01|The U.S. Senate votes 64 to 34 to grant President George W. Bush or his successor trade promotion authority for a period of five years. While the Senate retains its right to ratify or veto all trade agreements, the bill guarantees that the president can negotiate trade deals without fear that the Senate will interfere with the details. The House of Representatives passed the so-called "fast-track" trade bill in July.|
01|Federal authorities arrest two former executives of WorldCom, the bankrupt Mississippi-based telecommunications company. Scott D. Sullivan, WorldCom's former chief financial officer, and David F. Myers, the former controller, are accused of using illegal accounting procedures to artificially inflate WorldCom earnings by hiding nearly $4 billion in losses over a 15-month period. According to federal prosecutors, the two men perpetrated the fraud in order to keep the price of WorldCom stock from falling when the company was losing money. Sullivan pocketed millions of dollars through the sale of stock options during the same period.|
02|Four people in Louisiana have died of West Nile virus and at least 58 other residents of the state have been infected, announce health officials in Baton Rouge, the capital. In response, Louisiana Governor Mike Foster declares a state of emergency and asks the federal government for $3 million to $5 million for mosquito control. West Nile virus is spread to human beings by mosquitoes that have bitten migratory birds who carry the virus. Some infected people develop flulike symptoms and, more rarely, encephalitis, a potentially fatal swelling of the brain. Health officials describe the outbreak in Louisiana as the worst in the United States since seven New Yorkers died in 1999, when the virus was first detected in North America.|
03|Iranian and Saudi leaders, meeting in Iran's capital, Tehran, announce that their governments can not support a U.S. invasion of Iraq. President Mohammad Khatami of Iran and Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia urge Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein to avoid war with the United States by complying with United Nations (UN) resolutions and allowing UN weapons inspectors access to suspected weapon sites. Certain officials with the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush are advocating toppling Hussein on the grounds that he has stockpiled weapons of mass destruction.|
03|Floods have left at least 560 people dead in India, Nepal, and Bangladesh since the monsoon season began in June, report government officials in the three countries. The greatest death toll is in Nepal, where 269 people have died in torrential rains and mudslides. Approximately one-third of Bangladesh is under water, and at least 5 million people in northeast India have been displaced by the flooding. Indian officials also report that 10 districts in central India are suffering from severe drought.|
04|Officials with the George W. Bush administration announce that the United States is granting Uruguay $1.5 billion in short-term loans to deter a banking crisis triggered by a regional recession that began in Argentina in late 2001. The Uruguayan loan is the first made by the Bush administration to another nation. Economists suggest that the worsening financial situation in South America is forcing the administration to soften its stance against providing assistance to countries in economic crisis. As late as the week of July 28, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury Paul O'Neill remarked that financial assistance to Latin American countries was pointless because such money too often ended up in the hidden bank accounts of corrupt government officials.|
05|Israel places a total ban on Palestinian travel on the West Bank after a series of Palestinian attacks--two bombings and three shootings--left 14 people, Israeli and Palestinian, dead in a period of less than 24 hours on August 4 and 5. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer announces that even tighter restrictions on Palestinian movement are planned and that Israeli tanks are sealing off sections of the Gaza Strip. The wave of violence began when a suicide bomber detonated a powerful device on a crowded Israeli bus in northern Galilee. The Islamic militant group Hamas claims responsibility, describing the bombing as an act of revenge for an Israeli air attack in Gaza City on July 22.|
05|Islamic militants in Muree, Pakistan, shoot their way into a boarding school for the children of Christian missionaries. Muree is resort city in the Himalayan foothills about 35 miles (55 kilometers) north of Islamabad, the capital. The gunmen kill six Pakistani men, including two security guards and a retired teacher, before being stopped. None of the school's 150 students, all American, Australian, British, or European, are harmed, though authorities believe the foreign students were the actual target of the assault.|
05|Employees at the U.S. Department of Justice have lost track of nearly 800 weapons and 400 laptop computers, many of which had national security or sensitive law-enforcement information on their hard drives, reports the department's inspector general Glenn Fine. Fine notes that most of the missing weapons, which were lost between October 1999 and January 2002, belonged to Federal Bureau of Investigation agents or Immigration and Naturalization Service officials. Some of the missing weapons were recovered, having turned up during armed robbery investigations.|
