01|Judge James Robertson of the Federal District Court in Washington, D.C., dismisses tax evasion charges against Webster L. Hubbell, long-time friend of President Bill Clinton and former law partner of Hillary Rodham Clinton. In his ruling, the judge noted that independent counsel Kenneth Starr exceeded his authority and reneged on his promise to grant Hubbell immunity in exchange for information regarding the Clinton's business dealings.|
02|Residents of Volusia and Brevard counties in northeast Florida continue to flee their houses as wildfires threaten whole towns and burn through the countryside despite the efforts of hundreds of firefighters. More than 30,000 people had been evacuated since July 1, when high winds began spreading fires that had previously been confined to sparsely populated rural areas. More than 140 miles (225 kilometers) of Interstate 95 from Brevard County north to the Georgia border were closed because of the fires, which had burned continuously since the last week of May.|
03|Winds from North Africa push temperatures in Italy and Greece as high as 114 degrees F (45 degrees C), sending hundreds of people to hospitals and killing at least 10. In Palermo, Sicily, temperatures climb to 120 degrees F (48 degrees C). A heat wave in Japan sends temperatures in Tokyo to 100 degrees F (38 degrees C) in Tokyo and is blamed for the deaths of two people and the hospitalization of more than 60 others for heat-related illnesses.|
04|Jana Novotna of the Czech Republic wins her first Wimbledon championship by beating Nathalie Tauziat of France, 6-4, 7-6.|
05|Pete Sampras defeats Goran Ivanisevic of Croatia (6-7, 7-6, 6-4, 3-6, 6-2) to take his 5th Wimbledon title and his 11th Grand Slam championship. The victory ties Sampras with Bjorn Borg for the Wimbledon men's record and places him within one title of equaling Roy Emerson's record 12 Grand Slam championships.|
06|Hong Kong closes its 73-year-old Kai Tak Airport and opens Chek Lap Kok, a greatly enlarged, $20-billion facility on reclaimed land off Lantau Island 19 miles (30 kilometers) to the west. The old international airport was famous for its short runways and in-town location, which forced aircraft to make dramatic, roof-skimming approaches.|
07|Moshood K. O. Abiola, who claimed to be the lawfully elected president of Nigeria, dies after meeting with U.S. and Nigerian officials at a government guesthouse in Abuja, the capital. Nigerian dictator Sani Abachi had kept Abiola imprisoned since 1994. U.S. State Department officials believed that Abiola would soon be released from jail by Abdulsalam Abubakar, the general who assumed control of Nigeria in June 1998 after Abachi died suddenly of a heart attack. Abiola, the most prominent leader opposing Nigeria's current military regime, was believed to have won the 1993 presidential election, which international observers judged to be free and fair. But the results were voided by the military dictator then in control. Later in 1993, Abachi took power following a coup.|
08|At least 19 people are killed in riots between ethnic groups in Lagos, Nigeria, following the sudden death of Moshood Abiola, imprisoned leader of the opposition to the West African country's current military regime. Abiola was pronounced dead of a heart attack. But many Nigerians, including the Abiola family and members of his Yoruba ethnic group, claim he was murdered by members of the military.|
08|Leaders of the Taliban, the fundamentalist Islamic movement in control of 85 percent of Afghanistan, order the destruction of all television sets, videocassette recorders, videotapes, and satellite dishes. Taliban leaders warned that "religion police" would conduct spot raids after 15 days. Religion police armed with automatic weapons cruise city streets looking for violations of religious laws.|
09|The U.S. Senate votes 96 to 2 to reorganize the Internal Revenue Service (IRS), which had been widely criticized for abusing taxpayers' rights. The same measure passed in the House of Representatives in June by a 402 to 8 vote. The bill, which President Bill Clinton had promised to sign into law, profoundly changes how the IRS conducts business, including reversing the current assumption that the taxpayer is guilty until proven innocent.|
10|A western European diplomat stationed in Serbia reports that the ethnic the Albanian rebels battling Serbian police and military forces for independence in Kosovo Province have managed to acquire sufficient antitank and antiaircraft weapons to successfully repel Serbian advances, inflict heavy casualties, and actually drive the Serbs into retreat. According to observers, the shift in the balance of power could prolong the conflict for months if not years.|
11|A team of American and European pathologists announce in Lagos, Nigeria, that they have completed an autopsy on opposition leader Moshood Abiola and concluded that he had died of natural causes, probably a heart attack. Abiola, who claimed to be the lawfully elected president of Nigeria, had been imprisoned by the ruling military regime since 1994. He became ill during a July 7 meeting with a group of U.S. State Department and Nigerian officials and died soon after. The death triggered a series of riots between various ethnic groups in Lagos and other Nigerian cities.|
12|France beats Brazil 3-0 to capture the World Cup in the soccer championship's biggest upset in half a century. The victory sparks a dazzling celebration by the French, who hosted the 1998 games that claimed to be the world's largest sporting event.|
12|Three brothers, ages 10, 9, and 7, are burned to death in their beds in a public housing complex in Ballymoney, Northern Ireland, the result of a flaming firebomb thrown through a downstairs window. The boys, Jason, Mark, and Richard Quinn, were Roman Catholic. Ballymoney, approximately 40 miles (68 kilometers) north of Belfast, is primarily Protestant. Police suggest the arson attack was made by Protestants, disgruntled by current bans on Protestant marching through Roman Catholic neighborhoods.|
