August 2005
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31 August 2005 (Wednesday)
- Update on Hurricane Katrina:
- The Federal government declares a public health emergency for the Gulf Coast of the United States and launches one of the largest search and rescue missions in history. (CBS Video) (AP via MyWay)
- New Orleans mayor Ray Nagin states that "hundreds...most likely, thousands" may be dead in his city. The death toll in Biloxi stands at 110. (AP via MyWay)
- At least 25,000 refugees, particularly those currently in shelters in Greater New Orleans including the Louisiana Superdome, will be moved to the Reliant Astrodome in Houston, Texas. (Yahoo! News)
- The United States will release oil from its Strategic Petroleum Reserve to help refineries whose oil supplies have been badly hit by Hurricane Katrina. (Yahoo! News) Some refineries along the gulf coast are offline and so fuel production is likely to be limited nonetheless
- Baghdad bridge stampede:
- More than 965 people were crushed to death or died in a stampede on the Al-Aaimmah bridge over the river Tigris in Baghdad on Wednesday when thousands of Shia Muslims began marching to a shrine to the Imam Musa al-Kadhim. The stampede appears to have been caused by rumours of a series of Suicide Bombings.
- Earlier seven people in attendance died when insurgents fired mortars into the crowd. (Al Jazeera) (BBC) (Wikinews)
- The relatives of the four Israeli Arabs killed on a bus in Galilee have been denied the usual terrorism compensation payments because their killer was a Jew, and thus not an "enemy of Israel" as defined by Israeli law. (BBC)
- All Palestinian Authority Assets held in the United States have been frozen. (BBC)
- Philippine electoral crisis: A Philippine congressional committee has stopped all impeachment efforts against President Gloria Arroyo. USA Today
30 August 2005 (Tuesday)
- Conflict in Iraq: According to US and Iraqi government officials, US Air strikes near the border with Syria have left 56 civilians and over seven insurgents dead. (CNN)
- In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina:
- The death toll in Biloxi, Mississippi, may be as high as 80. Mayor A.J. Holloway declares that Katrina "is our tsunami", comparing the catastrophe to the 2004 Indian Ocean Earthquake and Tsunami. (Yahoo! News) Residents report storm surge higher than Hurricane Camille.
- US Highway 90 along Gulfport, Mississippi, has been destroyed.
- New Orleans, Louisiana, almost completely floods when levees along Lake Pontchartrain break. At least one attempt to repair broken levees was ended unsuccessfully. Gas leaks pollute the floodwaters. The primary evacuation site at the Louisiana Superdome is safe, with water only 3 ft. (1 m) deep outside. Death tolls there remain untold. Governor Kathleen Blanco orders the evacuation of everyone remaining in New Orleans.
- The storm surge has totally destroyed the Interstate 10 causeway connecting the east side of New Orleans to mainland Louisiana over the east tip of Lake Pontchartrain.
- The American Red Cross declares that the relief effort will exceed in scope that after the September 11, 2001 attacks. (Fox News)
- Michael Brown, director of the United States Federal Emergency Management Agency, declares that Katrina was "catastrophic" and pledges full federal assistance. (Yahoo! News)
- Oil reaches US$70/bbl for the second time, closes at $69.35 on the New York Mercantile Exchange. Gasoline expected to rise as well. AP
- Former Prime Minister of Israel, Binyamin Netanyahu, has declared his intention to challange Ariel Sharon for leadership of the Likud party. (BBC)
- In Paris, France, seven die and fourteen are injured when a fire burns down an apartment housing African immigrants owned by the Société Immobilière d'Économie Mixte de la Ville de Paris 22:00 (GMT+1) (Bloomberg)
- Prime Minister Manmohan Singh announced India would give US$50 million in additional aid for the reconstruction of Afghanistan during his meetings with Hamid Karzai. Earlier, it had pledged US$500 million to help rebuild the war-ravaged country.(MSN)
- The 2005 Forbes Global CEO Conference has kicked off in Sydney, Australia. Police arrest four at a barricade surrounding the Opera House (Wikinews) (Sydney Morning Herald via SMH.com.au)
- Former New South Wales Opposition Leader, John Brogden, is hospitalized after apparant suicide attempt after resigning as party leader. (Sydney Morning Herald via SMH.com.au)
29 August 2005 (Monday)
