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• The world's premier athletes on ice and snow have more to worry about than geopolitics as they plunge into the biggest challenges of their lives on the mountain slopes of the Caucasus and in the wet-paint-fresh arenas on the shores of the Black Sea.
• But watch out for those Russians on their home turf. A raucous group of Russian athletes had a message for their nearly 3,000 rivals in Sochi, marching through Fisht Stadium singing that they're "not gonna get us!"
• Superlatives abounded and the mood soared as Tchaikovsky met pseudo-lesbian pop duo Tatu and their hit, "Not Gonna Get Us." Russian TV presenter Yana Churikova shouted: "Welcome to the center of the universe!"
• ___

• SOCHI, Russia (AP) -- Smoke and mirrors? Russian state television aired footage Friday of five floating snowflakes turning into the Olympic rings and bursting into pyrotechnics at the Sochi Games opening ceremony. Problem is, that didn't happen.
• The opening ceremony at the Winter Games hit a bump when only four of the five rings materialized in a wintry opening scene. The five were supposed to join together and erupt in fireworks. But one snowflake never expanded, and the pyrotechnics never went off.
• But everything worked fine for viewers of the Rossiya 1, the Russian host broadcaster.
• As the fifth ring got stuck, Rossiya cut away to rehearsal footage. All five rings came together, and the fireworks exploded on cue.
• "It didn't show on television, thank God," Jean-Claude Killy, the French ski great who heads the IOC coordination commission for the Sochi Games, told The Associated Press.
• ___

• LOS ANGELES (AP) -- In a nearly 2,000-word open letter punctuated with rhetorical questions and decades-old anecdotes, notoriously media-shy Woody Allen again defended himself against renewed claims that he molested adoptive daughter Dylan Farrow 21 years ago.
• Allen's response was published online Friday night by The New York Times,

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