01|A chartered Bashkirian Airlines jet with 52 Russian school children enroute from Moscow to Spain collides with a Boeing 757 cargo plane above Lake Constance, which forms part of Germany's border with Austria and Switzerland. All 69 passengers and crew members aboard the Tupolev Tu-154 jet and the 2 crew members flying the cargo plane are killed.|
02|The crew of a U.S. AC-130 gunship accidentally targets a group of Afghan civilians in an area approximately 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Qandahar. Mistaking the fire of guns being shot off in celebration for anti-aircraft fire, the crew attacks a wedding party, killing up to 40 people, including 25 members of one family, and wounding at least 100 others.|
02|Pakistani officials announce that they have evidence that the al-Qa'ida terrorist network financed the June 14 car bombing of the U.S. consulate in Karachi that killed at least 12 people.|
02|Arab societies are undermined by a lack of political freedom, repression of women, and intellectual isolation, report a panel of Arab intellectuals in a study commissioned by the United Nations and the Arab Fund for Economic and Social Development. The authors of the Arab Human Development Report 2002 note that the per capita income in Arab countries has fallen to a level just above that of sub-Saharan Africa. They also note that productivity in Arab countries is declining and research and development is nonexistent. According to the report, more than half of all Arab women are illiterate. The report, prepared by a team of nearly 30 authorities in various fields, covers 22 Arab countries with a total population of 280 million people.|
03|Texas Governor Rick Perry declares parts of central Texas disaster areas as heavy rains continue to cause massive flooding that has swept away houses and caused the deaths of at least three people. Officials with the National Weather Service estimate that the storm, which began on June 29, has dumped a record 16 inches (40 centimeters) of rain on San Antonio, which typically receives an average of 2 inches (5 centimeters) in July.|
04|An Egyptian immigrant living in Irvine, California, opens fire near the El Al Airline ticket counter at Los Angeles International Airport, killing two people before he is shot and killed by El Al security guards. El Al is the Israeli national airline. The gunman, Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, was armed with two handguns and a knife. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation claim that Hadayet appears not to have been connected to any known terrorist organization.|
04|Steve Fossett, a 58-year-old Chicago businessman and adventurer, lands his "Spirit of Freedom" balloon in Australia after becoming the first person to successfully circumnavigate the world in a balloon. Fossett flew nearly 19,500 miles (31,380 kilometers) to complete the 14-day trip around the Southern Hemisphere.|
05|U.S. President George W. Bush declares 10 counties in central Texas disaster areas due to massive flooding caused by as much as 24 inches (60 centimeters) of rain in five days. Water from Canyon Lake spilling over Canyon Dam, 30 miles (48 kilometers) northeast of San Antonio, forces residents along the Guadalupe and Comal rivers to evacuate. State authorities believe at least 1,500 people are stranded northwest of San Antonio in various parts of Bandera County, including the city of Bandera, which became isolated when the Medina River overflowed its banks.|
05|The U.S. employment rate climbs to 5.|percent in June from 5.8 percent in May, report officials with the U.S. Department of Labor.|
05|At least 30 people are killed when a bomb explodes in a crowded market in Larba, Algeria, 15 miles (25 kilometers) south of Algiers, the capital, on the 40th anniversary of Algeria's independence from French rule. The explosion takes place three days after an Algerian general declared victory over the Islamic militants who have attempted to overthrow the government since 1992.|
06|A senior member of Afghanistan's new government is assassinated as he leaves his office in Kabul, the capital. Two gunmen wielding automatic weapons riddle Vice President Hajji Abdul Qadir's car with as many as 36 bullets, killing him and his driver. Qadir, a powerful warlord from eastern Afghanistan, was one of the few ethnic Pashtuns willing to join President Hamid Karzai's government. While the Pashtuns constitute Afghanistan's largest ethnic group, Karzai's government is dominated by Tajiks, whose Northern Alliance did most of the fighting against the Taliban regime.|
06|Serena Williams of the United States takes her first Wimbledon title and her third Grand Slam tennis championship by beating her sister, Venus Williams, 7-6 (4), 6-3 at the All-England Lawn Tennis Club in Wimbledon, England.|
