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ter battling AIDS.
• In 2001, NATO Secretary-General Lord Robertson said the United States had provided "clear and conclusive" evidence of Osama bin Laden's involvement in the attacks on New York and Washington.
• In 2002, the Washington, D.C. area sniper attacks began as a resident of Silver Spring, Md., was shot and killed in a store parking lot in Wheaton; the next day, five people were shot dead, setting off a frantic manhunt lasting three weeks.
• In 2006, an armed milk truck driver took a group of girls hostage in an Amish schoolhouse in Nickel Mines, Pa., killing five of them and wounding five others before committing suicide.
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• Ten years ago: The Los Angeles Times published allegations that California gubernatorial candidate Arnold Schwarzenegger had sexually harassed six women in the past; the actor acknowledged "bad behavior" on his part, and apologized. The House voted 281-142 to prohibit doctors from carrying out what abortion opponents called partial birth abortion. South African J.M. Coetzee (kut-SEE'-uh) won the 2003 Nobel Prize for literature. Former Labor Secretary John Dunlop died at age 89.
• Five years ago: Republican Sarah Palin and Democrat Joe Biden sparred over taxes, energy policy and the Iraq war in a high-profile vice-presidential debate at Washington University in St. Louis, in which Palin sought to reclaim her identity as a feisty reformer and Biden tried to undercut the maverick image of GOP presidential hopeful John McCain. More than a year after millionaire adventure Steve Fossett vanished on a solo flight over California's rugged Sierra Nevada, searchers found the wreckage of his plane but no body inside. (Fossett's remains were discovered in late Oct. 2008.)
• One year ago: Vice President Joe Biden said the middle class had been "buried" during the last four years, a statement that Republicans immediately seized upon as an unwitting indictment of the Obama administration. A judge in Pennsylvania ruled that the state's tough new voter identification requirement could not be enforced in the upcoming presidential election.
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• Today's Birthdays: Country singer-musician Leon Rausch (Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys) is 86. Retired MLB All-Star Maury Wills is 81. Movie critic Rex Reed is 75. Singer-songwriter Don McLean is 68. Cajun/country singer Jo-el Sonnier (sahn-YAY') is 67. Actor Avery Brooks is 65. Fashion designer Donna Karan is 65. Photographer Annie Leibovitz is 64. Rock musician Mike Rutherford (Genesis, Mike & the Mechanics) is 63. Singer-actor Sting is 62. Actress Lorraine Bracco is

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