The Winter Games are set to be held in Sochi in 2014, heralding Russia's 21st century coming out. But the path to the celebration isn't an easy one -- the project has been plagued by construction delays, homeowner protests and oligarch investors hit by the economic downturn. The countdown to Sochi has begun, but it is already clear it will be a thorn in the eye of the IOC for the next five years.

At 10 a.m. in the Caucasus Mountains, backhoes dig their way through the snow and trucks dump loads of sand. The sun is a yellowy white and it's -4 degrees Celsius (25 degrees Fahrenheit). Russian men with cigarettes dangling from the corners of their mouths reach for their helmets, shovels and wheelbarrows, then they begin to hammer, weld and saw.

There are 500 people working here at an elevation of 563 meters (1,847 feet) at the foot of the Aibga mountain range. Two helicopters, a white Ka-27 and a red Mi-8, rise into the air overhead. One flying hour per helicopter costs €3,800 ($4,830), and each can carry four tons of cargo. Right now they're flying cement bags and steel pylons up to the north slope of Black Pyramid mountain, where all alpine ski events will be held during the Olympic Games in February, 2014.

A psychedelic fish that bounces on the ocean floor like a rubber ball has been classified as a new species, a scientific journal reported.

The frogfish - which has a swirl of tan and peach zebra stripes that extend from its aqua eyes to its tail - was initially discovered by scuba diving instructors working for a tour operator a year ago in shallow waters off Ambon island in eastern Indonesia.

The operator contacted Ted Pietsch, lead author of a paper published in this month's edition of Copeia, the journal of the American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists, who submitted DNA work identifying it as a new species.

The fish - which the University of Washington professor has named "psychedelia" - is a member of the antennariid genus, Histiophryne, and like other frogfish, has fins on both sides of its body that have evolved to be leg-like.

The legendary Bauhaus movement turns 90 this year and the anniversary is being marked by exhibitions from Tokyo to New York. The school that created the image of the modern age was created when a young architect, Walter Gropius, set out to not only shape products for the future but to create a more just society.

In times of gloom and doom, there is often a need for the charismatic energy of great ideas. Back in 1919 German architect Walter Gropius regarded the miserable period following the end of the World War I as a "catastrophe of world history." His response was a bold and yet surprisingly pragmatic utopian vision -- the Bauhaus. By establishing this new kind of art school he managed to create a cultural wonder that continues to have a profound impact to this day.

This year marks the 90th anniversary of the founding of the school and a series of events and exhibitions are about to remind us once again that without Gropius the world of architecture and design would look very different today.

Christian Faur is an artist based in Granville, Ohio. Looking for a new technique, he experimented with painting with wax, but he didn't feel the results were satisfactory. Then, at Christmas in 2005, his young daughter opened a box of 120 Crayola crayons he'd bought her, and everything clicked into place...

A US fireman who lost his power of speech in a traffic accident has been taught to speak again by parrots.

Brian Wilson, from Damascus, Maryland, suffered life-threatening injuries in the accidnet 14 years ago. He also lost his ability to speak.

But he now claims that the chatter of pet parrots confounded the bleak outlook of doctors, who were convinced that he would spend the rest of his life in bed at a nursing home.

"Two birds taught me to talk again," he said. "I had such a bad head injury I was never supposed to talk any more than a two-year-old."

But two of the birds that he had had as pets since he was a child "just kept talking to me and talking to me".

"Then all of a sudden, a word popped out, then two, then more."

A prominent Saudi scholar warned youths studying abroad of using ethanol or other fuel that contains alcohol in their cars since they could be committing a sin, local press reported Thursday.

Sheikh Mohamed Al-Najimi, member of the Saudi Islamic Jurisprudence Academy, based his statement on a saying by the prophet that prohibited all kinds of dealings with alcohol including buying, selling, carrying, serving, drinking, and manufacturing, the Saudi newspaper Shams reported Thursday.

Saudi and Muslim youth studying abroad would violate the prohibition if they used bio fuel, he said, since it "is basically made up of alcohol."

Majimi stressed that his statement should not be considered an official fatwa, but is rather a personal opinion. He noted that this is an important issue that needs to be studied by the relevant religious bodies.

It is a hidden, taboo subject, widely known about within the music world but barely discussed. Little research into the area has been done and the full extent of the problem is incompletely understood. But inappropriate use of alcohol in Britain's great orchestras is, according to musicians, endemic - ranging from drinking a pint before a concert to steady the nerves, to full-blown inebriation on stage.

Gives a new meaning to Beethoven's Fifth.

You can't be me, I'm taken

This week in the UK saw the beta launch of Creative Spaces. An online community and federated search project across nine National Museums, part of the National Museums Online Learning Project (NMOLP) and involving the Tate, V&A, British Museum, National Portrait Gallery, Natural History Museum, Imperial War Museum, Royal Armouries, Wallace Collection and Sir John Soanes' Museum. The core idea is to provide a way for people to find, discuss and be inspired by the collections of all these museums.