01|Members of the U.S. House of Representatives vote 240 to 189 to approve legislation, sponsored by Republican House leaders and endorsed by the president, that would open up Alaska's Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil and gas exploration. The legislation, which must be passed in the Senate before becoming law, also provides $33.5 billion in tax credits as incentives to oil companies to increase production.|
01|The rarely found skulls of two titanosaurs--huge, plant-eating dinosaurs--have been unearthed in Madagascar, announce scientists from the State University of New York (SUNY) at Stony Brook. The SUNY paleontologists uncovered the fossilized skull of an adult and the skull and nearly complete skeleton of a juvenile on an expedition in 1995. Both of the skulls date to between 70 million and 65 millions years old. Most previously discovered titanosaur fossils date to 140 million years ago. According to the scientists, the relative youth of the newly discovered specimens suggest that titanosaurs survived through a much longer period of time than scientists previously believed.|
01|Heavy rains on the Indonesian island of Nias trigger flash flooding and landslides that kill at least 60 people. Authorities blame the flooding and landslides on uncontrolled logging that has stripped mountainsides of all vegetation.|
02|A scientist at Ohio University in Athens announces that he has concluded that the fleshy nostrils of dinosaurs were located near the tip of their snouts, not higher up, as had been believed. Paleontologist and anatomist Lawrence M. Witmer compared the scars and groves left by soft tissues, such as nasal passages, on the skulls of modern-day crocodiles and birds, with similar marks on dinosaurs. Witmer found that scarring on dinosaur skulls suggested that nasal passages were located at the end of the snout. His conclusion, if correct, alters human understanding of the organization of the dinosaur respiratory system and changes ideas of exactly how dinosaurs looked.|
03|International Monetary Fund (IMF) officials announce that a loan of $15 billion is being offered to Brazil and financial aid totaling $1.2 billion is being given to Argentina to shore up the faltering economies of both countries. The IMF, which is located in Washington, D.C., provides short-term credit to member nations. IMF economists fear that financial troubles in Argentina and Brazil may spread throughout Latin America.|
04|North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow, Russia's capital, announces that the North Korean missile program poses no threat to any nation. Kim repeats his promise to suspend all ballistic-missile launches until 2003. Foreign affairs experts describe Kim's statement as a response to U.S. President George W. Bush's proposal to build a missile defense shield. Bush administration officials cite the North Korean missile program as a major rationale for the shield.|
05|Ayatollah Khamenei, who heads Iran's Guardian Council, blocks the inauguration of Mohammad Khatami, who was to have been sworn in as the president of Iran for a second term. As leader of the Guardian Council, which consists of hard-line Islamic clergymen, Ayatollah Khamenei exercises veto power over both the president and parliament. According to foreign affairs experts, the ceremony was canceled because the Ayatollah is furious that the parliament failed to approve the new members he wants appointed to the council. Khatami was reelected president on June 8 with 75 percent of the vote.|
06|Leaders of the Irish Republican Army, the paramilitary wing of the Sinn Fein political organization, offer to disarm in accord with the 1998 Good Friday agreement, which called on all paramilitary groups in Northern Ireland to decommission, or surrender, their weapons. Officials representing the United Kingdom, the Republic of Ireland, and the International Commission on Decommissioning describe the IRA proposal as a breakthrough that may get the peace process back on track.|
07|British government officials confirm that a new outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in south Wales resulted in the slaughter of more than 14,000 sheep and that additional cases have been discovered in North Yorkshire and Cumbria. The officials admit that the disease, which first struck British farms in February, is not yet under control.|
08|Macedonian government officials and ethnic Albanian rebel leaders reach a tentative agreement designed to end the ethnic warfare that has plagued Macedonia since February. According to the plan's terms, the government agrees to recognize Albanian as the country's official second language and promises to significantly increase the number of ethnic Albanians on the national police force. The ethnic Albanian insurgents, known as the National Liberation Army, agree to surrender all weapons to a NATO peacekeeping force. Ethnic Albanians make up approximately 20 percent of Macedonia's largely Slavic population. Representatives of the United States and the European Union mediated the agreement, which foreign experts describe as a significant step toward peace.|
08|David Trimble, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party, Northern Ireland's largest Protestant group, warns that he will support a continuation of Northern Ireland's power-sharing government only if the Irish Republican Army (IRA) provides real evidence that disarmament has begun. Trimble resigned as Northern Ireland first minister on July 1 after Northern Ireland's independent disarmament commission confirmed that the IRA had failed to relinquish its weapons. Under the Good Friday agreement of April 1998, the IRA promised to surrender its weapons by mid-2000, a deadline that was later extended to June 2001.|
