enough on his dinner plate right now, with the move of the Atlanta Thrashers to Winnipeg and the apparently extensive realignment to come in 2013.
• What did you do celebrate 'Olympic Day' on June 24th?  Me, I set myself up a nice little biathlon course in my backyard; it pissed off the neighbors, but I have a feeling they'll be thanking me in December.