* Iran earthquakes kill upward of 300, injure 2,600, and flatten villages. * Royal Dutch Shell, Nigeria’s biggest oil producer, estimates that 150,000 barrels a day are lost to theft. * Approximately 60,000 pets are abandoned in France every year during summer holidays. * Super strain of gonorrhea, spotted in
* Gore Vidal's Economist obit. * Images of Olympic defeat. * Explaining the 2012 Olympic oddities, including a probable reason for those blue tongues. * Our latest Weekender: Falling for sports you never knew existed. * The modern pentathlon: more Star Wars than Peloponnesian. * Luis Rios has been rounding the Prospect Park loop
* The Economist drafts Plan B for Merkel in case she wants to reconsider holding the Euro zone together. * Graphic history of money in American politics, from George Washington to Citizens United. * U.S. quickly catching up to Africa's emergence as cash power, voting bloc, security frontier. * Fresh Prince
* A team of 20 drivers can't wait for their chance to operate Curiosity. * Roundup of Curiosity camera pics and resources. * Study finds athletes who travel more than five timezones to compete double their chances of illness. * Earthquake clusters like the one that began Tuesday in Southern California aren&
* Aleppo becomes Syria's focal point and faces a crippling stalemate. * Shadow war between Israel and Iran sees return to "the black arts of the cold war." * On the recent demise of Tuscany's Siena. * Bob Hoskins to retire from acting after diagnosis of Parkinson'
* This election's critical "low-information voters": Romney supporters who must not know any better, according to Democrats. * Philanthropist to spend his last $1.5 billion by 2020, then shut down his foundation. * Reuters pulled into Syrian civil war, when its social media channels were hijacked by
* NPR begins series visiting First and Main intersections in political-battleground states. * Porn stars' presidential endorsements. * Profile of transition within a Japanese firm that switched all communication to English. * Kremlin critic live-tweets discovering that his office is bugged. * Madonna defends punk band for staging anti-Putin stunt in
* The space race is long over, but America still lags behind the Soviets in number of planets visited. * Where Russia meets Kazakhstan, space junk is prevalent—as are health problems associated with toxic rocket fuel. * Inside the mind of last week's Tennessee Democratic Senate primary winner. * Romney'
* Syria's prime minister defects; Iran pokes U.S. over hostages in a bus. * The entire case that Romney is putting before undecided voters is something he does not believe himself. * Panama Canal to soon accommodate mega-ships, causing highways and shipyards elsewhere to evolve. * Man deposits junk-mail
* Designer of the Curiosity lander became a rocket scientist when the rock 'n' roll thing didn't work out. * Global food prices are spiking upwards because of widespread drought in the U.S., the breadbasket of the world. * New York restaurants' secret language. * English-language TV
