Mitt Romney formally accepted the Republican presidential nomination at the party’s national convention in Tampa, Florida. “What America needs is jobs,” said Romney. “Lots of jobs.” John Boehner suggested that Romney would be helped by low turnout among Hispanic and African American voters; Romney’s campaign held a party for top fundraisers aboard Cracker Bay, a yacht flying the flag of the Cayman Islands; and two conventioneers were ejected for heckling a black camerawoman. “This,” they said, tossing peanuts at her, “is how we feed animals.” Vice-presidential candidate Paul Ryan was criticized for making false claims in his convention speech, notably about the timing of a GM plant closure in his hometown of Janesville, Wisconsin, and for exaggerating his finishing time in the 1990 Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota. In the Tampa “free-speech zone,” Vermin Supreme, candidate for the Absurd Party, wore a boot on his head and mediated a confrontation between anarchists and Westboro Baptist Church protesters. Surprise guest speaker Clint Eastwood addressed delegates for 12 minutes, during which he carried on an imagined dialogue with an empty chair he identified as President Obama. “What do you want me to tell Mr. Romney?” asked Eastwood of the chair. “He can’t do that to himself. . . . You’re getting as bad as Biden.”[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] Twenty-two pilot whales beached themselves on the Florida coast.[9] Millions of gallons of raw Tijuana sewage spilled into the Pacific Ocean.[10] Hal David, lyricist of “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” and “What the World Needs Now Is Love,” died at the age of 91.[11] As Hurricane Isaac struck Louisiana, New Orleanians celebrated the Southern Decadence Festival.[12]
In Syria, which saw its deadliest week since the revolt to overthrow Bashar al-Assad began last spring, the rebel Brigade of Free Syrians launched operation Northern Volcano.[13][14] It was reported that Mexican federal police officers had deliberately chased down and shot two CIA agents in Tres Marías.[15] In Afghanistan, where American special forces suspended training of new recruits to the Afghan Local Police until all 16,000 of the militia’s members could be rescreened for terrorist ties, a suicide attacker bombed a compound that contained a provincial governor’s office and a police and army headquarters, while another blew up a fuel tanker on the road separating the compound from a U.S. Army base. “I fell down on the ground,” said a witness, “and everything around me was destroyed.”[16][17] A 550-pound World War II–era bomb was detonated in central Munich, creating a massive fireball, shattering windows, and setting nearby rooftops ablaze. “The fuse was a real bastard,” said bomb-disposal expert Andreas Heil.[18][19] The owner of Hitler menswear in the Indian city of Ahmedabad insisted that his shop’s name, whose ‘i’ tittle is a swastika, was the nickname of his business partner’s strict grandfather. “It was only recently,” he said, “that we read about Hitler on the Internet.”[20][21] Berliners attacked one another with vegetables on a city bridge; revelers in Buñol, Spain, threw 120 tons of tomatoes at each other; and Iran and North Korea agreed to exchange students and share laboratories.[22][23][24] Yosemite National Park warned 1,700 summer visitors that they may have been exposed to hantavirus from infected deer mice at its Curry Village campsite.[25] Thieves stole an eleven-ton elderberry crop in Deutsch Jahrndorf, Austria, and millions of dollars’ worth of maple syrup from a warehouse in Saint-Louis-de-Blandford, Quebec. “We still have enough maple syrup,” said a representative of Quebec producers, who provide three-quarters of the world’s supply. “There will be no shortage.”[26][27][28]
The International Paralympic Committee defended its decision not to perform doping tests on all competitors at the 2012 Summer Paralympic Games in London, where South African runner Oscar Pistorius, who was allowed to race in this year’s Summer Olympic Games after challenging a ban on carbon-fiber legs, lost the 200-meter final to a rival he accused of running on unfairly long blades. “Athletes,” he said, “can make themselves unbelievably high.”[29][30] A sports official was stabbed to death in Düsseldorf by a wayward javelin.[31] A bus tourist in Iceland joined a search party for herself.[32] Fire crews winched a heifer named Sparkle out of a tree growing along a ravine in Sheriff Park, England.[33] France opened a murder investigation into the death of Yasser Arafat; Sun Myung Moon, founder of the Unification Church, died in Seoul; and a Buddhist group in Thailand announced that the celestial reincarnation of former Apple CEO Steve Jobs was residing in a glass palace above Apple’s headquarters in California, where he sleeps in a hoverbed and is served day and night by aides.[34][35][36] A man who had dressed himself in a “Ghillie” military sniper-cover suit in order to provoke a Bigfoot sighting was run over on a Montana highway and died.[37] Police shut down the Burnside Bridge in Portland, Oregon, and detained a group of beard enthusiasts, dressed in camouflage and carrying an assault rifle, who were en route to a “Beards for Breasts” cancer-awareness calendar photo shoot. “We didn’t mean to shake up the community,” said one beard model. “Just going to save boobs, you know?”[38]
