01|Eight tourists, trekking through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest in southwestern Uganda, are killed by rebels armed with machetes and rifles. The attackers, a roving band of approximately 150 men, are believed to be remnants of the Hutu rebel army that killed some 500,000 Tutsi in Rwanda before fleeing into the forests of Uganda and Congo in 1994. The victims were British, American, and New Zealand sightseers visiting the park for glimpses of rare mountain gorillas. The Hutu rebels currently oppose U.S. and British support of the Ugandan government and its military.|
01|Police fire into crowds rioting outside a mosque in Ambon, Indonesia, a provincial capital approximately 1,400 miles (644 kilometers) east of Jakarta, the national capital. Nine people are killed and several injured in the brawl between Muslims and Christians. More than 150 people have died in Ambon in similar incidents since the beginning of 1999.|
02|California officials announce that Pacific Lumber Company has accepted a $480-million federal and state offer for 10,000 acres (4,047 hectares) of redwoods in the Headwaters Forest, located 250 miles (400 kilometers) north of San Francisco. Approximately half of the acreage consists of old-growth trees, some of which are more than 1,500 years old. A provision of the sale requires Pacific Lumber, a subsidiary of Texas-based Maxxam Inc., to adhere to strict guidelines when logging timber on the 211,000 acres (84,984 hectares) that remain under corporate ownership. The Headwaters Forest was the last privately owned grove of ancient redwoods in the world.|
03|The United States protests European barriers on certain brands of bananas by doubling tariffs (import taxes) on selected European goods. These include Scottish cashmere, French handbags, Italian cheese, and German coffee makers. U.S. trade representatives accuse the European Union (EU)-an organization of 15 Western European nations that promotes economic cooperation among its members-of implementing barriers that favor bananas imported from former European colonies in Africa and the Caribbean. The value of the added U.S. tariffs on European goods equals the $520 million that the U.S. banana companies claim to have lost due to the EU barriers.|
03|A mob in Lagos, Nigeria, attacks a police station and barrack, drags the police from the buildings, and murders five officers. Witnesses describe the rioters as opponents of the newly elected president of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo. Anti-Obasanjo rioters destroyed two other police stations on March 1.|
04|The discovery of a major blind-thrust fault under downtown Los Angeles is announced in the journal Science by geologist John Shaw of Harvard University and seismologist Peter Shearer of the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in San Diego, California. Shaw and Shearer believe the fault caused the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake, which killed eight people and destroyed $358 billion in property. Blind-thrust faults, which cannot been seen on the ground's surface, cause quakes in which blocks of earth move diagonally or even nearly vertically.|
05|The U.S. Department of Labor reports that the U.S. economy, fueled by consumer spending and a construction boom, has generated 275,000 new jobs since the beginning of 1999. Hourly wages have remained stable.|
06|The Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Washington, announces that it will modify its Windows 98 operating system to dispense with the user identification numbers. According to privacy advocates, the identification numbers gave Microsoft access to user documents and movements on the Internet. A Microsoft group product manager denied that the software giant intended to use or market data already gathered via the numbers and stored in data bases.|
07|Accusations that Chinese spies in the 1980's stole U.S. nuclear weapons designs from a national weapon laboratory in Los Alamos, New Mexico, are denounced as "unfounded" by Tang Jiaxuan, the Chinese foreign minister. Tang, speaking at a news conference in Beijing, labels a March 6 New York Times report of Chinese nuclear espionage "irresponsible." The article also alleged that China had used a commercial satellite to acquire information about military technologies.|
08|Germany's leading banker, Hans Tietmeyer, who heads the Bundesbank, warns European political leaders to stop meddling in the affairs of the European Union (EU) Central Bank. Tietmeyer, a prominent member of the governing board of the bank, blames the decline in the value of the Euro, the EU single currency, on mounting political pressures to lower interest rates in order to stimulate Europe's faltering economy. The value of the Euro has declined against the dollar by 10 percent since being launched on Jan. 1, 1999.|
09|President Mohammad Khatami of Iran pays a state visit to Italy. International affairs experts interpret the visit, the first to a Western nation by an Iranian leader since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, as a major change in Iranian foreign policy and a sign of moderation toward the West.|
09|The results of a 14-year study, conducted by Harvard University and published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, reveal that there is no evidence that a diet high in fat promotes breast cancer or that a diet low in fat prevents the disease. The study followed the lives of 88,795 women between 1980 and 1994.|
10|The United States Air Force discharges Jeffrey Bennendorf under "other than honorable conditions" after the airman first class refused to be vaccinated against anthrax. The vaccine was designed to protect against the deadly agent that is a staple of many biological weapons programs. Bettendorf claims the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine are unproven. Approximately 100 of the 218,000 men and women in the U.S. armed services have defied Defense Secretary William S. Cohen's order that all military personnel be vaccinated against various biological agents.|
