01|Vladimir Putin, who became the acting president of Russia with the resignation of Boris Yeltsin on Dec. 31, 1999, spends his first full day in office visiting Russian troops fighting in the breakaway republic of Chechnya. Russia's army is engaged in a fierce battle with Islamic militants entrenched in the Chechen capital of Grozny. The rebels are intent on establishing an Islamic state in the Caucasus region of southern Russia. The region includes Chechnya, which successfully broke away from Russia after fighting a war of independence between 1994 and 1996, and Dagestan, a former Soviet republic that remains part of Russia.|
02|At least 110 cars collide in massive auto pileups in both the northbound and southbound lanes of a fog-enshrouded <I>autobahn</I> (expressway) near Schweinfurt, Germany, in northern Bavaria. Two people are killed and 73 injured. Police attribute the first crash to people driving too fast for conditions and the second crash to drivers slowing down to watch the first.|
03|Croatia's democratic opposition party, the Social Democrats, soundly defeats the ruling Croatian Democratic Union, party of the late president Franjo Tudjman, in parliamentary elections. The leader of the Social Democrats, Ivica Racan, is expected to become prime minister and govern through a four-party coalition.|
03|The prime minister of India, Atal Behari Vajpayee, accuses Pakistan of being behind the December 24 hijacking of an Indian Airlines jet enroute from Kathmandu, Nepal, to New Delhi, India's capital. Vajpayee calls on the world's leading nations, including the United States, to declare Pakistan a terrorist state. On December 24, five masked terrorists forced the pilot of the Indian jet to land in Kandahar, Afghanistan. The hijackers held 155 passengers and crew members aboard the craft until December 31, when India agreed to some of the hijacker's demands that India release imprisoned Kashmiri militants. Both India and Pakistan claim sovereignty over the Himalayan territory of Kashmir, a dispute that has triggered three wars and continuing acts of violence since the two nations gained independence from Great Britain in 1947.|
04|U.S. President Bill Clinton joins Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Shara in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, for peace negotiations between Israel and Syria. The two sides are currently in an impasse over the order in which topics should be discussed. Al-Farouk insists on starting negotiations with Syria's demand that Israel give up control of the Golan Heights, an area in the southwestern corner of Syria, which Israel has held as a security zone since the 1967 Middle East War. Barak demands that the talks begin with negotiations leading to a Syrian guarantee of Israeli security along their joint border.|
04|President Bill Clinton nominates Alan Greenspan for a fourth four-year term as chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, an independent government agency that oversees the U.S. banking system. Making the announcement at the White House, the president thanks Greenspan for agreeing to continue in the position and notes that the chairman inspires "confidence not only here in America but all around the world."|
04|At least 35 people die when two passenger trains traveling in excess of 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour collide head-on. The force of the collision, which takes place approximately 100 miles (160 kilometers) north of Oslo, Norway's capital, compresses several cars into the length of a single car and sparks a fire that engulfs sections of both trains.|
05|Elian Gonzalez, a six-year-old Cuban boy who survived the capsizing of a refugee boat that resulted in his mother's drowning, is to be returned to his father in Cuba, according to a spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service. Since being rescued by fishermen off the coast of Florida on Nov. 25, 1999, the child has been the object of a tug-of-war between relatives in Cuba, relatives and anti-Castro Cubans in Miami, Florida, and the governments of Cuba and the United States.|
05|A suicide bomber, who Sri Lankan authorities believe was a member of the separatist Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, detonates a bomb, killing herself and 13 other people near the office of Sri Lanka's prime minister, Sirimavo Bandaranaike, in Colombo, the capital. The bombing is the second attack on Sri Lankan national officials in three weeks. At least 16 people were killed on Dec. 18, 1999, when a Tamil suicide bomber attempted to assassinate Sri Lanka's president, Chandrika Bandaranaike Kumaratunga. The Liberation Tigers are fighting for a separate homeland for minority Tamils in the island nation's north and east.|
06|Anti-Castro Cuban Americans shut down much of Miami, including the Port of Miami, to protest a decision by the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service to return a six-year-old boy to his father in Cuba. Members of the Cuban exile group Brothers to the Rescue and other protesters block downtown streets and many of the city's arterial roadways, bringing traffic to a halt during the afternoon rush hour. Approximately 100 people are arrested. Whether the child, Elian Gonzalez, should remain with relatives in the United States or be returned to his father in Cuba, became the subject of intense debate after the boy was rescued by fishermen off the coast of Florida on Nov. 25, 1999. The six-year-old had been in a refugee boat with his mother, who drowned when the boat capsized.|
