TODAY: Foreigners doubt Sochi safety measures will suffice, militants threaten more attacks; Mayor says there are no gay people in Sochi; bill would alter homophobic law; ‘foreign agents’ law up for review; Russia to double Asia exports; Baikalsk to close; Lebedev released.

Russia’s security ‘ring of steel’ around Sochi is not convincing foreign observers that the Games will be safe; U.K. officials are predicting more terrorist attacks before next week’s opening ceremony, and militants who claimed responsibility for the suicide bombings in Volgograd earlier this month have vowed to attack again if the Russian people do not rise up against their government and ‘decapitate this hydra’.  The FT reports on the final scramble to ensure the facilities are ready.  Environmental activist Yevgenia Chirikova is drawing links between recent bank closures and the Kremlin’s promoting of the Olympics.  The Mayor of Sochi, Anatoly Pakhomov, contradicted earlier clement statements by President Vladimir Putin about the question of Russian tolerance, saying that homosexuality is ‘not accepted’ in the Caucasus, and that ‘we do not have [gay people] in our city’.  Under a newly-submitted bill, the language of the ‘homosexual propaganda’ law, which bans the promotion of non-traditional sexual relations, would be altered to include all sexual relations.