06|At least 12 inches (30 centimeters) of rain falls in less than 24 hours in parts of west Texas, an area that normally receives no more than 24 inches (60 centimeters) of rain in a year.|
07|Australian Lleyton Hewitt wins the men's Wimbledon championship, defeating David Nalbandian of Argentina 6-1, 6-3, 6-2 in what tennis experts describe as the most lopsided Wimbledon final in 18 years.|
07|Coal dust ignites deep within a mine in the town of Ukrainsk in eastern Ukraine, killing at least 35 miners. More than 115 miners died in job-related accidents in Ukraine in the first six months of 2002.|
07|Smoke from about 45 forest fires burning out of control in northern Quebec, Canada, spreads over New England and the mid-Atlantic United States, prompting health officials to warn people with respiratory problems to stay indoors. Provincial authorities in Quebec estimate that approximately 100,000 acres (40,470 hectares) of forest has burned since the fires were started by a lightening storm on July 2.|
07|AIDS will kill 68 million people in the next 20 years, more than triple the number who died in the first 20 years of the epidemic, report scientists at the opening of the 14th International AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain. The authors of the United Nations' first long-range AIDS forecast warn that the epidemic is still in its early stages and that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, is spreading at an alarming rate. The experts predict that the number of Russians infected with HIV will double annually for the next 10 years and that the number of infected Chinese will climb from 1.5 million in 2002 to 10 million by 2010. They note that in some parts of sub-Saharan Africa, where as much as one third of all adults are infected, life expectancy has dropped below the age of 40 for the first time since 1950.|
08|The pilots of the chartered Bashkirian Airlines jet and the Boeing 757 cargo plane that collided over southern Germany on July 1 were ordered by a Swiss air traffic controller to descend at the same time, reveal officials with the German Federal Agency for the Investigation of Air Accidents. The orders placed the two aircraft on a collision coarse that resulted in the deaths of 71 people, including 52 Russian school children on their way to Spain for a school holiday. Data released by the agency show that the automated collision-avoidance systems aboard the planes were communicating as designed and that the accident would have been avoided if the Russian pilot had ignored the orders of the Swiss controller. Investigators also learned that air traffic controllers in Germany were aware of the impending collision and tried unsuccessfully to warn the Swiss controllers responsible for the planes.|
08|Bernard J. Ebbers, former chief executive of WorldCom, the Mississippi-based telecommunications company, invokes his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination and refuses to testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Financial Services Committee. Ebbers, who left WorldCom in April when it was disclosed that he had borrowed $40 million in company funds, does inform committee members that he did nothing wrong as head of the company. WorldCom's former chief financial officer (CFO), Scott D. Sullivan, also refuses to testify. Sullivan was dismissed as CFO in June just prior to the announcement that executives had used illegal accounting practices to hide approximately $4 billion in losses.|
08|The state of Michigan takes control of the city government of Flint, Michigan, which is nearly $40 million in debt. City officials revealed earlier in 2002 that municipal debt had doubled between June 2001 and June 2002. With a population of 125,000 people, Flint is the largest U.S. municipality ever to be taken over by a state.|
09|Members of China's Falun Gong spiritual movement jammed one of China's primary television satellites in June, admit government officials in Beijing, the capital. Followers of the banned movement disrupted national and provincial television transmissions between June 23 and June 30 by bombarding the satellite with illegal signals. The disruptions forced China's president, Jiang Zemin, to cancel a speech that was to be broadcast live nationwide. Experts on Chinese domestic affairs describe the incident as a highly sophisticated challenge to the Communist Party's control over China's media carried out by a group that has survived three years of government persecution.|