13|Prime Minister Ryutaro Hashimoto of Japan resigns in response to the severe losses his party, the Liberal Democratic Party, suffered in parliamentary elections on July 12. Political observers interpreted the vote as a blunt demand for greater leadership to revive Japan's ailing economy. While Japanese officials admitted in June that the economy, the world's second largest after the United States, was in a severe recession, Hashimoto and his ministers did little to address the problem. Most Western economists attributed Japans' woes to a banking system crippled by bad loans. Hashimoto's downfall follows the collapse of governments in Indonesia, South Korea, and Thailand. The collapse of the government was also attributed to Asia's current economic crisis.|
13|The International Monetary Fund and World Bank conclude agreements with Russian officials to provide Russia with nearly $17 billion in additional loans in 1998 and 1999. In total, the Russian economy is now backed with $22.6 billion in loans intended to stave off further economic crisis, prop up the ruble, and steady shaky international markets. In response, Russia agreed to reform its economy by lowering tax rates, implement laws to stimulate investment, and modernize budget procedures, including the collection of taxes. World Bank and International Monetary Fund officials acknowledged that the combined bailout package was endorsed by Western investors and governments, including the Clinton Administration.|
14|The Dow Jones industrial average of stocks on the New York Stock Exchange pushes to another record high, closing up 142.64 points at 9,238.85. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index gains 12.66 to close at 1,177.85. The NASDAQ composite index hits 1,972.21. The gains are attributed to higher than expected corporate earnings.|
15|Health officials in Dallas declare a state of emergency due to a heat wave that has pushed temperatures to above 100 degrees Fahrenheit (38 degrees Celsius) for 10 straight days. So far in 1998, temperatures in Dallas topped 100 degrees Fahrenheit on 23 days, and 16 deaths were attributed to the heat, which climbed to 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) on July 10, breaking local records.|
16|A federal appeals court in Washington, D.C., rejects an attempt by the Clinton Administration to block the grand jury testimony of Secret Service officials about their knowledge of President Bill Clinton's relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former student intern at the White House. Independent council Kenneth Starr has implied that President Clinton may have broken his oath to faithfully execute the office of the president of the United States by suggesting to Lewinsky that she lie under oath about the nature of their relationship.|
17|The remains of the last czar of Russia, Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandria, and three of their five children are buried beside those of his ancestors in Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg, the Russian capital during much of the 300 years of the Romanov dynasty. The remains were authenticated by DNA testing, conducted by British and American scientists. The bodies of two of the czar's children, Grand Duke Alexei and Grand Duchess Marie, have never been found. Nicholas and his family were shot on July 17, 1918, by order of the leader of the Communist Revolution, V. I. Lenin.|
17|Three tidal waves (tsunamis), the last and largest estimated to be 33 feet (10 meters) high, crash into Papua New Guinea's northern coast, killing an estimated 2,000 people. Entire villages are wiped out, leaving thousands of survivors without food or shelter. The walls of water were triggered by two earthquakes, 20 minutes apart, centered approximately 12 miles (19 kilometers) offshore. The quakes had magnitudes of 7 and 5.7.|
18|President Bill Clinton announces that the U.S. government will spend some $250 million to buy 80 million bushels of wheat, in an attempt to push up prices and aid American farmers. Wheat was currently selling at approximately $2.75 a bushel, which is down sharply from one year ago.|
19|Russian President Boris Yeltsin issues decrees aimed at reforming the Russian economy. The decrees deregulate the export of precious metals, regulate the production and sales of alcohol, and quadruple taxes on most land. Observers believe the decrees were mandated by the International Monetary Fund as a condition for providing more than $22 billion in loans, which Yeltsin desperately needs to prop up markets and the Russian currency.|
20|General Abdulsalam Abubakar, president of Nigeria, declares in a televised speech that presidential elections will be held in the next three months, and that power will be handed to a civilian government on May 29, 1999. The president also announced that all political prisoners incarcerated during the five-year rule of General Sani Abacha, who died in June, would be released immediately. Observers interpreted the speech as a stunning condemnation of Abacha's ruthless dictatorship, which left one of Africa's wealthiest nations in a state of economic collapse.|
21|Alan B. Shepard, Jr., first American astronaut to fly in space and one of only 12 astronauts to have walked on the moon, dies at age 74.|
21|A 700-foot (213-meter) construction elevator tower buckles and collapses at approximately the 22nd-floor level of the Conde Nast Headquarters under construction in New York City's Times Square. Tons of steel scaffolding rains into the streets below and through the roof of a nearby hotel, killing an elderly resident. Hundreds of residents and workers are evacuated, and Times Square is closed to all traffic.|
