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political events
Serbian paramilitary leader Zeljko Raznatovik, 47, dies January 13 after being shot in the left eye by masked gunmen in the lobby of Belgrade's Intercontinental Hotel. Also known as Arkan, Raznatovik has been wanted on war crimes charges; his bodyguard and an associate are also killed, but his wife and children are unharmed. No arrests are made. Yugoslav defense minister Pavle Bulatovic, 51, is shot dead by unidentified gunmen February 7 while dining at a Zagreb football (soccer) club.
Croats elect Stipe Mesic, 65, to succeed the late Franjo Tudjman as president February 8. Prime Minister Ivica Racan has moved to soften nationalist policies since taking office January 27, freeing the media, supporting democratic and human rights, and promoting economic discipline. Serbian constitutional law professor and democratic opposition leader Vojislav Kostunica, 56, wins a clear majority in elections held September 24, President Slobodan Milosevic's electoral commission claims that Kostunica has won only 48 percent of the vote and schedules an October 8 runoff election, the Serbian Orthodox Church and foreign political leaders demand that Milosevic step down, his police use tear gas to quell demonstrations at Belgrade but they permit rioters to take over the state broadcasting offices and set fire to the parliament building, the Yugoslav Constitutional Court annuls the September 24 election results October 5 and declares Kostunica the winner, Milosevic finally concedes defeat and resigns October 7 after a week of civil disobedience in which students, coal miners, and factory workers have shut down the country, but more than 12 years of Milosevic rule have left Yugoslavia in dire economic straits, with average per-capita income down 90 percent and inflation out of control (see Milosevic, 2001).
Russian forces enter chechnya's capital of Grozny January 18 (see 1999). Chechen rebel forces abandon the ruined city but continue to harass the Russians with guerrilla raids. Russian authorities order grozny residents to leave February 14 and seal off the city. Both sides have nuclear weapons and threaten to use them, creating anxiety worldwide (see 2002).
Russia's presidential election March 26 gives victory to acting president Vladimir V. Putin, who receives about 53 percent of the popular vote to 30 percent for Communist Party leader Gennadi A. Zyuganov. An increase in oil and gas prices has boosted the Russian economy, enabling the government to resume payment of salaries and pensions, but Putin's prestige suffers a setback when internal explosions send the 5-year-old nuclear-powered Russian submarine Kursk plunging more than 300 feet down to the seabed of the Bering Sea August 13 with 118 men. She has no pressurized escape chambers, the Russians wait too long before accepting British and Norwegian rescue offers, and all aboard are lost. When Norwegian divers enter the craft in late October they find a chilling metallurgy note in the 27-year-old officer's pocket stating that he and 22 other men reached the Kursk's rear compartment but, "None of us can get out."
Former German chancellor Helmut Kohl resigns as honorary chairman of the opposition Christian Democratic Party January 18 after being accused by the party leadership of "violating his duties" in refusing to reveal who gave him more than $1 million while in office (see 1998). The party's finance officer Wolfang Hüllen hangs himself in his Berlin apartment January 20 at age 49, leaving two children and a suicide note as the scandal widens.
Austria alienates other European countries and the United States in February by forming a coalition government with members of the Freedom Party holding half the cabinet seats. Heading the party (but absent from the cabinet) is immigration opponent Jörg Haider, 50, who has been making remarks sympathetic to the Nazis since 1990. About 600 neo-Nazis have recently marched under the brandenburg gate to protest plans for a Holocaust monument, and hundreds of thousands of Austrians march in protest against his right-wing proposals, but Austria has been providing refuge since the early 1990s to Croatians, Bosnians, and other eastern Europeans, they have taken jobs coveted by Austrians, and many agree that immigration must be stemmed.
Former Italian prime minister Bettino Craxi dies of a heart attack in Tunisia January 14 at age 65; East German spymaster Erich Mielke of Stasi notoriety at his native Berlin May 21 at age 92; British World War II spymaster Vera Atkins at Hastings, Sussex, June 24 at age 92.
Hopes for peace in Ulster gain support May 6 as the Irish Republican Army offers to open its secret weapons arsenal to international inspection as a means of meeting peace negotiators that it has put its arms "completely and verifiably" beyond use (see 1999), but even as the peace process moves forward there are paramilitary organizations on both sides that continue to administer vigilante justice in Northern Ireland, running protection rackets and controlling the drug trade.
Iran's pro-reform president mohammad khatami wins overwhelming support for his programs in mid-February elections as hard liners lose seats in the nation's parliament (see 1999), but the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has kept many moderate and reform-minded candidates from running on grounds that they were not Islamic enough. Many young Iranians rebel against the theocratic society by engaging in crime, drug abuse, Internet surfing, prostitution, rock music listening, and defiance of dress codes.
Bahrain's emir Sheik Isa bin Salman al-Khalifa dies of a heart attack at Manama March 6 at age 65 after a 38-year reign in which he was king for the first 10 years. As a member of the ruling Sunni minority that has ruled since 1783, the emir has in recent years employed a security force made up mostly of mercenaries and commanded by a former British police officer to suppress the shiite majority, violence has claimed more than 40 lives, many Western firms have relocated to Dubai, and hundreds of Bahraini Shiites have been arrested, but the emir's 48-year-old son Sheikh Hamad bin isa 3 al-Khalifa succeeds to power, suspends the law that has allowed prisoners to be held without charge for up to 3 years, empties the jails of political dissident, and promises to hold free elections in 2002 with women as well as men being allowed to vote. Some leaders of the uprising will be held under house arrest until 2001, the new emir promises to turn oil-rich Bahrain into a "people's kingdom," but it is not clear how much power the new parliament will have (see 2002).
Former Tunisian president habib bourguiba dies at his native Monastir April 6 at age 96, having put in place policies in the 1950s and 1960s that make the country far more successful economically than other Islamic nations.
Israeli troops unilateral withdraw from southern Lebanon May 23 to the internationally recognized border after 22 years in which they have occupied a demilitarized zone. "The 18-year tragedy is over," says Prime Minister Ehud Barak in a reference to the 1982 Israeli invasion that took over the "buffer zone" to protect northern Israel from attacks by hezbollah (Party of God) guerrillas, who now ride through the zone in triumph; dismissing claims that his troops have been chased out (a Lebanese anchorwoman has spoken gleefully of the "slinking, servile withdrawal of Israel"), Barak claims that Israel has regained the initiative in peace talks, most Israelis support proposals to give Christians, Jews, and Muslims joint sovereignty over Jerusalem, but although PLO chairman yasser arafat meets with Barak and President Clinton at Camp David, and Barak proposes turning 92 percent of the West Bank into a Palestinian state plus allowing Palestinian sovereignty over the Christian and Muslim quarters of the Old City of Jerusalem, the two leaders do not come to terms.
Syria's president hafez al-Assad dies of a heart attack at Damascus June 10 at age 69 after a 30-year dictatorship in which he has transformed his backward country into a regional power broker; he is succeeded by his 34-year-old ophthalmologist son Bashar, who is promptly promoted from colonel to lieutenant general.
Resolution 1310 approved by the United Nations July 27 confirms that Israel has "withdrawn its forces from Lebanon in accordance with Resolution 425," but delays in establishing a promised Palestinian homeland frustrate Arabs, as does continued discrimination against them in what they regard as their own country.
Israeli opposition leader Ariel Sharon visits Jerusalem's Harem esh-Sharif (Jews call it the Temple Mount) with 1,000 security police September 28, touching off the worst violence seen in years. Now 72, hardliner Sharon claims that he visited the Old City to show that Arabs and Jews can live peacefully together; critics suggest that he was acting to dissuade the government from making any concessions to Muslims or positioning himself to run against Barak in new elections, but many on both sides want to derail the peace process and they succeed. Palestinians lynch two Israeli soldiers at Ramallah on the West Bank October 12, Israel retaliates by sending helicopter gunships to fire rockets on targeted sites in Ramallah and Gaza City. Barak, Arafat, Clinton, and Egypt's Hosni Mubarak meet for 28 hours at the Egyptian seaside resort Sharm El-Sheik October 16 to 17, Arafat and Barak promise efforts to stop the violence, but Arafat cannot restrain the Arabs, animosities remain intense, and the violence continues (see 2001).
The U.S. destroyer Cole docks at Aden for refueling October 12 and is heavily damaged by explosives that kill 17 of those aboard and injure 38 others in the first such attack on a U.S. warship. Suspicions fall on rogue Arab terrorists, who may or may not have acted to protest U.S. support of Israel; it will eventually be determined that the terrorist responsible was al qaeda leader osama bin laden, who has urged his followers to kill infidel Westerners.
Burmese guerrillas led by a pair of cigar-smoking 12-year-old twins seize a Thai hospital at ratchaburi 75 miles west of Bangkok January 24, taking about 800 patients and staff members hostage. Fundamentalist Christians who call themselves God's Army, the guerrillas claim to have mystical powers which make them immune to bullets and land mines; they have hijacked a public bus and ride into the hospital compound firing automatic rifles; Thai security forces rescue the hostages after a 22-hour standoff but the guerrillas constitute just one of dozens of ethnic insurgent groups fighting Burma's central government.
Taiwan voters oust the Nationalist government that has ruled since 1949, electing Democratic Progressive Party leader Chen Shui-ban, 49. A former mayor of Taipei, he wins 39 percent of the vote March 18 in a bitter three-way race, but Chen has advocated independence, Beijing has expressed strong opposition to his candidacy, and although he has promised not to declare independence he has also said that he would not "let Taiwan become another Hong Kong or Macao." His victory creates dangerous new tensions that involve the United States.
Japan's prime minister Keizo Obuchi suffers a stroke April 2 and is replaced by Liberal Democratic Party secretary general Yoshiro Mori, 62. Obuchi dies at Tokyo May 14 without having regained consciousness, and Mori raises a furor soon afterward by calling Japan "a divine country with an emperor at its center," a summation of the racist official state Shintoism that propelled the country's Asian expansionism in the 1930s; the approval rating of his cabinet promptly falls to 19 percent. Former prime minister Noboru Takeshita dies at Tokyo June 19 at age 76, having picked the late Obuchi 2 years ago.
South Korea's president kim dae jung returns to Seoul from meetings with North Korea's Kim Jong Il at Pyongyang June 15 following a banquet at which two leaders have sung "Our Wish Is Unification" after half a century of hostilities (see 1998); the two have eased restrictions on family visits between their two countries, and Washington eases embargoes and sanctions against trade with North Korea June 19; neither China nor Japan looks favorably on the prospect of a reunited Korea, but Kim Dae Jung is awarded the Nobel Peace Prize October 13.
Former Sri Lankan prime minister Sirimavo Bendaranaike dies of heart failure at Colombo October 10 at age 84, having lived to see her daughter Chandrika be president.
