The World

THURSDAY

A hot-air balloon carrying tourists, including children, plunged to the ground in flames just outside the Slovenian capital Ljubljana, killing four people and injuring 28.

Grammy-winning country star Randy Travis was cited for assault in a fight outside Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, Texas, after the singer stepped into an argument between an estranged husband and wife.

A Nepali man who was bitten by a cobra snake bit back and killed the reptile in a tit-for-tat attack.

FRIDAY

Martin Nesirky, spokesman for United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, said the U.N. had no intentions of invading Texas, contradicting statements told by Tom Head, a county judge in Lubbock to Fox News. Head said a re-election of President Barack Obama could prompt a civil war that would require an invasion by U.N. troops to settle the dispute. He proposed raising local taxes so his county could prepare for contingencies of a second Obama term.

Victim No. 1 of former Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky filed a lawsuit against Penn State, saying the university deliberately concealed and misrepresented his serial sexual abuse of young boys. It is the third civil action filed against the university.

Lance Armstrong was stripped of his record seven Tour de France wins and handed a lifetime ban by the United States Anti-Doping Agency as he dropped challenges to doping charges. By the middle of the day, the Lance Armstrong Foundation reported donations were up 30 percent over Thursday.

WEEKEND

U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong, the first person to walk on the moon, died at the age of 82. “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

Former South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford announced he is engaged to marry his Argentine girlfriend, Maria Belen Chapur. In the summer of 2009, then-Governor Sanford disappeared from his office for a week on a trip to Argentina to visit Chapur. Aides said he was hiking the Appalachian Trail. He divorced wife Jenny shortly thereafter.

American Justin Howard, alias Nordic Thunder, was crowned world champion air guitar player in the northern Finnish city of Oulu, narrowly ahead of Matt Burns, or Aristotle. Howard was U.S. champion air guitarist last year and took silver in the 2011 world championship.

MONDAY

Energy companies evacuated offshore oil rigs and shut down U.S. Gulf Coast refineries as Tropical Storm Isaac reached hurricane strength. Exxon Mobil said it had shut 247 million cubic feet per day in natural gas production and 11,000 barrels per day in crude oil output in the Gulf of Mexico.

Weapons sales by the United States tripled in 2011 to a record high $85.3 billion, pumped up by $33.4 billion in sales to Saudi Arabia. Globally, however, the arms market has been slowed by the recession, according to a comprehensive new congressional report.

One of four soldiers in Georgia who belonged to an anarchist militia that wanted to overthrow the U.S. government pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter over the December 5, 2011, shooting deaths of Michael Roark, 19, and his girlfriend, 17-year-old Tiffany York. The four killed Roark because he had learned of their plans to attack their Army base and a dam in Washington state and to poison Washington state’s apple crop.

School officials in Grand Island, Neb., have asked the parents of three-and-a-half year old Hunter Spanjer, who is deaf, to change their son’s sign language name because the sign, in which the boy crosses his forefinger and index finger and moves them up and down, violates a rule that forbids anything in the school that looks like a weapon.

TUESDAY

Republicans officially nominated Mitt Romney and his running mate, Paul Ryan to challenge President Barack Obama for the White House, kicking off their storm-delayed convention. Ann Romney praised her husband as a determined problem solver who can turn around the United States in the key speech. She was followed by rotund New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who called the party to “tell the American people the truth,” about the need for an overhaul of federal entitlement programs such as Medicare.

A U.S. federal court rejected Texas redistricting maps for discriminating against black and Hispanic voters, effectively killing the new districts before they could take effect for the November 6 presidential election.

Randy Lee Tenley, 44, was killed after being struck on a Montana highway by two cars while wearing a bushy, military-style camouflage suit in an apparent attempt to impersonate Bigfoot.

WEDNESDAY

Hurricane Isaac drove water over the top of a levee on the outskirts of New Orleans, triggering life-threatening flooding seven years to the day after Hurricane Katrina.

Compiled by Gazette staff from a variety

of sources.