07|The rate of unemployment in the United States averaged 4.2 percent of the work force in 1999, its lowest level since 1969, when unemployment averaged 3.5 percent, reports the U.S. Department of Labor. Labor statistics for 1999 reveal that unemployment rates for black and Hispanic workers in the United States were the lowest ever recorded by the department. The U.S. economy in 1999 generated 2.7 million new jobs, and average hourly earnings rose 0.4 percent to $13.46.|
07|The Clinton administration announces that opening U.S. highways to Mexican trucks and buses will be delayed. According to a provision of the 1993 North American Free Trade Agreement, the United States was to allow Mexican transport vehicles free access to U.S. highways in all 50 states on Jan. 1, 2000. Administration officials claim that inspections made at border crossings in 1999 revealed that more than 40 percent of the 21,000 Mexican vehicles carrying goods across the border failed to meet basic safety requirements.|
08|More than 6,000 people rally before the Statehouse in Columbia, South Carolina's capital, in defense of the Confederate flag. The flag is the emblem of the confederacy, the six Southern states that <I>seceded</I>(withdrew) from the government of the United States in 1860 and 1861, resulting in the Civil War. South Carolina has flown the Confederate flag from the capitol dome for 38 years. Defenders claim the flag represents "defiant defense of freedom and Southern heritage." Various civil rights organization, including the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP)--describe the banner as a symbol of slavery and protest its display on public property. The NAACP launched a tourism boycott of South Carolina in the first week of January in an effort to force the state to remove the flag.|
09|The Guardian Council of Iran, a body of conservative clerics that supervises government activities, bars more than 30 members of Iran's parliament from running for re-election. All are allies of Iran's moderate president, Mohammad Khatami. The council also disqualifies dozens of proreform candidates slated to run in the election scheduled for February 18. At least 90 of the 290 candidates affiliated with the Islamic Participation Front, President Khatami's political faction, are stricken from the ballot, including Abbas Abdi, a leader in the 1979 takeover of the U.S. Embassy in Iran's capital, Tehran. In November 1999, the council sentenced another Khatami ally, Abdullah Nouri, to five years in prison for religious dissent.|
09|A Pakistani Muslim cleric, Maulana Masood Azhar, vows to recruit half a million men for a jihad, or holy war, to end Indian rule in Kashmir. He made his vow before tens of thousands of Pakistanis gathered for a ceremony to mark the end of Ramadan, the holiest time of the Islamic year. The cleric was one of the three militants released from prison by India on Dec. 31, 1999, in exchange for 155 hostages who had been aboard an Indian Airlines jet that five Kashmiri militants hijacked on December 24 and held at an airport in Afghanistan.|
10|The chairman of America Online (AOL), Steven M. Case, and chief executive of Time Warner, Gerald M. Levin, announce that AOL is acquiring Time Warner. AOL is the world's largest Internet service provider, with more than 22 million subscribers. Time Warner is the world's largest media conglomerate--publisher of 33 magazines, including <I>Time</I> and <I>People</I>; operator of cable television systems and channels; and owner of Warner Bros. film studio and a number of record labels. Media experts describe the $165-billion merger, which is the largest in history, as a demonstration of the Internet's mounting power as a communications medium.|
11|The Supreme Court of the United States rules, in a 5-to-4 decision, that a state employee cannot sue his or her employer in federal court for redress of age-based discrimination. Writing for the majority, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor declares that Congress lacked constitutional authority to authorize such lawsuits when in 1974 it extended the Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 to cover state employees. According to the majority opinion, such suits "violate the sovereign immunity" of the states. The Age Discrimination in Employment Act protects employees against discrimination on the basis of age--beginning at age 40--and authorizes suits for damages in federal court. The 50 U.S. states employ approximately 4.7 million people.|
11|President Bill Clinton designates 1,500 square miles (3,880 square kilometers) of rugged cliffs and desert along the north rim of the Grand Canyon as a national monument. The decree doubles the area of federally protected land around the canyon and halts further development and mining in the area. The president also grants national monument status to Agua Fria, a 1,000-acre (405-hectare) area north of Phoenix, Arizona, and extends monument status to thousands of exposed rocks, reefs, and uninhabited islands off the coast of California. In addition, he enlarges Pinnacles National Monument, in Salinas, California, by more than 8,000 acres (3,235 hectares).|
12|The population of the United States will more than double in the next 100 years, reports the U.S. Census Bureau. According to bureau estimates, the U.S. population will climb from 275 million people in 2000 to 571 million in 2100.|
13|Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft Corp., the Redmond, Washington-based software giant, steps down as chief operating officer and appoints as his successor company president Steve Ballmer. Assuming the title "chief software architect," Gates says that he will focus on improving the Microsoft product line.|
