The Frame

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) -- Mitt Romney launched his fall campaign for the White House with a rousing, remarkably personal speech to the Republican National convention and a prime-time TV audience Thursday night, August 30, 2012, proclaiming that America needs "jobs, lots of jobs" and promising to create 12 million of them in perilous economic times.

"Now is the time to restore the promise of America," Romney declared to a nation struggling with 8.3 percent unemployment and the slowest economic recovery in decades.

"I accept your nomination for president," he said, to a roar of approval. Then he pivoted into personal details of family life, recounting his youth as a Mormon, the son of parents devoted to one another, and a married man with five rambunctious sons.

The evening sealed a triumph more than five years in the making for Romney. He ran unsuccessfully for the nomination in 2008 after a single term as a moderate Republican governor of a liberal Democratic state.

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NEW ORLEANS (AP) -- Hurricane Isaac sidestepped New Orleans on Wednesday, sending the worst of its howling wind and heavy rain into a cluster of rural fishing villages that had few defenses against the slow-moving storm that could bring days of unending rain.

Isaac arrived exactly seven years after Hurricane Katrina and passed slightly to the west of New Orleans, where the city's fortified levee system easily handled the assault.

The city's biggest problems seemed to be downed power lines, scattered tree limbs and minor flooding. Just one person was reported killed, compared with 1,800 deaths from Katrina in Louisiana and Mississippi. And police reported few problems with looting. Mayor Mitch Landrieu ordered a dusk-to-dawn curfew just to be sure.

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RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) -- Business was brisk in the Mandela shantytown on a recent night. In the glow of a weak light bulb, customers pawed through packets of powdered cocaine and marijuana priced at $5, $10, $25. Teenage boys with semiautomatic weapons took in money and made change while flirting with girls in belly-baring tops lounging nearby.

Next to them, a gaggle of kids jumped on a trampoline, oblivious to the guns and drug-running that are part of everyday life in this and hundreds of other slums, known as favelas, across this metropolitan area of 12 million people. Conspicuously absent from the scene was crack, the most addictive and destructive drug in the triad that fuels Rio's lucrative narcotics trade.

Once crack was introduced here about six years ago, Mandela and the surrounding complex of shantytowns became Rio's main outdoor drug market, a "cracolandia," or crackland, where users bought the rocks, smoked and lingered until the next hit. Hordes of addicts lived in cardboard shacks and filthy blankets, scrambling for cash and a fix.

Now, there was no crack on the rough wooden table displaying the goods for sale, and the addicts were gone. The change hadn't come from any police or public health campaign. Instead, the dealers themselves have stopped selling the drug in Mandela and nearby Jacarezinho in a move that traffickers and others say will spread citywide within the next two years.

The drug bosses, often born and raised in the very slums they now lord over, say crack destabilizes their communities, making it harder to control areas long abandoned by the government. Law enforcement and city authorities, however, take credit for the change, arguing that drug gangs are only trying to create a distraction and persuade police to call off an offensive to take back the slums. -- Images by Felipe Dana for the Associated Press

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PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Curiosity took its first test drive around the gravel-strewn Martian terrain Wednesday, preparation for the ultimate road trip to find out if the red planet's environment could have supported life.

The six-wheel NASA rover did not stray far from the spot where it landed more than two weeks ago. It rolled forward about 15 feet, rotated to a right angle and reversed a short distance, leaving tracks in the ancient soil.

Mission managers were ecstatic that the maiden trek of the $2.5 billion mission was glitch-free.

"It couldn't be more important," said project manager Peter Theisinger at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "We built a rover. So unless the rover roves, we really haven't accomplished anything ... It's a big moment."

Curiosity landed in Gale Crater near the Martian equator Aug. 5 to explore whether the environment once supported microbial life. The touchdown site has been named Bradbury Landing in honor of the late "The Martian Chronicles" author Ray Bradbury, who would have turned 92 on Wednesday.

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BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) -- Argentines are embracing their partners and gliding at the world's largest annual tango festival and championship.

The two-week long offering of more than 500 free dance lessons, concerts and recitals began Tuesday evening August 14, in the capital of Buenos Aires.