- Hurricane Katrina as a Category 4 storm makes landfall at 6:10 a.m. CDT (11:10 a.m. UTC). The eye is just east of New Orleans, Louisiana. (AP)
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez offered to send food and fuel to the United States devastated by Hurricane Katrina. (AFP via Yahoo! News)
- Death toll by Hurricane Katrina reaches 55. (Canadian Press, via Canada.com), (Guardian)
- New South Wales Opposition Leader, John Brogden, resigns from the leadership of the NSW Liberal Party after describing Helena Carr, wife of former Premier Bob Carr, as a "mail-order bride" and sexually harassing two female journalists. Brogden will remain Member for Pittwater until at least the next state election. (ABC News)
- The Nigerian Vice President's home in Maryland, USA was raided by the FBI. Atiku Abubakar's relations with President Olusegun Obasanjo have cooled and it is possible he might use the pretext of the FBI corruption investigation to dismiss him.(BBC)
- Countries of the European Union attempt to work out a deal to end the "bra wars", the Chinese textile import row. (BBC)
August 28 2005 (Sunday)
- Iraq's National Assembly signs the text of the proposed Iraqi constitution. A referendum will be held on 15 October, with leaders of the Sunni community already calling for a "no" vote. (BBC)
- Hawaii, represented by Ewa Beach, Hawaii, defeats Williemstad, Curaçao 7-6 in the Little League World Series (Yahoo)
- Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh says the country will help Afghanistan deal with terrorism and rebuilding the country. (NDTV)
- Omri Sharon, son of the Prime Minister of Israel, Ariel Sharon, has been formally indicted on charges of corruption following allegations concerning Ariel Sharon's bid to become leader of the Likud party in 1999. (BBC)
- People begin to return to their homes as road and rail routes reopen after the 2005 European floods. (BBC)
- Hurricane Katrina:
- Hurricane Katrina continues to rapidly strengthen reaching Category Five status. It has the second lowest pressure for an American hurricane in recorded history, with only the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 having a lower measurement. Katrina is at 908 mb. and dropping; the Labor Day event of 1935 had 892 mb. (Weather Channel) (National Hurricane Center) (The Most Intense Hurricanes in the United States 1851-2004)
- Millions of people living in and around the below sea-level Louisiana city of New Orleans are leaving as Hurricane Katrina approaches. Storm surge is forecasted at 25 ft. The Mayor of New Orleans has issued a mandatory evacuation order, citing fears that the storm will break the levees protecting the city. (BBC), (CNN)
- Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: A Palestinian Islamic Jihad suicide bomber kills himself and injures close to 50 people in the southern Israeli city of Beersheba near the main bus terminal. According to sources, the bomber was trying to make his way to Beersheba's Soroka Hospital. (YNETnews) (Ha'aretz) (The Jerusalem Post) (BBC) (Reuters)
- Two Serb youths have been killed and two wounded in a drive-by shooting in Kosovo (BBC)
- The exiled ex-Ugandan president Milton Obote has announced he is to retire as president of the Uganda People's Congress, the party he has led since 1959. (Xinhua)
- Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez threatens to take legal action against Pat Robertson and potentially seek his extradition after the U.S. evangelist called for the assassination the South American leader. (Reuters)
August 27 2005 (Saturday)
- Over 30 are injured in a bomb blast on a ferry at Lamitan, Basilan, Philippines, a stronghold of the Abu Sayyaf group. (BBC)
- Muhammad Deif, the Hamas leader who heads Israel's most wanted list, releases a video taunting Israel. (BBC)
- Nearly 1,000 detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison are released this week at the request of the Iraqi Government, the largest number of prisoners freed since the start of the war. (CNN)
August 26 2005 (Friday)
- 120,000 people are expected at the Jean-Michel Jarre's concert Space of Freedom in Gdańsk Shipyard in Poland commemorating 25th anniversary of the creation of "Solidarity" trade union; live at 20:00 CET at iTVP (Radio Polonia)
- The High Court of Fiji overturns that country's sodomy laws after hearing the case of one Australian and one native Fijian who were previously sentenced to two years in jail under the legislation (365gay.com) (ABC)
