2000-2001 TRANSPORTATION k%4 In August, the Russian nuclear submarine Kursk sinks to the bottom of the Barents Sea after an unexplained explosion. All 118 crew members are killed. Bas Se, AIDS reaches epidemic proportions in southern Africa. Leaders and =: AFP/Corbis me ee aii bya - a ah ms since ee ‘hone Re ee ee the disease that is killing 6,000 . : cornet 2 sub-Saharan Africans each day. me ss nae eee ——._ me The outbreak is traced to a Gulu : : woman who died in September condi Sines by both countries’ leaders, who met for the first time in June. Peter Vujanic/Newsmakers/Liaison Uganda is struck by an occurrence of the deadly Ebola virus that is linked to more than 100 deaths. Corbis Sygma ‘a separa / ee Sa sc —_ | citizens throughout the world conduct a massive educational campaign on World AIDS Day December 1 to teach people about ool denie i of the dead. ReutersiniBaurg/Archive Photos Reuters NewMedia {nc./Corbis , agent Viadimir Putin ffice as Russia’s new ly 2000, succeeding Boris Yeltsin. f an authoritarian ibli¢ approval ratings A \n January 2001, a 7.9 magnitude earthquake devastates Gujarat in western India. The huge quake causes an estimated $5.5 billion in damages and kills more than 20,000 people. Wesley Bocxe/Liaison Tyler Hicks/Liaison AP/Wide World Photos viet esident Slobodan sted from office in J 13 years of violent ostunica becomes st democratically nt. A In August, Somalia elects its first president in nine years. President Abdigasim Salad Hassan promises to bring peace and economic recovery to the African nation. _ A Former Coca-Cola executive Vicente Fox, of the National Action Party, is elected president of Mexico in July, ending the Institutional Revolutionary Party’s 71-year reign. A More than 150 world leaders meet at the U.N. Millennium Summit in September to discuss war, poverty, disease and other global problems. The meeting is the largest gathering of world leaders in history. Reuters/Stringer/Archive Photos AFP/Corbis \4 The worst wave of Middle Eastern violence in years erupts between Israelis and Palestinians, leaving more than 350 dead. A visit by Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon to a Jerusalem holy site on September 28 is claimed to have sparked the fighting. ns the death of former ierre Trudeau, who ry for nearly 16 years. is 80, is remembered nt style and his <eeping Canada a FLASH <n 7 7X in July, an Air France Concorde supersonic jet catches fire and crashes outside Paris, killing 113 people. The crash is blamed on metal debris which punctured the tires and damaged the fuel tanks. berg a g E 1s e g