09|U.S. Senators Tom Daschle (D., South Dakota) and John McCain (R., Arizona) call for the resignation of Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chairman Harvey Pitt. McCain accuses Pitt of being "slow and tepid in addressing accounting abuses" among U.S. corporations. Daschle notes that Pitt told business leaders shortly after being appointed SEC chairman in 2001 that the commission had become too antagonistic toward the accounting profession and that the industry should expect a "kinder, gentler" SEC under his leadership. U.S. accounting firms subsequently came under intense criticism when a series of questionable accounting practices were revealed with the collapse of Enron, the failed Houston-based energy trading company, and WorldCom, a Mississippi-based telecommunications company.|
09|President George W. Bush announces the creation of a special task force to investigate questionable corporate accounting practices. Speaking in New York City to a group of business and financial executives, the president accuses corporate America of failing to police itself and proposes increasing funding of the Securities and Exchange Commission in order to expose corporate corruption.|
09|The U.S. Senate, in a 60 to 39 vote, approves legislation establishing a nuclear waste repository 1,000 feet (305 meters) under Yucca Mountain, which is located 90 miles (145 kilometers) northwest of Las Vegas. The legislation, already approved by the House of Representatives and endorsed by President George W. Bush, provides for a site capable of containing as much as 77,000 tons (86,240 short tons) of high-level radioactive waste. The waste is to be transported to Nevada by truck or by train from more than 100 civilian and military nuclear reactors, most of which are east of the Mississippi River. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission must issue a license to the U.S. Department of Energy before the facility can be created.|
10|More than 13 million children worldwide have been orphaned by AIDS since 1991, report scientists at the 14th international AIDS Conference in Barcelona, Spain. More than 10 million of the total live in sub-Saharan Africa. The report, prepared by UNAIDS, an alliance of six United Nations agencies fighting HIV and AIDS, defines an orphan as a child under the age of 15 who had lost one or both parents. The author, UN Undersecretary General Peter Piot, predicts that the number of children orphaned by AIDS worldwide will double to nearly 27 million by 2010.|
10|A frequently performed knee operation, arthroscopic surgery, used to treat pain and stiffness from osteoarthritis is ineffective, concludes scientists who conducted a study on the procedure at the Houston Veterans Administration (VA) Center and at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. Arthroscopic surgery involves inserting a thin instrument known as an arthroscope in the knee. The instrument allows surgeons to see the joint, from which they shave rough areas of cartilage. This is flushed out with other debris. The VA and Baylor research scientists discovered that people who underwent a sham operation felt just as much relief from pain and improvement in joint function as people who underwent the real operation. The head of the study notes that the "entire driving force behind this . . . is the placebo affect." Physicians annually perform arthroscopic surgeries for osteoarthritis on some 225,000 Americans. The cost to Medicare, the VA, and private insurance companies exceeds $1 billion annually.|
11|An estimated 600,000 Venezuelans demonstrate through the streets of Caracas, the capital, demanding the ouster of President Hugo Chavez. Chavez was driven from power on April 12 but restored to the presidency two days later when the military coup (overthrow) that ousted him collapsed under pressure from the country's rank-and-file soldiers and from the poor, who form a large majority in Venezuela.|
11|The Italian parliament passes legislation that allows male members of Italy's royal family, the House of Savoy, to enter Italy for the first time in 56 years. The legislation lifts a constitutional ban intended to punish the family for its support of the Italian dictator Benito Mussolini. Mussolini controlled Italy from the 1920's through much of World War II (1939-1945). Italy's last king, Umberto II, was forced from the throne in 1946 when the Italian people voted to make the country a republic.|
12|The Dow Jones industrial average of stock prices of 30 leading U.S. corporations listed on the New York Stock Exchange closes the week down 694.97 points, a drop of more than 7 percent and the Dow's worst weekly performance on record.|
12|A spokesperson for the Bush administration announces that officials expect the federal government to post a deficit of $165 billion this fiscal year, a 56 percent increase over earlier projections.|
