September 3, 2008 (Wednesday)
- The Republican Party officially endorses Arizona Senator John McCain as its candidate in the 2008 United States presidential election. (The New York Times)
- 2008 Atlantic hurricane season:
- Hurricane Ike becomes the fifth hurricane of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season, later strengthening to Category 3. (USA Today) (AP via Google News)[permanent dead link]
- Flooding from Tropical Storm Hanna causes 26 deaths in Haiti. (AP via Google News)[permanent dead link]
- United States Army troops cross the Pakistan border and launch a raid in the Angoor Ada region of Waziristan. Twenty civilians die. (ABC News)
- Earlier 'up to 90' people were killed during US air raid in Herat province, Afghanistan, many of them women and children, the Afghan government and the UN said. HRW says civilians deaths from international air strikes nearly tripled between 2006 and 2007. (BBC News)
- GMAC's Residential Capital mortgage provider announces plans to dramatically reduce the size of its business resulting in the loss of 5,000 jobs. (Minneapolis-St Paul Star-Tribune)
- Japan's Kyodo news agency reports that North Korea has started rebuilding the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center in retaliation for the United States failing to remove it from a list of states that sponsor terrorism. (CNN)
- The United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit finds "that a reliance on information in Wikipedia is insufficient grounds for a ruling" in an immigration case. (Ars Technica)
- Prime Minister of Pakistan Yousaf Raza Gilani survives an assassination attempt. (BBC News)
- The Independent Monitoring Commission reports that the Provisional IRA has effectively been disbanded as a terrorist organization, but the Provisional IRA Army Council still exists. (The Guardian)