11|The foreign ministers of Indonesia and Portugal, meeting at the United Nations in New York City, agree to allow the voters of East Timor to decide if they prefer greater autonomy within Indonesia or independence. Opponents of Indonesian rule in East Timor have fomented rebellion continuously since Indonesia invaded and annexed the former Portuguese colony in 1975.|
12|Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, former members of the Warsaw Pact military alliance, join NATO. The military alliance of 19 Western nations was formed in 1949 to discourage an attack on Western Europe by the former Soviet Union.|
13|The central markets of two northern Kosovo towns, Podujevo and Mitrovica, are rocked by three powerful bomb explosions, which kill six people and wound dozens of Saturday shoppers. The violence is another escalation in the year-long conflict between Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority, who demand some degree of autonomy, and Yugoslavia's Serbian-controlled government. Both sides are participating in NATO-sponsored peace talks in Paris.|
14|The U.S. Justice Department announces that the U.S. jail and prison population climbed to 1.8 million in June 1998, a record high. The U.S. crime rate dropped in 1998 for the seventh consecutive year, according to the department's Bureau of Justice Statistics. Southern and Southwestern states led the country in highest incarceration rates per capita, with 709 out of every 100,000 residents of Louisiana behind bars. States in the Midwest and Northeast had the lowest rates per capita. In Minnesota in 1998, 117 of every 100,000 residents were incarcerated.|
14|The government of Indonesia closes 38 private banks and takes over the operation of 7 additional banks to conform with economic reforms mandated by the International Monetary Fund. This United Nations-affiliated organization provides short-term credit to member nations.|
15|Amtrak's City of New Orleans train, traveling 70 miles (113 kilometers) per hour from Chicago to New Orleans, collides with a semitrailer truck loaded with steel bars at a railroad crossing in Bourbonnais, Illinois, 55 miles (88 miles) south of Chicago. The derailment mangles the train's first five cars, injuring more than 100 people. A fire, fed by diesel fuel spilling from the twin engines, engulfs a crushed sleeper car, killing 20 passengers.|
15|The Democratic National Committee announces that the party will hold its 2000 national convention in Los Angeles. The last Democratic convention in Los Angeles was held in 1960 when John F. Kennedy was nominated for president.|
16|The entire European Union (EU) Commission, the executive body that runs the day-to-day affairs of the 15-nation trade group, resigns in response to an official report, made public on March 15, that accuses the commissioners of corruption. The commission president, Jacques Santer of Luxembourg, said the 20-member board was unable to function under the accusations of financial irregularities and cronyism. The 140-page report was commissioned by the European parliament, the only EU governing body with members elected by voters of member nations.|
17|A panel of independent experts from the Institute of Medicine, a branch of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, reports that the active ingredients of marijuana appear to be useful in the treatment of pain, nausea, and weight loss, common symptoms of AIDS. The report, described as the most comprehensive analysis to date on medicinal use of marijuana, recommends that the drug be prescribed for short periods only and used under close supervision.|
18|The rate of death from the human form of "mad cow disease," called variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob, more than doubled in Great Britain in the fourth quarter of 1998, according to a scientific report in the latest issue of the British medical journal Lancet. The number of deaths from the disease had averaged four per quarter for more than three years. But nine people died in the last three months of 1998. The "mad cow" epidemic began in Great Britain in 1986 outbreak. Diseased cattle developed abnormalities in their brains, which triggered personality change and a staggered gait. The British government destroyed more than 4 million cows. Scientists believe that human beings acquire the disease by eating infected beef.|
19|More than 60 people die and 107 are wounded when a powerful bomb explodes in the central market in Valadikavkaz, in the Russian republic of North Ossetia, near the breakaway region of Chechnya. Russian authorities, including President Boris Yeltsin, blame the bombing on "forces of chaos and terror."|
20|Health officials in the Netherlands confirm that 21 people have died of Legionnaires' Disease since March 13. Another 90 people are infected with the disease, which is caused by a rare bacterium that thrives in air-conditioning ducts, storage tanks, and river water. An additional 200 people show symptoms of the disease. The current outbreak was traced to Holland's largest flower and bulb show, the Westfriese Flora, which attracted 80,000 visitors in February.|
21|The first balloonists to circle the world, Bertrand Piccard and Brian Jones, end their 20-day voyage by landing in the dessert 300 miles (483 kilometers) south of Cairo, Egypt. The 180-foot (55-meter) silver balloon, the Breitling Orbiter 3, actually completed the first nonstop balloon trip around the world over the African country of Mauritania on March 20. The balloon's captain is a Swiss psychiatrist and the grandson of Auguste Piccard. In 1932, Auguste Piccard attached an airtight gondola that he had invented to a hydrogen-filled balloon and ascended more than 53,000 feet (85,000 kilometers) into the stratosphere.|
22|Royal Caribbean Cruises pleads guilty in federal district court in Los Angeles to charges that employees concealed from U.S. Coast Guard inspectors that the Nordic Prince repeatedly discharged contaminated waste water into the Pacific Ocean in 1994. The Miami-based Royal Caribbean line pleaded guilty to similar charges in federal courts in June 1998. The line faces fines totaling $1.5 million.|
