01|A spokesperson from the Paris prosecutor's office announces that tests performed on Henry Paul, driver in the car crash that killed Diana, Princess of Wales, on August 31, proved that Paul had a blood alcohol level more than twice what the laws of most U.S. states define as above the legal limit to operate an automobile.|
02|June E. O'Neill, director of the United States Congressional Budget Office, reports that federal revenues in 1997 are equal to 19 percent of the country's gross domestic product--the highest level since the end of World War II in 1945. O'Neill predicts a balanced federal budget as well as treasury surpluses by 2002.|
03|Southeastern Asia currencies, led by the Thai baht and the Malaysian ringgit, again plunge to record lows against the dollar. The ringgit, which has slipped 15 percent since July 2, falls to 2.986 against the American dollar. In Kuala Lumpur, the Malaysian capital, Prime Minister Mahathir bin Mohamad responds to the economic crisis, now in its third month, by announcing that his government will pour $20 billion--the equivalent of the nation's entire annual federal budget--into the Malaysian stock market in an effort to reverse the downward slide that has reduced market value by 40 percent since March 1997.|
04|Three suicide bombers, men dressed as women, detonate bombs in a crowded Jerusalem shopping area. Seven people die, including the bombers. Nearly 200 people are wounded. The Martyrs' Brigade for Freeing Prisoners, an offshoot of the Islamic Hamas movement, claims responsibility for the attack.|
05|Mother Teresa, the Roman Catholic nun whose work on behalf of the poor of the world earned her the 1979 Nobel Peace Prize, dies in Calcutta, India. She was 87 years old. Mother Teresa had been hospitalized repeatedly in recent years for heart ailments and other health problems.|
05|Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom, breaking tradition by personally addressing the British people, expresses her sorrow over the death of her former daughter-in-law, Diana, Princess of Wales, who was killed in a car crash in Paris on August 31. The queen refers to Diana, who was divorced from Prince Charles in 1996, as "an exceptional and gifted human being." With millions of mourners jamming the streets of London, the public outpouring of grief over Diana's death is without precedent in English history.|
06|Diana, Princess of Wales, is buried on an ornamental island at Althorp, the ancestral house of her family, the Spencers, in Northamptonshire, following a state funeral in London's Westminster Abbey. The funeral was attended by Queen Elizabeth, Prince Charles, Diana's family and sons William and Harry, as well as by foreign dignitaries and celebrity friends of the late princess. More than 1 million people, standing in silence, lined the streets, 20 deep, along which the cortege passed on its way to the Abbey. The hearse bearing the coffin to Althorp was showered with flowers along the entire 75-mile (120-kilometer) route. An estimated 1 billion people around the world watched the service on television.|
07|Sixteen-year-old Martina Hingis of Switzerland defeats Venus Williams of the United States to win the women's singles title at the U.S. Open tennis championship played at New York City's new Arthur Ashe Stadium. It is Hingis's third Grand Slam title in 1997. Australian Patrick Rafter captures his first U.S. Open men's singles title by beating Britain's Greg Rusedski 6-3, 6-2, 4-6, and 7-5.|
07|Mobutu Sese Seko, driven from power in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of Congo) in May 1997 after holding the presidency for nearly 32 years, dies in exile in Morocco. Mobutu is said to have accumulated and hidden as much as $5 billion during his years in office.|
08|President Bill Clinton authorizes exploratory drilling for oil on federal land in Utah's red rock country, an area that the president set aside in 1996 to protect it from development.|
09|Panic among passengers aboard an overcrowded ferry in waters along the central coast of Haiti capsizes the 60-foot (18-meter) vessel, causing the death by drowning of approximately 245 people. Licensed for 80 passengers, the ferry may have been carrying as many as 900 people, according to police estimates. The vessel's owner claims that only 265 passenger tickets had been sold. By government count, this latest sinking is the sixth such disaster in Haitian waters in five years.|
10|Drug control officials of the United Nations reveal that opium production increased by 25 percent in the last 12 months in Afghanistan. The Taliban, a group of Muslim fundamentalists led by religious leaders, controls the 22 Afghani provinces in which 96 percent of the nation's poppy crop--3,085 short tons (2,800 metric tons)--is grown, a quantity sufficient to supply half of the heroin consumed worldwide in one year.|
11|The citizens of Scotland vote four to one to establish a legislature, their first since 1707. The referendum does not make Scotland independent, but it grants wide-ranging power to a Scottish legislature that will function under the leadership of the British monarch and prime minister.|
