Top News Stories –

Wayde van Niekerk wins Olympic 400m gold in a new world record! –
The South African produces an absolutely astonishing run to wrestle the Olympic title away from Kirani James, who comes second. Michael Johnson’s 17-year-old world record is finally beaten! He looked to have set out far too quickly but, incredibly, got faster around the top bend and then sustained that top speed down the final stretch. The 2008 Olympic champion, LaShawn Merritt, gets the bronze. To give you an idea of how incredible of an athlete Van Niekerk is; he’s the only athlete in history to run 100m under 10 secs, 200m under 20 secs, and 400m under 44 secs. [CNN] See List of the Day
Wayde van Niekerk

Video of the Day –

Vocabulary 1 from Becky James on Vimeo.

List of the Day –

Time	Athlete	Nationality	Location of race	Date
43.86A	Lee Evans	United States	Mexico City, Mexico	October 18, 1968[1]
43.29	Butch Reynolds	United States	Zürich, Switzerland	August 17, 1988[1]
43.18	Michael Johnson	United States	Seville, Spain	August 26, 1999[1]
43.03	Wayde van Niekerk	South Africa	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil	August 14, 2016[4]

Other News Stories –

Armed conflicts and attacks

• Yemeni Civil War
  • About 40 suspected Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula fighters are killed as Yemeni forces, aided by Saudi-led airstrikes, fight their way into Zinjibar and Jaʿār in eastern Yemen. (Reuters) (Daily Mail)
• Syrian Civil War
  • Russian and Syrian government jets conduct 26 airstrikes across Idlib province, killing 122 civilians. (The Washington Post)

Business and economy

• Volkswagen emissions scandal
  • Volkswagen gets approval from Germany’s motor vehicle authority for technical fixes on 460,000 cars. (Reuters)

Disasters and accidents

• A wedding bus carrying over 50 passengers falls into a ravine in Azad Kashmir, killing at least 25 people and wounding 20 more. Many people are critically injured, with the death toll expected to increase.(Anadolu Agency)
• 2016 California wildfires
  • 100 homes are destroyed and thousands of people are forced to leave due wildfire in Lower Lake, California. (WSJ)

Law and crime

• American Olympic swimmers Ryan Lochte, Gunnar Bentz, Jack Conger and Jimmy Feigen are robbed at gunpoint in Rio de Janeiro by men posing as Brazilian police officers. (The New York Times)
• HEI Hotels & Resorts, a firm that operates hotels for Hyatt, Intercontinental, Marriott, and Starwood, reports that malware designed to collect payment information was discovered on computers at 20 of their locations across the United States. (Reuters)
• Sage, a British accounting software firm, reports a data breach; it is presently unclear what data was viewed or taken. (BBC)

Science and technology

• SpaceX successfully launches Japanese communication satellite JCSAT-16 into geostationary orbit from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. The Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket used to place the satellite in orbit successfully landed on an autonomous spaceport drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. (RT)

Sports

• 2016 Summer Olympics
  • Athletics
    • Usain Bolt of Jamaica becomes the first man to win three gold medals in the men’s 100 metres. (CNN)
    • In the men’s 400 metres, Wayde van Niekerk of South Africa breaks the world record set in 1999 by Michael Johnson en route to winning South Africa’s first gold medal in a track event since 1928.(ESPN)
  • In golf, England‘s Justin Rose, representing Great Britain, wins the first gold medal in the sport since 1904. (The New York Times)
  • In tennis, Scotland‘s Andy Murray, representing Great Britain, defeats Argentine Juan Martín del Potro in the men’s singles final for his second consecutive gold medal in the event. Murray becomes the first male tennis player ever to win two Olympic gold medals, whether consecutively or not. (ESPN)

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