05|The gun turret from the USS Monitor, an iron-clad Union warship from the U.S. Civil War (1861-1865), is raised 240 feet (73 meters) from the floor of the Atlantic Ocean 16 miles (25 kilometers) off Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. The massive turret weighs 150 tons (136 metric tons). The Monitor sank in a storm at sea on New Year's Eve 1862 months after making naval history battling the CSS Virginia (also known as the Merrimack) in the first duel of ironclad warships.|
06|Louisiana's Office of Public Health confirms that a fifth resident of the state has died from the mosquito-borne West Nile virus. Officials also announce that 14 additional cases of the disease have been diagnosed in Louisiana, bringing the total to 71. Mississippi, Texas, and Illinois health officials have reported 33 cases since late June.|
06|Argentina's unemployment rate hits 21.5 percent, the highest in the country's history. Economists claim that the economic crisis in Argentina has pulled Brazil, Paraguay, and Uruguay into recession and threatens the economies of Bolivia and Venezuela.|
07|Huge explosions rock downtown neighborhoods in Bogota, Colombia, as Alvaro Uribe is sworn in as president. The explosions, from mortar shells launched about 1 mile (1.6 kilometers) from the presidential palace, kill 14 people, wound more than 60 others, and trigger panic in the streets of the capital. Bogota police suspect that urban militias of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, the country's largest guerrilla group, are behind the attacks. Alvaro Uribe was elected on the promise that he would subdue Colombia's leftist guerrillas, which have waged war on the government for 38 years and currently control large areas of the countryside.|
08|WorldCom, the bankrupt Mississippi-based telecommunications company, announces the discovery of an additional $3.3 billion in accounting misstatements. The latest figure is on top of $3.8 billion in loses that had been hidden through various accounting practices, bringing the total to more than $7 billion. Economists estimate that WorldCom's restatement of earnings back to 1999 will reduce the reported value of the company from $100 billion to $50 billion. WorldCom assets include MCI Corp., the second largest U.S. long-distance telephone company, and much of the equipment that runs the Internet.|
08|Ten people, including four children, plunge into a shark tank at the Aquarium of the Americas in New Orleans when a catwalk suspended above the water collapses. All are rescued without injury after spending 15 minutes surrounded by a dozen sharks.|
08|The majority leader of the U.S. House of Representatives, Texas Republican Dick Armey, announces to the media that an unprovoked attack by the United States on Iraq would violate international law and undermine support for the U.S. war on terrorism. President George W. Bush has stated that one of his administration's primary goals is to remove Saddam Hussein from power, because of the threat of Iraqi chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons programs. President Bush has assured Congressional leaders that he will consult with them before launching an attack but has not promised to ask for a declaration of war.|
09|At least 60 percent of Zimbabwe's 2,900 white farmers ignore threats of fines or jail and defy President Robert Mugabe's order that all of the nation's white farmers must leave their land by August 9. International aid agencies predict that as many as 6.5 million Zimbabweans will face starvation by February due to drought and political mismanagement of the nation's agricultural system.|
09|The George W. Bush administration issues a directive that strips most protections for the privacy of medical records of U.S. citizens. Reversing a policy established during the administration of President Bill Clinton, the Bush directive allows information about the health of a patient to be distributed without his or her consent. It specifically allows physicians and hospitals to share records with health insurance companies, health maintenance organizations, marketing companies, and law-enforcement agencies. However, the measure prohibits physicians from sharing health information with a patient's employer without written approval from the patient.|
10|The Colombian Army launches a major attack on a paramilitary force in Antioquia province and kills or captures dozens of the right-wing militia known as Metro Block. The attack comes three days after the inauguration of Alvaro Uribe. Uribe, a former Antioquia governor, was elected president of Colombia on his promise to end a 38-year-old civil war.|
11|US Airways, the sixth-largest air carrier in the United States, files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of Virginia. The airline lost $249 million in the second quarter of 2002, its eighth consecutive quarterly loss. In addition, the company, which is based at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport in Arlington, Virginia, was crippled when that airport was shut down for weeks following the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. A U.S. Airways spokesperson confirms that the airline has provisional approval for a government-guaranteed loan of $900 million and wage concessions from its pilots and flight attendants. The U.S. commercial airlines have lost a combined $1.4 billion so far in 2002, primarily because of a downturn in business travel due to the recession.|