Zimbabwe's president Robert Mugabe holds a referendum February 15 to let voters decide whether to accept a draft constitution which would increase the executive power and give the government the right to seize white-owned land without compensation. Whites number only about 70,000 out of a total population of 12.5 million and they dominate the nation's agriculture, but Mugabe's opponents win nearly 55 percent of the vote, soundly defeating the proposal. Mugabe wins a narrow victory in the June 25 presidential election, with the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) taking 25 seats in parliament to Mugabe's 62, and many believe the MDC would have won had there not been widespread intimidation, especially in rural areas.
Rebels of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front kill seven members of a United Nations peacekeeping force May 3 and take 500 others hostage a few days later (see 1999). Bodyguards of rebel leader Foday Sankoh kill 19 demonstrators outside his compound at Freetown May 8 and Sankoh disappears, but he returns to his abandoned house May 17 and a neighbor reports his presence to an armed supporter of the government; shot in the leg and stripped naked, Sankoh is taken to a pro-government militia force, which turns him over to the government.
A Florida judge rules that Cuban refugee Elián González may remain in the United States, but Attorney General Janet Reno announces January 12 that the case is a federal matter and that the Immigration and Naturalization Service may return the boy to his father in Cuba (see 1999). The father comes to Washington, a U.S. district court rules that young Elián must remain in America pending a hearing, his great uncle says he will turn the boy over to his father but then reneges, INS officers acting on orders from Reno break down the great uncle's door early on the morning of April 22, seize the boy in less than 3 minutes, they reunite him with his father outside Washington, most Americans applaud the action, deploring the use of a 6-year-old child to score political points against Cuba's Castro regime and the Clinton administration. Emotions on the issue run high, and the necessary show of force employed in the operation brings predictable (albeit inapt) comparisons with Ruby Ridge (see 1992) and waco texas (see 1993); many demand Reno's resignation, but thousands of people in Miami demonstrate May 6 in support of Reno's action and the incident actually weakens Little Havana's influence on U.S. policy toward Cuba, raising hopes of normalizing U.S.-Cuban relations. The boy's father takes him home to Cuba.
Chilean socialist ricardo lagos, 61, defeats his right-wing rival Joaquin Lavin, 46, in the January 16 presidential election, becoming the nation's first socialist head of state since the overthrow and assassination of salvador allende in 1973. Both candidates have campaigned on centrist platforms with almost no reference to questions of human rights, but judicial authorities and families of "the disappeared" succeed in having former dictator Augusto Pinochet, now 85, extradited from Britain for trial on charges relating to crimes committed while he was in office.
Peru's president Alberto Fujimori wins election to a third term in May, but Stanford University-educated opposition leader Alejandro Toledo has withdrawn, telling his followers that the voting would be rigged and to boycott polling places. Videotape evidence released by opposition leader Fernando Olivera and shown on television in September suggests that Fujimori's security chief Vladimiro Montesinos, 55, bribed a congressman, Fujimori announces September 16 that he is firing Montesinos and calling for immediate new elections, but Fujimori vows September 19 to stay in office until the summer of 2001. Montesinos flees to Panama September 24, it is announced that new elections will be held in March, Montesinos returns but remains out of sight, Fujimori visits Japan and sends a letter to Lima in late November announcing his resignation, Peru's congress rules November 21 that Fujimori is "morally unfit" to be president, and it selects centrist party leader Valentin Paniagua, 64, to succeed him on an interim basis. The war and rebellion that began in 1980 finally come to an end after thousands of human rights violations in which Maoist rebels and government troops have killed more than 69,000 people, three-fourths of them Quechua-speaking Indians (the 69,000 figure will be announced August 28, 2003, in a report by a Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which will hold the Shining Path guerrilla organization responsible for 54 percent of the deaths, the nation's armed forces for 30 percent, and government-backed peasant militia for the rest).
Dominican opposition leader Hipólito Mejía wins election May 16; an agronomist and businessman, he heads the left-leaning Dominican Revolutionary Party, which ousts the ruling Dominican Liberation Party, whose privatization policies have helped to give the Dominican Republic Latin America's fastest growing economy but have alienated many voters.
Mexico's PRI party loses power after 71 years July 2 as state governor and former Coca-Cola executive vicente fox, 58, wins the presidency for the 62-year-old National Action Party (PAN), defeating the PRI candidate Francisco Labastida Ochoa, 57, who has promised more jobs, better salaries, and a crackdown on the corruption that has been endemic for more than 71 years. President Ernesto Zedillo's reforms have made possible the election of the six-foot-seven-inch cowboy-booted Fox, who has promised growth, a crackdown on crime, and more opportunity for small businesses; he wins by a landslide in what is generally considered the fairest election ever held in Mexico, although critics worry about the PAN's link to the Church, which has effectively been kept from political power since the 1850s, and cite Fox's 1996 proposal to privatize the state-owned oil company pemex, which has been government owned since the state appropriated Standard Oil Co. fields in 1938. Fox takes office December 1 in the first peaceful transfer of power in Mexico's history.
Former Bahamas prime minister Lynden Pindling dies of prostate cancer at his Nassau home August 26 at age 70.
A Baton Rouge jury finds former governor Edwin W. Edwards guilty May 9 on 17 of 26 counts of fraud and conspiracy after a 4-month trial. Now 72, Edwards was tried in 1985 and 1986 but not convicted; United States attorney Eddie J. Jordan Jr., 47, has conducted a 4-year investigation, and his success shatters a lot of the cynicism that has been endemic in Louisiana politics; Edwards faces a sentence of life imprisonment.
The U.S. Justice Department announces September 10 that accused "atom spy" Wen Ho Lee will go free after pleading guilty to one of the 59 felony charges brought against him (see 1999).
Admiral Elmo Zumwalt (ret.) dies at Durham, N.C., January 2 at age 79 following chest surgery for malignant mesothelomia; longtime U.S. Communist Party leader Gus Hall dies at New York October 13 at age 90, having served 8 years in prison for his political views, run for president four times, and remained without apology true to his ideology.
The U.S. presidential election ends in an unprecedented dead heat. Republicans have nominated Texas Gov. George W. (Walker) Bush, 54, son of former president George H. W. Bush, at their national convention at Philadelphia August 3, being careful to keep House Majority Leader Richard K. Armey, Majority Whip Tom DeLay, Henry Hyde, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Mitch McConnell, and other prominent (but divisive) party leaders out of sight as they put on a great show of inclusion and party unity. Vice President Al Gore has selected Sen. Joseph I. Lieberman, 58, of Connecticut as his running mate; the first Jewish U.S. vice-presidential candidate in history, Lieberman was the first U.S. senator to speak out against President Clinton's immorality in 1998 and has a record that offsets some of Gore's liberalism but is far less extreme than that of Bush's right-wing running mate, former secretary of defense Richard Cheney, now 58. Calling himself a "compassionate conservative" who will be a "uniter, not a divider," Bush favors a proposal by the 23-year-old Cato Institute to privatize Social Security. In debates with Gore he says, "I just don't think it's the role of the United States to walk into a country and say, 'We do it this way, so should you . . . ' If we're an arrogant nation they'll resent us. I don't think our troops ought to be used for what's called nation building." Neither presidential candidate inspires much enthusiasm, turnout for the November 7 election is about 50.7 percent of eligible voters, only slightly higher than in 1996, and the balloting ends in a statistical tie, with Gore winning California, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Washington State, Washington, D.C., and all of New England except New Hampshire, but with Florida and Oregon still in doubt pending tabulation of absentee ballots, Gore has a narrow majority of the popular vote. Oregon voters have all cast their ballot by mail, the state reports November 10 that it has gone for Gore, he has 267 electoral votes to Bush's 246, but the final election result remains in doubt. Consumer advocate Ralph Nader, now 66, runs on the Green Party ticket, winning less than 3 percent of the popular vote but taking enough votes from Gore to make the difference in states like Florida and New Hampshire (whose four electoral votes would have made Gore the winner). Interest in the election becomes intense in the days following November 7 as eligible voters who did not cast their ballots realize how important even a single vote can be. Voting procedures in Florida and some other states vary from district to district, some poorer Florida election districts have antiquated machines that effectively disenfranchised thousands of voters. Florida law requires hand counting of ballots where requested in counties where the result is in dispute, Gov. Bush appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court November 22 to intervene in the hand counting, Florida's secretary of state (and Republican campaign co-chair) Katherine Harris aborts hand counting November 26 with Bush ahead by 537 votes (out of 6 million votes cast) and certifies Bush as the winner of her state's 25 electoral votes, giving him the presidency. About $3 billion has been spent on electioneering, which has been going on for 4 years.
The U.S. Supreme Court remands the presidential election case to the Florida Supreme Court December 4, the Florida Supreme Court approves a resumption of hand counting December 8, but the U.S. Supreme Court rules in a 5-to-4 decision December 9 that the lack of an objective standard requires that the counting must stop immediately. A complex and unsigned ruling handed down by the Rehnquist court at 10 o'clock on the evening of December 12 remands the case to the Florida Supreme Court with instructions that bar hand-counted ballots because time is running out. Four associate justices take exception, with david souter saying that "there is no justification for denying the state the opportunity to try to count all the disputed ballots now." Two other justices join John Paul Stevens in a more sharply-worded dissent: "It is confidence in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law. Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly clear. It is the nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." Vice President Gore concedes defeat December 13, Gov. Bush is proclaimed the winner, but Gore has won the popular vote by 539,947 votes (Kennedy beat Nixon by 118,574 votes in 1960, Nixon beat Humphrey by 510,314 votes in 1968), the 5-week struggle has embittered partisans on both sides, and the Supreme Court's action creates troubling legitimacy questions both for the Bush victory and for the court itself.
New York's mayor Rudolf Giuliani announces in May that he has prostate cancer and will not be a candidate for the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Daniel Patrick Moynihan. Republicans nominate Long Island congressman Rick Lazio to run for the Senate, Democrats nominate First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton; she campaigns hard upstate and wins with 55 percent of the popular vote, becoming the first woman to serve as first lady and then to win elective office and giving Democrats 50 of the Senate's 100 seats, but Republicans retain their narrow majority in the House of Representatives.
Haitians reelect former president Jean-Bertrand Aristide November 26 after his Lavalas Party wins 17 of the 18 Senate seats at stake and 80 percent of the House Assembly (see 1995), but all major parties have boycotted the presidential election, charging fraud in the May elections, and many of Haiti's 4 million registered voters have stayed away from the polls for fear of violence. The United States, Canada, and the European Union have refused to monitor the presidential election. Now 47, the former priest will try to revive the fortunes of his impoverished country (see 2004).