- 14 children and three adults die as a fire breaks out in a building in Paris which housed African immigrants. (BBC)
- Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
- An Israeli Border Policeman is wounded when a Palestinian man stabs him in the back of the neck near The Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron. (Ha'aretz), (The Jerusalem Post,(Reuters)
- The Interior Ministry of Israel has announced that the number of Israeli citizens living in Israeli settlements on the West Bank has increased by more than 9,000 thus far this year. (BBC)
- Typhoon Mawar (11W) makes landfall at Chiba city, just east of Tokyo, having weakened from super-typhoon strength. (BBC)
August 25 2005 (Thursday)
- French investigating magistrate Jean-Louis Bruguière warns that Al-Qaeda is planning a terrorism attack in Asia, singling out Tokyo, Sydney and Singapore as potential targets. (Financial Times)
- Arab-Israeli Conflict
- Two Qassam rockets fired out of the Gaza Strip by Palestinian militants landed near the southern Israeli town of Sderot. (YNETnews),(The Jerusalem Post)
- Two mortar rockets were fired from Lebanon towards Israel, one of which struck a chicken coop in the Northern Galilee Moshav of Margaliot, while the other landed in Lebanese territory. Nobody was reported injured. (YNETnews),(The Jerusalem Post)
- Later reports suggest that for the first time, Hizb Allah test-fires an Iranian medium-range rocket near the Lebanese border with Israel. One of the three 240 mm Fajr-3 rockets, launched about six kilometers north of the border, landed in Israel and the other two fell inside Lebanon. (MENL)
- Two Egyptian policemen die following two explosions in northern Sinai. (BBC)
- At least 42 people die following a series of floods throughout Europe. (BBC)
- Conflict in Iraq:
- 36 male corpses have been found in a shallow river near the town of Kut, Iraq. (BBC)
- Violence occurs in Najaf, Nasiriyah, Diwaniyah, and Sadr City (Baghdad). Cleric Muqtada al-Sadr calls for an end to violence between his followers engaging a rival Shiite group, the Badr Brigades (backed by the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI). Both groups blame the other, while some Shia National Assembly members and ministers suspend their membership in the council because of the violence. (CNN) (Standard) (New Kerala)
- The German Constitutional Court rules that early elections on September 18 may go ahead. (BBC)
- The foreign minister of India, Natwar Singh calls on Pakistan high commissioner Aziz Ahmed Khan to plead the case of Sarabjit Singh. (NDTV.com)
August 24 2005 (Wednesday)
- Conflict in Iraq: At least 17 people are killed in a series of gun battles and a suicide car bombing that targeted the Iraqi Police in Baghdad. (BBC)
- Israeli-Palestinian Conflict:
- A British haredi Jew, Shmuel Matt, is stabbed to death, and his American friend, Sammy Weissbard, is wounded when a Palestinian man attacked the pair in Jerusalem. (ITN) (Telegraph)
- The Israeli government issues orders to seize Palestinian land close to the Israeli settlement of Maale Adumim on the West Bank for continued construction of the Israeli West Bank barrier. (BBC)
- Five Palestinians, including Islamic Jihad leader Ribhi Amara, are killed in a gun-battle following an Israeli raid on the Palestinian refugee camp of Tulkarm in the West Bank. Israel maintains that all five were militants, while eye witnesses say that three were unarmed teenagers. (BBC) (Reuters) (YNETnews) (New York Times) (Chicago Tribune)
- Heavy floods hit Switzerland, Austria and Germany forcing thousands of people to abandon their homes. (BBC)
- Chinese railroad workers in Tibet laid rail tracks on the Tanggula Mountain Pass in Tibet at 5,072 m (16,640 ft) above sea level, surpassing the altitude of the highest Peruvian railway by 255 m (837 ft). This section of the Qinghai-Tibet Railway is now the highest railway in the world. The railway also includes the highest railway station in the world at Lhasa, 5,068 m (16,627 ft) above sea level. The railway is expected to open later in 2005. (Xinhua)
- American televangelist and former Presidential candidate, Pat Robertson apologizes for calling for the assassination of Venezuelan President Hugo Chávez. (Financial Times)
August 23 2005 (Tuesday)
- At least 41 die when TANS Peru Flight 204, a Boeing 737-200, crashes near Pucallpa, Peru, with 100 on board. It was the fifth major airline accident this month. (Reuters), (BBC), (CNN).
- UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan visits Zinder, Niger, which is affected by a regional food crisis in West Africa. (Guardian), (BBC), (CNN), (Reuters)
- Israel completes the unilateral disengagement from all settlements in the Gaza Strip and four in the West Bank. (Reuters), (BBC), (Haaretz)
- Canada has sent 2 Kingston-class warships to the north Arctic port of Churchill, Manitoba following a territorial dispute with Denmark regarding Hans Island. (BBC)
- Christian religious leader Pat Robertson, a televangelist and former candidate for President of the United States, calls on the US to kill Hugo Chávez, the President of Venezuela.(Yahoo! News) (BBC) (ABC)
August 22 2005 (Monday)
- Iraq's parliament receives a draft of that country's constitution, minutes before the revised deadline. The parliamentary vote on the constitution will be delayed until a final draft emerges. (ABC)
- Eric Rudolph is sentenced to three more life terms without possibility of parole for the Centennial Olympic Park bombing of the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta. (BBC) (VOA)
- A large explosion injures several people in Beirut, Lebanon. (BBC) (CNN)
- The Piano Man has been identified and sent back home to Bavaria, Germany. (BBC)(CNN)
- Conflict in Afghanistan: US Troops claim to have killed more than one hundred suspects following raids in south and East Afghanistan. (BBC)
- Conflict in Iraq: US Troops claim that they will investigate the circumstances following the death of a cousin of Iraq's envoy to the United Nations. The man died from a bullet wound to the head as he opened his door to US Soldiers in western Iraq. (BBC)
- Patriarch Theophilus III is unanimously elected 141st Orthodox Patriarch of Jerusalem by the Holy Synod of the Orthodox Church of Jerusalem to replace ousted predecessor Irenaios I.(LA Times)
- Israeli forces enter the last remaining Israeli settlement in the Gaza Strip to remove the settlers from Netzarim, a religious farming community of about 500, completing the evacuation of all the enclaves. Four small militant settlements on the West Bank will also be cleared, with 5,500 troops heading there to begin evictions on Tuesday. (Reuters) IMRA
- Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon announces that existing large West Bank Israeli settlements will be expanded. (WikiNews)
- Voting registration begins in the war-torn east of the Democratic Republic of Congo ahead of planned elections. (BBC)
- In tennis, Maria Sharapova becomes the first Russian woman to reach world number one replacing injured American Lindsay Davenport at the top of the WTA rankings. (BBC) (Yahoo! News)
- Tickle-U premieres on Cartoon Network at 9 AM.
August 21 2005 (Sunday)
- More than 800,000 people joined Pope Benedict XVI for the concluding Mass of World Youth Day 2005 in Cologne, Germany. (CNN) The next World Youth Day was announced to be held in Sydney, Australia in 2008. (kreuz.net) BlueAirNews News
August 20 2005 (Saturday)
- Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, the President of Indonesia, ordered the national intelligence agency and police to investigate after a power outage left about 100 million people without electricity. (Wikinews)
- The original handwritten manuscript of a paper by Albert Einstein, entitled "Quantum theory of the monatomic ideal gas" (Bose-Einstein condensate), dated December 1924, has been found in the archives of Leiden University's Lorentz Institute for Theoretical Physics. It was considered one of Einstein's last great breakthroughs. (AP via Yahoo! News) Photographs of the 16-page manuscript and a description of how a student stumbled upon it were posted on the institute's Web site. (Leiden University)
August 19 2005 (Friday)