11|Renewed fighting in Congo (Kinshasa) is reported by a United Nations (UN) team assigned to keep the peace in that country, which has been torn by civil war. UN representatives discovered at least 90 victims, primarily women and children hacked to death with machetes, in northeast Congo, less than 30 miles (48 kilometers) from the Ugandan border. The latest violence involves rebels and ethnic group militias battling other ethnic militias backed by the Ugandan army. A peace treaty signed by the leaders of Congo (Kinshasa) and Rwanda on July 30 was to have ended the war that has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 2 million people.|
12|Flooding in central and eastern Europe produced by torrential rains during the week of August 4 has left at least 70 people dead, estimate European officials. The flooding extends from France, Germany, and Austria to Romania, Bulgaria, and southern Russia. Flash floods along Russia's Black Sea Coast killed 58 people and trapped thousands of summer tourists. In the Czech Republic, flooding in Prague, the capital, is the most severe in more than 110 years, with 50,000 residents evacuated from the city's historic center, which is under water. Prime Minister Vladimir Spidla placed half of the country under a state of emergency.|
13|Amtrak suspends its Acela high-speed train service, which carries passengers at speeds of up to 150 miles (241 kilometers) per hour between Boston, New York City, and Washington, D.C., after finding cracks in shock absorber assemblies. The shutdown affects nearly 10,000 passengers that ride Acela trains daily. Amtrak officials announce that the Acela will remain out of service until all cars can be repaired.|
14|Bankruptcies hit a new record high in the United States for the second year in a row, report officials with the Administrative Office of the U.S. Courts. During the 12-month period ending on June 30, 2002, 1.5 million bankruptcy cases were filed in U.S. courts, up 8.6 percent over the previous 12-month period. Individual bankruptcies totaled 1.47 million, up 8.5 percent. Business bankruptcies totaled 39,201, up 5.6 percent.|
14|German Army helicopters airlift hospital patients out of Dresden as a wall of water sweeps down the Elbe River from the Czech Republic into southern Germany. Torrential rains during the week of August 4 triggered massive flooding across Europe.|
14|The Supreme Court of Venezuela dismisses charges against four military officers who were accused of fomenting rebellion against the government of President Hugo Chavez. A military coup (overthrow) temporarily drove Chavez from office in April. The court's decision sparks violent protests in the streets of Caracas, the capital, by Chavez's supporters. At least two people are wounded in the melee.|
15|At least 900 people have died in floods in Nepal, northern India, and Bangladesh, government officials report. The flooding, which began with torrential monsoon rains in June, has displaced more than 25 million people.|
15|The director of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service, James Ziglar, tenders his resignation to President George W. Bush, who appointed Ziglar to the position in 2001. Ziglar became the object of widespread criticism when the agency revealed that it had renewed student visas for two of the terrorists who carried out the attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Political observers note that Ziglar, a former New York City stock broker with no administrative experience, was unable to balance the agency's competing missions to enforce immigration laws and provide service to immigrants.|
16|U.S. Army and Marine Corp officers and employees begin moving back into rebuilt work spaces in those portions of the Pentagon Building damaged on Sept. 11, 2001, in the terrorist attack on the U.S. Department of Defense headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Department officials expect to have 600 people working in the building's outer E-ring section by the first anniversary of the attack.|
16|Thousands of residents of Dresden, Germany, evacuate the city as the swollen Elbe River rises to a record-breaking 30 feet (9 meters), five times its normal depth. European officials confirm that at least 100 people have died in the flooding, which stretches from Germany to areas of Russia on the Black Sea.|
17|Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat is accused of moving million of dollars in Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) donations into his personal bank accounts. Jawad Ghussein, who served as secretary general of the Palestinian National Fund until 1996, claims to have documentation that Arafat transferred as much as $8 million a month into his own accounts. An official with the Israeli Army recently alleged that Arafat had amassed a personal fortune of $1.3 billion, primarily from donations to the PLO.|