14|U.S. Energy Secretary Bill Richardson announces plans to return 84,000 acres (33,995 hectares) along the Colorado River in Utah to Northern Ute Native Americans, whose tribal headquarters is located at Ft. Duchesne, Utah. The government took the land, which contains oil-rich shale deposits, from the Northern Ute in 1916 for a naval oil reserve. The reserve was never exploited. Between the end of World War II (1939-1945) and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the federal government dumped uranium waste on the land. Officials expect the government will spend in excess of $30 million to clean up the approximately 10.5 million short tons (9.5 million metric tons) of radioactive rock and soil.|
15|A Serb paramilitary leader known as Arkan, whose real name was Zeljko Raznatovic, is murdered in a hotel lobby in Serbia's capital, Belgrade. Raznatovic was indicted in 1997 by the international war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia for crimes against humanity. Interpol, an intergovernmental organization of police agencies, wanted Raznatovic for a string of bank robberies in western Europe. Political experts in Belgrade claim that Raznatovic had connections to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's government and to various business concerns, both legitimate and criminal. The experts describe the daytime attack in a public place as typical of political assassinations in present-day Yugoslavia.|
16|A 61-year-old economist and leader of the Chilean Socialist Party is narrowly elected president of Chile. Ricardo Lagos, who took 51 percent of the vote, will be Chile's first Socialist head of state since a violent <I>coup</I>(overthrow) forced Salvador Allende from office in 1973 and brought General Augusto Pinochet to power. In the 1980's, Lagos helped lead Chilean forces opposed to the Pinochet dictatorship.|
17|U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright issues a statement announcing that high-level peace talks between Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Syrian foreign minister Farouk al-Shara have been indefinitely postponed. The resumption of the talks in Shepherdstown, West Virginia, scheduled for January 19, unraveled when the Syrian announced announced on January 16 that Israel must withdraw from the Golan Heights before discussions can continue. Israel has occupied the Golan Heights, an area in the southwestern corner of Syria, as a security zone since the 1967 Middle East War. Israel demands that Syria guarantee Israeli security along their joint border before Israel leaves the Golan Heights.|
17|Nearly 48,000 protesters mark the birthday of slain civil rights leader Martin Luther King with a march through Columbia, South Carolina, They demand that the state remove the Confederate flag--the emblem of the six Southern states that withdrew from the United States in 1860 and 1861--from the capitol dome. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) claims the flag is a symbol of slavery. Defenders of the flag, which was first flown above the capitol in the early 1960's, respond that the banner symbolizes "defiant defense of freedom and Southern heritage."|
18|Helmut Kohl, the former chancellor who presided over German's unification, resigns as chairman of the Christian Democratic Union party. The conservative political party has governed Germany for 33 of the 55 years since World War II ended in 1945. Before resigning, Kohl defied the party's executive committee by refusing to identify who gave him illegal contributions during his 16 years as chancellor. Kohl disclosed the existence of such funds, amounting to more than $1 million, in November 1999 while testifying before a parliamentary committee investigating illegal political contributions from arms dealers. Kohl left office in October 1998 after losing a re-election bid to Gerhard Schroeder, leader of the liberal Social Democratic party.|
19|The U.S. Supreme Court upholds the death penalty for a man convicted of killing a Virginia state trooper while being stopped for a routine traffic violation. Lawyers for the defendant did not claim that their client was innocent but rather that a sentence of death violated his constitutional rights because the judge in the 1993 trial did not inform the jury that any sentence other than death could be considered. Writing for the majority, Chief Justice William Rehnquist said that the jury had been "adequately instructed."|
20|The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approves changes in licensing rules that will open radio airwaves to a wide spectrum of religious, educational, and community groups. The new rules allow such organizations to operate low-power, noncommercial FM radio stations. Most radio broadcasting corporations strongly object to the new FCC ruling, which the company spokespersons claim will produce static on airwaves or distort signals from established stations. Experts in the field of commercial radio speculate that the FCC ruling is an attempt to bring diversity to FM radio, which is dominated by a few large broadcasting companies as a result of a spate of mergers and consolidations in recent years.|
21|Two car bombs explode in Spain's capital, Madrid, killing a Spanish army officer on a walk near his residence. The government blames the Basque separatist organization ETA for breaking a cease-fire that lasted for 18 months. The initials ETA stand for Basque Homeland and Liberty in the Basque language. The organization has fought for 31 years to achieve independence for the 2.5 million Basques living in the Pyrenees Mountains in the north of Spain.|
22|Vice President Gustavo Noboa Bejarano assumes Ecuador's presidency with the backing of most of the country's armed forces and the national police. Ecuador's elected president, Jamil Mahuad, was ousted from office on January 21 in a coup (overthrow) that was led by dissident military officers and various Indian groups. Noboa is Ecuador's sixth chief of state in four years.|