09|U.S. President George W. Bush announces that taxpayer money could be used to fund research using stem cells from human embryos, which can be grown into any type of cell or tissue. The president stipulates that federal funding must be limited to research on existing lines of stem cells and not used to create new lines from the destruction of embryos. The president notes that researchers have already produced dozens of stem cell lines that can be reproduced indefinitely, providing scientists with an abundance of cells for medical research. Scientists believe that embryonic stem cells can be manipulated to grow into specialized cells that could be used for the repair of tissue damage caused by a variety of diseases, including Parkinson disease, Alzheimer's disease, and diabetes.|
09|At least 15 Israelis, 6 of them children, are killed and more than 90 people are injured when a Palestinian suicide bomber detonates an explosive device packed with nails in a crowded restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem.|
10|Israeli troops storm Orient House and eight other East Jerusalem buildings that house various Palestinian offices. Middle East experts describe Orient House as an unofficial capitol building, which Palestinians consider a symbol of their yearnings for a homeland with Jerusalem as its capital. The Israeli minister for internal security, Uzi Landau, characterizes Orient House as a challenge to Israel's sovereignty over Jerusalem and notes that the takeover is permanent.|
10|The explosion of a land mine planted by rebels of the National Union for the Total Independence of Angola (UNITA) derails a train with more than 500 passengers some 90 miles (145 kilometers) southeast of Angola's capital, Luanda. Rebels kill more than 150 people as the surviving passengers attempt to escape from the train. Officials in Luanda describe the attack as one of the bloodiest carried out since the civil war in Angola began in 1975 after the country gained its independence from Portugal.|
11|The British secretary for Northern Ireland, John Reid, suspends home rule in Northern Ireland for 24 hours in the hope of renewing negotiations to resolve the stalled 1998 Good Friday peace agreement. The suspension, the second since the accord introduced a power-sharing government, gives Northern Ireland's feuding parties--the Protestant Unionists and Sinn Fein, the political arm of the predominantly Roman Catholic Irish Republican Army (IRA)--an additional six weeks to resolve their differences before new elections must be called.|
11|Flash floods set off by heavy rains roar down mountainsides in Thailand's northern province of Phetchabun, killing at least 85 people.|
12|Iranian officials in Tehran, the capital, confirm that an estimated 200 people were killed in flash floods and mudslides triggered by a series of severe rainstorms that began on August 10. The storms ended three years of severe drought in the region. The flooding, which officials describe as the worst in 200 years, caused $25 million in damages in the Kalaleh area of Golestan province and in neighboring Khorasan province.|
13|An aircraft that consists of a flying wing driven by 14 propellers--the Helios Prototype--sets altitude records for a propeller-driven aircraft and for a nonrocket craft by climbing to 85,100 feet (25,940 meters) in tests off Hawaii. The remote-controlled Helios, developed by NASA, is powered by 65,000 solar cells, making full sunshine mandatory for takeoff. The solar cells cover the upper part of the wing, which at 247 feet (75 meters) is longer than a Boeing 747, but weighs only slightly more than 1,500 pounds (680 kilograms). NASA officials suggest that a craft of similar design could survey much larger areas of Mars than a land-based vehicle.|
14|The Irish Republican Army (IRA), the paramilitary wing of Northern Ireland's Roman Catholic Sinn Fein party, withdraws its offer to begin disposing of its arsenal of weapons. IRA leaders claim the one-day suspension of home rule by the British government changed the conditions under which their August 6 disarmament offer was made.|
14|As many as 18 people died of drug overdoses in Houston between August 11 and August 13 announces the chief medical examiner of Harris County, Texas. All 18 deaths were caused by a combination of heroin and cocaine known as a speedball. Fatal overdoses involving cocaine jumped in Houston from 5 in June and July 2000 to 60 during the same period in 2001.|
15|NATO ambassadors, meeting in Brussels, Belgium, authorize moving an initial peacekeeping force of 400 troops, all British, into Macedonia. If the current cease-fire holds, a multinational force of 3,500 soldiers, which would include Americans, will be deployed to collect weapons from the ethnic Albanian rebels, who agreed to disarm as part of the peace agreement signed on August 13. The deployment in Macedonia marks the third time since 1992 that NATO troops have gone into the Balkans to settle fighting among the region's various ethnic groups.|
15|The first planetary system in which planets orbit a star in a nearly circular path similar to Earth's orbital path around the Sun has been discovered, announce astronomers at the University of California at Berkeley. The scientists discovered the solar system in the Big Dipper, or Ursa Major, constellation, which is nearly 45 light-years from Earth. The system consists of a sun, named 47 Ursae Majoris, and two planets. One planet is approximately the size of Jupiter. The other is two and one-half times larger than Jupiter.|
16|The parliament of Nepal, meeting in Katmandu, the capital, passes legislation outlawing all discrimination against the Dalitis, or untouchables, the lowest class in the Hindu class system. In Hindu countries such as Nepal and India, the Dalitis traditionally are barred from temples and religious structures. Many Hindus refuse to eat food that is prepared or touched by untouchables.|
17|A spokesperson for the Ford Motor Company of Dearborn, Michigan, announces company plans to reduce the number of cars in production in the final quarter of 2001 by 8 percent and to eliminate 5,000 salaried jobs in North America. U.S. auto industry experts claim that a persistently strong U.S. dollar has allowed foreign automakers to undercut U.S. prices, cutting profits at General Motors, Ford, and Chrysler.|