Canada's prime minister Jean Chrétien wins a snap election November 27, easily defeating right-wing challenger Stockwell Day, 50, after a contest that has taken only the legally allowed 36 days and cost scarcely $16 million. Former prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau has died of prostate cancer at Montreal September 28 at age 80 (he has suffered from Parkinson's disease). Canadian Alliance Party leader Day is an evangelical Christian who believes in creationism and holds that dinosaurs and human coexisted in prehistoric times; he opposes abortion rights, gay rights, and Canada's new gun-registration laws (views shared by many below the 49th parallel). The talcum-tongued college drop-out has promised to reduce taxes; he wins only in the western provinces of Saskatchewan, Alberta, and British Columbia. Chrétien, now 66, has robbed Day of his chief issue; his government has announced the largest tax cut in Canadian history.
human rights, social justice
Britain announces January 12 that her military will conform with the practice of other European countries and end the ban on openly homosexual men and women serving in the armed forces.
A Tokyo conference convened in January to play down the atrocities committed by Japanese troops during their occupation of China stirs a storm of criticism in January by declaring that the nanjing massacre of 1937 was "a myth." Mainstream Japanese historians join with foreign academics and the Chinese government in condemning what they call a "distortion" of history; while there are legitimate differences as to the number of people killed and raped in the notorious incident, Tsuru University professor Tokushu Kasahara says, "The people claiming there was no Nanjing Massacre . . . are the people who would maintain that Japan's war in China was legitimate, that it was not an invasion. Many Japanese do not know much about these events, and the people of this camp are trying to influence them."
On March 1 Egyptian women gain equal rights to divorce, but women in every other Muslim country except Tunisia may divorce only with assent from their husbands, who often cannot be found and who can obtain divorces automatically under the Shariah (Islamic legal code). Former president Anwar Sadat issued a decree permitting a woman to divorce her husband if she objected to his taking another wife, the decree was called unconstitutional on procedural grounds, President Mubarak repealed an Ottoman-era rule that made it a crime for a woman to run away from an abusive husband, he proposed the change in Egypt's divorce law late last year, right-wing lawmakers said women were too flighty to be entrusted with the option of no-fault divorce, the press called the proposal a man-hating feminist idea, but a coalition of moderate clerics, civil court judges, divorce lawyers, and women's advocates endorsed Mubarak's proposal.
The Confederate battle flag that has flown atop the South Carolina Statehouse at Columbia since 1962 comes down July 1 pursuant to legislation enacted in May following widespread protests that the flag is a symbol of racism (blacks have boycotted the state); a smaller, square version of the flag is put on a pole adjacent to a Confederate soldiers' memorial near the front of the Capitol, but the naacp continues its boycott, urging that organizations hold their meetings and conventions elsewhere until the flag is removed entirely.
Britain gets a U.S.-style Bill of Rights October 2 as the Labour government enforces a new Human Rights Act incorporating a European Convention on Human Rights into British civil law. Britain signed the convention in 1953 but there was little public enthusiasm for it and many right-wing elements feared that it would give too much power to criminals, homosexuals, minorities, and women at the expense of government authority; Scotland has incorporated the convention into her laws earlier in the year, it now becomes part of English and Welsh law, but aside from absolute bans on slavery and torture most of the rights in the convention are qualified or limited in some way.
Vienna unveils a Holocaust memorial in the Judenplatz November 25 with a ceremony attended by the city's mayor, its chief rabbi, its Roman Catholic archbishop Christoph Cardinal Schönborn (who acknowledges the Church's "culpability in the persecution of Jews" before and during the Nazi era), and Austria's president Thomas Klestil. London-born sculptor Rachel Whiteread, 37, has designed the structure, which is intended to resemble an inside-out library.
exploration, colonization
A soyuz astro in encyclopedia spacecraft carrying a U.S. astronaut and two Russians dock at the 80-ton International Space Station 240 miles above Earth November 2 and begin what is expected to be a 4-month stint expanding the $60 billion research outpost. Critics deplore spending so much money on the effort and note that unmanned space-research programs have produced better results than the more-publicized manned programs.
commerce
Russia's commercial creditors agree at Frankfurt February 11 to restructure $31.8 billion of the country's external debt, effectively writing off about half of it to clear the way for Moscow to reenter international money markets for the first time since August 1998. Some $22.2 billion in Soviet-era debt and $6.8 billion in Russian state debt will be exchanged under the agreement for new 30-year Russian Federation Eurobonds.
World finance ministers gather at Washington, D.C., in mid-April for meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, but demonstrators block traffic as they did last year at Seattle in protests against what they call policies which are adopted without public debate, harm the environment, and help multinational companies while supporting sweatshops, impoverishing peasants, and burdening Third World countries with crushing debts.
The U.S. Treasury issues its first $100 million worth of gold-tinted $1 coins in April, circulating them through Wal-Mart stores and in 5,000 boxes of Cherios breakfast food (see1998). Sculptor Glenna Goodacre has designed the coin's face, using shoshone student Randy 'L Hedow Teton as a model for the Shoshone guide sacagawea who helped the Lewis and Clark expedition. Made of copper, brass, and manganese, the coins are far less easy to confuse with quarters than were the Susan B. Anthony dollars issued earlier but are prone to tarnishing.
The African Growth and Opportunity Act signed into law by President Clinton May 17 is the biggest trade measure since the creation of the World Trade Organization in 1994. The United States unilaterally lowers tariffs for a number of African goods and eliminates import quotas for African textiles made with native or American material (sweaters woven in Africa from Asian or European yarn still face U.S. quotas, but only 5 percent of all African exports go to the United States). While Africa has nearly 700 million potential customers, average per-capita income exceeds $1,500 in only six of the 48 sub-Saharan countries.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average reaches new heights in March but plummets 617.78 points (5.7 percent) to 10,305.77 April 14, its largest point drop ever, on news of a 0.7 percent increase in the U.S. Consumer Price Index for March; the NASDAQ has topped 5,000 March 10 but plunges 355.49 points (9.7 percent) to 3,321.29 April 14, another record drop.
The euro falls to new lows in September and Danes reject the European common currency September 28 by a popular vote of 53.1 percent to 46.9 percent, despite a vigorous campaign by Denmark's prime minister Nyrup Rasmussen, who has said that clinging to the kroner instead of adopting the common currency would mean isolation from the European Community.
The House of Representatives votes 279 to 136 June 9 to phase out the federal estate (inheritance) tax, even though only 2 percent of Americans die with estates large enough to be subject to any tax (over $675,000 for an individual, $1.3 million for a family-owned farm). The bill would reduce federal tax revenues by $28 billion over the first 5 years, $100 billion over the first decade, and $50 billion per year after that. Democrats have offered a measure that would limit the tax to estates of more than $4 million, but it has been defeated 222 to 196, and 65 Democrats have joined the 213 Republicans voting for total abolition of the tax, raising fears that philanthropies will be hard hit if President Clinton does not veto the bill. Clinton vetoes legislation August 5 that would eliminate the "marriage penalty," which in some cases requires married couples to pay higher federal income taxes than single persons earning the same amount (Republicans assail the veto and vow to use it against the candidacy of Vice President Gore, but Clinton insists that the measure is imprudent and favors the rich, who will actually benefit more from lowering the national debt and consequently increasing stock prices than by lowering taxes). He vetoes repeal of the estate tax August 31.
Gold and diamond magnate Harry F. Oppenheimer dies at Johannesburg August 19 at age 91, having headed Anglo American Corp. from 1957 to 1982 and De Beers until 1987.
Chase Manhattan agrees in September to pay $36 billion for the 139-year-old investment banking house J. P. Morgan and changes its name to J. P. Morgan Chase (see Chemical, 1995).
The Permanent Normalized Trade with China bill signed into law by President Clinton October 10 endorses permanent normalized trade status for the People's Republic of China and paves the way for the PRC's entry into the World Trade Organization (WTO). Many U.S. labor unions have opposed the measure, protesting that normalized trade would mean a loss of U.S. jobs and signify acceptance of Chinese human rights violations, but the Clinton administration has argued that it would open new markets to U.S. exports and give the Chinese increased exposure to democratic ideas. Multinational companies have lobbied hard for its passage, Clinton and Vice President Gore have supported it, and it has won Senate approval by a vote of 83 to 15 September 19, but only after provisions have been added to safeguard Taiwan and protect Chinese workers (who may or may not represent a great market for U.S. exports but who certainly earn a tiny fraction of what U.S. workers earn).
The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) issues a rule in November intended to protect employees from repetitive stress injuries. OSHA estimates that compliance will cost industry $4.5 billion in the rule's first year, industry estimates place the cost as high as $125.8 billion in its first year and $886.6 billion over the course of 10 years (see1978); insurance companies, trade groups, and unions mount legal challenges to the rule and will try to have it repealed.
A pocket veto by President Clinton December 20 stops legislation that would have made it far more difficult for debtors to obtain bankruptcy protection. Banks and other credit card issuers have lobbied hard for the Bankruptcy Reform Act, they have given more in political contributions to lawmakers than energy or pharmaceutical companies, but supporters of the measure will renew their efforts to have it passed.
Wall Street's Dow Jones Industrial Average closes December 31 at 10,786.84, down 6.2 percent from its 1999 close of 11,497.12. The NASDAQ ends the year at 2,470.52, down 54 percent from its peak and down 39.3 percent for the year.
retail, trade
Montgomery Ward files for bankruptcy December 28, announcing that it is eliminating 450 jobs immediately and will go out of business after 128 years, closing its 250 stores and dismissing the 28,000 associates who operate them.
energy
World oil prices reach $30 per barrel in February as OPEC countries restrict output; by early March the price has hit $34, up from $11 at the end of 1998, and OPEC ministers from every member nation except Iran agree March 27 to increase production by 1.2 million barrels per day. Iran joins the agreement within a day or two, and by May the price has fallen back to $30, which is still double what it was a year ago. Prices by August 25 have reached $35 per barrel; French fishermen, truckdrivers, farmers, and others force the government to reduce taxes on gasoline, Prime Minister Tony Blair refuses to lower British taxes, protesters blockade refineries, and they bring the country almost to a standstill in September. Spanish truckdrivers join the protest in mid-September. President Clinton gives orders September 22 to release 1 million barrels per day for 30 days from the U.S. Strategic Oil Reserve, responding to pleas that high oil prices will cause hardships to needy Americans in cold weather; Republicans protest that he has acted for political reasons. OPEC nations celebrate their 40th anniversary at Caracas at the end of September, Venezuela's populist president Hugo Chávez says oil prices should rise in order to make developed countries help less developed countries, but Saudi Arabia promises to increase production in order to keep prices affordable. The United States remains a major petroleum producer, pumping about 6 million barrels per day, but U.S. proven oil reserves have fallen to 21 billion barrels, down from 39 billion in 1970, while Saudi Arabia has 262 billion and Venezuela 73 billion.
transportation
Athens inaugurates a subway in January that has taken 7 years to complete under the scrutiny of 50 Greek government archaeologists, who have followed the excavation equipment and sifted the debris for artifacts.
Amtrak's first Acela Express train leaves Washington's Union Station December 12 and arrives at Boston in 6 hours and 43 minutes (12 minutes behind schedule). Able to go 150 miles per hour and shorten by 15 minutes the ride between New York and Washington, it goes that fast only on an 18-mile stretch in Rhode Island and a 10-mile stretch in Massachusetts. Held to between 70 and 90 miles per hour on tracks owned by New York and Connecticut, it is slower than France's Train à Grande Vitesse, which weighs half as much.
JetBlue Airways Corp. is founded at New York February 11 by Salt Lake City airline executive David Neeleman, 39, a veteran of Southwest Airlines who has petitioned the U.S. Department of Transportation for slots at Kennedy Airport. Neeleman will operate his 162-seat A320 planes 12 hours per day on routes that average 1,055 miles (JFK to San Juan, JFK to Long Beach, Calif., etc.), and JetBlue will show profits in its initial years.
A Kenya Airways Airbus A310 takes off from Abidjan, Ivory Coast, January 30 and crashes into the Atlantic, killing 169 of the 179 persons aboard; Alaska Airlines Flight 261 plunges into the Pacific northwest of Los Angeles January 31, killing all 88 persons aboard the MD-83 aircraft; an Air Philippines Boeing 737-200 en route from Manila to Davao City crashes into a coconut grove April 19, killing all 131 persons aboard; an Air France Concorde takes off from Charles de Gaulle Airport outside Paris July 25 and crashes into a nearby hotel, killing all 100 passengers and nine crew personnel aboard plus four people on the ground (all Concorde flights are soon suspended and Air France sues Continental Airlines, alleging that the accident was caused by debris on the runway left by a Continental plane); the pilot of a Singapore Airlines Boeing 747 uses the wrong runway for his takeoff from Taiwan in heavy rain and wind November 2, hits construction materials, and crashes, killing more than 81 (the pilot survives).
The 77,000-ton cruise ship Ocean Princess goes into service in February for the Peninsular & Oriental Steam Navigation Co. subsidiary Princess Cruises. Rising 14 stories high, it has two main dining rooms, four swimming pools, a casino, a fitness center, shops, and accommodations for 1,950 passengers.
Ford Motor Company agrees in March to buy Land Rover from BMW and announces April 14 that it will pay its shareholders a record $10 billion extra dividend investment. Now the world's second largest industrial corporation, Ford remains under the control of the Ford family, which owns 40 percent of its voting stock. BMW sells the rest of its Rover subsidiary for a token £10 ($15) to a British consortium and promises to loan the buyers $767 million to help it stop the losses ($3 million per day), avoid closing Rover's Longbridge plant outside Birmingham, save about 9,000 jobs, and make Rover a viable mass producer of motorcars. Ford chairman William C. Ford Jr. admits May 11 that the sport utility vehicles on which his company has made so much money cause serious safety and environmental problems but vows to reduce exhaust pipe emissions, boost fuel economy, and make the SUVs less dangerous in crashes with ordinary cars.
Bridgestone/Firestone announces August 9 that it will recall some 6.5 million Firestone tires, including all 15-inch Radial ATX and Radial ATX II tires but especially Wilderness AT tires made at a Decatur, Ill., plant (see Firestone, 1978; bridgestone corporation adr otc brdcy, 1988). The tires have been used primarily on Ford Explorer suburban utility vehicles, the company has previously recalled such tires in Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, other tiremakers profit from Firestone's recall, and Ford announces September 28 that it will equip its Explorer SUVs with michelin tires and negotiate with other makers to provide tires for various Ford models.
Japan's Akashi Kaikyo Bridge opens to connect Kobe and Awaji-shima Island. The world's longest spanning suspension bridge, it has been built at a cost of $4.3 billion to withstand earthquakes and 180-mile-per hour winds, its two towers rise to a height of 928 feet, and it stretches 12,828 feet across the Akashi Strait with a single steel span of 6,527 feet.
General Motors announces December 12 that it will phase out its Oldsmobile make within 5 years.
Mini Cooper motorcar designer John Cooper dies of cancer at Worthing, West Sussex, December 24 at age 77.
technology
IBM announces in March that it has embarked on a bold, costly, and risky program to make all of its software and hardware work seamlessly with the "open source" Linux computer operating system, introduced in 1993 and available free on the Internet. Senior vice president Sam Palmisano, 48, has persuaded chairman Louis V. Gerstner Jr. that Linux could eventually enable IBM to have a viable alternative to Microsoft's Windows and Sun Microsystem's Solaris operating systems, becoming the industry standard.
Judge Thomas Penfield Jackson rules April 3 that Microsoft violated U.S. antitrust rules with predatory behavior designed to maintain a monopoly for its PC operating software and tie its Internet Explorer Web browser to its Windows system as "part of a larger campaign to quash innovation." Jackson then urges litigants to appeal directly to the Supreme Court in order to expedite a resolution of the dispute (see 1999). The Department of Justice and 17 state attorneys general ask Jackson April 28 to break Microsoft into two parts and impose serious curbs on the activities of the two new companies, but the government's position finds support among only a minority of computer users. Microsoft fights the "radical" breakup proposal, says there is no precedent for it, denies any wrongdoing, but proposes May 10 that some limitations be placed on its dealings with computer makers; the Justice Department responds May 16 that the concessions are not sufficient, Judge Jackson orders a breakup of the company June 8, and the U.S. Supreme Court refuses in late September to hear the case (see 2001).
IBM announces April 3 that its researchers have devised a method for boosting the speed and performance of microprocessors by as much as 30 percent using a new polymer-based material that helps reduce losses of power and signals. The company will begin manufacturing copper chips with the material, which is known as low-k dielectric and effectively seals the area around the chip's wiring to help prevent so-called cross-talk, in which signals traveling down on microscopic wire are detected by adjacent wires.
Silicon Valley pioneer Richard Hodgson dies in Barbados March 4 at age 83 of injuries sustained in an automobile accident; statistician John Tukey dies of a heart attack at New Brunswick, N.J., July 26 at age 85.
science
Human Genome Project director Francis S. Collins and Celera Genomics Group president J. Craig Venter announce jointly at the White House June 26 that they have completed "working drafts" of the human genome, having determined that there are about 3.1 billion chemical bases, or letters, in the sequenced genome (see Venter, 1998). The work of decoding has been finished far ahead of schedule and at far less cost than had originally been projected ($250 million from a consortium of federal and private entities, $200 to $250 million from Celera), it has involved only 1,100 scientists from the consortium and 542 from Celera, and it is hailed as a scientific achievement comparable to the Manhattan Project of 1945, the moon landing of 1969, and the Hubble Space Telescope of 1990, but Collins and Venter remain at odds as both continue to pursue the quest for a complete sequencing of the genome (see 2003).
The National Institutes of Health issues rules August 23 that would permit federally financed researchers to work on human embryonic stem cells under strict regulations (see 1998). The rules anger right-to-life advocates, but privately funded stem-cell research has been going on for years (see2001).
Nuclear physicist Walter H. Zinn dies at clearwater florida, Fla., February 14 at age 93; evolutionary biologist William D. Hamilton of malaria at Oxford March 7 at age 63, having been bite by a mosquito in the Congo while seeking evidence to support a radical theory that the AIDS epidemic can be traced to contaminate polio vaccines; crystallographer Herman Bijvoet dies at Niewengen, Netherlands, March 29 at age 82; biophysicist Toyoichi Tanaka suffers a heart attack while playing tennis and dies at Wellesley, Mass., May 20 at age 54; physicist Joseph Weber dies of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at Pittsburgh September 30 at age 81; Nobel biochemist Michael Smith of cancer at Vancouver, B.C., October 4 at age 68, having determined how to change the sequences of the chain of building blocks that make up DNA.
medicine
The American Academy of Pediatrics issues its first guidelines for diagnosing attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder May 1 in an effort to prevent overmedication of youngsters who are merely rowdy while making sure that those who really need drugs such as Ritalin will get them. The drugs have been prescribed for decades, but a sharp increase in their use over the past few years has suggested that the disorder is being overdiagnosed.
South Africa resumes widescale house spray with DDT following a resurgence of malaria. Epidemics of the disease killed more than 100,000 people in Madagascar and Swaziland following suspension of spraying in the mid-1980s, and a group of 380 scientists have signed an open letter urging renewed use of DDT inside houses, noting that such use has no ill effects on human health and has nothing to do with eggshell-thinning in raptor birds or other environmental concerns.
Saline breast implants win approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) May 10. Studies of more than 5,000 women have shown that such implants pose what the FDA calls a relatively high risk of complications (infection, pain, tissue hardening, repeated surgery) and rupture, but the agency says they also offer benefits and may be sold with warnings of their risks.
The June 26 announcement that a rough draft of the genetic code has been completed opens new vistas for medical treatment. The draft includes the sequencing of 95 percent of genes known to cause disease; gene-replacement therapy is still in its infancy, but the announcement raises concerns that it will be difficult to maintain the privacy of individuals' genetic makeups and that the information may be used by insurance companies and others to deny coverage or employment.
Coronary bypass surgery pioneer René Favaloro is found dead at his Buenos Aires home July 29 at age 77, an apparent suicide.
The Drug Addiction Treatment Act signed into law by President Clinton October 17 aims to treat heroin addiction as a disease. Sponsored by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R. Utah) and Sen. Carl M. Levin (D. Mich.), it has been written on the basis of prescription-drug alternatives to methadone that will win FDA approval in September 2002: buprenorphine (a partial opiate that produces minimum mood alteration) and buprenorphine-naloxone (the same drug combined with an opiate blockers). Implementation of the measure will permit physicians to prescribe drugs for addicts in the same way they do for patients with diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, or other chronic illnesses.
The Needlestick Safety and Prevention Act signed into law by President Clinton November 6 has cleared Congress in quick time. The Centers for Disease Control estimated in March that more than 380,000 subcutaneous injuries from contaminated sharps occur each year among U.S. health professionals and as many as 800,000 worldwide, subjecting them to the risk that the accidental prick could infect them with a patient's blood carrying HIV or the often-fatal C strain of hepatitis. New Jersey-based Becton Dickinson is the leading producer of needle devices and has spent $500 million developing "safety-engineered" needles, gambling that Congress would pass the law that mandates use of their products (which cost more than twice as much as ordinary sharps).
The Dutch parliament votes November 28 to legalize assisted suicide, allowing physicians to help end the lives of seriously ill patients who have asked to die. The Netherlands becomes the first nation to permit a practice that has become widespread but has technically been a crime.
religion
Pope John Paul II announces plans to visit the birthplace of the Old Testament prophet Abraham at ur, but Iraq refuses him entry. He makes a "virtual pilgrimage" February 24, using props and videotape, proceeds to Egypt, where he visits the place believed by many to be the biblical Mount Sinai and goes on to Bethlehem and Jerusalem in an effort to reconcile all three Abrahamaic faiths-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam-but when he visits a Palestinian refugee camp on the West Bank, deplores the plight of the camp residents, and expresses empathetic understanding (in English) for the hardships of refugee life his remarks are not translated into Arabic.
