Skip to main content

US win World Athletics C’ship, Jamaica finish second

Monday, August 24, 2009 BERLIN: United States won the World Athletics Championship while Jamaica came second and Kenya finished third.On the final day of the event held in Berlin, the US obtained gold medals in men’s and women’s 4X400m relay.Norway's two-time Olympic champion Andreas Thorkildsen ended his title drought at these championships after two silvers with gold at last. This is Norway’s only gold medal in the championship.Ethiopian superstar Kenenisa Bekele and Americans LaShawn Merritt and Sanya Richards won their second gold medals on the final day of the world athletics championships here on Sunday.Bekele's came in the 5,000 metres as he became the first man to do the 5,000-10,000m double, a feat even his compatriot Haile Gebrselassie failed to achieve the one time he tried in 1993.Merritt and Richards' second titles came in the men's and women's 400m relays respectively.There was to be no such joy for Yusuf Saad Kamel of Bahrain who, having taken the 1500m title, failed to repeat his golden performance in the 800m.That was was won by Mbulaeni Mulaudzi which meant the South Africans swept the 800m after Caster Semenya had won the women's equivalent.Bahrain's Maryam Jamal also completed a double, by defending her 1500 metres title, but only after Spaniard Natalia Rodriguez was disqualified after crossing the line first.The 30-year-old was adjudged to have pushed Ethiopian Gelete Burka down the back stretch sending her crashing to the ground and on seeing the video replay the Spanish team decided not to protest the decision.Earlier, China had claimed their first ever women's marathon world title when Xue Bai had taken gold.United States, with ten gold medals and 22 medals over all, achieved the first position while Jamaica with the help of seven gold medals finished second.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

India's swine flu death rate is increasing

Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in...

Suicide bombings kill 18 in Iraq

Thursday, August 13, 2009 MOSUL: At least 18 people, most of them members of the ancient Yazidi religious sect, were killed when two suicide bombers blew themselves up on Thursday in a packed cafe in northern Iraq, a local government official said.At least 31 people were also wounded after the bombers detonated suicide belts packed with explosives in the cafe in Kalaa town, in the district of Sanjar, local district chief Dakheel Qassem Hasoon, told a foreign news agency."Two suicide bombers entered the Cafe Barbaroz at 4:30 pm (1330 GMT) and blew themselves up, killing 18 civilians and wounding 31. Most of the victims were Yazidis," Hasoon said.Kalaa, northwest of the insurgent stronghold of Mosul in northern Nineveh province is predominantly populated by the minority Yazidi religious sect, as well as Arabs and Kurds.The attack is the deadliest since Monday, when 51 people were killed across Iraq, including 28 members of the tiny Shabak sect cut down when two truck bombs det...

US drones to target Taliban in Afghan war

Friday, July 31, 2009 WASHINGTON: The US military plans to use more drone aircraft to target Taliban militants in Afghanistan while focusing less on hunting down Al-Qaeda figures, report said on Thursday.Although defeating the Al-Qaeda terror network remains an overriding goal for Washington, officials now believe the best way to pursue that objective is to ensure stability in Afghanistan and neighboring Pakistan instead of Al-Qaeda manhunts, the paper said, citing US government and Defense Department officials.It was more important to prevent a slide towards violence and anarchy that could be exploited by Al-Qaeda, which used Afghanistan to stage its attacks on the United States on September 11, 2001, the officials said."We might still be too focused on Bin Laden," an official said. "We should probably reassess our priorities."The shift in priorities for the drone fleet comes despite President Barack Obama's declaration that defeating and dismantling Al-Qaeda ...