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BEIJING (AFP) — Oussama Mellouli shattered Australian Grant Hackett’s Olympic treble dream and put behind him his own drugs nightmare with an upset triumph in the 1500-metres freestyle at the Beijing Olympics on Sunday.

Mellouli, 24, killed off Hackett’s bid to become the first man to win three Olympic titles in the same event and also claim Tunisia’s first-ever Olympic swimming gold medal.

Mellouli, planning on swimming a strong final 800m, took over the lead with 300m left and held off Hackett’s spirited finish to win in 14 minutes 40.84 seconds.

It was Olympic heartbreak for the world record holder and four-time world champion Hackett, who was bidding to add the Beijing crown to the titles he won in Sydney and Athens.

The 28-year-old Australian had to be satisifed with the silver medal in 14:41.53, just 0.69secs separating him and Mellouli after 30 gruelling laps of the Water Cube pool.

Canadian Ryan Cochrane, who led up to the 1000m, finished third in 14:42.69.

Just two days earlier, world record-holder Hackett had posted the second-fastest 1,500m in history in the heats.

While Hackett reflected on what might have been in his last Olympic Games, Mellouli saw his surprise victory as redemption.

The Tunisian served an 18-month doping ban after becoming his country’s first swimming world champion with a come-from-behind win in the 800m freestyle with Hackett trailing in seventh at last year’s world championships in Melbourne.

He was subsequently stripped of the title after testing positive for amphetamines and only completed his ban in May in time to swim in Beijing.

“I’ve been waiting for this moment for two years. It’s the redemption I wanted and I got it,” Mellouli said.

“This year was difficult because of the (drugs) penalty, but I thank God for the talent I’ve been given. At the Olympic Games anything can happen. It was a miracle and for once the miracle was for me.”

Mellouli plotted to steal the race from the middle stages and go for broke and hang on.

“I felt good in the first 400m of this race and at the 800m and 900m I started believing that I could win,” he said.

“It was all calculated. I slowed down in the penultimate 100m to save my energy and attack in the final 50m.

“I knew I had a lot of speed, But I wasn’t 100 percent sure. I knew this was going to be a challenge. I had a pretty good race in the 400 freestyle, but it didn’t happen for me.”

Mellouli’s shock triumph ended an Australian domination of the Olympic 1500m final, stretching back to Kieren Perkins’s double victory in Barcelona in 1992 and Atlanta in 1996.

Although no man has ever won three consecutive Olympic titles, Australian sprinter Dawn Fraser and Hungarian backstroker Krisztina Egerszegi have achieved the feat in women’s swimming.

“It’s disappointing, yet so close,” Hackett said. “To get second is great, but three in a row would have been nice.

“I have certainly no regrets in my preparation and what I’ve been able to do here. It was certainly a good race.

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BEIJING – Like the best of showmen, Jamaica’s Usain Bolt left us wanting more.

Twenty meters from the finish line, his celebration began. He relaxed his arms, looked toward the crowd and slapped his chest. And despite those theatrics, he still covered 100 meters faster than any man ever has.

He did it in 9.69 seconds, and immediately one had to wonder how much faster he could go. Faster than a speeding bullet?

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 NEW YORK - Britney Spears tells OK! magazine she’s focused on family life these days, looking forward to her two sons meeting their new cousin, daughter of her sister, Jamie Lynn Spears.

“She’s going to come out here for the kids’ birthdays,” Spears, who lives in Beverly Hills, Calif., says of Jamie Lynn in the Aug. 25 issue of OK! “It will be the first time the cousins meet. I’m sure the boys will be like big brothers to Maddie,” who was born June 19.

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 WASHINGTON - White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That’s eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004.

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics.

It is also growing older.

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 WASHINGTON - Famed chef Julia Child shared a secret with Supreme Court Justice Arthur Goldberg and Chicago White Sox catcher Moe Berg at a time when the Nazis threatened the world.

They served in an international spy ring managed by the Office of Strategic Services, an early version of the CIA created in World War II by President Franklin Roosevelt.

The secret comes out Thursday, all of the names and previously classified files identifying nearly 24,000 spies who formed the first centralized intelligence effort by the United States. The National Archives, which this week released a list of the names found in the records, will make available for the first time all 750,000 pages identifying the vast spy network of military and civilian operatives.

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NDIANAPOLIS - A woman who grew to be 7 feet, 7 inches tall and was recognized as the world’s tallest female died Wednesday, a friend said. She was 53.

Sandy Allen, who used her height to inspire schoolchildren to accept those who are different, died at a nursing home in her hometown of Shelbyville, family friend Rita Rose said.

The cause of death was not yet known. Allen had been hospitalized in recent months as she suffered from a recurring blood infection, along with diabetes, breathing troubles and kidney failure, Rose said.

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ASHINGTON - White people will no longer make up a majority of Americans by 2042, according to new government projections. That’s eight years sooner than previous estimates, made in 2004.

The nation has been growing more diverse for decades, but the process has sped up through immigration and higher birth rates among minority residents, especially Hispanics.

It is also growing older.

“The white population is older and very much centered around the aging baby boomers who are well past their high fertility years,” said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank. “The future of America is epitomized by the young people today. They are basically the melting pot we are going to see in the future.”

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 SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - A maroon-striped marauder with venomous spikes is rapidly multiplying in the Caribbean’s warm waters, swallowing native species, stinging divers and generally wreaking havoc on an ecologically delicate region.

The red lionfish, a tropical native of the Indian and Pacific oceans that probably escaped from a Florida fish tank, is showing up everywhere — from the coasts of Cuba and Hispaniola to Little Cayman’s pristine Bloody Bay Wall, one of the region’s prime destinations for divers.

Wherever it appears, the adaptable predator corners fish and crustaceans up to half its size with its billowy fins and sucks them down in one violent gulp.

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 WASHINGTON - BMW AG is recalling 200,000 vehicles over concerns that the front passenger air bag may not deploy in a crash.

The German automaker says the recall involves the 2006 3 Series, the 2004-2006 5 Series, and the 2004-2006 X3 compact sport utility vehicle.

The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration said in a posting on its Web site Wednesday that small cracks could develop in a seat detection mat and lead to the front passenger air bags to be deactivated.

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