18|The Brazilian Congress passes a new legal code that grants women the same rights as men, ending 26 years of debate on the measure.|
18|More than 70 people are killed when a fire sweeps through a hotel in Manila, capital of the Philippines. Many of the victims were unable to escape the blaze because burglar-proof bars blocked the windows.|
19|At least 36 miners are killed and more than 40 more are injured when a methane gas explosion ignites an underground fire in Ukraine's largest coal mine, which is located near the eastern city of Donetsk.|
19|David Toms wins the Professional Golf Association (PGA) Championship, his first major tournament victory, by one stroke, a 12-foot par putt, at the Atlanta Athletic Club in Duluth, Georgia.|
20|More than 430 cattle are sold in the first livestock auction to be held in the United Kingdom since the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease in February. The auction in Kirkwall, capital of northern Scotland's Orkney Islands, is conducted with disease-prevention measures as a trial run for future sales. Since the disease was initially spotted on February 20, some 1,960 cases have been reported in Great Britain, and British authorities have slaughtered 5.1 million sheep, cows, and hogs in an attempt to halt the spread of the disease.|
21|The Federal Reserve, the central bank of the United States, lowers the prime interest rate for the seventh time in 2001. The federal funds target rate on overnight loans drops from 3.75 percent to 3.50 percent.|
22|NATO officials authorize the deployment of 3,500 additional troops into Macedonia for a 30-day period. An initial force of 400 British soldiers moved into Macedonia under NATO command on August 16 to supervise the cease-fire. The latest force is specifically commissioned to collect arms surrendered voluntarily by ethnic Albanian rebels. Leaders of the Albanian National Liberation Army, which launched the insurgency in Macedonia in February, claim to have fewer than 2,000 weapons. Government officials in Skopje, the capital, claim the rebels hold as many as 80,000 weapons.|
23|U.S. President George W. Bush, speaking to a group of elementary school children outside Crawford, Texas, announces that the United States will withdraw from the Antiballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty at its convenience at some unspecified time. The ABM treaty, signed by President Richard M. Nixon of the United States and Communist leader Leonid Brezhnev of the Soviet Union in 1972, is a major arms control pact that limits each country's defensive missile systems.|
24|Canadian Air Transat Flight 236, with 304 passengers and crew members aboard, loses power over the Atlantic Ocean and is forced to glide to an emergency landing in the Azores, a group of nine Portuguese islands some 900 miles (1,450 kilometers) west of Portugal. Eleven passengers are slightly injured in the landing, which ruptured the plane's tires. The Airbus A339-200 was en route to Lisbon, Portugal, from Toronto, when its two Rolls-Royce engines died after the jet began losing fuel.|
25|Two Palestinian militants infiltrate an Israeli Army compound in the Gaza Strip and kill three soldiers and wound seven other Israelis before the Palestinians are themselves shot to death. Israeli authorities characterize the raid as the boldest and deadliest breach of Israeli security since the "second intifada," the current Palestinian uprising, began in September 2000.|
26|More than 6.5 million Americans, 1 out of every 32 adults in the United States, came under the jurisdiction of the U.S. criminal justice system in 2000, announce officials of the U.S. Department of Justice. Of the 6.5 million adults, approximately one-third were serving time in prison and two-thirds were on parole or probation. The U.S. prison population, which is the highest in the world, increased by 2 million people between 1990 and 2000. Justice Department officials note, however, that the penal population in the United States is beginning to level off due to a drop in the rate of crime that began in the 1990's and to the usual attrition of people completing sentences.|
27|British soldiers taking part in NATO's 30-day disarmament mission in Macedonia begin collecting weapons from ethnic Albanian rebels. The disarmament program is part of a NATO-brokered cease-fire to end an insurgency that threatened to spiral into the fifth civil war in the Balkans in the last 10 years.|
28|The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) lowers its federal budget surplus estimate for fiscal year 2001 from $275 billion to $153 billion, citing the current weak economy and the 2001 federal income tax cut for the shortfall. The CBO, a government agency that provides Congress with information on the economy and the federal budget, also estimates that $30 billion in surplus Social Security taxes will be needed to fund the government operations over the next four years.|
29|The U.S. gross domestic product (GDP), the value of all goods and services produced in a given year, grew 0.2 percent in the second quarter of 2001, the smallest percentage in eight years, report officials with the U.S. Commerce Department.|
30|More than 90 percent of all eligible voters in East Timor turn out to elect an 88-member assembly in the nation's first democratic election. The assembly is to write East Timor's constitution. East Timor gained its independence from Indonesia in 1999 after a long and violent struggle.|
31|Palestinian Authority leader Yasir Arafat, speaking to the heads of state of 15 nations meeting at the United Nations World Conference on Racism in Durban, South Africa, labels Israel a racist colonial power that has instituted a "new kind of apartheid" in the West Bank and Gaza.|
31|A gas explosion that ignited a fire in a mah-jongg gambling parlor in Tokyo's Kabukicho entertainment district leaves 44 people dead. At least three people are hospitalized after jumping from windows in the club, which was located on the third floor of a four-story building.|
