up089601|Clinton signs minimum wage bill|<STRONG>Clinton signs minimum wage bill</STRONG><P>President Bill Clinton signed legislation on Aug. 20, 1996, that raised the minimum wage to $5.15 per hour. The raise was to take effect in two steps. A 50 cents-per-hour increase was to take effect on Oct. 1, 1996, with the remaining 40 cents per hour to be added on Sept. 1, 1997.</P>
up089602|Dole accepts Republican Party presidential nomination|<STRONG>Dole accepts Republican Party presidential nomination</STRONG><P>Bob Dole, former majority leader of the United States Senate, was nominated as the Republican Party presidential candidate on Aug. 14, 1996, at the party's convention in San Diego. Dole accepted the nomination the next day.<P>Dole chose Jack Kemp as his vice presidential candidate. Kemp was a former member of the United States House of Representatives from New York and secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President George Bush from 1989 to 1993.</P><P>Dole defeated nine other Republican candidates in the presidential primaries in early 1996, clinching enough delegates for the nomination on March 26. On June 11, Dole retired from the Senate to devote his time to the presidential race. </P>
up089603|Kemp chosen as Republican Party vice presidential candidate|<STRONG>Kemp chosen as Republican Party vice presidential candidate</STRONG><P>Jack Kemp was chosen on Aug. 14, 1996, as the vice presidential running mate to Bob Dole on the Republican Party presidential ticket.</P>
up089604|Yeltsin takes oath of office|<STRONG>Yeltsin takes oath of office</STRONG><P>President Boris Yeltsin took the oath of office as the first democratically elected president of an independent Russia on Aug. 9, 1996, in Moscow. Yeltsin appeared shaky and spoke only during the brief swearing in ceremony.</P>
up089605|Cure announced for some sickle cell anemia patients|<STRONG>Cure announced for some sickle cell patients</STRONG><P>Medical researchers announced a cure for sickle cell anemia in some patients on Aug. 8, 1996. Researchers led by oncologist Keith M. Sullivan of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle said the cure involves transplanting sickle cell patients' bone marrow.</P><P>Researchers performed bone marrow transplants on 22 children with severe sickle cell anemia over a five-year-period. Bone marrow is tissue inside bones that makes red blood cells and many cells of the immune system. To perform a bone marrow transplant, doctors first destroy a patient's bone marrow with strong drugs and replace it with healthy marrow from a donor. The new bone marrow makes healthy red blood cells.</P><P>After two years, 16 of the patients showed no signs of sickle cell disease. Researchers cautioned that bone marrow transplants carried the risk of serious illness or death, however. Two of the transplant patients who participated in the study died, and the immune systems of four others rejected the transplanted bone marrow.</P><P>The study included only children from ages 3 to 14 who had suffered at least one stroke (stoppage of blood flow to a part of the brain), recurrent acute chest pain, and other major symptoms as a result of the sickle cell anemia.</P>
up089606|Clinton signs welfare reform bill|<STRONG>Clinton signs welfare reform bill</STRONG><P>President Bill Clinton signed a bill on Aug. 22, 1996, that dramatically reformed the federal welfare system. The legislation ended the federal government's 61-year-old guarantee of welfare payments to poor families and turned the responsibility for those payments over to the states. The legislation also ended most federal aid to legal immigrants.</P><P>The bill imposed a five-year lifetime limit on welfare benefits and required people on welfare to begin working two years after their welfare benefits begin. The legislation also mandated that states administer their own welfare programs with money from federal block grants and bars most federal aid to future legal immigrants for five years. The bill also tightened the requirements for food stamps, allowing able-bodied individuals without children to receive food stamps for only three months in any three-year period, unless they worked part-time. The new regulations were scheduled to take effect in July 1997.</P>
up089607|Iraq attacks Kurds in northern Iraq|<STRONG>Iraq attacks Kurds in northern Iraq</STRONG><P>Iraqi President Saddam Hussein sent more than 30,000 government troops into protected Kurdish territory in northern Iraq on Aug. 31, 1996, capturing the city of Irbil and triggering a new confrontation with the United States and its allies. Hussein's attack came during a period of internal conflict among the Kurdish leaders of northern Iraq, and Hussein claimed that a Kurdish faction had asked Iraqi government troops for military help.</P><P>The Iraqi action violated the 1991 agreement reached with the United States and other allied forces after the Persian Gulf War that set up a safety zone in northern Iraq to protect the Kurds from government forces. Under the agreement, Iraqi government forces were prohibited from attacking the Kurds.</P><P>The two main Kurdish factions vying for control in northern Iraq were the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP) and the Kurdish Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK). The PUK had ties with Iran, and the KDP was aligned with the Iraqi government, which claimed that the KDP had asked Hussein for assistance against its rival faction on August 22.</P>
