In reverse order of importance…
The Total Recall remake has now made less money through two weekends than the original Arnold film did with 1990’s ticket prices, continuing to prove that Hollywood’s “low-risk” strategy of reboot/sequel/remakes is not at all interesting. (Ice Age 4 is also behind all first three Ice age films; Wimpy Kid 3 is behind the first two; Amazing Spiderman is behind all three earlier Spidermen; Men In Black 3 is behind the first two.)
The Olympics continued with different people from different countries winning different medals. Usain Bolt won the 100m dash in 9.63 seconds, just shy of his 9.59 record.
Mitt Romney chose policy wonk Paul Ryan as his running mate, exciting both conservatives and liberals. I wrote a little about this here.
A white supremacist shot and killed several people at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin. Apparently the only thing more ignorant than conflating radical Muslims with westernized Muslims is conflating radical Muslims with followers of a completely different religion.
NASA successfully landed the Curiosity rover on Mars. It sent back some early photos before going down for a software update to replace landing programs with driving ones, or something like that. Sounds scary to me, but apparently NASA has done this before.
Syria’s defections now include the prime minister. Assad continues to fight the rebels, who are calling for the world to give them a no-fly zone like they did in Libya to protect them from the ruler’s aircraft.