18|The governments of Russia and Iraq announce plans to sign a new five-year, $40-billion economic cooperation agreement. The agreement ensures Russian-Iraqi cooperation in a variety of fields, including oil and electrical energy; irrigation; transportation; and the construction of chemical plants. Russian engineers built much of the modern infrastructure in Iraq, a long-time ally of the Soviet Union and Russia.|
18|Torrential rains in southwestern China trigger massive landslides that kill more than 50 people in remote Yanjin and Xinping provinces, report government officials in Beijing, the capital. At least 130 people in the country's central and western provinces have died during the past month in floods, landslides, and mudflows due to the severity of the rainy season.|
19|A huge Russian military transport helicopter crashes into a minefield in Chechnya, killing 116 of the 147 people aboard. Russian officials believe that the Mi-26 helicopter, which was designed to carry a maximum of 82 people, was downed by Chechen rebels with a Trela anti-aircraft missile launcher.|
20|German police commandos storm the Iraqi embassy in Berlin and arrest five armed men belonging to an Iraqi opposition group. The group occupied the embassy and held members of the Iraqi diplomatic mission captive for some five hours before the police raid. Officials in Baghdad, the Iraqi capital, characterized the five invaders as "mercenaries of Israel and the United States."|
20|Moscow police rescue 25 people from the rubble of a five-story apartment building that was nearly destroyed in an explosion that left eight people dead. Residents pulled from the rubble claim to have smelled gun powder before the blast, which police claim was of a magnitude similar to the series of apartment building bombings that killed more than 300 Russians in 1999. The Russian government attributed the 1999 bombings to Chechen rebels.|
21|A former Enron executive, Michael J. Kopper, pleads guilty to money laundering and conspiracy to commit wire fraud in U.S. District Court in Houston and tells a federal judge that he paid huge kickbacks to Enron's chief financial officer, Andrew S. Fastow. The alleged kickbacks came from funds Kopper received for managing three partnerships that Fastow set up to help Enron hide debt and increase profits. Kopper claims that Fastow and his friends and family stole at least $35 million through the partnerships, which contributed to the company's financial collapse in late 2001. As part of a plea bargain for a reduced prison sentence, Kopper agrees to turn over to the government the $12 million he obtained through the partnerships and to cooperate in the government's investigation into criminal activity among Enron executives. Legal experts suggest that Kopper's plea signals that federal prosecutors are building a case against other Enron officials by turning lower-level executives against their former superiors.|
21|President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan grants himself near-dictatorial powers through a series of amendments to the country's constitution. The new amendments allow Musharraf, who took power in Pakistan in a coup (overthrow) in 1999, to suspend the constitution at will, dissolve the parliament, and name new Supreme Court judges.|
21|Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien announces that he will not seek a fourth term and will leave office in February 2004. The prime minister notes that by stepping down, he hopes to heal party divisions brought about by recent challenges to his leadership.|
22|U.S. President George W. Bush excludes more than 175 imported steel products from the tariffs his administration imposed on imported steel in March. The new exclusions lift tariffs from more than 25 percent of all steel imports. The move is applauded by heads of U.S. companies that use steel products. They claim that the tariffs drove up the price of all steel and made it impossible to obtain specialty products not produced domestically. U.S. steel industry leaders and representatives of labor maintain that cheap imports endanger America's ailing steel industry.|
22|A ruling by the highly secretive U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) is formally challenged for the first time in the court's history when U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft appeals the court's refusal to grant the Department of Justice broad new powers to combat terrorism.. The court, which consists of a panel of 11 federal judges, reviews all government requests to conduct covert operations against suspected spies, terrorists, and other possible enemies of the United States. Its purpose is to prevent government abuse of the civil rights and privacy of U.S. citizens. In the ruling, the judges accused officials in the Justice Department, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), of misleading the court by providing erroneous information in more than 71 applications for search warrants and wiretaps during the last two years. The judges also allege that Justice Department and FBI officials improperly shared classified intelligence information with other government officials.|
22|Police in Portland, Oregon, use pepper spray to push back a crowd of more than 1,000 people taunting and jostling Republican donors as they attempt to enter a downtown hotel where President George W. Bush is attending a fund raiser. The protestors demonstrated against the administration's plans to relax environmental standards for logging and the possible war with Iraq.|