23|An ice storm in Atlanta, Georgia, fells trees and downs power lines, cutting electricity to more than 500,000 houses in the area. Near Kansas City, Missouri, ice on U.S. Interstate 29 triggers the pile-up of 24 cars and trucks, killing eight people.|
23|More than 1 million people march through Spain's capital, Madrid, protesting the resumption of terrorist tactics by the Basque separatist organization, ETA. The Spanish government accused ETA of breaking 18 months of cease-fire by detonating two car bombs in Madrid on January 21. The group has fought for 31 years to achieve independence for Spain's more than 2.5 million Basque people.|
24|The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) issues a new warning to physicians about the use of Propulsid, a popular heartburn medicine that was first marketed in 1993. More than 70 deaths and an additional 200 cases of irregular heartbeat have been linked to the drug, according to the FDA, which on four earlier occasions has demanded that Johnson & Johnson, the manufacturer, make changes to the drug's packaging label.|
25|A winter storm drives up the East Coast of the United States with winds of 40 miles (64 kilometers) per hour. Heavy snows bury states from South Carolina to New England. In North Carolina, the governor declares a general emergency when the capital, Raleigh, is hit by more than 20 inches (51 centimeters) of snow, a city record. The storm forces the closure of federal offices in Washington, D.C., and shuts down airports in Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City, and Boston.|
26|The U.S. Congressional Budget Office releases a report with projections that the federal budget surplus will substantially increase in the years between 2000 and 2010. According to one set of estimates, the surplus outside Social Security funds could total $1.9 trillion by 2010, which is more than double budget office estimates made for the same period in 1999. The budget office also projects that the Social Security system will slide into a deep deficit as the baby-boom generation retires between 2000 and 2020. In 1999, Congress borrowed $17 billion from Social Security, which currently runs at a surplus, to cover deficit spending in the 1998-1999 budget.|
26|Officials in Beijing, China's capital, announce new laws banning information from the Internet about the Chinese government or government officials unless the information is approved by the State Secrets Bureau. The laws specifically prohibit the discussion of "state secrets" in chat rooms, over e-mail, or on Web sites but does not define what constitutes a "state secret," giving the bureau wide power to regulate Internet content. The Chinese government is currently embroiled in a number of corruption scandals, which were revealed and publicized on the Internet. Experts estimate there are 8.9 million Chinese currently on-line, double the number in January 1999.|
27|Egypt's parliament passes legislation allowing a woman to divorce a husband without providing the court with witnesses of abuse or proof of mistreatment. President Hosni Mubarak, whose party controls the parliament, proposed the measure, which Egypt's Islamic fundamentalists renounce. The fundamentalists claim that only men have the right to initiate divorce, according to the laws of Islam, Egypt's dominant religion.|
28|The U.S. economy grew at a rate of 5.8 percent in the last quarter of 1999, reports the U.S. Commerce Department.|
28|The value of the euro, the single European currency, falls to $0.9739, a record low in relation to the U.S. dollar. The euro was valued at $1.17 when it was introduced on Jan. 1, 1999.|
29|Delegates from 130 countries meeting in Montreal, Canada, adopt a worldwide treaty regulating trade in genetically modified products. Genetically modified, or transgenic, products contain genes from other species that confer new traits, such as pest resistance and greater productivity. According to a provision in the new treaty, export countries must inform import countries when products are genetically modified. The treaty allows import countries to ban genetically altered animals, crops, seeds, and microbes deemed harmful to local environments. Negotiators for the governments of the United States and Canada maintain that banning such products will cripple free trade in world food. Approximately one half of all soybeans and one-third of all corn grown in the United States contain altered genes.|
30|The St. Louis Rams win Super Bowl XXXIV by beating the Tennessee Titans 23 to 16 in Atlanta, Georgia.|
30|Gerry Adams, leader of Sinn Fein, the political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), refuses to guarantee that the IRA will surrender its weapons by the May 22 deadline set by the 1998 agreement known as the Good Friday peace accord. The Ulster Unionist Party, a political organization representing the majority of Protestants in Northern Ireland, threatens to walk out of the government if the IRA fails to begin the process of disarming by Feb. 12, 2000. Under a compromise agreement worked out in December 1999, the Unionists agreed to allow the IRA to participate in a power-sharing government if the IRA would begin to turn in its arsenal "soon," an indefinite date to which the Unionists assigned Feb. 12, 2000, as a deadline.|
31|A Kenya Airways jet enroute to Lagos, Nigeria, crashes into the Atlantic Ocean shortly after takeoff from the airport at Abidjan, capital of the Ivory Coast. At least 169 of the 179 passengers and crew aboard the Airbus A310 are killed.|
31|All 88 passengers and crew members aboard an Alaska Airlines jet--Flight 261 from Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, to Seattle, Washington, with a stop in San Francisco--are killed when the McDonnell-Douglas MD-83A crashes into the Pacific Ocean near Oxnard, California, northwest of Los Angeles.|
