Turks have hit back at a new law tightening control of the internet with more than half a million tweets on the hashtag "Internet Censorship in Turkey".

Journalists covering the Sochi Olympics have taken to Twitter to air complaints over the state of their hotel rooms. For the past week, some reporters have been tweeting images describing what they say are appalling conditions in the media hotels.

Turks have hit back at a new law tightening control of the internet with more than half a million tweets on the hashtag "Internet Censorship in Turkey".

Google hasn't shied away in the past from taking political positions in its popular doodle images on its google.com homepage. Thursday's doodle is no exception. It features a rainbow-colored illustration of popular Winter Olympic sports, including alpine skiing, hockey, curling, and ice skating.

Judith Martin, the popular American columnist better known as “Miss Manners”, advocates restraint when responding to insults: “I don't believe in answering rudeness with rudeness”, she once said in an interview. In extreme circumstances, however, – such as when a man asks a woman whether she’s expecting – Martin does permit to “defend one’s own honor.”

On his first anniversary as secretary of state on Tuesday, John Kerry celebrated by reactivating his Twitter handle. “It only took a year but @StateDept finally let me have my own @Twitter account,” Mr. Kerry tweeted with the hashtag #JKTweetsAgain, as if to suggest he had been held hostage for the last year without a BlackBerry.

Amid continued debate over whether or not Sochi is prepared to host the 2014 Olympics, which begins Thursday, reporters from around the world are starting to check into local hotels — to their apparent grief. Some journalists arriving in Sochi are describing appalling conditions in the housing there, where only six of nine media hotels are ready for guests.