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Facing fears of an attack from al Qaeda or the IRA, Brits are flexing their military muscle and doubling down on surveillance cameras, Mike Giglio reports. Let the games begin.

As the 2012 Olympics approach, London may soon see surface-to-air missiles installed atop some of its apartment buildings, as residents learned by way of government-issued flyers earlier this year. The HMS Ocean, Great Britain’s largest warship, will be moored on the banks of the Thames for the extent of the Games. Typhoon fighter jets will patrol the skies, and Puma helicopters will be at the ready with airborne snipers. More than 13,000 British soldiers, meanwhile, will reportedly be deployed—more than the United Kingdom currently has posted in Afghanistan.

Mike Blake / Reuters-Landov

Don’t like gymnastics? NBC is betting you’ll watch the Olympics anyway.

Jim Bell was an unemployed football coach in Spain, not long out of Harvard, when NBC hired him as a glorified gofer for the 1992 Olympics in Barcelona. His assignment was to shepherd around an injured executive confined to a wheelchair. “I picked him up and slung him over my shoulder,” recalls the 6-foot-4 Bell. “I needed to make some money.”Dick Ebersol, the legendary producer of NBC’s Olympics coverage, liked Bell’s hustle and kept him on at NBC.

CBS News

Ann Romney’s horse Rafalca is heading to the Olympics to compete in dressage, the equestrian sport that’s already become an issue on the campaign trail. The Daily Beast explains six facts about the expensive pastime, from its history to why the horses foam at the mouth.

After Ann Romney’s love for the expensive equestrian sport known as dressage caused a minor stir on the campaign trail, her connection to dressage is making waves once again. Rafalca, one of the horse’s Romney co-owns, and Jan Ebeling, Romney’s dressage trainer, will be heading to the London Olympics after taking third at the U.S. Equestrian Federation National Dressage Championships in Gladstone, N.J., over the weekend. The win was enough for Rafalca to take one of the five dressage spots on the U.