12|Chinese President Jiang Zemin, who also heads China's Communist Party, announces at the opening of the 15th party congress in Beijing that the Chinese government will sell more than 300,000 state-owned enterprises. Because many of state-owned companies are inefficient and lose money, Jiang Zemin's plan could result in massive unemployment.|
13|Mother Teresa, who was called a living saint for her work in the slums of Calcutta, is entombed after a six-hour funeral service that was closed to most of the poor to whom she had devoted her life. To ensure the safety of visiting dignitaries--including the presidents of Albania, Ghana, and India, three queens, and U.S. First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton--the Indian army largely barred crowds from the funeral.|
14|An Air Force F-117A stealth fighter performing in an air show near Baltimore crashes into a suburban subdivision, injuring four people and setting fire to two houses. The pilot, who ejected, is unhurt. The $45-million jet is a complete loss.|
15|Two drug companies--Wyeth-Ayerst Laboratories and Interneuron Pharmaceuticals, Inc.--announce the immediate withdrawal of two prescription diet pills, fenfluramine and dexfenfluramine, from the market. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration asked that the drugs be withdrawn after uncovering evidence that suggests that they may cause heart valve damage to as many as 30 percent of the people taking the drugs. In 1996 alone, physicians prescribed the pills, which depress appetite and increase the rate at which calories are burned, to more than 18 million Americans.|
15|Former Governor of Massachusetts William Weld withdraws his name from consideration as ambassador to Mexico after a five-month political squabble that pitted Weld against more conservative elements of his own Republican Party. The nomination was opposed by North Carolina Republican Senator Jesse Helms, who as chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee was able to block confirmation by refusing to convene a committee hearing. Helms claimed Weld was "soft on drugs" for favoring legalizing marijuana for medicinal use.|
16|A spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department announces that Attorney General Janet Reno will replace the federal prosecutor and FBI agent heading an inquiry into possible Democratic Party campaign finance irregularities during the 1996 presidential election. According to the spokesperson, Reno believes different management may provide her with the information she needs to decide whether an independent prosecutor is warranted. Campaign funds raised by President Bill Clinton and Vice President Al Gore are the primary focus of the inquiry.|
17|The U.S. Defense Department, for the first time in its history, orders all branches of the armed services to suspend training flights for 24 hours, during which aviators and ground crews are to receive additional safety lectures. The order comes 24 hours after two F-16 fighter jets collided off New Jersey's Atlantic coast. The September 16 accident was the fifth separate crash of a U.S. armed forces plane in four days. The spate of crashes have killed 11 crew members.|
18|President Jiang Zemin of China succeeds in removing rival Qiao Shi--the third most powerful man in the Communist Party hierarchy--from the politburo as well as from the party's central committee. The move, made at the close of a week-long party congress, effectively ousts Qiao as a major rival for power and secures Jiang's place as successor to Deng Xiaoping, who died in February 1997.|
18|A tourist bus outside Cairo's renowned Egyptian Museum is attacked by men wielding automatic weapons and gasoline bombs. Ten people, nine of whom are German tourists, die in the assault, which the Egyptian government claims is unrelated to previous attacks on foreign tourists made by Islamic militants.|
18|Ted Turner, founder of Cable News Network and vice chairman of the Time Warner communication company, stuns an audience of diplomats and dignitaries at the annual United Nations Association banquet in New York City by announcing that he will donate $1 billion to the United Nations over a 10-year period. The money is to be used for programs, rather than administration. The donation is estimated to be about one-third of Turner's fortune.|
19|A B-1B bomber, on a training mission out of Ellsworth Air Force Base in South Dakota, crashes over Montana, killing all four crew members. The $200-million jet is the seventh American armed services craft to crash in six accidents in seven days, killing a combined total of 15 people.|
20|A spokesperson for the U.S. Justice Department announces that Attorney General Janet Reno has authorized a formal inquiry into whether President Bill Clinton in 1996 illegally solicited campaign contributions by speaking to possible donors on White House telephones. The inquiry is designed to provide the attorney general with sufficient information to decide whether to appointment an independent prosecutor to investigate campaign finances during the 1996 presidential election. For months, Reno has resisted appointing such a prosecutor despite mounting pressure to do so from Republicans in Congress, who have called for her impeachment.|
