Neeraj Chopra Brings Home Olympic Silver Medal, Bangladesh Caretaker Government, More: Weekly Charts in 5 Categories

(1) Neeraj Chopra wins silver in Paris

Neeraj Chopra fought as hard as he could. He pushed himself harder than he ever had this season. In the qualifying round, he threw his best throw of the season. He improved on that in his second throw in the final. 89.45m. It was the second best throw of his career. It wasn’t enough.

On Thursday night at the Stade de France, Pakistan’s Arshad Nadeem beat him as comprehensively as possible. On his sixth attempt, he finally beat the man he had always looked up to and admired. He beat India’s reigning Olympic and world champion, Neeraj Chopra, and it took the best Olympic performance in history to do it.

Nadeem broke the Olympic record that had stood for 16 years not once but twice. The first, a throw of 92.97m in the second throw of the competition, ended it. A second throw of 91.79m in the last attempt put the final exclamation point on a nearly flawless performance.

(2) Bangladesh’s caretaker government takes power

Filling a leadership vacuum in Bangladesh, albeit temporarily, Nobel laureate economist Muhammad Yunus has taken the oath of office as head of a caretaker government. The 84-year-old microfinance pioneer will head the government until new elections are held. Parliament has already been dissolved by the country’s president, Mohammed Shahabuddin.

This comes days after Sheikh Hasina – the country’s longest-serving prime minister and leader of the Awami League – resigned and fled the country amid violent mass protests that left more than 300 people dead.

Extremist sections took advantage of the chaos to attack Hindus, Ahmedis, a minority sect in Islam, and Awami League officials. According to the Bangladesh Hindu Buddhist Christian Unity Council, homes and shops of the minority were ransacked in several districts. Awami League offices were vandalised and dozens of party officials and supporters were killed. Mr Yunus, who was sworn in on Thursday (August 8, 2024), condemned the violence and appealed for calm.

(3) 61 people died in a passenger plane crash in Brazil

A passenger plane crashed into a gated community in the Brazilian state of Sao Paulo on Friday (August 9, 2024), killing all 61 people on board and leaving smoldering wreckage, officials and the airline said. The airline, VOEPASS, said its plane, a twin-engine turboprop ATR 72, was headed toward Sao Paulo’s Guarulhos International Airport with 57 passengers and four crew members on board when it crashed in Vinhedo.

It was the deadliest air disaster since January 2023, when 72 people died aboard a Yeti Airlines plane in Nepal that stalled and crashed while approaching for landing. That plane was also an ATR 72, and the final report blamed pilot error. The graphic below shows a timeline of the world’s deadliest air disasters since 2018.

(4) Google loses antitrust case over its dominance of search engine market

Google’s payments to make its search engine the default option on smartphone browsers violate U.S. antitrust law, a federal judge ruled Monday (Aug. 5, 2024), handing a key victory to the Justice Department. Judge Amit Mehta in Washington said the Alphabet Inc. unit’s $26 billion in payments effectively prevented any other competitor from succeeding in the market.

“Google’s distribution agreements restrict a significant portion of the market for general search services and limit opportunities for competition,” Mehta said in the 286-page ruling.

The long-awaited decision by U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta comes nearly a year after the start of the trial pitting the U.S. Justice Department against Google, the largest antitrust battle in the country’s history in a quarter-century.

The case is the first antitrust trial pitting the federal government against a U.S. technology company in more than two decades. Here’s a timeline:

(5) Thai court dissolves Forward Movement Party

On Aug. 7, a Thai court ordered the dissolution of the progressive Forward Movement Party, which came first in last year’s general election, saying it had violated the constitution by proposing to change a law banning defamation of the royal family.

The Constitutional Court ruled that it had unanimously voted to dissolve the party because its campaign to change the law was seen as an attempt to overthrow the constitutional monarchy.

The Move Forward party failed to form a government after coming first in the election because members of the Senate, then a conservative military-appointed body, refused to support its candidate for prime minister.

The country has been mired in cyclical political crises since a military coup in 2006. Here’s a look at the turbulent two decades that led to the key Constitutional Court decision: