01|In Washington D.C., the United States Congress votes to ban imported goods made by forced child labour. The legislation is intended to end child slavery around the world and is expected to have an impact on the U.S.A.'s domestic consumption of imported goods such as carpets, shoes, toys, and trinkets. The law is sponsored by an independent congressman, Bernard Sanders of Vermont.|
01|The French government enforces a new system of fighting air pollution in Paris by restricting the flow of traffic into the capital. With the exception of emergency vehicles, all vehicles with an even-numbered registration are banned from the city streets and public transport is free of charge. The new measure is a response to dangerously high levels of nitrogen dioxide, which are causing health problems for many Parisians. By the end of the day, pollution levels drop noticeably and the government lifts the ban.|
02|At a press conference at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, U.S.A., space scientists announce the discovery on the planet Mars of a giant chasm which is three times deeper than the Grand Canyon in Arizona, U.S.A. There is also evidence that a Martian ocean larger than the Pacific once existed. The 'Mars Global Surveyor' spacecraft, which began orbiting the planet in September, is being prepared for a 30-month mapping operation.|
02|The Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat visits Sheikh Ahmad Yassin, founder of the militant Palestinian group Hamas, in hospital in Amman, the capital of Jordan. He is accompanied by King Hussein of Jordan, who helped secure Yassin's release from an Israeli prison on October 1. Yassin has served eight years of a life sentence for organizing armed attacks on Israel. The reason for the release was officially given as Yassin's ill health, but there is speculation that it is part of an exchange after Jordan frees two alleged Israeli agents.|
03|A senior Australian politician is admitted to hospital after trying to commit suicide. Nick Sherry, the finance spokesman for the opposition Labor Party, is in a stable condition in a Canberra hospital. Sherry, aged 42, was accused of fraudulently claiming travel expenses. The fraud scandal led to the resignation of two government ministers on September 24, since when another politician and three civil servants have resigned.|
03|Alfred Leslie Rowse, the English historian and poet, dies at the age of 93. Born at St. Austell, Cornwall, Rowse went to Oxford University, where he studied history at Christ Church College. Rowse became a fellow of All Souls College and an authority on the history of the Elizabethan Age. His books include 'Tudor Cornwall' (1941), 'The Expansion of Elizabethan England' (1955), and 'William Shakespeare: A Biography' (1963).|
04|The daughter of King Juan Carlos of Spain marries a Basque sportsman in Barcelona, Spain. The 32-year-old Infanta Cristina and Basque handball player Inaki Urdangarin, 29, celebrate their wedding with a ceremony which is conducted in three languages (Catalan, Spanish and Basque) to symbolise the unity of the country.|
04|The most complete skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus Rex ever found is sold for 8.4 million U.S. dollars at a New York auction. The 65-million-year-old dinosaur fossil, nicknamed 'Sue', is sold by Sotheby's auction house to the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, U.S.A. The fossil was discovered on a remote ranch in South Dakota in 1990.|
05|About one million Christian men attend a weekend event in Washington D.C., U.S.A. The event, which included a rally on October 4, is organized by the Promise Keepers, a body which believes that men should take spiritual leadership in the home and that their wives should submit to them. Many Christian denominations, such as Roman Catholics, Baptists, and Episcopalians, are represented. Promise Keepers was founded by Bill McCartney in 1990.|
05|India's Space Research Organization says that the country's most advanced satellite, Insat-2D, has been abandoned in space because of a malfunction. The satellite was turned off on October 1 after a power failure. As a result, television communications were disrupted and financial trading on India's stock exchange was suspended.|
06|The Nobel Prize for medicine is awarded to the American Stanley Prusiner for his controversial 'prion' theory, which explains several brain disorders, including Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (or 'mad cow disease') and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. The prize, valued at about one million U.S. dollars, is given for discoveries that may one day lead to new treatments for dementia-related brain diseases such as Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Prusiner teaches biochemistry at the University of California, San Francisco, U.S.A.|
06|Michael Foale, the British-born astronaut, lands on Earth after spending 145 days in space on the Russian space station 'Mir'. His space shuttle, 'Atlantis', touches down at Cape Canaveral, Florida, U.S.A., where he is greeted by his wife, Rhonda, their two young children, and about 400 well-wishers.|
07|The United Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth II begins her tour of Pakistan and India by meeting Pakistan's President Farooq Leghari at the Aiwan-a-Sadr palace in Pakistan's capital, Islamabad, and visiting the Shah Faisal mosque. In a speech, she pays tribute to Diana, Princess of Wales, who died on August 31. The Queen's last state visit to the country was in 1961.|
07|Ray Burke, the Irish minister for foreign affairs, resigns following allegations of corruption. Burke has admitted taking 30,000 Irish punts in cash in 1989 when a business associate was seeking planning permissions in north Dublin. His resignation takes place at Stormont, Northern Ireland, where peace process talks are in progress.|
08|Astronomers photograph one of the brightest stars in the Milky Way. The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer of Nasa's Hubble space telescope is needed to take the picture because the star is hidden behind galactic dust. Named Pistol Star, it is about 25,000 light years away in the direction of the constellation Sagittarius. It is brighter than 10 million suns and releases as much energy in six seconds as the sun loses in one year. Astronomers estimate that it is between one and three million years old and, when originally formed, had a mass of up to 200 times that of the sun's.|
08|Two United Kingdom companies announce a new way of sending Internet data which is about 10 times quicker than the fastest existing telephone modem. The electricity company, NORWEB, and the telecommunications company, Nortel, say they have worked out how to send electronic data over the mains power supply at over 1 megabit per second. The new system will be tried out in 2,000 homes in the northwest of England in early 1998.|
09|Dario Fo, the 71-year-old Italian playwright, is awarded the Nobel Prize for literature. He became famous as a political dramatist during the 1960's, and wrote more than 60 plays. A former comic actor and mimic, Fo's blend of slapstick and satire can be seen in plays such as 'The Comic Mysteries', 'Accidental Death of an Anarchist', and 'Can't Pay? Won't Pay!'. He is the sixth Italian to win the literature prize.|
09|At least 120 people die and hundreds are missing as a hurricane hits the Mexican tourist resort of Acapulco and other towns on the country's Pacific coast. Hurricane Pauline, with winds reaching more than 160 kilometres per hour, causes waves up to 10 metres tall. At least 40 centimetres of rain are recorded.|
10|The Nobel Peace Prize is awarded to two groups which campaign for a ban on landmines. The U.S.A.'s International Campaign to Ban Landmines and the United Kingdom's Mines Advisory Group are joint recipients of the 600,000-pounds-sterling prize. The campaign received a boost in January 1997 when Diana, Princess of Wales, visited a minefield in Angola.|
10|Official celebrations in Kenya to mark President Daniel arap Moi's 19 years in power are marred by violence. As Moi addresses a crowd in Freedom Park, in the capital Nairobi, police use tear gas and baton charges to clear demonstrators in the Kamukunji area of the city. The opposition rally, organized by the National Convention Executive Committee, had been banned by the authorities.|
11|Italian riot police fight with English football fans during the first half of an international match between England and Italy. The game, which is played at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, ends in a goalless draw. The result means that England has gained enough points in its qualifying group to enter the World Cup tournament, which will be held in France in 1998.|
11|At a two-day summit of the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, France, European leaders promise to ban human cloning. The ban, which is similar to that already in force in the United Kingdom, will be added to the European Convention on Biomedicine. The convention regulates embryo research, genetic testing, and organ transplants.|
12|The Malaysian prime minister addresses a rally of 10,000 people in the eastern state of Terengganu and blames his country's economic decline on a Jewish conspiracy. Mahathir Mohamad blames currency speculation - which resulted in the ringgit, Malaysia's currency, falling by 18 per cent against the U.S. dollar since July 1997 - on Jews. Commentators see this attack as evidence that Mahathir does not understand the causes of Malaysia's economic decline.|
12|The 'New York Times' newspaper publishes figures which show that New York has proportionally fewer burglaries than London, and that Los Angeles has proportionally fewer burglaries than Sydney. However, violent crime, such as street robbery, is up by 6 per cent in the U.S.A. since 1980. The U.S.A. also has up to 18 times more murders than any other industrial democracy.|
13|United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair shakes hands with Gerry Adams, president of Sinn Fein, a party with links to the terrorist Irish Republican Army, at a meeting in Belfast, Northern Ireland. It is widely seen as a symbolic gesture of goodwill toward the peace process, although loyalist extremists jostle Blair when he visits a shopping mall in east Belfast after the meeting.|
13|John Denver, the pop singer, dies at the age of 53 when his private plane crashes into the sea off northern California, U.S.A. Originally a song-writer, he became famous in the 1970's for singing country songs such as 'Rocky Mountain High', 'Take Me Home', and 'Annie's Song'.|
14|During her tour of India, the United Kingdom's Queen Elizabeth II lays a memorial wreath at Jallianwala Bagh in Amritsar, Punjab, the site of the 1919 massacre. On April 13, 1919, a British army commander, General Dyer, ordered his troops to fire without warning on a peaceful demonstration for Indian independence. As a result, nearly 400 people were killed and at least 1,200 others wounded. Anti-British feeling has been aroused by the refusal of successive UK governments to apologise for the massacre. The Queen also visits the Golden Temple, the most sacred Sikh site in India.|
14|In the United Kingdom, the Indian writer Arundhati Roy wins the 21,000-pounds-sterling Booker Prize for Fiction with her first novel, 'The God of Small Things'. The book is a lyrical, tragi-comic novel set in and around a pickle factory in Kerala, southern India, and is based on Roy's childhood experiences. It has sold 400,000 copies worldwide.|
14|The Red Cross organization announces that the death toll caused by Hurricane Pauline has risen to 400. The hurricane struck the Mexican coast on October 9.|
15|Andy Green, a British Royal Air Force fighter pilot, becomes the first man to break the sound barrier on land. Squadron leader Green drives a Thrust SSC car at an average of 1,228 kilometres per hour, subject to confirmation, during two runs in the Black Rock Desert, Nevada, U.S.A. This betters the British team's breaking of the land speed record on September 25.|
15|The business district of the Sri Lankan capital, Colombo, is hit by a bomb in the city's worst violence in 14 years of civil war. At least 15 people are killed and more than 100 injured as Tamil rebels force their way into the car park of the Galadari Hotel and set off a truck bomb. A gun battle between rebels and Sri Lankan troops is responsible for several of the deaths. More than 50,000 people have been killed since the uprising, in support of a homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority, began in 1983.|
16|The legendary revolutionary Ernesto 'Che' Guevara is buried in the central Cuban city of Santa Clara. A former comrade of Cuba's President Fidel Castro, Guevara was killed by Bolivian government troops in October 1967, while trying to start a revolution. His body was presumed missing until a retired Bolivian officer revealed its location in 1996. It was exhumed and brought to Cuba on July 13, 1997. Hundreds of thousands of Cubans filed past Guevara's coffin when it was put on display in the capital Havana last week.|
16|The Republic of Congo's former Marxist ruler, General Denis Sassou-Nguesso, declares victory over deposed President Pascal Lissouba. After a four-month civil war, Sassou's militia seizes the capital, Brazzaville, and the main oil port, Pointe-Noire, with help from Angolan troops. Sassou ruled the Congo from 1979 until 1992, when he lost the general election to Lissouba. The civil war broke out in June 1997 when both men were preparing to be candidates in a new general election.|
17|A 15-year-old Japanese boy is sentenced to indefinite detention for beheading a younger boy in May 1997. The convicted boy, who cannot be named under Japan's juvenile law, is found guilty of two murders at Kobe Family Court. The discovery of 11-year-old Jun Hase's body on May 27, and the subsequent arrest of a juvenile suspect, shocked Japanese society.|
17|President Kwasniewski of Poland appoints Jerzy Buzek as prime minister and asks him to form a new government. Buzek, a veteran trade union adviser, was nominated by Solidarity Electoral Action, an alliance of anti-communist parties led by the Solidarity trade union. It won the general election on September 21.|
18|The new Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, is opened by King Juan Carlos. Built by Frank Gehry, an American architect, it is a massive, curved structure covered in shining titanium, and situated next to the Nervion River in the city's industrial zone. Its largest gallery is 137 metres long and houses Richard Serra's 174-ton steel sculpture 'Snake'. The museum will display both a permanent collection of modern art and loaned art works from New York's Guggenheim Museum.|
18|New research shows that marine life on coral reefs is endangered by pollution. 'Reef Check 1997' is a survey of 250 reefs by more than 100 teams of marine scientists. It concludes that reefs are damaged by run-offs of fertiliser, the use of cyanide and dynamite in fishing, and oil exploration. Even remote locations, such as north Borneo, are affected. One result is a drop in the number of species in an important area of sea ecology.|
19|The Pope bestows one of the Roman Catholic Church's highest honours on Saint Therese of Lisieux, a 19th-century French nun known as the 'Little Flower'. In a ceremony in Saint Peter's Square, Rome, John Paul II made her a Doctor of the Church, a title given to selected saints whose teachings are considered to have outstanding merit. Therese died, aged 24, at a Lisieux convent in 1897. She was an inspiration for Mother Teresa, who died on September 5, 1997.|