21|Foreign ministers of Arab League countries vote to defy a United Nations sanction that banned aircraft bearing official Libyan delegations, particularly Libyan leader Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, from landing on non-Libyan territory. The sanction was imposed in 1992 after Qaddafi refused to hand over to British or American authorities two men suspected of planting a bomb on a Pan Am jet that crashed in 1988 over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Because Qaddafi and most Arab League countries have ignored the ban since 1994, the vote is seen as a display of Arab solidarity with Qaddafi's unbending stance toward the West.|
22|President Bill Clinton states that he is confident that neither he nor Vice President Al Gore broke the "letter of the law" while raising campaign funds during his 1996 presidential campaign. A Justice Department spokesperson announced on September 20 that Attorney General Janet Reno had authorized a formal inquiry into Clinton's 1996 fund raising activities to assess if the appointment of an independent prosecutor is warranted.|
23|Islamic militants, battling the military-led government of Algeria, slaughter 67 people on the outskirts of Algiers, the capital. Since the beginning of the civil war in 1991, roving bands of insurgents have attempted to force that collapse of the government by murdering tens of thousands of men, women, and children.|
24|Enormous forest fires in the Indonesian jungles of eastern and southern Sumatra and the island of Borneo are burning out of control due to a draught caused by the return of El Nino, the powerful ocean current that affects worldwide weather patterns. In combination with urban pollution, the smoke is generating smog across Malaysia and Indonesia--as well as Singapore, the Philippines, Brunei, and southern Thailand--that is so severe as to dim the light of the sun. Governments have closed schools, businesses, and nonessential offices and issued health alerts suggesting that people wear masks to protect themselves. Flights across Southeast Asia are canceled and shipping on the Strait of Malacca is disrupted due to poor visibility. The fires were intentionally set by Indonesian and Malaysian corporations intent on clearing land cheaply.|
25|Three days of Senate Financial Committee hearings on the inner workings of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) conclude with an apology by the acting commissioner, Michael Dolan, for past IRS abuses, which have included invasion of privacy and harsh and insulting behavior by collection agents. Dolan also promises to eliminate incentives that might lead to misconduct among agents. Dolan admitted that performance reviews of IRS agents are currently based on revenue collection quotas.|
26|An Indonesian Airbus A-300, enroute from Jakarta to Medan on the island of Sumatra, crashes on approach to the airport. All 234 people aboard the jet die. Crash investigators focus on confusing instructions from the flight controller and the role that thick smoke from forest fires burning out of control in Indonesia may have played in the accident.|
26|Russian President Boris Yeltsin signs a bill designed to place the country's traditional religions--the Russian Orthodox Church, Islam, Judaism, and Buddhism--on a higher level than faiths introduced into Russia since the downfall of Communism in 1991. Under the new law, religious groups that have been active in Russia for at least 15 years are accorded a tax-exempt status, the right to conduct services, to own property, and to distribute literature to the public. Organizations that are unable to meet the 15-year rule may perform charitable works but may not recruit members.|
27|A cyclone, with 90-mile- (144-kilometer-) per hour winds, hits the coast of Bangladesh in the district of Bhola along the Bay of Bengal, destroying tens of thousands of homes and killing 47 people.|
28|Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi announces a $500-million fund to aid victims of twin earthquakes that shook central Italy on September 25. Prodi states that with more than 80,000 dwellings destroyed and 5,000 people homeless, damage is worse than originally feared. In the Umbrian town of Assisi, two art experts and two Franciscan friars were killed when the inner roof of the basilica of St. Francis of Assisi collapsed on them during the second quake.|
29|An Iraqi foreign ministry spokesperson accuses Iran of sending eight warplanes into Iraq to bomb various targets in the country's Daiyla and Kut provinces. The Iraqi-based Mujahedeen Khalq, an opposition group that advocates the overthrow of the Iranian government, claims that two of their camps along the Iranian border were also bombed. Working from such camps, that Mujahedeen Khalq have staged numerous cross-border raids and attacks on Iran in 1997.|
30|An international team of demographic researchers in Moscow disclose that their studies indicate that overuse of alcohol--particularly binge drinking--is the primary factor that has contributed to the sharp decline in life expectancy among Russians during the early 1990's. Currently, a 20-year-old Russian male has a 1 in 2 chance of surviving to age 60, compared with an English or French male of the same age who has a 9 out 10 change of living to 60. The life-expectancy decline, which went into free-fall among males after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, is the most severe ever documented, according to researchers.|
