In reverse order of importance…
There was some kind of awards show with some kind of acronym in its name…. MTV… VGA… VH1… something like that.
Some anonymous hackers claimed to have released a million unique Apple IDs and claimed to have 11 million more, stolen from the FBI. The FBI denied any involvement (of course), and some people wondered why the FBI had this kind of information anyway. Others (including myself) thought it much more likely that the user info was hacked from an app developer and that the hackers claimed the FBI for more notoriety. (Update from this week’s news: Yep.)
Some other anonymous hacker(s) claimed to have stolen Mitt Romney’s tax records and were willing to release them for $1 million in Bitcoins. They didn’t really release any evidence to prove that they actually had the records, though, so the Romney campaign ignored them and after a few days it seems the press has too.
A new study claims that organic foods have no more nutritional value than non-organic food. This was hailed by organic pooh-pooh-ers, while organic lovers argued that the foods still have fewer pesticides and maybe even taste better.
The Democrats had their National Convention, where conservatives, libertarians, and liberals made a lot of fun videos making fun of the participants. A speech was given by Charlie Crist, who was originally a Florida Republican senate candidate backed by the Republican establishment until the grassroots Tea Party replaced him with Marco Rubio because they thought he wasn’t conservative enough (apparently Crist wanted to prove them right). Another speech was given by Bill Clinton, which a lot of people apparently liked. Cable news spent four days discussing what kind of boll pounce (or is it poll bounce?) Obama was getting.
A Pakistani Christian girl accused of blasphemy has been released from jail. A Muslim cleric accused the mentally disabled girl of burning pages of the Koran, which a lot of Muslims apparently think is worthy of death. This caused an international uproar, even when it looked like an unfortunate accident. Then some witnesses said they actually saw the cleric plant the pages in the ashes. The girl has now been freed, though there are still fears that Muslims will try to harm her. I’m optimistic that modern technology, especially the Internet, is helping to spread news and attract international attention that stops these kinds of injustices more often – even in primitive Muslim nations. (In fact, a Christian pastor in Iran appears to have escaped execution this week as well.)
The West Nile virus appears to be spreading in the US with the most number of cases ever, though it still appears to be far from an epidemic, and it seems that most people are either completely or mostly unaffected. If you want to be extra cautious, use bug spray when you go outside.
The European Central Bank announced some kind of complicated plan to buy bonds or something that was apparently the sort of intervention that lots of people were hoping for, though there is still plenty of skepticism that this will actually solve all the problems. Maybe it has at least bought them more time.