19|In Bosnia, Pale Television, the station which supports Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic, is shut down by peacekeeping troops, led by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. The ban, which had been in force until two days ago, is reimposed after the station incites Bosnian Serbs to attack peacekeepers.|
20|The United States Department of Energy announces that greenhouse gases have increased in the U.S.A by 3.4 per cent in the past year. U.S. emissions of greenhouse gases - carbon dioxide, methane, and nitrous oxide, which are responsible for air pollution and damage to the Earth's ozone layer - have increased each year in the 1990's. This fact seriously undermines the credibility of U.S. President Bill Clinton's 1993 commitment to reduce emissions to 1990 levels by the year 2000.|
20|A demonstration of about 4,000 office workers and business executives in the Thai capital of Bangkok calls on the country's Prime Minister Chavalit Yongchaiyudh to resign. Protestors are angry that Chavalit has reneged on a promise to raise the tax on oil in an attempt to help the Thai economy recover from its recent slump. Chavalit has been in power for just over 10 months.|
21|In Russia, the writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn launches a literary prize named after himself. His wife, Natalya, says that the prize - of 25,000 U.S. dollars, to be paid in dollars, not roubles - will be restricted to writers living in Russia. The Solzhenitsyns will head a jury of six and the first award for a book written in the 'national literary tradition' will be made in March 1998. Solzhenitsyn, aged 79, was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974 for writing 'The Gulag Archipelago', an expose of Stalin's labour camps, and returned to Russia in 1994.|
21|Three Chinese women break the world record for running 5,000 metres. At China's National Games, held in Shanghai, 17-year-old Dong Yanmei is recorded as running 5,000 metres in 14min 31.27sec, beating the world record set by Portugal's Fernanda Ribeiro in 1995. Her team mates, Jiang Bo and Liu Shixiang, also break the world record. Dong is a protege of the coach Ma Junren.|
22|Parachutists in Paris celebrate the 200th anniversary of the first parachute jump, made by Frenchman Andre-Jacques Garnerin, who dropped about 400 metres from a hot-air balloon in 1797. Seventy-six people, including French actor Jean-Paul Belmondo, aged 64, parachuted onto the Champs de Mars in central Paris.|
22|The Lloyds Bank British Fashion Awards are won by designers John Galliano, 36, and Alexander McQueen, 27. For the first time in the 13-year history of the UK's top fashion award, which is sponsored by Lloyds Bank, there are two joint winners. Galliano and McQueen, who design for the Paris fashion houses Christian Dior and Givenchy, receive their awards at a ceremony in the Royal Albert Hall, London.|
23|On the eve of the meeting of Commonwealth heads of state in Edinburgh, Scotland, the Commonwealth Ministerial Action Group decides not to impose new sanctions on Nigeria. However, if Nigeria fails to set up a democratic government by October 1998, it will be expelled from the Commonwealth and oil sanctions will be imposed. At the moment, Nigeria is governed by a military junta led by General Sani Abacha, who seized power in 1993.|
23|The European Court of Justice upholds the Swedish government's monopoly on alcohol. It accepts Sweden's argument that state control of the manufacture and sale of alcoholic drinks is part of its public health policy, which is necessary to prevent alcohol abuse. The court rejects a complaint by Harry Franzen, a Swede who wants to sell wine in his grocery store, that government restrictions on sales are an unfair interference in the free market.|
24|Zoran Todorovic, a senior official in Yugoslavia's ruling alliance, is shot dead in Belgrade. Todorovic, aged 38 and an ally of President Slobodan Milosevic, was secretary of the powerful neo-Communist United Yugoslav Left party, which is led by Milosevic's wife, Mirjana. Although his assassin escapes, there is speculation that he was killed because of alleged links with gangsters.|
24|In Algeria, the ruling National Democratic Rally party wins more than 50 per cent of the votes in the first local elections in five years, amid accusations of fraud by opposition politicians and analysts. The result of the elections is almost identical to that of the June elections, and there have been reports of fear and intimidation among the electorate. The local elections are part of President Zeroual's move toward a civil constitution, but will do little to alleviate the country's economic and social crisis.|
25|The historic Reading Room of the British Library closes. Situated in the British Museum in London, the domed reading room opened in 1857 and has been used by researchers, including Karl Marx, ever since. It will now be turned into an information centre by 2000. Its replacement, the Humanities Reading Room at the new British Library next to Saint Pancras station, about two kilometres away, is due to open on November 24.|