12|The discovery of the oldest known skull of a hominid (human ancestors and their relatives) is reported by a team of scientists led by paleontologist Michel Brunet of the University of Poitiers in France. The team gave the name Sahelanthropus tchadensis to the fossilized skull, which was discovered with pieces of a lower jaw and several teeth in the central African nation of Chad. The skull has an apelike braincase but a large brow ridge and a short face, characteristics seen in the genus Homo (the group in which modern humans belong). The paleontologists estimate it lived about 7 million years ago. Brunet suggests that the characteristics of S. tchadensis indicate that it was at the beginning of human lineage. This implies that the evolutionary split between human and ape ancestors occurred before S. tchadensis lived. Many scientists previously had thought that human lineage split from the ape lineage about 6 million years ago.|
12|The Superior Court of Ontario, Canada, rules in a 3-0 decision that Ontario's provincial government must recognize the rights of gay men and lesbian women to marry people of their own sex. Citing Canada's Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which prohibits discrimination, the court also rules that Canada's Parliament must enact legislation extending marriage rights to same-sex couples. Provincial and federal authorities have 15 days in which to appeal the decisions to a higher court.|
13|Islamic militants, disguised as Hindu holy men, kill 25 Hindus, mostly women and children, in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. At least 30 other people are wounded in the attack in which eight militants lobbed three or four grenades into a shanty town outside the city of Jammu before opening fire on the residents.|
14|Documents submitted by WorldCom to the House Energy and Commerce Committee reveal that WorldCom employees alerted the firm's auditor, Chicago-based accounting company Arthur Andersen, two years ago that questionable entries existed in the telecommunication company's accounts. WorldCom was using irregular accounting practices to inflate earnings reports and keep stock prices high as early as spring 2000. Both WorldCom and Arthur Andersen executives claim they knew nothing about the irregularities until WorldCom announced in June 2002 that nearly $4 billion in loses had been hidden through various illegal accounting practices.|
15|A late afternoon rally of nearly 400 points on the New York Stock Exchange nearly offsets an earlier dive that pulled the Dow Jones industrial average down 439.66 points. Economic analysts suggest that prices rose as investors began picking up bargain stocks whose prices had fallen below actual value.|
15|The value of the euro, the common currency of 12 of 15 European Union nations, edges past the U.S. dollar for the first time since the euro was introduced more than two years ago. Financial experts point out that the raise in the euro reflects a decline in the value of the U.S. dollar, battered by a lack of investor confidence in the U.S. economy.|
15|John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, avoids life in prison by pleading guilty to 2 counts of a 10-count indictment that he conspired with the Taliban to kill Americans. The 21-year-old Lindh, who grew up in Marin County, California, outside San Francisco, is to serve 20 years without parole for assisting the Taliban and for being armed with explosives. He also agrees to cooperate with the U.S. authorities in their investigation of the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network and other security threats. U.S. Army forces captured Lindh, a convert to Islam, in late 2001 in Afghanistan, where he was fighting alongside radical Muslims for the Taliban.|
16|Palestinian militants bomb an armored Israeli bus on a road outside Emmanuel, a largely ultra-Orthodox settlement of about 3,000 people, between Nablus and Qalqilya on the West Bank. Gunmen shoot at the passengers as they attempt to flee the damaged bus, killing 8 Israeli civilians and wounding 12 others. The attackers, dressed in Israel army uniforms, escape in the direction of Nablus.|
16|More than 50 people are injured in widespread clashes between police and antigovernment demonstrators in Paraguay. In Ciudad del Este, a trading center some 200 miles (320 kilometers) east of Asuncion, the capital, 2 people are killed and 17 others injured in what government officials describe as the most violent of the demonstrations, which resulted in the destruction of more than $1 million in property. Experts on Paraguay's domestic situation suggest that the public has become disenchanted with Gonzalez Macchi's government, which has been unable to pull the country back from an economic decline tied to recessions in Argentina and Brazil.|