- Mounir El Motassadeq, the first person to be convicted for his role in the 9/11 attacks who had his conviction overturned in 2004, is re-convicted in Hamburg, Germany and sentenced to seven years in prison. (Reuters), (CBC), (Chicago SunTimes), (Guardian)
- Pope Benedict XVI speaks inside a synagogue at World Youth Day 2005 about the Judeo-Christian relationship. He also speaks with Protestant and Orthodox Christians about upcoming challenges within Christianity. BBC News
- Conflict in Iraq:
- Pierre Nkurunziza of the National Council for the Defense of Democracy-Forces for the Defense of Democracy, a former rebel leader of the Hutu majority in Burundi, has been elected unopposed as the new President of Burundi by the parliament, the first president chosen through democratic means since the start of the civil war in 1993. He will be sworn in on 27 August. (BBC), (BBC)
- Former Northern Ireland Secretary Mo Mowlam has died in a hospice at the age of 55. (BBC)
- A Jordanian soldier dies when three unexploded Katyusha rockets miss their targets and hit a warehouse and hospital in Aqaba, Jordan and hit a road by the airport in nearby Eilat, Israel. A group with alledged links to Al-Qaeda claims responsibilty for the attacks, stating the targets were US ships docked at the Red Sea port in Aqaba, the USS Kearsarge and the USS Ashland. (CNN), (MSNBC)
- In a bid to end the armed conflict with Morocco, the Polisario Front independence movement in Western Sahara frees its last 404 Moroccan prisoners of war, many of them having been held for almost two decades. (Reuters), (Reuters), (MSNBC), (BBC), (Guardian)
- New York authorities reveal the existence of a letter from a deceased woman who claims her husband (according to the New York Daily News, WINS 1010 cites a cab driver named Frank Burn) and two others killed Judge Joseph F. Crater and buried him under the boardwalk at Coney Island. Crater has been missing since 1930 and has since become one of the most famous "missing person" stories. (1010 WINS) (Fox News) (MSNBC) (New York Daily News) (New York Post)
- Merck & Co. loses the first wrongful death lawsuit over its painkiller Vioxx, with a jury awarding $253 Million in damages. There have been over 4000 cases filed against Merck over this drug. (MSNBC) (CNN)
- Pennsylvania police announced the discovery of a body presumed to be that of missing woman LaToyia Figueroa and the arrest of former boyfriend Stephen Poaches.(CNN)
- Pakistan's Supreme Court upholds the death sentence awarded to Manjeet Singh, an alleged Research and Analysis Wing agent who was also reportedly involved in five bomb blasts in the country. Singh was arrested by security forces at the Indo-Pak border on August 30, 1990. (Indian Express) (Hindustan Times)
- In one of the worst confrontations on the Indo-Bangla frontier in recent months, Bangladesh Rifles opens unprovoked fire at the India side at some outposts in West Bengal. About 500 rounds were fired in the skirmishes, but there was no casualty. (Press Trust of India) (Sify)
August 18 2005 (Thursday)
- Ohio Governor Bob Taft pleads no contest to four counts of filing incomplete financial disclosure statements in Columbus, Ohio and a Franklin County muncipal court judge finds him guilty, fines him $4,000, and orders him to apologize publicly. Taft says he will not resign his office. (The Cincinnati Enquirer)
- A man described as Al Qaeda's leader in Saudi Arabia, Saleh Mohammed al-Aoofi, is killed in a shootout with police.(CBS) (BBC)
- Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK Killer, is sentenced 10 consecutive life sentences for 10 murders between 1974 and 1991. (Reuters) (CNN)
- Pope Benedict XVI made his first foreign trip to his homeland Germany, attending the World Youth Day 2005. He was welcomed with cheers and made several speeches to leaders of Germany and to pilgrims at the Rhine banks at a ship as well as in front of the Cologne cathedrale. - BBC Pictures; BBC News; MSNBC.