At least 330 members of a millennial sect lock themselves inside a church in a small Ugandan town 200 miles southwest of Kampala March 17, spend a few hours singing and chanting, and then set fire to the structure. More bodies are found in the next 10 days, most of them evidently murder victims, and by the end of March the body count has reached 914. The mass suicide and murder of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Commandments of God is the largest such incident since the Jonestown, Guyana, incident of 1978.
New York's archbishop John Cardinal O'Connor dies of brain cancer at his Manhattan residence May 3 at age 80 after a 16-year term in which he has defended the poor and working class among the 2.37 million Roman Catholics in his archdiocese while fighting abortion and homosexuality. He is succeeded by bridgeport connecticut, Conn., bishop Edward Michael Egan, 68, who has similar views.
A 6-to-3 U.S. Supreme Court ruling June 19 bars publicly supported high schools from offering prayers on public-address systems at sporting events. Justice John Paul Stevens's majority opinion says a Texas school district was sponsoring proselytization in violation of the establishment clause in the Constitution's First Amendment (Santa Fe Independent School District v. Jane Doe). The family of a Catholic student has joined with a Mormon student's family to obtain a restraining order 1 that would prevent prayers from being said at forthcoming graduation exercises. They have received support from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), those favoring the school district's position argue that Congress opens its sessions with prayers, Chief Justice William Rehnquist's dissent says the majority opinion "bristles with hostility to all things religious in public life," Justices Scalia and Thomas also dissent, and politicians use the issue of school prayer to distract voters from substantive issues.
Former U.S. senator John C. Danforth (R. Mo.) releases a report at St. Louis July 21 that clears Attorney General Janet Reno and the FBI of any wrongdoing in connection with the deaths of about 80 branch davidian at Waco, Texas, in April 1993. Condemned by many for having championed the candidacy of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in 1991, Danforth has served as special counsel for a team of 38 investigators and 16 lawyers who have spent more than 10 months examining the evidence; there was no conspiracy and no cover-up, he says: "The blame rests squarely on the shoulders of David Koresh." An FBI agent and some government lawyers tried to conceal the fact that the FBI fired three pyrotechnic tear-gas projectiles at a construction pit about 75 yards from the cult's living quarters, but the projectiles did no damage. Cult members spread flammable liquid and set fire to the complex in a mass suicide, having first killed 30 of their own people, including five children (one child was stabbed to death, the others shot in the head execution style).
education
Japan's Education Ministry announces January 26 that it has formed a panel of experts to devise measures for improving English teaching methods. Prime Minister Obuchi proposes making English the country's official second language, opponents of the new policy say there is no way for all Japanese to have a working knowledge of English, but the nation's lack of facility with English has created a crisis in the Internet age.
A poll of seniors at 56 top U.S. colleges reveals a woeful ignorance of history. Sponsored by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, it reports that 99 percent of the 556 seniors interviewed in December 1999 could identify the cartoon characters beavis and Butthead, 98 percent recognized the name of the hard-core rapper Snoop Doggy Dog, but only one in four was familiar with the emancipation proclamation, 29 percent could identify Reconstruction, 52 percent knew that George Washington's Farewell Address warned against establishing permanent alliances with foreign governments, and only 22 percent that the phrase "Government of the people, by the people, and for the people" came from Lincoln's gettysburg address. Students at three out of four liberal arts and research universities are not required to take any history courses.
communications, media
America Online and Time Warner announce January 10 that aol will acquire Time Warner for about $162 billion in a deal that eclipses all previous Mergers and Acquisitions.
The Internet comes under a massive attack by "cybervandals" in February; they block access to Amazon.com, ebay, Yahoo! and other Web sites, increasing alarms that the open nature of the Internet makes it vulnerable to "denial of service" breakdowns that may jeopardize national defense and international commerce. Malicious hackers and "cyberterrorists" have broken into government Web sites in the past, but the February incidents spark a major FBI investigation. A far more devastating attack comes May 4, when young Filipino hackers send out an Internet message saying, "I love you" and inviting Web users to call up an attachment, which sends a message to everyone on that user's Web mailing list and shuts down the recipient's computer. Replicating as it moves, the so-called "love bug" virus (or worm) erases data, including photograph and music files, as it travels across Asia, Europe, and the Americas, paralyzing communications. As many as 70 percent of Germany's computers are affected, the House of Commons at London shuts down its e-mail to stop the virus, and government offices at Washington, D.C., are affected as the virus takes a toll estimated as high as $10 billion.
The comic strip "Peanuts" makes its final appearance January 3 after nearly 50 years of entertaining newspaper readers worldwide with the antics of Charlie Brown, Lucy Van Pelt, her brother Linus, and snoopy comic strip character. Cartoonist Charles M. Schulz dies immediately after final appearance of colon cancer at his Santa Rosa, Calif., home February 12 at age 77, having decided to stop the strip rather than have anyone else continue it.
Canadian press lord Kenneth R. Thomson sells his 49 U.S. newspapers in mid-July for $2.44 billion to invest more deeply in electronic information services but retains ownership of the Toronto Globe and Mail (see 1981). Now 76 and one of the world's 10 richest men (his family's net worth reportedly exceeds $16 billion), Thomson sold his North Sea oil holdings in 1989 and 2 years ago sold his British package-tour travel business. The Toronto-based Thomson Organization has owned more than 200 community newspapers in Canada and the United States but will now concentrate its efforts on cyberspace, acquiring rights to use database content for which it can charge Internet users.
CanWest Global Communications announces at Montreal July 31 that it will pay $2.36 billion and assume $460 million of publisher Conrad Black's $1.6 billion debt load to acquire Black's hollinger inc, which publishes the dominant newspapers in eight out of Canada's 10 provinces, including the Calgary Herald, Edmonton Sun, Montreal Gazette, Ottawa Citizen, Vancouver Province, plus more than 90 smaller papers and controls the Internet company Canada.com. (seeCanWest, 1975). Now 55, Black retains ownership of the Chicago Sun-Times, London Daily Telegraph, and Jerusalem Post plus a half interest in the Toronto-based National Post. He becomes the second largest stockholder in CanWest, whose founder Israel H. Asper, now 63, is a social democrat whose Liberal Party views do not jibe with those of Black. Asper and his sons Leonard and David have come under fire for requiring editors of their papers to support Israel, support Prime Minister Chrétien, and take other unpopular positions, and of undermining Canadian culture by running U.S. sitcoms on their TV stations.
Russian troops wearing ski masks and carrying machine guns raid the Moscow offices of the country's biggest media company May 11, shutting down Media Most's newspaper and television station, which have been the most outspoken critics of President Putin and his Kremlin entourage. Former prime minister Sergei Kiriyenko backed Putin in the election but calls the raid "a public act of intimidation"; Communist Party leader Gennadi A. Zyuganov says that "it looks disgusting."
The Serbian government seizes control of the main opposition television station at Belgrade May 17, accusing it of advocating an uprising against the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic. Some 20,000 demonstrators take to the streets in protest, chanting, "Slobodan, save Serbia, kill yourself," and "To The Hague, Slobodan, to the hague!" (Milosevic has been indicted on charges of war crimes by the international tribunal at The Hague.) Demonstrators take over the state-controlled television station October 2.
Haitian broadcast journalist Jean Dominique, 69, is gunned down at Port-au-Prince April 3 as he arrives at radio station Haiti-Inter to deliver the 7 o'clock morning news (in recent months he has accused the national election board of planning to sabotage upcoming polls and attacked a local pharmaceutical company whose dextromethorphan was blamed for the deaths of 60 children); broadcast journalism pioneer Robert Trout dies at New York November 14 at age 91.
Former Columbia University constitutional law professor Herbert Wechsler of 1964 New York Times v. Sullivan fame dies at his New York home April 26 at age 90; Brazilian journalist Alexandre Barbosa Lima writes his last newspaper column in July and dies at a rio de janeiro clinic July 16 at age 103.
President Clinton vetoes an intelligence authorization bill November 4 that contains a provision making it a felony to leak government secrets, with violators subject to prison terms of up to 3 years and fines of up to $10,000. Britain's Official Secrets Act has been in force since 1911, but Clinton says the U.S. measure is "overbroad and may unnecessarily chill legitimate activities that are at the heart of a democracy."
The U.S. Supreme Court permits audio recording for the first time of arguments before the nine justices in connection with the disputed presidential election but continues to forbid cameras in the courtroom. The audio tapes are played on radio and television in December after completion of the lawyers' arguments and questions from the bench.
literature
The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) goes online in early April in the first phase of a 10-year, $55 million overhaul that will add more than 600,000 new words to the work and revise the 19th-century entries for many old ones. The printed version has grown to a 138-pound monster of more than 20 volumes with some 640,000 words and phrases, and although annual subscriptions cost $550 for individuals ($795 and up for libraries and other institutions), it is possible for individuals to log onto their libraries' Web site and use the new electronic version free.
A 12-volume, Arabic language Encyclopedia of Folklore of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is published in Belgium in June after 10 years of work. Financed by Saudi media baron Prince Khaled bin Sultan, the multi-million-dollar project has 5,000 drawings, illustrations, and graphics, with separate volumes on such subjects as archaeological sites, the camel 1, children's games, geography, historical sites, and traditional medicine.
Nonfiction: Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community by Rochester, N.Y.-born Harvard political scientist Robert D. (David) Putnam, 59; The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference by English-born (Canadian-raised) New Yorker magazine writer Malcolm Gladwell, 37; The Geostrategic Triad: Living with China, Europe, and Russia by Zbigniew Brzezinski; Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson; The Rights Revolution and Virtual War: Kosovo and Beyond by Michael Ignatieff; Completing the Revolution: A Vision for Victory in 2000 by Robert D. Novak; Shrub: The Short but Happy Political Life of George W. Bush by Molly Ivins (with Lou Dubose); Democracy Derailed: Initiative Campaigns and the Power of Money by David S. Broder, now 71; The Hunting of the President: The Ten-Year Campaign to Destroy Bill and Hillary Clinton by Gene Lyons and New York Observer columnist Joe Conason; Way Out There in the Blue: Reagan, Star Wars, and the End of the Cold War by Frances FitzGerald, who questions the idea that technology can somehow protect America from missile attacks, a notion that has bilateral support in Congress but little support in the scientific community; The O'Reilly Factor: The Good, the Bad, & the Completely Ridiculous in American Lifeby New York-born Fox News anchor William "Bill" O'Reilly (Jr.), 51, whose views in many cases differ little from those of pundits such as Rush Limbaugh (he has a picture of Hillary Clinton on the doormat of his office) but who admires the late Robert F. Kennedy, opposes the death penalty, and favors both gun control and the legalization of marijuana (his book is a huge bestseller); A Darwinian Left: Politics, Evolution, and Cooperation by philosopher Peter Singer, whose appointment 2 years ago to a chair at Princeton brought condemnation from right-wing critics who demonstrated on campus and flooded the university's alumni and student newspapers with protests; God's Name in Vain: How Religion Should and Should Not Be Involved in Politics by Stephen L. Carter; The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars by Toronto-born Providence, R.I.-historian Stephen O'Shea; Hirohito and the Making of Modern Japan by Herbert Bix, now 61, who claims that the late emperor played an active role in bringing his country into World War II; A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by San Francisco author Dave Eggers, 29, is a memoir about raising his orphaned brother; In the Heart of the Sea by nantucket massachusetts author Nathaniel Philbrick, 35, is the fullest account thus far of the sinking of the whale-ship Essex in 1820 and what ensued.
