Monday, August 17, 2009 BERLIN: Jamaican Usain Bolt added the world crown to his Olympic title as he scored to victory in a world record 9.58 seconds in the men's 100m final at the World Athletics Championships here on Sunday.Billed as the first of three potential Berlin duels between Bolt and American reigning world champion on Gay, the 22-year-old show-boating Jamaican crushed the field and smashed his own record of 9.69sec set in similarly spectacular fashion at the Beijing Olympics final.Gay claimed silver in 9.71sec, finishing a good couple of metres off Bolt, with former world record holder Asafa Powell of Jamaica clocking 9.84sec for bronze.Bolt, who took the Beijing Games by storm last summer, winning all three Olympic sprint golds and all in world record times, had overcome a nervy semi-final in which he false started for the first-ever time in his career.But when it came to the final, he enjoyed his normal start, his head staying down over the first 40 metres before slowly bringing his towering 6ft 5in frame fully upright and lengthening out his stride to attain maximum velocity.After having enraptured the crowd with his trademark bow-and-arrow posing before starter's orders, his pull was exemplary and he was soon away from Gay - who had a marginally better reaction time - and his other rivals and celebrating another new world record.In sultry conditions at the Olympic Stadium, with a temperature of 28C (82F), Bolt's training partner Daniel Bailey of Antigua finished in fourth at 9.93sec on a photo finish with Trinidad's Olympic silver medallist R?ichard Thompson.Dwain Chambers, the world indoor 60m silver medallist who is competing here after having ser?ed a two-year doping ban, came in sixth with 10.00sec.Trinidadian Marc Burns and American Darvis Patton, who finished seventh and eighth, in the Beijing Olympics repeated their places here in 10.00 and 10.34sec respectively.
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...
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