01|Former Rwandan prime minister Jean Kambanda confesses before a United Nations war crimes tribunal, meeting in Tanzania, that he is guilty of committing genocide against members of the Tutsi tribe in Rwanda, as well as against moderate members of his own Hutu clan. Kambanda, who faces a maximum sentence of life in prison, promises to testify against former colleagues in the Rwandan government in connection with the 1994 mass killings of at least 500,000 people. His is the first conviction for the tribunal in the three years of its existence.|
02|Wim F. Duisenberg of the Netherlands is appointed first head of the European Union's (EU) new central bank. However, intense wrangling between leaders of the 15 EU nations compromises Duisenberg's term of office. His candidacy, strongly supported by Germany, was opposed by France, which demanded the appointment of a French candidate, Jean-Claude Trichet. To break the deadlock, Duisenberg agreed to accept the position but step down in favor of Trichet four years into his eight-year term. The central bank was created to oversee the EU single currency, which is to go into effect in January 1999.|
03|The space shuttle Columbia returns to the Kennedy Space Center at Cape Canaveral, Florida, after a 16-day voyage that centered around scientific research on the brains and nervous systems of animals during a state of weightlessness. While six of the seven crew members are removed from the ship on stretchers to preserve their weightless state, scientists unload nearly 2,000 crickets, fish, and snails that survived the trip. Casualties among experimental rats aboard Columbia ran high, particularly among infants who died as a result of maternal neglect. Scientists are unsure why maternal instinct is disrupted by weightlessness.|
04|The commander of Pope John Paul's personal military unit, the Swiss Guard, which functions as a papal bodyguard, is murdered with his wife in their Vatican apartment in Rome by a vice corporal of the guard, who then kills himself. The murders of Commander Alois Estermann and his wife are the first acts of violence within the confines of the Vatican since Mehmet Ali Agca attempted to assassinate Pope John Paul II in 1981.|
04|Judge Garland E. Burrell, Jr., of Federal District Court in Sacramento, California, sentences Theodore J. Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, to four life sentences plus 30 years in prison. Kaczynski was convicted of mailing bombs to people around the country over a 17-year period. The bombs killed 3 people and the injured 22 others.|
05|Negotiations between labor and management collapse on the ninth day of a general strike in Denmark, and employers respond by locking out an additional 60,000 workers, bringing the total number of people on strike to 510,000. The cost of the strike--$556 million a week, which is 0.5 percent of the annual gross domestic product--has weakened the krone, the Danish currency, which the government has attempted to bolster by raising interest rates.|
06|The chairmen of Damiler-Benz A.G. and the Chrysler Corperation announce that the Stuttgart, Germany-based maker of Mercedes-Benz automobiles will acquire Chrysler in a $36-billion merger. The purchase is the largest acquisition of an American company by a foreign buyer in history. The resulting company, with headquarters in Germany as well as Detroit, Michigan, will be the world's second largest automobile manufacturer as measured by stock value.|
07|U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen orders the remains of the Vietnam War veteran buried in the Tomb of the Unknowns, the monument to unidentified war dead at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia, exhumed for DNA testing. The family of Michael Blassie, a fighter pilot shot down over Vietnam in 1972, requested the DNA testing. The Department of Defense (DOD) officially labeled the remains as unknown and interred them in the monument in 1984. But the DOD for a period in the 1970's had believed the remains were Blassie's and continued doubts about the remains' identity prompted their removal.|
08|The U.S. Department of Labor announces that unemployment in the United States in April 1998 dropped to 4.3 percent, the nation's lowest unemployment level since 1970.|
09|Foreign and financial ministers representing the Group of Eight, an informal alliance of leading industrial nations, imposes an investment ban on Serbia, freezing Serbian assets abroad. The economic sanctions are a response to government violence against ethnic Albanians in the southern Serbian province of Kosovo. Canada, France, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, and the United States favor the sanctions. Russia, a traditional ally of Serbia, votes against the ban. Japan abstains.|
10|The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounds 179 older Boeing 737 jets until all electrical wires associated with fuel pumps can be inspected for wear. The grounding is ordered after FAA officials discovered that more than half of these 13 older 737's inspected since May 7 showed evidence of worn insulation on 110-volt wiring, which the FCC fears could spark an explosion or fire. Officials with the National Transportation and Safety Board have studied the possibility that sparks from such wiring caused the explosion of TWA Flight 800 off the coast of Long Island in 1996 by igniting vapors in an empty fuel tank. According to Boeing, most of the 2,975 planes of the 737 series completed by the Seattle-based company remain in operation.|
11|Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee announces that India had detonated three nuclear devices in underground tests in India's Thar Desert, in the northwest part of the country. The largest of the three was a hydrogen bomb, a weapon of enormous power. The announcement generates immediate international condemnation. Experts on international affairs fear India and its archrival Pakistan may become embroiled in a dangerous and expensive arms race.|
12|Indonesian soldiers kill 12 students during a demonstration that spilled onto the streets of Jakarta, the capital, from a college campus. Indonesian students have staged daily demonstrations for more than three months in response to the current Indonesian economic crisis.|