Author Alex Comfort dies northwest of London March 26 at age 80; historian Adam Ulan of lung cancer at Cambridge, Mass., March 28 at age 77; environmental author Marc Reisner of cancer at his san anselmo california, Calif., home July 21 at age 51; Mensa cofounder Lancelot Ware in Surrey August 15 at age 85; historian Steven Runciman at Radway, Warwickshire, November 1 at age 97; philosopher W. V. Quine at Boston December 25 at age 92.
Fiction: Girl with a Pearl Earring by Tracy Chevalier; Gertrude and Claudius by John Updike; The Unremovable Stain by Philip Roth; City of God by E. L. Doctorow; Ravelstein by Saul Bellow; Anil's Ghost by Michael Ondaatje; The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood; The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon; Emotionally Weird by Kate Atkinson; The Hiding Place by Cardiff-born Welsh novelist Trezza Azzopardi; The Blue Bedspread by Indian Express editor Raj Kamal Jha, 35; The Death of Vishnu by Bombay (Mumbai)-born University of Maryland mathematics professor-novelist Manil Suri; True History of the Kelly Gang by Paul Carey; English Passengers by Matthew Kneale; Blue Angel by Francine Prose; Horse Heaven by Jane Smiley; Riding the Bulletby Stephen King, whose electronic novel is offered on the Internet in mid-March and draws more than 400,000 download orders in its first 24 hours, free on some Web sites, $2.50 on others. King offers his next thriller The Plant on the Internet in July, making it available one chapter at a time for $1 per chapter on his Website www.stephenking.com.
Novelist Patrick O'Brian dies at Dublin January 2 at age 85; Anthony Powell at his Somerset home March 28 at age 94; Frances Gray Patton at Durham, N.C., March 28 at age 91; Giorgio Bassani at Rome April 13 at age 84; Penelope Fitzgerald at Highgate, London, April 28 at age 83; Barbara Cartland at her hertfordshire home May 21 at age 98, having written 723 books; detective novelist Frédéric Dard dies of a heart attack at Bonnefontaine, Switzerland, June 6 at age 78, having written nearly 300 books under his own name and various pseudonyms; editor-novelist William Maxwell dies at his New York home July 31 at age 91; mystery writer Patricia Moyes at her Virgin Gorda home in the Virgin Islands August 2 at age 77.
Poetry: Beowulf by Seamus Heaney in a modern English retelling of the 1,000-year-old classic; Tiepolo's Hound by derek walcott (with paintings by the poet); Taking Off Emily Dickinson's Clothes by Billy Collins; The Collected Poems of Stanley Kunitz by Kunitz, now 95, who becomes U.S. poet laureate in October.
Poet Edgar Bowers dies of non-Hodgkins lymphoma at his San Francisco home February 3 at age 75; Al Purdy of lung cancer at his home on Vancouver Island April 21 at age 81; Karl Shapiro at a New York hospice May 14 at age 86; Ernst Jandl of a cardiac disorder at his native Vienna June 9 at age 74; gwendolyn brooks at her native Chicago December 3 at age 83.
Juvenile: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire by J. K. Rowling, whose fourth in a projected series of seven novels has a record U.S. first printing of 3.8 million copies (Rowling's three previous books have sold more than 30 million), goes on sale at U.S. bookstores July 8, quickly sells out at British and U.S. bookstores, despite the fact that it runs to well over 700 pages. Many adults read the Rowling books, but the New York Times Book Review sets up a separate children's book best-seller list beginning July 16 to keep the Potter phenomenon from eclipsing other fiction bestsellers; The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman concludes his His Dark Materials trilogy; The Wide Window, The Miserable Mill, and The Austere Academy by Lemony Snicket, illustrations by Bret Helquist; The Rain Came Down and How Georgie Radbourn Saved Baseball by David Shannon; Because of Winn-Dixie by Merion, Pa.-born Minneapolis author Kate DiCamillo, 36.
Children's book illustrator Leonard Weisgard dies at his Glumso, Denmark, home in Zealand January 14 at age 83; author Beatrice Schenk de Regniers at her Washington, D.C., home March 1 at age 86; Robert E. Cormier of complications from a thrombus 1 at leominster massachusetts, Mass., November 2 at age 75.
art
British authorities accuse former Sotheby's chairman A. Alfred Taubman and former Christie's chairman Sir Anthony Tennant in early April of having conspired in the early 1990s to limit competition by fixing commissions charged to buyers and sellers. Taubman pleads guilty in October.
London's Tate Modern Museum opens May 12 in Southark across the Thames from St. Paul's Cathedral in the former Bankside power plant, which has been renovated by Swiss architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, both 49. Half of the $200 million funding for the project has come from government grants, half from private contributions. The old Tate upriver has been renamed Tate Britain and continues to display Gainsboroughs and Turners while the 12-story-high lobby of the Tate Modern features Louise Bourgeois's gigantic steel sculptures I Do, I Undo, and I Redo.
Painting: The Stowaway Peers Out at the Speed of Light by James Rosenquist. Jacob Lawrence dies at his Seattle home June 9 at age 82.
Sculptor and graphic artist Leonard Baskin dies of kidney disease at Northampton, Mass., June 3 at age 77; George Segal of cancer at his South Brunswick, N.J., home June 9 at age 75.
photography
Photographer Gisèle Freund dies at Paris March 31 at age 91.
theater, film
Theater: Contact 3/2 at New York's Mitzie E. Newhouse Theater, with dancers Boyd Gaines, Jack Hayes, Deborah Yates, book by John Weidman, choreography by Susan Stroman, 1,010 pers.; Lydie Breeze by John Guare 5/15 at the New York Theater Workshop, with Elizabeth Marvel, Boris McGiver, Bill Camp, Matt Servito, Joanna P. Adler; Conversations after a Burialby Yasmina Reza 9/13 at London's Almeida Theatre, with Claire Bloom in a translation by Christopher Hampton from the French; My Zinc Bed by David Hare 9/14 at London's Royal Court Theatre, with Steven Mackintosh, Tom Wilkinson, Julia Ormond in a play about drug addiction and the need for love; Jitney by August Wilson 9/19 at New York's off-Broadway Union Square Theater (after a run at the smaller Second Stage Theater); To the Green Fields Beyond by English playwright Nick Whitby 9/25 at London's Donmar Theatre about a tank crew in World War I; Proof by Chicago-born playwright David Auburn, 39, 10/24 at New York's Walter Kerr Theater, with Mary-Louise Parker, New York-born Ben Shankman, 32, California-born actor Larry Bryggman, 61, in a play about mathematical whizzes, 917 perfs.; Light by Torgny Lindgren 10/31 at London's Almeida Theatre; The Tale of the Allergist's Wife by New York-born playwright Charles Busch, 46, 11/2 at New York's Ethel Barrymore Theater, with Linda Lavin, Tony Roberts, Michele Lee, 777 perfs.; Force of Change by English playwright Gary Mitchell 11/8 at London's Royal Court Theatre; Old Money by Wendy Wasserstein 11/9 at New York's Mitzi E. Newhouse Theater, with John Cullum, Mary Beth Hurt; God Only Knows by Hugh Whitemore in November at London's Vaudeville Theatre, with Derek Jacobi; Far Away by Caryl Churchill 11/30 at London's Donmar Theatre attic.
Illusionist Doug Henning dies of liver cancer at Los Angeles February 7 at age 52; actor Lawrence Linville at New York April 10 at age 60; Broadway producer Alexander H. Cohen of respiratory failure at New York April 22 at age 79; Broadway producer David Merrick at London April 26 at age 88; actor John Gielgud near Aylesbury May 21 at age 96; playwright Samuel Taylor of arteriosclerosis at his Blue Hills, Me., home May 26 at age 87; actress Eugenia Rawls at Denver November 8 at age 87; actor Jason Robards Jr. of cancer at Bridgeport, Conn., December 26 at age 78.
Television: Malcolm in the Middle 1/9 on Fox with Frankie Muniz, Jane Kaczmarek, Bryan Cranston in a series about a middle-class family with four squabbling brothers; Titus3/20 on Fox, with stand-up comedian Christopher Titus, Stacy Keach (to 3/12/2002); Survivor 5/31 on CBS with 16 strangers marooned on a Malaysian island in a game show whose final "survivor" will win $1 million (adapted from a British version, the summer program attracts a huge initial audience as it tries to compete with Who Wants to Be a Millionaire on ABC), (contestant Richard Hatch wins the elimination test in the final episode August 23 as 50 million viewers watch, most of them 18- to 34-year-olds); C.S.I.: Crime Scene Investigation 10/6 on CBS with William Petersen as head of a Las Vegas police unit that includes actress Marg Helgenberger, George Eads, Gardy Dourdan, and Jorja Fox solving crimes from grisly evidence; Ed 10/8 on NBC with Thomas Cavanagh as lawyer Ed Stevens, Josh Randall, Jana Marie Hupp, Lesley Boone, Julia Bowen (to 2/6/2004); That's Life 10/8 on CBS with Saturday Night Live ellen burstyn tv episode, Heather Paige Kent, Paul Sorvino (to 1/26/2002); Yes, Dear 10/9 on CBS with Anthony Clark, Liza Snyder, Mike O'Malley, Jean Louisa Kelly; The District 10/14 on CBS with Spokane-born actor Craig T. Nelson, 54, as former New York crime fighter Jack Maple, Joliet, Ill.-born actress Lynn Thigpen, 51, Glasgow-born actor David O'Hara, 45 (to 5/1/2004); Gilmore Girls 10/19 on WB with Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Keiko Agena.
Gunmen attack Mexican TV comedian Francisco "Paco" Stanley and kill him in a Mexico City street June 12 at age 56; TV host and comedian Steve Allen dies of a heart attack at Los Angeles October 30 at age 78.