23|There is evidence that Mohamed Atta, the man suspected of leading the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, and two of his accomplices were at Al-Qa'ida training camps in Afghanistan from late 1999 to early 2000, announces the director of Germany's federal anticrime agency, the Bundeskriminalamt. The three men were enrolled in U.S. flight schools less than six months after leaving Afghanistan. German agents also uncovered evidence that establishes a clear link between Al-Qa'ida operatives and the bombing of a synagogue in Tunisia in April 2002 that killed 21 people.|
24|An estimated 1,000 people belonging to a variety of white supremacist, white separatist, and neo-Nazi organizations march through Washington, D.C., denouncing non-European immigration to the United States and President George W. Bush's support of Israel. In a counter demonstration, several hundred people describing themselves as anarchists and students for world peace chant "death to the Nazis.|"
25|More than 6.6 million Americans, 1 of every 32 U.S. adults, were in prison, jail, or on probation or parole in 2001, report officials with the U.S. Department of Justice. The U.S. prison population increased by 2.3 percent between 2000 and 2001 and by 3.6 percent between 1995 and 2001. Texas has the largest inmate population, followed by California.|
26|The Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Cincinnati, Ohio, rules that the U.S. government cannot conduct deportation cases in secret. The U.S. Department of Justice held hundreds of closed deportation hearings, primarily against Islamic men, in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Justice officials justified the secrecy on the grounds of national security, arguing that closed hearings keep terrorists from learning government strategy in the war on terrorism. The decision of the court's panel of three judges was made in response to a case filed by U.S. newspapers and a Michigan congressman that challenged the result of a secret deportation hearing against Rabbih Haddad. Haddad was a Michigan resident who headed an Islamic charity located in Bridgeview, Illinois. The government accused him of funneling money collected for charity to the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network and other terrorist organizations.|
27|Tax receipts into the U.S. treasury shrank by 6.6 percent during a 12-month period between 2001 and 2002, announce officials with the Congressional Budget Office (CBO). CBO analysts characterize the decline as the greatest in any single year since 1946, when taxes were cut following the end of World War II (1939-1945). In light of declining tax revenues, the CBO projection for a 10-year budget surplus is lowered from $5.6 trillion to $300 billion.|
28|Federal authorities in Detroit charge four Arab men with being members of the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network and with plotting attacks in the United States, Jordan, and Turkey. According to a U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson, the men belonged to an Al-Qa'ida cell in the Detroit area. Their primary mission was obtaining weapons and providing a support network of safe houses and mail drops for terrorists active in the United States. Three of the four men were employed at the Detroit Metropolitan Airport before they were arrested shortly after the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001.|
29|Israeli officials express regret that an Israeli tank attack on a Bedouin encampment in the Gaza Strip resulted in the deaths of four Palestinian civilians, including a 50-year-old woman and her two sons. According to Israeli officials, the attack was an attempt to stop the smuggling of weapons into the Gaza Strip. Israeli Defense Minister Binyamin Ben-Eliezer notes that he has ordered the army to investigate the incident.|
30|Major League Baseball players union representatives and team owners reach a four-year contract agreement just hours before a scheduled strike that threatened to end the 2002 baseball season. Per the agreement, each team is to contribute a percentage of its revenues to a common pool. The money is to be equally distributed among all 30 teams. Team owners also agree to pay a "luxury tax" to their league if their payrolls exceed a set amount. The minimum annual salary for players is to increase from $200,000 to $300,000 in 2003, and the players agree to be randomly tested for steroid use. National and American league representatives agree that no teams will be eliminated through the 2006 season.|
31|Officials in Germany announce that they will not provide prosecutors in the United States with evidence that German agents have uncovered linking Zacarias Moussaoui, the so-called 20th hijacker, to the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network. U.S. officials have charged Moussaoui with conspiracy to commit terrorism and the murder of federal employees in connection with the terrorist attacks on the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. German officials refuse to turn over the material unless they receive a guarantee from U.S. officials that use of the evidence will not lead to "a death sentence or an execution".|