up089608|Researchers find AIDS-resistant gene|<STRONG>Researchers find AIDS-resistant gene</STRONG><P>Researchers announced the discovery on Aug. 9, 1996, of a mutant gene that protects some people from HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. The discovery by researchers at the Aaron Diamond AIDs Research Center in New York City may explain why some people escape infection with HIV despite repeated exposure to the virus and may present possibilities for treating and preventing the disease.</P><P>The researchers said that people with two copies of a mutant gene called CCR5--one from each parent--have a built-in defense against HIV infection. The CCR5 gene normally makes a protein found on the surface of immune-system cells that the HIV attacks. The protein acts as a receptor that the virus latches onto when it invades the cell. If a person has two copies of the mutant gene, however, it does not produce the protein, and HIV cannot attach to the cell. </P><P>For reasons the researchers said they do not fully understand, the mutant gene occurs only in white people. About 1 in 100 white people carry two copies of the mutant gene.</P>
up089609|Perot nominated as Reform Party presidential candidate|<STRONG>Perot nominated as Reform Party presidential candidate</STRONG><P>Ross Perot's Reform Party nominated him as its presidential candidate on Aug. 17, 1996, at the party's national convention in Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Perot had announced the formation of the Reform Party in September 1995 in an effort to bolster a third-party candidate for president.</P>
up089610|Somali clan leader Aidid dies, son takes over|<STRONG>Somali clan leader Aidid dies, son takes over</STRONG><P>Somali clan leader Mohammed Farah Aidid died on Aug. 1, 1996, a week after suffering wounds in battle against rival warlords in Mogadishu, the nation's capital. In October 1993, Aidid's forces killed 18 American soldiers that were in Somalia as part of a United Nations peacekeeping mission. Aidid's son, Hussein Mohammed Aidid, who had lived in the United States and served in the U.S. Marines, replaced his father as clan leader.</P>
up089611|New life form confirmed|<STRONG>New life form confirmed</STRONG><P>Scientists reported on Aug. 23, 1996, that they had deciphered the entire genetic blueprint of an ancient microbe that lives in near-boiling water around deep-sea vents. In the process, the researchers confirmed that there are three basic classes of life on Earth, not two as previously thought. The two previously known classes are prokaryotes and eukaryotes. Prokaryotes are bacteria, and eukaryotes are multicellular organisms, such as fungi, yeasts, plants, animals, and human beings. The third class of organisms, called <I>Archaea,</I>, live in super-heated water rising from vents along ridges in the ocean floor, in the spray of geysers, and in the craters of active volcanoes. Researchers said that the newly discovered organism may also hold clues about how life began on Earth.</P><P>Scientists headed by researchers at the Institute for Genomic Research in Rockville, Maryland, mapped all 1,682 genes of <I>Methanococcus jannaschii</I>, a primitive, single-celled organism that scientists believe may have ancestors that go back 3 billion years. Researchers discovered <I>M. jannaschii</I> in 1983 in a hot-water vent some 2 miles (3.2 kilometers) beneath the surface of the Pacific Ocean.</P><P><I>M. jannaschii</I> was a member of <I>Archae</I>. Scientists have identified about 500 species of <I>Archaea,</I> all of which live without oxygen or sunlight. Some biologists had theorized that <I>Archaea</I> represented a new branch on the tree of life. But other scientists believed that <I>Archaea</I> were not sufficiently different from the other two basic life forms.</P><P>The Maryland researchers discovered that 66 percent of <I>M. jannaschii</I>'s genes were totally new to biology and science, however, confirming that <I>Archaea</I> are a new form of life. </P>
up089612|Clinton nominated for second term as president|<STRONG>Clinton nominated for second term as president</STRONG><P>President Bill Clinton accepted the Democratic nomination for president on Aug. 29, 1996, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. He had been nominated the previous day.</P><P>In his acceptance speech, Clinton stressed his vision for the future with the slogan "Let's build a bridge to the 21st century." He stressed "opportunity for all, responsibility from all, a strong united American community."</P>
up089613|Chechnya peace ends civil war|<STRONG>Chechnya peace ends civil war</STRONG><P>The Russian government and Chechen separatists reached a peace agreement on Aug. 31, 1996, ending the civil war that had raged in the southern Russian region of Chechnya since 1992. Russian troops invaded Chechnya in December 1994, and the war had killed more than 30,000 people by mid-1996. A previous truce in mid-1995 had collapsed.</P><P>Russian Security Chief Alexander Lebed and Chechen rebel leader Aslan Maskhadov announced the latest peace agreement in the town of Khasavyurt in the neighboring Russian republic of Dagestan. Chechen rebel forces were in control of much of the republic at the time of the truce, including the capital city of Grozny.</P><P>The two sides agreed that a decision on Chechen independence would be put off until December 2001. The peace agreement called for a joint commission, led by Russian and Chechen government officials, that would work to ensure peace and fight crime and terrorism in Chechnya.</P>
up089614|Tiger Woods wins third straight U.S. amateur golf title|<STRONG>Tiger Woods wins third straight U.S. amateur title</STRONG><P>Tigers Woods won an unprecedented third straight United States Amateur golf championship on Aug. 25, 1996, at the Pumpkin Ridge Golf Club in Cornelius, Oregon. Woods, a 20-year-old Stanford University student, won the title over 19-year-old Steve Scott of the University of Florida. Woods announced on August 27 that he was turning pro.</P>