Films: Cameron Crowe's Almost Famous with Patrick Fugit, Billy Crudup, Frances McDormand, Los Angeles-born actress Kate Hudson, 21; Lasse Hallström's Chocolat with Juliette Binoche, Judi Dench, Johnny Depp; Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon with Chow Yun-Fat, Michelle Yeoh, Zhang Ziyi, Chang Chen; Steven Soderbergh's Erin Brockovich with Julia Roberts, Albert Finney, Aaron Eckhart; Ridley Scott's Gladiator with Russell Crowe, Joaquin Phoenix as the emperor commodus; Philip Kaufman's Quills with Joaquin Phoenix, Kate Winslet, Geoffrey Rush as the marquis de sade; Darren Aronofsky's Requiem for a Dream with Jared Leto, Marlon Wayans, Jennifer Connolly; Steven Soderbergh's Traffic with Michael Douglas; Edward Yang's Yi Yi (A One and a Two) with Wu Nienjen, Jonathan Chang; Kenneth Lonergan's You Can Count on Me with Laura Linney, Mark Ruffalo. Also: Mary Harron's American Psycho with Welsh actor Christian Bale; Julian Schnabel's Before Night Falls with Javier Bardem; Patrice Leconte's Girl on the Bridge with Daniel Auteuil, French pop star Vanessa Paradis; Stephen Frears's High Fidelity with John Cusack; Hugh Hudson's I Dreamed of Africa with Kim Basinger; Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love with Maggie Cheung, Tony Leung; Robert Redford's The Legend of Bagger Vance with Will Smith, Matt Damon, Charlize Theron; Volker Schlondorff's The Legend of Rita with Bibiana Beglau, Martin Wuttke; Istvan Szabo's Sunshine with Ralph Fiennes, Jennifer Ehle, Rosemary Harris; Robert Zemeckis' What Lies Beneath with Michelle Pfeiffer, Harrison Ford; Marek Kanievska's Where the Money Is with Paul Newman, Linda Fiorentino. Plus: Des McAnuff's The Adventures of Rocky and Bullwinkle with Jason Alexander, Rene Russo, Robert De Niro.
Actress-inventor Hedy Lamarr is found dead in her altamonte springs florida home outside Orlando, Fla., January 19 at age 86; director Claude Autant-Lara dies at Antibes February 5 at age 98; director Roger Vadim of cancer at Paris February 11 at age 72; actress Claire Trevor at Newport Beach, Calif., April 8 at age 91; Douglas Fairbanks Jr. at New York May 7 at age 90; Francis Lederer at his Palm Springs, Calif., home May 25 at age 100; Vittorio Gassman of a heart attack at his Rome residence June 29 at age 77; saturday night live walter matthau tv episode of a heart attack at Santa Monica, Calif., July 1 at age 79; director Claude Sautet of liver cancer at Paris July 22 at age 76; Sir Alec Guinness of liver cancer in West Sussex August 5 at age 86; Loretta Young at Los Angeles August 12 at age 87; Jean Peters of leukemia at her Carlsbad, Calif., home October 13 at age 73; former screenwriter Ring Lardner Jr. at his New York apartment October 31 at age 85, the last surviving member of the Hollywood 10 who were blacklisted in 1947; screenwriter Leonardo Benvenuti dies at Rome following heart bypass surgery November 2 at age 77.
music
Film musicals: Fernando Trueba's Calle 54 with Tito Puente and other Latin musicians; Mark Dindal's The Emperor's New Groove with Disney animation, voices of saturday night live david spade tv episode, John Goodman, Eartha Kitt, Patrick Warburton.
Stage musicals: Aida 3/23 at New York's Palace Theater, with Heather Headley, Adam Pascal, Shere René Scott, music by Elton John, book by David Henry Hwang, 1,720+ perfs.; The Wild Party 4/13 at New York's Virginia Theater, with Mandy Patinkin, Toni Collette, Eartha Kitt, music and lyrics by John LaChinna and George C. Wolfe, 88 perfs.; Closer to Heaven5/31 at London's Arts Theatre, with music and lyrics by the Pet Shop Boys, book by Jonathon Harvey; Beautiful Game 9/26 at London's Cambridge Theatre, with music by andrew lloyd webber, lyrics by Ben Elton; Napoleon 10/17 at London's Shaftesbury Theatre, with music and lyrics by Timothy Williams and Andrew Sabiston.
Dancer Harold Nicholas dies of heart failure following surgery at New York July 3 at age 79; choreographer and jazz dancer Peter Gennaro at New York September 28 at age 80; dancer Gwen Verdon at Woodstock, Vt., October 18 at age 75; Ballet Folklórico de Mexico founder Amalia Hernández at Mexico City November 4 at age 83; dancer José Greco at his Lancaster, Pa., home December 31 at age 82.
U.S. District Judge Marilyn Hall Petel rules July 26 that napster inc. has been violating copyrights of record companies, music publishers, and artists by distributing their songs free over the Internet (see 1999). Millions of Internet users rush to download songs before the judge's order to shut down takes effect July 29. Napster promptly appeals and escapes being shut down when another judge issues a stay. Other companies distribute songs over the Internet, and recording companies move to use that medium for its own distribution purposes, charging a fee for each title downloaded. Napster agrees October 31 to a plan financed by the German media giant Bertelsmann that would enable it to charge a fee for its service and distribute part of it as royalties to record companies.
Popular songs: "Fill Me In," "Woman Trouble," and "7 Days" by English singer-songwriter Craig (Ashley) David, 19, whose CD Born To Do It includes the singles "Walking Away" and "Rendezvous;" Parachutes (CD) by the British rock group coldplay (Chris Martin [guitar, piano, vocalist], 23; Guy Berryman [bass], 23; Jon Buckland [guitar], 23; Will Champion [drums], 22) includes the single "Yellow;" Come to Where I'm From (CD) by Joseph Arthur; All that You Can't Leave Behind (CD) by U2 includes the single "Beautiful Day;" Steely Dan's Two Against Nature (CD) with the songs "Cousin Dupree" and "Janie Runaway" by the group's songwriters Walter Becker and Donald Fagen; "You're the One" by Paul Simon; "Buy Me a Rose" by Kenny Rogers, now 61, whose single is the first top-selling country music record by a singer over 60 in at least 56 years; Stankonia (CD) by the rap duo outkast; The Marshall Mathers LP (CD) by rapper eminem, whose record has sales of 1.76 million copies in its first week.
Calypso songwriter Lord Kitchener (Aldwyn Roberts) dies at Port of Spain, Trinidad, February 11 at age 77; songwriter Pee Wee King at Louisville, Ky., March 7 at age 86; punk rock vocalist Ian Drury of colorectal cancer at his Hampstead, London, home March 27 at age 57; onetime bandleader Tex Beneke at Costa Mesa, Calif., May 30 at age 86; drummer-bandleader Tito Puente following heart surgery at New York June 1 at age 77, having recorded nearly 120 albums in a career as "Mambo King" that spanned more than half a century (the Puerto Rican government declares 3 days of official mourning); songwriter Carl Sigman dies at manhasset, N.Y., September 26 at age 91; "hillbilly" songwriter and onetime radio disk jockey Zeke Manners at Los Angeles October 14 at age 89; singer-actress Julie London at a southern California hospital October 18 at age 74, having suffered a stroke 5 years ago; songwriter and onetime Louisiana "singing governor" Jimmie Davis dies at his Baton Rouge home November 5 at age 101 (approximate); English vocalist Kirsty MacColl is killed off cozumel, Mexico, December 18 at age 41 by a speedboat racing through water reserved for swimmers; pianist-comedian Victor Borge dies at his Greenwich, Conn., home December 23 at age 91.
sports
Golfer Tiger Woods sinks a 40-foot putt at Kapalua, Hawaii, January 9 to defeat Ernie Els in the Mercedes Championship and match the late Ben Hogan's 1945 winning streak of 11 victories. He comes back from a seven-stroke deficit February 7 to win the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am tour, matching Hogan's 1948 record of six consecutive tour victories, but his streak ends February 13 with a loss to Phil Mickelson at la jolla california, Calif. Fiji Islander Vijay Singh wins the Masters at Augusta, Ga., April 9, beating runner-up Ernie Els by three strokes; Woods comes in fifth, but he wins the 100th U.S. Open at pebble beach california, Calif., June 18 by a record 15 strokes (his 12-under-par 272 total is also a record) as golfers mourn the loss of course architect Robert Trent Jones, who has died at his Fort Lauderdale, Fla., home June 14 at age 93, having worked in 45 states and 35 foreign countries to design more than 350 courses and remodel more than 150 others, including 79 that have been used for U.S. Opens or other national championships. Woods wins the British Open at St. Andrews July 23, becoming at age 24 the youngest player ever to take that title, and he wins the PGA Championship at Louisville August 20, becoming the first player to win back-to-back PGAs since the 1930s and to win all three major titles in one year since Ben Hogan did it in 1953.
The St. Louis Rams (formerly the L.A. Rams) defeat the Tennessee Titans (formerly the Houston Oilers) 23 to 16 at Atlanta December 30 to win Super Bowl XXXIV.
Former Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry dies of leukemia at Dallas February 12 at age 75; onetime Yale end and 1936 heisman trophy winner Larry Kelley commits suicide at his Highstown, N.J., home June 27 at age 85, having sold the trophy at auction 6 months earlier for $328,100.
Tennis legend Don Budge dies at scranton pennsylvania, Pa., January 26 at age 84, having been injured in an automobile accident December 14 of last year.
Pete Sampras wins his seventh men's singles title at Wimbledon, Venus Williams, 20, (U.S.) defeats her sister Serena to win the women's title; Marat Safin, 20, easily defeats Sampras to become the first Russian U.S. Open singles winner, Venus Williams wins the women's title.
Lance Armstrong wins France's Tour de France for a second consecutive year July 23.
Thoroughbred owner and breeder Fred W. Hooper dies at ocala florida, Fla., August 4 at age 102.
The Olympic Games at Sydney in September attract 10,000 athletes (and 21,000 journalists) from 199 countries. U.S. athletes win 97 medals (including 39 gold), Russians 88 (32 gold), Chinese 59 (28 gold); Aborigine runner Cathy Freeman, 27, wins the 400-meter sprint, U.S. track and field star Marion Jones, 24, wins three gold medals and two bronze.
The New York Yankees win their third consecutive World Series, defeating the New York Mets 4 games to 1 in the first "subway series" since 1956.
everyday life
Fashion designer bonnie cashin dies February 3 at age 84 following open-heart surgery at New York.
Michigan swimming-pool installation company owner Larry Ross, 47, buys a hot dog with a $100 bill at a Detroit suburb, takes the change in lottery tickets at the suggestion of his wife, Nancy, and learns May 8 that he has won half of a record $363 million jackpot, netting him about $61 million after taxes.
Sega Enterprises begins in August to give away its $199 dreamcast video-game console (see 1999); customers who subscribe to its new Sega Web service for 2 years at $21.95 per month receive a free keyboard and a $200 check.
Estée Lauder introduces its new premium-price fragrance Intuition in Europe in September, but U.S. sales of so-called prestige perfumes have been flat or down for the past 5 years as women have opted for more casual attire in place of designer clothes and avoided perfumes with designer names.