23|U.S. President Bill Clinton announces that force is necessary to end Serbian aggression against the ethnic Albanian majority in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo. Clinton notes that "If President Milosevic [of Yugoslavia] is not willing to make peace, we are willing to limit his ability to make war. . ." In the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, Prime Minister Momir Bulatovic declares a state of imminent war. Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, in flight to Washington, orders his plane turned around and returned to Moscow. Russia is Serbia's historic ally.|
23|The vice president of Paraguay, Luis Maria Argana, is assassinated in the streets of Asuncion, the capital. Argana, involved in a bitter power struggle with Paraguan President Raul Cubas, was ambushed by three or four men, who tossed a grenade into the vice-president's jeep and sprayed the vehicle with gunfire.|
24|NATO launches a broad offensive against Yugoslavia in an effort to force the Serbian-controlled government in Belgrade to end its year-long assault on ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo. Waves of missiles from U.S. Navy cruisers in the Adriatic and bombers flying from Great Britain, Germany, and Italy target military bases and antiaircraft sites in Serbia and Montenegro, Yugoslavia's two republics, and Kosovo, a Serbian province. The air strikes mark the first time in the 50-year history of NATO that the defense alliance has attacked a sovereign nation. The offensive is a response to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's rebuff of a peace plan. The U.S.-brokered plan was designed to restore the autonomy that Serbia stripped from Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority in 1989.|
25|The French minister of transport, Jean-Claude Gayssot, announces that the 7-mile (11-kilometer) Mont Blanc tunnel will remain closed for several weeks in the wake of a March 24 fire that killed 35 people. A fire aboard a semitrailer truck loaded with flour and margarine turned the highway tunnel, which connects France and Italy under the highest peak in the Alps, into an inferno that caused 328 feet (100 meters) of the ceiling to collapse and destroyed more than 30 vehicles. Most of the 30 victims died from breathing toxic fumes.|
26|Jack Kevorkian, a physician who claims to have assisted in the suicides of more than 130 people, is found guilty of murdering a 52-year-old man suffering from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig's disease). Although prosecutors in Michigan charged Kevorkian with first-degree murder, the jury, after deliberating for 13 hours, reduced the charge to second-degree murder, which imposes a minimum sentence of 10 to 25 years in prison.|
27|A U.S. pilot is rescued by an American military search team six hours after his F-117 stealth bomber was shot down in Yugoslavia, approximately 35 miles (56 kilometers) northwest of Belgrade, the capital. The crash is the first allied loss in four days of NATO bombing attacks on Yugoslavia.|
28|Ethnic Albanians, fleeing Serbian military forces, are crossing from Kosovo into Albania at a rate of 1,000 per hour. Refugees report a 10-mile- (16-kilometer-) column of between 150,000 and 200,000 persons attempting to escape Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's policy of "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo. NATO observers believe that Milosevic has adopted the policy to drive ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, where Serbs constitute only 10 percent of the population. The volume of people seeking refuge threatens to overwhelm Albania, Europe's poorest nation.|
28|Raul Cubas, president of Paraguay, resigns hours before the Paraguan Senate was scheduled to remove him from office for his alleged involvement in the March 23 assassination of Vice President Luis Maria Argana. Cubas and his ruling Colorado Party were also cited as triggering the riots on March 26 in Asuncion, the capital, which left six people dead and hundreds injured. The leader of the Senate, Luis Gonzalez Macchi, replaces Cubas as president.|
29|NATO officials announce that Serbian forces have executed five prominent ethnic Albanian leaders, including Fehmi Agani, a delegate to the failed Paris peace talks. According to NATO monitors, ethnic Albanian refugees are pouring through the Morina pass from Kosovo into Albania at a rate of 4,000 an hour. Officials estimate that 120,000 people have crossed the border since the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia began on March 24. To escape Serb violence toward ethnic Albanians, 35,000 Kosovars also have fled into Montenegro and 16,000 refugees into Macedonia.|
29|The Dow Jones industrial average of selected stocks on the New York Stock Exchange closes above 10,000 for the first time in history. In November 1972, the Dow average stood at 1,000. It reached 5,000 in November 1995.|
30|The United States and its NATO allies reject Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's offer to pull "some military forces" from Kosovo if NATO airstrikes are halted. Milosevic's offer, which included a promise to return to peace talks, was made, via television, after hours of negotiations with Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov. Russia, Serbia's historic ally, opposes NATO's use of force in Yugoslavia.|
30|The head of the Japanese Economic Planning Agency, Taichi Sakaiya, announces that the number of people unemployed in Japan in February 1999 rose to 3.13 million people, 4.6 percent of the work force. The rate is the highest in Japan since the government began keeping unemployment records in 1953. On March 29, Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi announced that Japan's worst recession since World War II (1939-1945) had "bottomed out."|
31|The Bank of Japan cuts interest rates on overnight loans between banks to 0.02 percent. Taking into account the standard 0.02 percent commission on loans, Japan's prime rate stands at absolute zero, making loans between banks free. Interest on savings accounts falls to 0.05 percent and interest on home mortgages to 2.35 percent.|