13|India claims it detonates two nuclear devices at an underground testing site in the country's northwestern Thar Desert where Indian officials said three similar tests were conducted on May 11. President Bill Clinton calls the tests a "terrible mistake" and announces wide-ranging economic sanctions on India, including the suspension of nearly all American aid. He also pledges to block International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans to India.|
14|Frank Sinatra, widely hailed as the greatest popular singer of the 1900's, dies in Los Angeles at the age of 82.|
14|Riots erupt throughout Jakarta, throwing the Indonesian capital into chaos. While looters smash store and office windows, mobs sweep up and down the city's main thoroughfares torching automobiles and setting fires to stores and shopping malls. Smoke from the burning buildings darkens the sky above the capital for miles in every direction. At least 1,000 people, civilian and military personnel, die as a result of the rioting.|
15|Brush and forest fires, driven by a combination of drought, heat wave, and high winds, burn out of control in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, and in every Mexican state except Baja California. As many as 10,000 fires burn in a mountainous region southeast of Mexico City. The smoke and clouds of cinders mixed with urban pollution trigger environmental alerts from Mexico City northeast into Texas, where officials of 50 counties issue health warnings. Haze from the fires blows as far east as Florida and as far north as Wisconsin.|
16|Two weeks after winning the Kentucky Derby, Real Quiet, ridden by jockey Kent Desorneaux, wins the 123rd running of the Preakness at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. The victory places the three-year-old within one race of becoming the 12th thoroughbred in history to win the legendary Triple Crown. Real Quiet's trainer, Bob Baffert, also trained Silver Charm, who took both the Derby and the Preakness in 1997, only to place second in the Triple Crown's third leg, the Belmont Stakes.|
17|New York Yankees pitcher David Wells retires 27 batters in a row to pitch a perfect game against the Minnesota Twins. Wells's feat marks the 15th perfect game in Major League history and the second ever pitched in New York City's venerable Yankee Stadium. Don Larsen, the only other Yankee to pitch a perfect game, accomplished the feat against the Brooklyn Dodgers in Game 5 of the World Series on Oct. 6, 1956. Wells and Larsen graduated from the same high school, Point Loma High in San Diego. Wells graduated in 1982; Larsen, in 1947.|
18|The U.S. Justice Department and the attorneys general of 20 states launch antitrust suits in United States District Court against the Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington, for attempting to control access to the Internet through Microsoft's dominate control of the personal computer operating system market. The suit claimed that the latest version of the Microsoft Windows operating system, Windows 98, is equipped with a web browser, Internet Explorer, that restricts users' access to the Internet except through Microsoft. The company was also charged with coercing computer manufacturers into accepting its Internet browser as a condition of licensing its operating system.|
19|President Suharto of Indonesia announces on television that he is prepared to resign the presidency if a new Parliament can be elected that will appoint his successor. Thousands of students occupied the Indonesian Parliament complex in Jakarta, the capital. The Asian economic crisis spawned weeks of student protests and riots, which on May 14 in Jakarta resulted in the deaths of more than 1,000 people and the destruction by fire of hundreds of commercial structures.|
20|The U.S. government announces that the nation's trade deficit exceeded $13 billion in March 1998. The deficit, the largest since the government began using the present measuring system in 1992, is attributed to the current economic crisis in Asia.|
21|President Suharto of Indonesia, speaking on television, resigns his office after 32 years in power. Vice President B. J. Habibie immediately takes the presidential oath. Habibie, who was raised by Suharto after being orphaned at the age of 13, has no political following of his own. The Suharto resignation comes in the wake of the grave Asian economic crisis, which has brought the Indonesian economy to the edge of collapse, triggering weeks of daily public protests.|
22|The citizens of Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic vote overwhelmingly for a referendum approving the Stormont Agreement, a peace accord designed to end hundreds of years of conflict between Roman Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland. More than 70 percent of voters in Northern Ireland and 94 percent of voters in the Irish Republic favor the accord, which was completed on April 10, 1998, after nearly two years of negotiations between Northern Ireland political leaders and representatives of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. The Stormont, or Good Friday, Agreement, provides for a National Assembly in which Catholics and Protestants are to govern jointly. The assembly is charged with cooperating with the Irish Republic in a new lawmaking body--the North-South Council. The accord also provides for a body of representatives--the Council of the Isles--made up of members of the parliaments of the United Kingdom and Ireland and the new assemblies of Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland. Finally, the Irish Republic is to amend its constitution to renounce territorial claims on Northern Ireland.|
23|Indonesia's finance minister, Ginandjar Kartasasmita, tells reporters only minutes after being sworn in to his new Cabinet position that he doubts that President B. J. Habibie's new government can survive without a mandate from the people, and he calls for elections. Former Vice President Habibie became president on May 21 after the resignation of Suharto, who held power for 32 years.|
24|Eddie Cheever, who began his career on the European road courses of Formula One racing, wins the Indianapolis 500 by overtaking Buddy Lazier, who finished second, in the final laps of open-wheel racing's biggest event.|