World chess master Garry Kasparov loses his title at London November 2 to his 25-year-old Russian protégé Vladimir Kramnik. Now 37, Kasparov has held the title since 1985 and has been considered by many the greatest chess player of all time.
tobacco
U.S. efforts to curb smoking suffer a setback March 22 as the Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 that the Food and Drug Administration has never received authority from Congress to regulate tobacco products. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor's majority opinion states that smoking is indeed the nation's leading health problem, and that it kills some 400,000 people per year, but it rejects FDA rules proposed in 1995 to restrict marketing of cigarettes to children and teenagers. Tobacco companies remain liable for hundreds of billions of dollars to settle lawsuits to recover state health-care costs. A Florida jury rules July 14 that the companies must pay a staggering $145 billion to settle hundreds of thousands of health claims, but the companies file appeals.
crime
The U.S. Supreme Court rules January 12 that police are justified in conducting a stop-and-frisk search on anyone who arouses suspicion by fleeing at the mere sight of an officer. The 5-to-4 ruling handed down in the case of Illinois v. Wardlowreverses a decision by the Illinois Supreme Court.
Illinois governor George Ryan announces January 31 that he is imposing a moratorium on executions in his state. A Republican, Ryan has been a longtime supporter of the death penalty, but 13 wrongfully condemned inmates have been exonerated since 1977 (12 were executed) and the Chicago Tribune last year ran a series of articles exposing inequities in the state's capital-punishment system, showing that half of 260 capital cases had been reversed on appeal (30 lawyers representing inmates on death row have been disbarred or suspended). Only a few other countries in the world still have capital punishment, which is not permitted in Alaska, the District of Columbia, Hawaii, Iowa, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, North Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, or Wisconsin. A Gallup Poll in February finds that 66 percent of Americans still support capital punishment, down from 80 percent in 1994.
A 6-year-old Michigan schoolboy takes his uncle's .32-caliber handgun to school February 29 and uses it to kill classmate Kayla Renee Rolland. The incident brings fresh demands for handgun controls, and Smith & Wesson agrees March 17 to accept a wide range of restrictions on the way it manufactures, sells, and distributes its products. Now owned by a London-based company and threatened with bankruptcy from lawsuits, Smith & Wesson promises that within 3 years each of its handguns will be equipped with "smart gun" technology that allows only its authorized user to fire it. Other gunmakers and the National Rifle Association oppose any change.
New York's annual Puerto Rican Day parade ends June 11 with an ugly incident in Central Park: 10 amateur videotapes show as many as 50 drunken black, white, and Hispanic youths spraying women with water, tearing off their clothes, groping and fondling them, while police stand by without intervening and shrug off demands that they stop the violence. Police later identify many of the perpetrators from the tapes and make arrests; some police officials blame the lack of response on a shortage of radios that prevented communication of the outrage to officers who would have rushed to the scene had they known what was happening.
The notorious Indian rebel bandit Veerappan kidnaps the 72-year-old film star Rajkumar at his country house near the village of Gajanur in Tamil Nadu August 3. Now in his 50s, Veerappan has for decades defied police efforts to apprehend him, killing dozens of them while he slaughtered elephants for their ivory and smuggled out sandalwood from the jungle, finding refuge among villagers to whom he provided financial support. He has been wanted in connection with the murders of 141 people, including his own newborn daughter, whom he strangle to silence her lest her cries reveal his presence to the authorities. Veerappen also abduct two of Rajkumar's associates and demands the release of 50 imprisoned comrades; he releases Rajkumar November 14 but will remain at large until police gun him down in 2004.
Former Lucchese crime family boss Anthony Corallo dies in a federal prison at Springfield, Mo., August 23 at age 87, having been sentenced in November 1986 to a 100-year sentence for Mafia labor racketeering.
Computer software tester Michael McDermott, 42, goes berserk at a Wakefield, Mass., Internet company December 26 and kills seven co-workers, using a semiautomatic rifle and a shotgun.
environment
The worst tornadoes to hit southwest Georgia since 1936 roar through the countryside early in the morning of February 14, killing 22, leaving hundreds injured, and destroying many poultry farms. Other tornadoes in March and April wreak havoc at Fort Worth, Texas, and elsewhere.
Los Alamos, N.M., makes headlines as a "prescribed burn" begun by the National Park Service May 4 at Bandolier National Monument sweeps past firebreaks May 11 and rages out of control (seeYellowstone, 1988). Intended to prevent a surprise fire from igniting bone-dry forest lands, the blaze is driven by high winds. It destroys hundreds of homes and tens of thousands of acres of woodland, and although no radioactive material or other sensitive material is affected at the nuclear weapons laboratory the disaster triggers a reexamination of Park Service fire-control procedures. Other forest fires destroy millions of acres of timber in Colorado, Idaho, and Montana.
The U.S. bison (buffalo) population reaches 300,000, up from fewer than 30 in 1900, as bison ranches proliferate in the Plains states.
An impoundment of coal sludge spills over October 11 at Martin County Coal Co. in West Virginia, burying lawns more than six feet deep in black slurry that kills fish and contaminates drinking water. An investigation will show that the protective shield at the Massey Energy Co. facility was far thinner than regulators believed.
Environmentalist David Brower dies at his Berkeley, Calif., home November 5 at age 88; naturalist-environmentalist Théodore André Monod at Versailles outside Paris November 21 at age 98.
President Clinton creates the largest U.S. nature preserve December 4, setting aside 99,500 nautical square miles (84 million acres) underwater around the northwestern Hawaiian Islands to protect the coral reefs, atolls, submerged lagoons, and marine life in an area as large as Florida and Georgia combined. Clinton in his 8 years as president has protected more natural acreage than any president since Theodore Roosevelt; the new Northwestern Hawaiian Islands Coral Reef Reserve encompasses a refuge established by Roosevelt and contains 70 percent of the nation's coral reefs. Coastal development, global warming, pollution, coral poachers, and dynamite fishing have killed more than 25 percent of the world's reefs.
marine resources
Aqua Bounty Farms applies to the U.S. Food and Drug Agency (FDA) for approval to market genetically modified salmon that grow to market size in only 18 months instead of the usual 36. The Atlantic salmon population of Canada and the United States has fallen to 350,000, down from 1.5 million in 1970, and demand for the fish has risen. A subsidiary of the biotechnology company A/F Protein, Aqua Bounty says its cultivated fish would not survive long in the wild if they escaped from their pens, but critics call the salmon "Frankenfish"; they point out that other farm-raised fish have escaped in large numbers and compete for habitat and spawning in the same streams as wild salmon.
agriculture
A biosafety biology treaty adopted by delegates from more than 130 countries at Montreal January 29 regulates international trade in genetically modified products, including grains, which critics call "frankenfood."
Entomologist Edward F. Knipling dies at his Arlington, Va., home March 17 at age 90.
nutrition
U.S. Food and Drug Administration guidelines that take effect in February permit dietary supplements to make general claims that they improve health but bars claims or implications that a product will cure a specific malady (e.g., "restores sexual vigor, potency, and performance") unless the product has passed the lengthy approval process to which pharmaceutical drugs are subjected. But the FDA does permit so-called "structure/function" claims (e.g., "arouses or increases sexual desire and improves sexual performance," "helps support cartilage and joint function," "maintains healthy lung function" "supports the immune system," and "helps to maintain cholesterol levels that are already within the normal range." People in nearly 70 percent of U.S. households use vitamins, minerals, or nonprescription herbal products.
restaurants
The New York restaurant Alain Ducasse at the Essex House opens in late June in West 58th Street with prix-fixe dinner at $160 (lunch is the same price). The 60-seat dining room is open only Monday through Friday, and lunch is served only 2 days per week. The waiting list soon dwindles and Ducasse threatens to move the establishment, but it will survive, and by 2004 the prix-fixe dinner will cost $225.
population
The Food and Drug Administration announces September 28 that it has approved marketing the French abortion-inducing drug RU-486 (mifepristone) as an alternative to surgical abortion (see1996). Physicians begin prescribing the pills in early November subject to strict regulations, but the rules require that a physician have access to back-up surgical procedures, which are unavailability in 86 percent of America, and right-to-life advocates vow to continue fighting against use of the abortifacient.
The population of the world tops 6.2 billion, up from 1.65 billion in 1900, 2.3 billion in 1940, with 1.285 billion in the People's Republic of China, and 1.025 billion in India. Indonesia has 214 million, Brazil 182, the Russian Federation 145, Bangladesh 140, Japan 127, Nigeria 117, Mexico 104, Germany 82, Vietnam 81, Egypt 74, Iran 68, Turkey 67, the United Kingdom 60, France 59, Italy 57, South Korea 47, Spain 40, Poland 38, Canada 31.5, Iraq 24, Saudi Arabia 24, North Korea 22, Taiwan 22, Israel 6, and Singapore 4.5.
China's population continues to grow despite the so-called "one-child" policy initiated 20 years ago. Violators of the policy may be held in makeshift underground jails for as long as 35 days, but family-planning bureaucrats in some areas have for some years been ordered by their corrupt higher-ups to bring in the equivalent of $1,250 per month, the bureaucrats are permitted to sell birth permits, births are underreported, a State Planning Commission senior official concedes that only 60 million of the country's 300 million children under age 14 are from one-child families, and some experts say the population may be as high as 1.4 billion or even 1.5 billion.
The U.S. Census Bureau reports December 28 that the nation's population has reached 281,421,906, up from 150.7 million in 1950 and up 13.2 percent since 1990, but the bureau chief suggests that the count has been more thorough than in 1990.
Andrew Fastow former chief financial officer for Enron Corp is indicted on 78 counts of wire fraud, money laundering, conspiracy and obstruction of justice.
January 1st was the being of a new millenium. that's a thousand years smart one
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How many manslaughters happen in a year?
About 2000 a year
What happen in the 2000 bc?
Around the year 2000 BC, Stonehenge was completed.
Where did the 2000 year ago democracy happen?
Athens, Greece
What year did Touching Spirit Bear happen in?
I think in 2000?
Why was the world goingto end in 2000?
it wasnt going to end because they had been saying that for ages but never did it happen like this year apparently it is going to end this year but it wont
When did Grand Prix World happen?
Grand Prix World happened in 2000.
Do scientists agree that the world will end in the year 2000?
No, scientists do not agree that the world will end in the year 2000. Predictions about the world ending are not supported by scientific evidence and are considered pseudoscience. The world continues to exist beyond the year 2000 based on scientific understanding.
Which country won the 2000 world cup?
There was no football world cup in the year 2000 , it was held in the year 2002 in South Korea and Japan.
What was the world population in the year 2000?
6,000,000,000
Who was the richest person in the world in the year 2000?
me
When did Moto Racer World Tour happen?
Moto Racer World Tour happened in 2000.
When did TOCA World Touring Cars happen?
TOCA World Touring Cars happened in 2000.
