* 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'
Recalling a favorite book from childhood is easy; trickier is remembering your younger self’s exact reaction to it. We canvassed young readers from across the globe to find out what they thought of their latest summer read.
* 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'
A post-World War II documentary, banned by the military in 1946 but lately released online, is one of the earliest depictions of psychotherapy. But it says even more about contemporary Americans’ interest in the veterans they love to praise.
* 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