22|Biologists at the University of Hawaii, Ryuzo Yanagimachi and Teruhiko Wakayama, report that they have successfully cloned dozens of mice and have cloned mice from animals that were themselves clones. The announcement shatters the belief common among many biologists that mice were impossible to clone because of the extraordinary speed with which the mouse embryo develops.|
23|Clinton Administration spokesperson Michael McCurry confirms that Iran on July 22 successfully tested a medium-range missile capable of flying approximately 800 miles (1,287 kilometers). The weapon's range includes all of Israel and Saudi Arabia, changing the balance of power in the Middle East. According to McCurry, U.S. intelligence agencies believe the Iranians purchased the missile from North Korea.|
24|A gun battle takes place inside the U.S. Capitol, in Washington, D.C., when a 41-year-old man opens fire with a revolver. In an exchange of gunfire with the gunman, two Capitol police officers were killed and a tourist wounded before the gunman was subdued.|
24|The foreign minister of Japan, Keizo Obuchi, is named president of the ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), ensuring that he will be Japan's next prime minister. Obuchi, who has no record of bold leadership, was faced with an ever-worsening national economy. Backed by ruling party elders, Obuchi's nomination was openly opposed by a majority of LDP members as well as by the public. In July, the Japanese people's expressed their anger with the current government by taking away LDP's control of the upper house, triggering the downfall of Prime Minister Hashimoto's government.|
25|Vice President of the United Auto Workers Richard Shoemaker announces that General Motors (GM) has agreed to return diemaking equipment to a GM plant in Flint, Michigan. The plant is one of two in Flint where employees are on strike over General Motors plans to trim labor costs by moving certain production facilities, such as diemaking, out of the United States. The strike, which began in June, has affected nearly 150,000 workers in the United States, Canada, and Mexico and resulted in the shutdown of many of GM's North American assembly and parts plants.|
26|More than 50 crosses appear outside the walls of Auschwitz, the World War II (1939-1945) Nazi German concentration camp and extermination center near what is now Oswiecim, Poland. Observers believe the crosses to be part of a campaign by a group of Polish Roman Catholics claiming the right to maintain Christian symbols at a place where Christians as well as Jews were murdered. Jewish groups claim that Auschwitz, now a museum maintained by the Polish government, is the world's largest Jewish cemetery and should not, therefore, reflect non-Jewish faiths. More than 1 million people, most of whom were Jewish, died in the Auschwitz gas chambers between September 1941 and January 1945.|
27|Russian stock prices decline by 9.7 percent after falling 17 percent during the week of July 19. The losses plunged the value of Russian stocks back to where they were before the International Monetary Fund (IMF) boosted markets on July 13 by guaranteeing Russia a total of $22.6 billion in loans. On July 25, the Russian government announced that in order to raise additional funds it would sell part of its controlling interest in Gazprom, the world's largest natural-gas company and Russia's single greatest economic asset.|
28|Independent Council Kenneth Starr announces that he has granted Monica Lewinsky, a former student intern at the White House, complete immunity from federal prosecution in exchange for her promise to testify before a grand jury about the nature of her relationship with President Bill Clinton. Starr claism that she has also promised to testify that the president instructed her to lie about the relationship in a sworn affidavit.|
29|American economists with the Clinton Administration, the U.S. Treasury, and the Federal Reserve system concluded that the Japanese banking crisis is far worse than the Japanese government has acknowledged. The crisis is rooted in massive levels of bad debt resulting from loans made by Japanese banks in the 1980's, that remain unpaid. While Japan acknowledged that its banks hold some $500 billion in bad debts, American economists concluded that the actual figure is twice that amount or $1 trillion, a figure that is nearly 25 percent of Japan's current gross domestic product (the value of all the goods and services produced in a given year).|
29|The International Red Cross warns that massive flooding of the Yangtze River has resulted in the widespread contamination of drinking water in three provinces--Hunan, Hubei, and Jiangxi. Asaa result, millions of Chinese were exposed to a variety of diseases and intestinal ailments. Cresting for the third time in less than a month, the Yangtze reached its highest level in 44 years on July 27. Weeks of flooding has left at least people 2,500 dead.|
30|Keizo Obuchi becomes prime minister of Japan, the sixth person to hold the office since 1992. With Japan's economy in recession and its banking system in crisis, Obuchi faced so many problems that members of his own Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), predict that it is unlikely that he will hold office for more than a few weeks. Obuchi's premiership, backed by ruling party elders, was openly opposed by a majority of LDP members and appeared to lack public confidence.|
31|A spokesperson for the U.S. Commerce Department announces that the growth of the U.S. economy slowed substantially between the first and second quarters of 1998. U.S. gross domestic product (the value of all the goods and services produced in a given year) grew at an annual rate of 1.4 percent during April, May, and June 1998, compared with 5.5 percent in January, February, and March. The slowdown was attributed in part to the economic recession in Asia.|