16|Prime Minister Bulent Ecevit of Turkey agrees to hold early parliamentary elections in November in response to massive defections from his own Democratic Left Party. The Democratic Left has been reduced from the largest to the smallest party in the coalition government as nearly half its members in parliament have switched allegiances. Ecevit's government is crippled by Turkey's worst recession in nearly 50 years and by arguments over economic reforms that are a condition for joining the European Union.|
17|The Democratic-led U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee schedules hearings for early August on President George W. Bush's policy toward Iraq and the removal of Iraqi President Saddam Hussein from power. The Republican-controlled House International Relations Committee plans similar hearings for later in August. The hearings are set despite a Bush administration announcement that no one from the U.S. Department of Defense is likely to take part because military plans for Iraq must remain secret.|
18|Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, tells U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema that he is a member of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida terrorist network and that he is guilty of participating in the planning of the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Judge Brinkema informs Moussaoui that he will not necessarily escape the death penalty by pleading guilty and orders him to think about his plea over the next week.|
18|More than 600 immigrants have been jailed and subjected to secret hearings since the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, reports a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Justice. According to Justice Department statistics, some 1,200 people, immigrants as well as U.S. citizens, have been detained since September 11 by various federal agencies, including the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). INS officials currently have 81 people in custody in connection with the terrorist attacks.|
18|Secretary Thomas White, who resigned as vice chairman of Enron Energy Services to become the civilian head of the U.S. Army in 2001, tells members of the Senate Commerce Committee that he was unaware that traders in his division of the company were attempting to manipulate energy prices during the California energy crisis of 2000 and 2001. According to Enron lawyers, Enron traders made enormous profits by carrying out various transactions that drove up electricity prices in California, deepening the crisis. Former Enron employees also allege that White's division used questionable accounting measures to overstate profits by millions of dollars. White tells Senator Barbara Boxer (D., California) that the 77 telephone calls he made from his office in Washington, D.C., to Enron employees in Houston in late 2001 had nothing to do with the $12 million in Enron stock he sold prior to the company's bankruptcy in December 2001.|
19|The Dow Jones industrial average of stock prices of 30 leading U.S. corporations on the New York Stock Exchange falls 390 points, the index's largest one-day point drop in 2002 and the seventh biggest decline in history. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index, which accounts for approximately 80 percent of the market value of all stocks listed on the New York exchange, drops 33.80 points, or 3.8 percent. The Nasdaq electronic stock market, which lists nearly 5,000 stocks, including many high-technology companies, declines by 37.80 points, or 2.8 percent.|
20|Officials with the George W. Bush administration direct lawyers with the Department of Justice and the Department of Defense to review a law that restricts the use of U.S. Army personnel in domestic law enforcement. The 1878 law, known as Posse Comitatus (force of the country), makes it illegal for the U.S. Army, Navy, or Marine Corp to function as a domestic police force. Congress passed the law in 1878 in response to what many people regarded as the excessive force used by federal troops in former Confederate states occupied during the Reconstruction period following the Civil War (1861-1865). Administration officials suggest that the existing law may need to be changed to allow the military authority to operate within the borders of the United States in order to protect the country from terrorist attack.|
20|At least 30 people are killed in a fire in a nightclub in Lima, Peru. The club was packed with as many as 1,000 young partygoers, more than double the club's 400-person capacity. The fire, which killed several caged animals, including a lion and tiger, began when a pyrotechnic display ignited the ceiling above the disco dance floor.|