25|South Africa's President Nelson Mandela asks United Kingdom Prime Minister Tony Blair to drop his demand that Libya should surrender two men suspected of bombing a Pan Am aeroplane over Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988. Mandela, who is in Edinburgh at a meeting of the heads of Commonwealth countries, says that the suspects would not get a fair trial in the United Kingdom or the U.S.A. Mandela visited Libya last week.|
26|Secret cameras located in hospital wards in two hospitals within the United Kingdom reveal the torture and abuse of infant patients by their parents. The findings of these hidden cameras have led to the conviction of 33 out of the 39 sets of parents observed over the last eight years, and reveal a disturbing scale of parental abuse upon infants.|
26|The medals of Lieutenant-Colonel John McRae, the Canadian who wrote the World War I poem 'In Flanders Fields', are sold at auction in Toronto, Canada. Arthur Lee, a Chinese immigrant to Canada, pays 180,000 pounds sterling for the medals and donates them to the McRae Museum in Guelph, Ontario.|
27|The Wall Street stock exchange in New York suffers its biggest ever one-day fall. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, an index of stock market share prices, falls more than 550 points to 7161.15. This is a bigger fall than the 'Black Monday' crash of October 19, 1987. The panic selling follows a fall on stock exchanges in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Tokyo. Many commentators say that this is due to economic difficulties in Southeast Asia.|
27|Iraq claims that sanctions imposed by the United Nations have caused more than one million children to die. Dhari Mahmood, head of the Justice Ministry in the capital Baghdad, publishes a report which says that sanctions have caused a rise in mortality rates among women, children, and the elderly. The report is presented to the United Nations human rights committee. The United Nations imposed sanctions on Iraq following the country's defeat in the 1991 Gulf War.|
28|Zambia's President Frederick Chiluba announces that a military coup by a small group of officers has failed. The plotters, led by Captain Steven Lungu under the nickname 'Captain Solo', briefly occupy the state radio station in the capital Lusaka, before being arrested by the authorities. Lungu claims to have been inspired by an angel, who told him to eradicate corruption.|
28|An appeal court in Guatemala overturns the convictions of three high-ranking government officials, who had been given 10-year prison sentences for the killing of a student in 1994. In July, the former Interior Minister Danilo Parrinello, his deputy, Mario Alfredo Merida, and the former police chief, Salvador Figueroa, were found responsible for the death of Alioto Lopez at the hands of riot police. But the appeal court agrees with the defence's argument that the three were doing their duty by maintaining order.|
29|The United Kingdom government asks Brazil for the extradition of Ronald Biggs, the 'Great Train Robber'. Biggs, aged 68, escaped from Wandsworth Prison in London in 1965 after serving 15 months of a thirty year sentence for his part in the 2.6 million-pounds-sterling robbery on the Glasgow to London train in 1963. For 27 years he has lived in Brazil, which did not have an extradition treaty with the UK until August 1997.|
29|An animal rights group claims that ivory poaching in Africa is increasing. The International Fund for Animal Welfare (IFAW) says that since the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (Cites) decided in June 1997 that Botswana, Namibia and Zimbabwe could sell stocks of ivory to Japan, illegal killing of elephants has increased in Zambia, Kenya, Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo. IFAW says the Cites meeting resulted in a more relaxed attitude to the ban on the ivory trade.|
30|Louise Woodward, a 19-year-old British au pair, is convicted of the murder of Matthew Eappen, the 8-month-old baby whom she was employed to care for in Boston, USA. The trial has aroused controversy as Woodward's lawyers opted for an "all or nothing" approach, dropping the lesser charge of manslaughter and confining the jury's consideration of guilt to the charge of murder alone. Louise is found guilty of murdering the baby on February 4, 1997, and faces the mandatory life sentence, with no application for parole allowed for 15 years.|
30|Mary McAleese is elected eighth president of the Irish Republic, becoming the first Irish president to come from Northern Ireland. McAleese, a 46-year-old pro-vice-chancellor of Queen's University in Belfast, won by an 18 point lead over her nearest rival, and replaces Mary Robinson who resigned in September to become the United Nations High Comissioner for Human Rights. Only 50 per cent of the electorate exercised their voting rights, lower than any previous presidential election.|
31|Hillary Clinton, the United States' First Lady, visits Belfast to deliver the first Joyce McCartan memorial lecture at the University of Ulster, where she asks for renewed participation from both sides in the peace talks. Community worker McCartan, who died in 1995, lost her son and 17 other relatives during Northern Ireland's political unrest.|
