AUGUST

AUGUST
1. President Bush declares Mahoning, Trumbull, Portage, Summit and Medina counties federal disaster areas eligible for state and federal disaster assistance after floods from July's record-setting rains.
5. Mayor George McKelvey says Youngstown must scale back its arena project because it can't afford to build a 10,000-seat facility, and it isn't sure it can afford a 5,000- to 6,000-seat facility.
* Columbiana County is added to the federal flood disaster area.
7. As young college graduates leave for job opportunities elsewhere, U.S. Census reports show that almost 15,000 more people left the four-county Youngstown-Warren area than moved in between 1995 and 2000.
* A 46.5-acre industrial brownfield site along the Mahoning River in Struthers -- the former site of the Youngstown Sheet & amp; Tube Co. Campbell Works coke plant -- will be cleaned up and made available for redevelopment under an agreement between Struthers and Astro Development LLC.
* Richard G. Jewell, 58, of Bethel Park, Pa., is named the eighth president of Grove City College, succeeding John H. Moore, 68, who retired June 30.
* Large crowds gather nightly outside St. Joseph the Provider Church in Campbell as the eyes and heart of a statue of the Virgin Mary on the bell tower appear to glow.
8. General Electric announces it will permanently lay off 78 people at its Ohio Lamp Plant in Warren, effective Sept. 2, because of slow sales and high inventory.
* Former Atty. John Zimmerman, 55, is sentenced to two years' probation, with the first six months of it to be served in the Mahoning County Jail, for stealing some $200,000 from the downtown Youngstown law firm of Manchester, Bennett, Powers and Ullman.
9. As FEMA opens a flood disaster assistance office in Youngstown, heavy rain hits again, causing major flash flooding in many parts of the Mahoning Valley, with Boardman being hard-hit. Some 8,000 children's books are destroyed by flooding in the Salem Public Library.
14. YSU dedicates the $22 million University Courtyard apartments for its students in Smoky Hollow -- the largest residential development in Youngstown in nearly a decade.
* Ashtabula, Meadville and Oil City lose electric power in the largest blackout in U.S. history, but the lights stay on in the Mahoning and Shenango valleys.
19. Rick Shadle, a 32-year-old employee of Andover Industries, fatally shoots Theodora L. Mosley, 61, the plant manager's assistant, and wounds two other workers, Sue Martin, 35, and Joyce Smith, 54, before shooting himself to death at the Andover plant.
* The Youngstown, Warren and East Liverpool schools leave academic emergency and rise to academic watch in the latest report cards from the Ohio Department of Education on pupil academic performance and attendance. But Lowellville schools outperform all others in Mahoning and Trumbull counties.
21. Integrated Health Services announces that its 100-bed Colonial Manor Nursing Home in Liberty is closed indefinitely because of flood damage, with patients and some employees transferred to other IHS facilities and some employees laid off.
22. An 11-year-old Mercer County girl tests positive for West Nile virus, officials of the Pennsylvania Department of Health announce.
24. Country music performances return to Ponderosa Park near Salem after a seven-year absence with an appearance by the Paint the Town Tour with John Berry, David Lee Murphy and Leroy Parnell.
25. Vickie L. Dietrich, 50, of Poland, is killed and at least 10 others are hurt in a six-vehicle pileup at state Route 82 and Howland-Wilson Road.
* Retired contractor Bernard J. Bucheit, 71, who retired to Florida from Boardman, is sentenced to two years in a federal prison for bribing expelled and imprisoned U.S. Rep. James A. Traficant Jr., then lying about it to a grand jury.
26. A family feud closes the Rulli Bros. grocery store on South Avenue in Boardman. The Austintown store remains open.
27. Mahoning County's Ohio bicentennial bell is cast at the Canfield Fair, and country music performer Tracy Byrd entertains at the fairgrounds grandstand.
* Wayne Gilliam, 21, is sentenced to 54 years to life in prison after a jury convicts him of complicity in the murder of 3-month-old Jiyen C. Dent Jr., who was shot through an exterior wall of his residence with an AK-47 assault rifle March 24.
29. Michael Terlecky, 47, a former Mahoning County deputy sheriff with a felony record, is arrested at his Canfield residence and charged with seven counts of drug trafficking. Law-enforcement agents said they found the drug OxyContin and four handguns during the raid at his residence.