01|The U.S. military stops deliberately scrambling satellite signals from the Global Positioning System (GPS), the U.S. government's highly accurate satellite navigation system. The change, ordered by President Bill Clinton, improves the accuracy of the signals for civilians by 10-fold, which economists predict will provide a boon for commercial companies using the GPS.|
01|South Asia is a major hub of international terrorism, announces the U.S. State Department in a 107-page report that specifically names Pakistan and Afghanistan as havens for terrorists. The report notes that terrorist acts perpetrated by groups in the name of religion or ideology now pose a greater threat to public safety than acts carried out by nations with political motivations. The funding of terrorist groups, according to State Department officials, most often comes from profits from drug trafficking and crime.|
02|The Swiss National Bank, Switzerland's central bank, begins selling gold reserves, with an initial offering of 120 short tons (108 metric tons), in the largest sale of gold in history. Swiss officials plan to sell over the next five years a total of 1,300 short tons (1,180 metric tons), approximately half the bank's reserves.|
03|Executives with the London Stock Exchange and Frankfurt's Deutsche Borse announce plans for a merger, creating a single market on which English and German securities will be traded on a 24-hour-a-day basis. The combined value of the securities exceeds $5.95 trillion. Blue-chip stocks will be traded in London, and technology issues will be traded in Frankfurt. The new market, by far Europe's largest exchange and the world's fourth largest, is to be allied with the technology-heavy Nasdaq exchange in the United States. The German branch is to provide the technology that will allow the new market to plug into Nasdaq's global network.|
03|Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives sue the House majority leader, Tom DeLay (R., Texas), for violating federal antiracketerring laws while raising funds for Republican candidates. Patrick Kennedy (D., Rhode Island), head of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, alleges in a U.S. District Court complaint that DeLay raises campaign money through threats and intimidation. According to the allegations, the money is laundered through tax-exempt organizations, before being used to pay for television commercials that attack Democratic candidates.|
04|A computer virus, dubbed the "love bug" for the "I LOVE YOU" featured in the subject line of the e-mail carrying it, attacks hundreds of thousands of computers worldwide, destroying data, jamming e-mail services, and crashing programs. Computer security experts initially identified the virus in Asia on May 3 and believe it may have started in the Philippines and traveled west to Europe and on to North and South America. The virus is unleashed when a user clicks to open an e-mail attachment.|
04|Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF), a rebel group led by Foday Sankoh, attacks United Nations (UN) peacekeeping troops and seizes more than 500 men as hostages. The UN has a force of more than 8,000 troops in Sierra Leone, attempting to keep the peace after nine years of civil war. In July 1999, Sankoh had been pardoned for treason and mass murder and made vice president of Sierra Leone after he signed a peace accord that was designed to end the war.|
05|The unemployment rate in the United States dropped from 4.1 percent in March to 3.9 percent in April, a 30-year low, announces the U.S. Department of Labor. The last time the unemployment fell below 4 percent was in 1970. According to Labor Department statistics, the economy, which generated 340,000 new jobs in April 2000, has been in a period of uninterrupted growth for nine years, the longest expansion cycle in the country's history.|
05|Ken Livingstone is elected mayor of London in the British capital's first mayoral election in history. Previous mayors were appointed by the crown. Livingstone, who ran as an independent, quit Britain's Labour Party after being denied Labour's candidacy for the post. Political experts view his election as a major embarrassment for Prime Minister Tony Blair, leader of the Labour Party, whose own handpicked candidate, former Health Secretary Frank Dobson, finished a distant third, trailing the Conservative candidate, Steven Norris.|
06|The Irish Republican Army (IRA) agrees to allow an international team to inspect its secret arsenal of weapons and offers to store the arsenal under the supervision of a neutral party. The agreement raises the possibility of ending an impasse over IRA disarmament, which in February, forced Great Britain to suspend Northern Ireland's power-sharing government of Roman Catholics and Protestants only 10 weeks after it was instituted.|
07|Vladimir Putin is sworn in as president of Russia in the first free transfer of power in the country's 1,100-year history. In national elections on March 26, Putin soundly defeated the Communist candidate, Gennady Zyuganov. The inaugural ceremony, which takes place in the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow, is attended by former President Boris Yeltsin, former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, and various legislators, jurists, and diplomats. |
08|Partisans of Sierra Leone's Revolutionary United Front (RUF) fire into a crowd throwing rocks into the compound where RUF leader Foday Sankoh lives in Freetown, the capital. Four protesters are shot execution-style as United Nations (UN) peacekeeping troops look on. The crowd, numbering in the thousands, marched on the compound to protest Sankoh's role in blocking UN efforts to keep the peace in Sierra Leone after nine years of civil war.|
09|Senator John McCain (R., Arizona) endorses Texas Governor George W. Bush for president of the United States but insists that he will not join Bush on the Republican ticket as a candidate for vice president.|
10|A fire, which scorched more than 18,000 acres (7,284 hectares), sweeps through Los Alamos, New Mexico, forcing at least 18,000 people to evacuate their houses. Officials at the nearby Los Alamos National Laboratory, which closed on May 8 because of the fire, announce that they do not believe the fire could ignite hazardous chemicals or nuclear material stored there. National Park Service employees at nearby Bandelier National Monument purposely set the fire on May 4 in order to clear brush. High winds and low humidity caused the fire to burn out of control.|