It included a homage to Astor Piazzolla, Argentina's most popular player of the bandoneon, the concertina-like accordion that is synonymous with Tango.

Hundreds of professional dancers will compete in the championship and teach many the eight basic steps of the dance in the city where it was born. Update: new photos added Wednesday afternoon 8/22/12.

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SAKABAL, Niger (AP) -- In a part of the world where the worth of a man is measured by his animals, Tuareg nomad Soumaila Wantala has come to this market to do the unthinkable: Sell his last camel.

He crouches in the shade of a thorn tree as traders haggle over the 4-year-old male animal, Yedi. When the sale is complete, Yedi rears his enormous neck and lets out a cry, like the deep, subterranean call of a whale. It takes three men to drag the camel out of the arena, as if he understands the fate that has just befallen his master.

In markets all over Niger, hungry people are selling hungry animals for half their normal value, giving up on the milk and money of tomorrow so that their children can eat today. Their plight is a sign of how far the economy of the desert has broken down, leaving its people unable to feed themselves in drought after drought.

This is a community so tied to its animals that children play with miniature camels or cows cut from rock. It's in livestock that a man settles disputes, pays the dowry for his future bride and leaves an inheritance to his sons.

So to see a nomad sell his last camel is like watching someone sell their house and car, liquidate their 401(k) and empty their bank account all at once, just to buy groceries.

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Muslims around the world are observing Ramadan, the holiest month in Islamic calendar. Ramadan is the ninth month of the Muslim year that lasts around 30 days, which strict fasting is observed from sunrise to sunset and although it is a time of deprivation, Muslims consider Ramadan to be a joyful season.

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NEW DELHI (AP) -- India's national security is at risk if urgent steps are not taken to boost economic growth, attract new investment in infrastructure and legislate against corruption, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Wednesday.

Singh warned that if economic growth remained stagnant, new investments were discouraged, government finances did not improve and energy security was not ensured, "then it most certainly affects our national security."

Singh's speech marking the 65th anniversary of India's independence from British rule comes after large parts of India's power grid collapsed over two days last month, leaving hundreds of millions without electricity.

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TEHRAN, Iran (AP) -- Iran Monday raised its earthquake death toll to 306, a day after rescuers called off the search for survivors from the rubble of their homes in the country's northwest, state media reported.

Health Minister Marzieh Vahid Dastjerdi told a session of parliament that the number jumped by about 50 after victims expired in the hospital. More than 3,000 people were injured in the twin earthquakes that struck two days ago, she added in comments broadcast on state radio.

The death toll included some 219 women and children, Dastjerdi said, adding that around 2,000 injured people had been released from hospitals soon after the quake since they had only minor injuries.

Scores of aftershocks have coursed through the region since the 6.4 and 6.3 magnitude quakes hit the area, home to some 300,000 people.

The quakes hit the towns of Ahar, Haris and Varzaqan in East Azerbaijan province. At least 12 villages were totally leveled, and 425 others sustained damage ranging from 50 to 80 percent, state TV and news agencies reported.

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Actually, the moment of victory is wonderful, but also sad. It means that your trip is ended. --Bill Toomey, 1968 Olympic decathlon champion

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Growth, in some curious way, I suspect, depends on being always in motion just a little bit, one way or another. -- Norman Mailer

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NEW DELHI (AP) -- For 16 years, Lokinder Kaur waited patiently for the day her husband would be reunited with her and their children. That dream died with him in a Sikh temple in Wisconsin.

Ranjit Singh, one of six killed in a shooting attack at the temple, never came home even once in all those years, working at a grocery store during the week and volunteering at the Sikh gurdwara on weekends. He promised his family he was doing what had to be done to get a green card so they could come join him.

He called every few days, even as the months dragged into years. Kaur said she spoke to Singh just the day before a gunman entered the temple in Oak Creek, Wisconsin, and shot worshippers as they prepared for services on Sunday.

"My husband had only one dream. To see his children settled abroad," Kaur said as she sat surrounded by grieving family and friends in her modest two-story home in a Delhi neighborhood.

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It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen. -- Coach John Wooden

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As the English poet George Herbert said, "the eyes have one language everywhere."

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