- Conflict in Iraq:
- Insurgents kill 4 US Troops in an IED explosion in Samarra, north of Baghdad, Iraq. (Polit Info), (Xinhua)
- An angry Iraqi crowd thronged the Amiriya district of Baghdad, after US Troops killed 3 local brothers, including a disabled man, accusing them of being Terrorists. (Reuters)
- NASA has decided to push the next shuttle mission STS-121 to March 2006 and reassign it to the Space Shuttle Discovery (MSNBC)
- Israeli troops forcibly remove Zionist Jews opposed to Ariel Sharon's unilateral disengagement plan one by one from their strongholds in the synagogues in the Israeli settlements on the Gaza Strip. Some of the protesters threw paint, rocks and acid at the soldiers. (BBC), (ABC)
August 17 2005 (Wednesday)
Indonesia Republic's 60th Independent Day
- Israeli-Palestinian Conflict: An Israeli settler kills 3 Palestinian civilians in the West Bank. The attack was condemned by Ariel Sharon as a "Jewish Terror act" and "twisted thinking" while Hamas claimed the right to avenge the deaths. (Reuters) (BBC)
- At least two people have been killed and several others injured in a series of over 300 blasts across Bangladesh. An outlawed Islamist group, Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen Bangladesh, has claimed responsibility. (BBC)
- Conflict in Iraq: At least 42 people have died following a series of co-ordinated car bombings in the Iraqi capital of Baghdad. (BBC)
- The first actual pullout of settlers in the Gaza Strip, as part of the Israel unilateral disengagement plan, has started. (FOXNews)
- S.R. Nathan returns unopposed for a second term in the Singapore presidential elections. Three other candidates who filed for candidature were rejected by the Presidential Elections Committee due to "lack of experience", amongst other reasons. (CNA), (Reuters)
- The governors of the U.S. states of New Mexico and Arizona declare an emergency along their borders with Mexico citing recent violence, and inaction in both the US government and the Mexican government. (NY Times), (Arizona Republic), (UK Telegraph).
- The Zotob computer worm causes fatal crashes of computers worldwide. The worm only crashes PCs running Windows 2000 and earlier versions of Windows XP, shutting down and rebooting the computer endlessly. Affected were CNN, ABC, Caterpillar, New York Times and Capitol Hill PCs. (CNN).
August 16 2005 (Tuesday)
- Roger Louis Schutz-Marsauche, better known as Brother Roger, is murdered by a mentally-ill woman during an afternoon prayer service. Brother Roger is best known for founding the Taizé Community in 1940. His death saddened many officials and leaders across Europe, including Pope Benedict XVI. (BBC)(Bloomberg)
- Russian cosmonaut Sergei K. Krikalev set a record for the most days spent in space, clocking almost 748 days over a 20-year career. (AFP via Yahoo! News), (Reuters via Yahoo! News)
- In Richmond, Virginia, thousands of people stampede at the Richmond International Raceway to obtain one of 1000 $50 iBooks being liquidated by the Henrico County school district. Seventeen people suffer minor injuries, with four requiring hospital treatment. Cincinnati Post MSNBC macworld uk Richmond Times-Dispatch
- Lena Baker is pardoned by the Georgia Board of Pardons and Paroles 60 years after her execution (CNN)
- Coretta Scott King, widow of civil rights pioneer Martin Luther King, Jr., is admitted to Piedmont Hospital in Atlanta for possible stroke. (AP)(ABC news)
- Madonna suffers multiple broken bones from a horseback riding accident during her 47th birthday celebration. (MTV)
- ITN news announces it has uncovered classified documents which seem to imply that Jean Charles de Menezes, the man shot dead by British Police on July 22, 2005, was not wearing a heavy coat, did not jump the ticket barrier, was not given a warning, and did not at any time flee from police. (ITN)
- Two Puma helicopters crash near the city of Herat, in western Afghanistan, killing Spanish troops. (BBC)
- West Caribbean Airways Flight 708 from Colombia crashes in a remote region of Venezuela with 160 people on board. (BBC)
- A magnitude-7.2 earthquake strikes northeastern coast of Honshu, Japan at 11.46am (02:46 UTC), injuring at least 40 people, and resulting in a tsunami warning. (BBC) (Guardian) (CNN) (Reuters)
- World Youth Day 2005 begins in Cologne, Germany. (SD)
August 15 2005 (Monday)
- Many countries celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Victory in the Pacific and the end of World War II. Beijing holds an arts performance gala. In Japan, in a large-scale ceremony led by the Emperor Akihito, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi apologizes for people's suffering Japan caused during World War II. The ceremony was met with scattered protests. (Xinhua) (BBC China)
