Village Security Guard Hit by Bullet

Georgia National Guardsmen may be asked to wear body armor while patrolling the Olympic Village because a sergeant was wounded by gunfire at his post.

Thomas Bentley, 43, was struck by a bullet from an AK-47 assault weapon Thursday. He was not seriously injured.

The bullet that hit Bentley was thought to have been fired from about half a mile away during a Fourth of July celebration.

The shooting was one of three incidents in or near Olympic sites late Thursday and early Friday. Police chased a stolen car near the equestrian venue in suburban Rockdale County, and two small fires burned woods in restricted areas at Stone Mountain, where Olympic tennis, cycling and archery will be held.

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The laboratory that will test athletes for drugs during the Games has been accredited by the IOC, settling a major unresolved issue. Ordinarily completed long before the Games, accreditation dragged on for months, partly because it was not agreed until February that the ACOG lab would use the high-resolution mass spectrometers, machines used to detect anabolic steroids.

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Most Americans plan to watch the Summer Games on television, but many feel the event is too commercialized, according to a study released in Atlanta.

In a survey of 1,002 adults done last month by Marketing Research Services, about one in four said they felt the Olympics were staged for rich corporations and VIPs, but more than half could name the big firms sponsoring the event.

More than four of five Americans said they will watch on television, but almost as many--67%--said there were too many commercials in the broadcast.

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The Olympic beach volleyball teams of Karch Kiraly and Kent Steffes and Mike Dodd and Mike Whitmarsh easily advanced on the first day of the $125,000 Miller Lite Twin Cities Open in Minneapolis.

The top-seeded Kiraly and Steffes scored a 15-5 victory over 32nd-seeded Kevin Wong and John Anselmo and the fourth-seeded Dodd and Whitmarsh routed No. 29 Rico Guimaraes and Tony Zapata, 15-1.

Other top seeds advancing included No. 2 Adam Johnson and Jose Loiola and No. 3 Scott Ayakatubby and Brian Lewis and No. 6 Randy Stoklos and Eduardo Bacil.