Word: sochi
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Alexander Koval, 46, figured his boarding house for a gold mine. The two-storied building with 23 double rooms is only a short walk from the Black Sea coast in Nizhneimeretinskaya Bukhta, a town just 28 miles (45 km) down the shoreline from Sochi - the host city of the 2014 Winter Olympics. But Koval's reckoning of future wealth turned sour early this year when it started looking as if a government decree requisitioning his property for Olympic development could render his home and source of income all but worthless. "The prospect of confiscation has killed the real estate market...
Official Russia basked in glory last July when President Vladimir Putin successfully spearheaded Russia's effort to win the 2014 Games. The country has not hosted the Olympics since the 1980 Moscow Games, which the U.S. boycotted to protest the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. So the win for Sochi, proclaimed a reporter on Russia's state television station, was "perhaps the greatest success in Russia's modern history...
Odds-on favorites for diplomatic success are also in trouble. At talks in the Black Sea resort of Sochi this month, Russian President Vladimir Putin seemed open to a deal on missile defense, but the White House couldn't convince him that its proposed Europe-based system would not pose a threat to Russia. At home, Democrats emboldened by Bush's weak numbers and their own rising electoral prospects in November are loath to hand him a win, even on trade deals with allies like South Korea and Panama...
...even odds-on favorites for diplomatic success are in trouble. Russian President Vladimir Putin had seemed to want a deal to bookend his presidency, which ends May 7, but the divide on missile defense proved unbridgeable at talks in Sochi this month. At home, Democrats emboldened by Bush's weak numbers and their own rising electoral prospects in November are loath to hand Bush a win even on trade deals with South Korea and Panama, which as recently as last fall had seemed more achievable than the Colombia deal...
...Sunday morning, President Bush was gone. Clouds and showers soon returned to Sochi, and the Black Sea returned to its seasonally typical tempestuous ways. The two Presidents parted as friends, but despite their enjoyment of each other's company, their countries remain further apart now than when they first locked eyes in Lubljana...