24|Hong Kong voters turn out in record numbers for the first election since China regained control of the former British colony. Many prodemocracy politicians, who were ousted from office by the government in Beijing only hours after the handover at midnight on June 30, 1997, are reelected to Hong Kong's Legislative Council. Sixteen of the 20 directly elected seats on the 60-seat council will be held by members of Hong Kong's three main prodemocracy parties.|
25|Russia's prime minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, publicly reassures foreign investors that the government will meet future financial obligations and is working to promote tax reform and reduce borrowing. Russia is highly dependent on foreign investment to finance its enormous budget deficit. To encourage investment, the Russian Central Bank recently raised interest rates to over 50 percent. Earlier in May, President Boris Yeltsin summoned leading Russian bankers and industrialists to the Kremlin to discuss ways to avoid a financial crisis. In recent weeks, the Russian stock market has declined by more than 30 percent, and the economy has been hit by a decline in oil prices, by labor unrest that has shut down the Trans-Siberian Railroad, and by fluctuations in the value of the ruble on international markets. The new prime minister also faces the prospect of losing a $700-million loan installment from the International Monetary Fund, which is currently studying government plans for reducing deficit spending.|
26|Police raid 43 houses across France and on the island of Corsica, searching for people with connections to an Islamic extremist group in Algeria. More than 50 suspects are detained for questioning. In Belgium, Germany, Italy, and Switzerland, police stage similar raids, which are described as a coordinated operation designed to forestall terrorist acts at the World Cup. The international soccer tournament, held every four years, will be played in France between June 10 and July 12.|
27|Russia's Central Bank, attempting to head off economic crisis, raises interest on treasury bills to 90 percent and the interest on loans to other banks from 50 to 150 percent. Dipping into cash reserves that are estimated to have sunk to below $10 billion, the Central Bank in the past week has purchased $1 billion in rubles in an attempt to stabilize the value of the currency on international markets and on the streets of Moscow. The new prime minister, Sergei Kiriyenko, offers Russia's last state-owned oil company for sale at a bargain-basement price of $1.6 billion and publicly asks the managing director of the International Monetary Fund for his support in the face of another day of falling prices on the Moscow stock exchange, which some international investors describe as having crashed.|
27|Stock prices decline on markets around the world amid rumors that economic stagnation in Japan threatens to worsen the financial crisis in Asia, which in turn threatens Russia's fragile economy. The German stock market falls 3.1 percent, and stocks in Hong Kong plunge by more than 5 percent. The Russian stock market tumbles by nearly 10 percent. In New York City, the Dow Jones Industrial average rallies to close down only 24 points after having been down 124 points earlier in the session.|
28|Declaring Pakistan a "nuclear power," the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, announces the detonation of several nuclear devices in underground tests. The prime minister characterizes the tests as having "evened the score with India" and fulfilling Pakistan's 30-year ambition to achieve an "Islamic bomb." On May 11 and May 13, India, Pakistan's archrival, exploded a total of five nuclear devices, including a hydrogen bomb, in the Thar Desert near India's border with Pakistan.|
28|President Bill Clinton of the United States denounces Pakistan's nuclear tests and characterizes the situation between India and Pakistan as a "dangerous arms race." Adopting the same position toward Pakistan that he took with India on May 13, the president imposes economic sanctions that could potentially cripple Pakistan's economy, which is highly dependent on foreign aid. Japan, the largest donor of foreign aid to both countries, also imposes economic sanctions as do Germany, Canada, and Australia.|
29|Barry M. Goldwater, former Arizona senator who ran for president in 1964 and who is credited with founding America's modern conservative movement, dies at the age of 89 at his house in the Phoenix suburb of Paradise Valley.|
29|The Congress of the Philippines declares Joseph Estrada president, 18 days after the disputed May 11 election. Estrada, a former movie actor, is scheduled to succeed President Fidel Ramos on June 30.|
29|The International Monetary Fund (IMF) agrees to lend Russia $670 million by the end of June. IMF officials claim the loan is sufficient to stabilize Russia's chaotic financial markets.|
30|A magnitude-6.9 earthquake strikes the Takhar and Badakhshan provinces in northeastern Afghanistan, destroying as many as 100 villages and leaving at least 5,000 people dead. An earthquake in the same area, approximately 200 miles (320 kilometers) northeast of Kabul, the capital, also killed about 5,000 people on February 4.|
30|Pakistan, ignoring worldwide condemnation, detonates a nuclear device in an underground test in the same mountainous desert region where it detonated similar nuclear devices on May 28. Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif of Pakistan and Atal Bihari Vajpayee of India deny that an arms race exists between the two archrivals, which have fought three wars since gaining their independence in 1947.|
31|President Bill Clinton announces that if Russia is unable to meet its short-term debts as a result of its current financial problems, he would support an International Monetary Fund bailout. Economic experts suggest that Russia could need as much as $10 billion to make up for massive budget deficits that are the result of uncollected taxes and declining revenues due to falling oil prices. Foreign investment in Russia declined in response to the current economic crisis in Asia, which many investors feared would negatively affect Russia's fragile economy.|