21|WorldCom Inc., a Mississippi-based telecommunications company, files for bankruptcy in Federal District Court in New York City. The bankruptcy, the largest in U.S. history, places more than $100 billion in assets, including long-distance giant MCI, under the control of the banks and bond holders that financed the company's once spectacular growth. WorldCom was founded in 1983 as LDDS Communications and grew quickly into the second largest U.S. long distance company and the largest handler of Internet data. In 1999, at the height of the telecommunication and technology boom, the value of WorldCom stock reached $60 a share. The price dropped to pennies when company officials disclosed in late June 2002 that illegal accounting practices had been used to disguise nearly $4 billion in losses over the previous 15 months.|
22|A group of about 45 U.S. soldiers are moving into the presidential palace in Kabul, Afghanistan's capital, to provide security for President Hamid Karzai, at Karzai's request. The move, according to U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, underscores U.S. commitment to Karzai's leadership in Afghanistan's transitional government. Rumsfeld notes that while he is unaware of any specific threats against Karzai, Afghanistan remains an unstable country "where people get killed." Assassins gunned down one of Karzai's vice presidents, Hajji Abdul Qadir, on July 6.|
22|The Dow Jones industrial average of stock prices of 30 leading U.S. corporations on the New York Stock Exchange declines below 8,000 for the first time in nearly four years. The index falls 234.68 points to close at 7,784.58, the market's third double-digit decline in three consecutive trading sessions. The broader Standard & Poor's index of 550 stocks on the New York exchange drops 3.3 percent. The Nasdaq composite index, which includes many technology stocks, closes down 2.8 percent.|
22|The commander of the military wing of the Palestinian militant group Hamas dies in an Israeli air raid. Sheik Salah Shehada is among 15 people, including nine children, killed when an Israeli fighter plane dropped a bomb weighing 1 ton (0.|metric tons) into Shehada's residence in Gaza City on the Gaza Strip. Hamas vows it will retaliate.|
23|A fire in California's Sequoia National Forest grows to more than 75 square miles (195 square kilometers), threatening some of the world's oldest trees. The fire, in the southern mountainous region of the forest, some 150 miles (240 kilometers) north of Los Angeles, threatens both the Cunningham and Pack Saddle groves. Winds currently are blowing the fire away from the Trail of a Hundred Giants, the oldest and largest of the sequoias. An official with the United States Forest Service warns that while sequoia bark is naturally fire-resistant and the ancient trees have withstood countless numbers of fires, anything could happen because of highly volatile conditions. Past efforts to prevent fires have allowed trees around the tall sequoias to grow higher and resulted in a buildup of natural litter and underbrush on the forest floor. This is producing a hotter, higher fire in a forest that is extremely dry due to drought.|
24|The Dow Jones industrial average of stock prices of 30 leading U.S. corporations on the New York Stock Exchange surges up 488.95 points, the average's biggest one-day rally in 15 years. Volume on the exchange hits a record 2.77 billion shares.|
24|John J. Rigas, founder of Adelphia Communications, and two of his sons are arrested for looting the Coudersport, Pennsylvania-based cable television company. Federal prosecutors allege that the Rigases borrowed as much as $66 million in company money and improperly used company funds to finance personal stock purchases, build a $13-million golf course, and pay for luxury vacations. All three men resigned from Adelphia in May after it was revealed that the family had taken out $2.3 billion in bank loans that were guaranteed by Adelphia but never recorded on the company's books. That disclosure led the price of Adelphia's stock to collapse, forcing one of the largest U.S. cable operators, with 15,000 employees, into bankruptcy in June with $18.6 billion of debt.|
25|The U.S. Senate votes 99-0 and the House of Representatives votes 423-3 to approve a corporate reform bill that stiffens penalties for corporate fraud. The legislation institutes longer prison terms and bigger fines for fraud and for illegal document shredding. It establishes an independent board to oversee the accounting industry, and it restricts the amount of consulting work an accounting firm can perform for a company that the firm also audits. The bill prohibits corporate directors and top executives from granting themselves personal loans from company funds. It also extends the length of time in which defrauded investors may bring lawsuits.|