- The Parliament of Iraq grants an extension to the nation's leaders to draw up a new Constitution. (MSNBC)
- The US refused to abide by a NAFTA ruling on the US vs Canada softwood lumber dispute, leading to Canada's Finance Minister Ralph Goodale saying he was considering trade sanctions on the US. (Boston Globe)
- Israel begins the Gaza Strip pullout plan. The Kissufim Roadblock was shut down at midnight between August 14 and August 15. Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas hailed the move as "historic" but said Israel should also pull out of the West Bank. (BBC), (Canada.com)
- Conflict in Iraq: A senior aide to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, Abu Zubair, has been shot dead following a US ambush in Mosul, Iraq. (BBC)
- The Indonesian government and rebels from the Free Aceh Movement (Gam) sign a peace deal aimed at ending their near 30 year conflict. (BBC), (chosun.com). UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan applauded both parties for reaching a peaceful settlement of the dispute through dialogue, and commended Martti Ahtisaari, former President of Finland, for the mediation role that he played throughout the negotiation process. (XinHua)
- Due to stalled labour talks, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation locks out the company's 5500 members of the Canadian Media Guild, severely disrupting operations in most of Canada. The key point of contention is the broadcaster's insistance on more contract employees to the expense of full time positions. (The Toronto Star)
- Phil Mickelson wins the 2005 PGA Championship (PGA.com)
- India celebrates its fifty-eighth Independence Day.
August 14 2005 (Sunday)
- Kurmanbek Bakiyev has been sworn in as Kyrgyzstan's new president after winning nearly 90 percent of the vote last month in an election to find a successor to President Askar Akayev, who was ousted during protests in March.(Reuters)
- Thirty bodies are found in a mass grave south of Baghdad after the interrogation of Iraqi insurgents captured in a raid yesterday. (Newsday; AP)
- Time magazine cites United States military intelligence documents that an Iranian-backed Iraqi insurgent network, led by Abu Mustafa al-Sheibani, had introduced a bomb design based on Iranian-backed Lebanese militia Hizbollah plans in last eight months. (Reuters)
- U.S. forces in Iraq raid a warehouse in Mosul. They uncover a suspected chemical weapons factory. (Boston Globe)
- Helios Airways Flight 522 en route from Larnaca, Cyprus via Athens, Greece to Prague, Czech Republic crashes near Athens, with at least 121 onboard. Observations from Greek fighter aircraft indicate a decompression problem. (BBC)
- Ugandan journalist Andrew Mwenda has been charged with sedition after a radio debate speculating on the death of Sudan's vice-president John Garang.(BBC)
- Liberian football hero George Weah has been given the go-ahead to contest the country's presidency. Liberia's election commission dismissed a complaint that his French citizenship barred him from standing.(BBC)
August 13 2005 (Saturday)
- Former Prime Minister David Lange of New Zealand dies. His 1984-1989 administration has left a permanent mark on New Zealand. (NZ National Business Review)
- German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder warns the US to back away from the possibility of military action against Iran over its nuclear programme. (BBC)
- Ernest "Smokey" Smith, the last surviving Canadian recipient of the Victoria Cross, is laid to rest in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada following the largest Canadian military funeral in recent history. He died on 3 August at the age of 91. (CBC)
- Singapore President SR Nathan is returned unopposed by the Presidential Elections Committee, which ruled that he is the only eligible candidate out of 4 applicants. Singapore's nomination day is on October 17. (Bernama)
August 12 2005 (Friday)
- Conflict in Iraq:
- Three US Soldiers are killed following an IED attack by insurgents in Tuz, northern Iraq (Reuters)
- Moqtada Sadr, the Shia cleric and leader, has announced that his Mahdi army has freed four hostages. (BBC)
- Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Lakshman Kadirgamar is assassinated by suspected Tamil Tigers sniper team in Colombo. (CNN)
- Shipwreck: 104 Ecuadorians trying to emigrate to the United States are killed when their ship sinks in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of Colombia. Nine people are rescued after floating at sea for two days.
- At least 80 people have died from water-borne diseases and over 5,000 are sick in the western Indian state of Maharashtra following recent floods. (BBC)
- An unofficial strike by ground staff at Heathrow forces British Airways to cancel over 100 flights. Flights have resumed.