Everything You Need to Know About Last Week’s News #7

In reverse order of importance:

Katy Perry and John Mayer broke up or something. I guess they were together or something.

Apple and Samsung’s patent trial went to jurors who decided Samsung infringed on most of the patents in question and has to pay Apple like a billion dollars. From what I’ve read of the case (not much), Samsung probably did steal ideas from Apple but hey Apple probably has stolen ideas from others and it’s probably not that useful for society to be patenting things like rounded corners and buttons. Oh well. (If you still don’t think the patent system is broken, here’s a new one that was going around the Twittersphere last week.)

Lance Armstrong gave up fighting against the anti-doping agency, which now means they can’t prove he did anything bad but they can strip him of all seven Tour de France titles. I feel like the lines between valid and invalid athletic training techniques are going to keep blurring.

Neil Armstrong died. Meanwhile, the Curiosity rover finished sending back the full-quality descent landing video and started roving around.

A new study links part of the rise in autism to the rising age of fathers.

Todd Akin said something about rape and pregnancy and got in lots of trouble. (I wrote about this here.)

A couple people died and several were injured in a shoot-out near the Empire State Building, except it turned out most of the injuries were accidentally caused by the police. (I wrote about this here.)

Tropical Storm Isaac is making its way through the Gulf of Mexico and delaying the Republican National Convention. The variable forecast has been trending westward and now looks like it might follow Katrina’s path to New Orleans, although it’s looking much less dangerous and it’s not even a hurricane yet.

The northern ice cap shattered its five-year-old minimum record and is still melting.

The euro kept staggering on, with headlines like “Euro hits 7-week high on speculation ECB will take action” and “ECB Said to Await German ESM Ruling Before Settling Plan.” Ah. OK.

The fighting in Syria continues, with lots of violence and death in the large cities of Aleppo and now Damascus. Haven’t heard if the rebels or the government seem to be gaining an upper hand.