25|Emergency crews are drilling an escape shaft 240 feet (73 meters) through solid rock to rescue nine coal miners trapped in the Quecreek Mine near Somerset, Pennsylvania, 60 miles (97 kilometers) southeast of Pittsburgh. The miners became trapped on July 24 when an estimated 50 million gallons (18 million liters) of water from an abandoned mine next door burst through the wall into which the miners were drilling. Engineers believe the men are huddled in an airpocket in a shaft about four feet (1.2 meters) high.|
26|Mud and rock slides in Nepal triggered by weeks of incessant rain have buried a number of villages on Himalayan mountainsides, killing at least 200 people, reports Nepal's Home Minister. Massive flooding in the Indian state of Bihar has caused the deaths of at least 7 people, including 20 people who drowned when two boats overturned on the surging Kosi and Gopalganj rivers. Floodwaters cover an estimated one third of Bangladesh, killing more than 80 people and displacing some 3 million others.|
27|At least 83 people are killed and 116 others wounded when a Ukrainian jet fighter, swooping low during an air show at the Sknyliv airfield in the city of Lviv in western Ukraine, plows through a crowd of spectators and explodes. The jet's two pilots survive by ejecting from the Russian-built Sukhoi 27 seconds before one wing clipped the airport tarmac.|
28|A team of more than 100 emergency workers rescue all nine coal miners trapped for nearly 80 hours in the Quecreek Mine outside Somerset, Pennsylvania. The nine men are lifted in a narrow cage, one at a time, from the mine through an escape shaft that the rescue team drilled 240 feet (73 meters) through solid rock. None of the miners is seriously injured.|
28|Lance Armstrong of the United States wins his fourth consecutive Tour de France bicycle race, crossing the finish line on the Champs-Elysees in Paris with a margin of 7 minutes 17 seconds over Joseba Beloki of Spain.|
29|Stocks rally on the New York exchanges, sending the three major indices of stock values up by more than 5 percent. The composite index of stocks on the technology-rich Nasdaq exchange surges 73.13 points, or 5.8 percent. Standard & Poor's index of stock prices of 500 corporations traded on the New York Stock Exchange climbs 46.12 points, or 5.4 percent. The Dow Jones industrial average of 30 leading U.S. corporations on the New York exchange jumps 447 points, or 5.4 percent. In the previous four market sessions, the Dow Jones average rose more than 1,000 points, a gain of 13 percent, the biggest rally for the Dow since 1933.|
30|Air strikes alone can not destroy all of Iraq's hidden weapons of mass destruction, announces U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The secretary points out that the introduction of ground forces would be necessary to seek out and destroy Iraqi weapons stored deep underground, weapons made in factories that also make legitimate commercial products, and mobile biological weapons laboratories.|
30|The presidents of Congo (Kinshasa) and Rwanda, meeting in Pretoria, South Africa, sign a treaty designed to end four years of armed conflict. Congo and Rwanda have been at war since mid-1998, when Rwanda invaded Congo in an attempt to protect itself from marauding rebels based in Congo. Under the peace agreement, President Joseph Kabila of Congo promises to allow United Nations troops to disarm Rwandan Hutu rebels in areas along its border with Rwanda. In return, President Paul Kagame of Rwanda agrees to pull his troops out of Congo. The conflict, which has been described as Africa's World War, pitted the government of Congo, backed by Angolan, Namibian, and Zimbabwean forces, against rebel factions supported by Rwanda and Uganda. At least 2 million people died in the war.|
31|A powerful bomb, concealed in a bag left on a restaurant table by Islamic militants, tears apart a cafeteria in the student center at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Seven people are killed, including five Americans. At least 80 other people, primarily students, are wounded. Both Arabs and Israelis attend Hebrew University, which recruits large numbers of American students. The bombing is the second in Jerusalem in two days. On July 30, a suicide bomber killed himself in a falafel stand, seriously wounding five Israelis. The Islamic militant group Hamas claims responsibility for both bombings, describing them as acts of revenge for an Israeli air attack in Gaza City on July 22. That attack killed a Hamas military commander and 14 other Palestinians, including |children.|
31|Growth in the U.S. economy slowed sharply in the second quarter of the year, reports the U.S. Department of Commerce. The economy expanded at a rate of just 1.1 percent in the period from April through June. Commerce officials also report that the recession in 2001 was longer and deeper than originally estimated. The economy shrank throughout the first three quarters of 2001, rather than only during the July through September period, as economists originally believed.|