11|Ford Motor Company of Dearborn, Michigan, acknowledges in a "corporate citizenship report" issued at the company's annual stockholders' meeting that sports utility vehicles (SUV's) contribute more to global warming, emit more smog-causing pollution, and are less safe than regular automobiles. A company spokesperson also notes that the Ford line of SUV's is far more profitable that its line of regular cars.|
12|Ethiopia and Eritrea resume fighting along their disputed border two days after the collapse of peace talks brokered by the United Nations (UN) and the European Union. World War I-style trench warfare, involving as many as 750,000 foot soldiers, erupts on three fronts--on the western end of the border; near the town of Zalambessa in the center; and at the eastern end of the border near the port of Assab. Eritrea charges that Ethiopia broke a year-long cease-fire by launching a massive artillery barrage. Ethiopia blames Eritrea for starting the war by moving troops onto Ethiopian territory. Calling the war "senseless," UN officials warn that the fighting hinders humanitarian efforts to assist the more than 8 million people in the region who are threatened by a severe famine.|
13|At least 20 people are killed and 950 wounded when a fire in a Dutch warehouse ignites 100 short tons (90.7 metric tons) of fireworks, triggering multiple explosions that send huge fireballs shooting into the center of Enschede, a town of approximately 150,000 people in the east-central area of the Netherlands.|
14|The Yugoslav government of Slobodan Milosevic blames two opposition groups, the student organization Otpor and the Serbian Renewal Movement party, for the assassination of Bosko Perosevic, a prominent official. A government spokesperson announces a general crackdown on opposition groups and notes that activists who participate in an opposition rally scheduled for Belgrade on May 15 face arrest. A number of opposition leaders already have been arrested in connection with the murder. Perosevic was assassinated on May 13 by a security guard at an agricultural fair in Novi Sad, northwest of Belgrade, the capital. Experts on Yugoslav politics point out that the murder is the fourth in recent months of officials or businesspersons with ties to Milosevic.|
15|At least three Palestinians are killed and more than 315 Israelis and Palestinians injured in fierce fighting between Israeli troops and Palestinian security forces on the West Bank and in the Gaza Strip. The violence, which began near the Palestinian city of Ramallah and spread to other cities, was sparked by Palestinian protests over the slow pace of the Mideast peace process. The various conflicts, described as the most violent in nearly four years, escalated from the hurling of stones and firebombs into exchanges of automatic weapon fire.|
16|The United States Federal Reserve System (the Fed), an independent government agency that oversees the U.S. banking system, raises short-term interest rates by one half of a percentage point in an effort to control inflation. The Fed boosts the rate for overnight loans between banks to 6.5 percent. It increases the discount rate, the rate at which Federal Reserve district banks lend directly to financial institutions, to 6 percent. The Fed has hiked interest rates six times since June 1999 to control inflation in a steadily growing economy.|
17|Sierra Leone's chief rebel leader, Foday Sankoh, is caught by his neighbors in Freetown, the capital, and paraded through the streets before being turned over to government authorities. On May 4, Sankoh's Revolutionary United Front troops abducted nearly 500 United Nation peacekeepers, bringing the country back to the brink of civil war, which ended in July 1999.|
17|Japan's prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, publicly apologies for referring to Japan as a "divine country with an emperor at its core." Many Japanese believed that Mori's comment suggested emperor worship and implied that the new prime minister did not support Japan's constitution, which guarantees a secular state. Before the adoption of the constitution after World War II, Shinto was Japan's official religion and the emperor was regarded as a living god.|
18|The New Hampshire Senate passes a bill banning the death penalty. The legislation, which was approved by the New Hampshire House in March, is the first passed by a state legislature since capital punishment was declared constitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1976. The governor of New Hampshire, Jeanne Shaheen, vows to veto the bill.|
19|New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani drops out of the race for the U.S. Senate seat from New York in which he was likely to run as the Republican candidate against First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. Citing health problems for his withdrawal, the mayor declares that he will devote his remaining 18 months in office to becoming a better mayor and person.|
19|The United States Department of Commerce reveals that the nation's trade deficit--the shortfall between the value of a country's exports of goods and services and the value of its imports--grew to a record $30.2 billion in March. Economists said that high oil prices were partially responsible for the deficit and cautioned that the deficit could threaten robust consumer spending in the United States.|
20|Fifty years of Nationalist rule in Taiwan ends when Chen Shui-bian is sworn in as president. President Chen, leader of the Democratic Progressive Party, which has long advocated Taiwan's independence from China, succeeds Lee Teng-hui, Taiwan's first popularly elected president. Lee was blamed by his fellow Nationalists for the party's humiliating loss in the March 18 election, in which the Nationalist candidate came in a distant third in a three-way race.|
20|U.S. Representative Rick Lazio, a Republican from New York, announces that he will seek the nomination of his party in the New York Senate race against Democratic candidate First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton.|
21|Government officials in China announce that they have approved a plan to send two pandas to the National Zoo in Washington, D.C. In exchange, the Smithsonian Institution, which operates the zoo, agrees to donate $10 million over 10 years to China for panda research and conservation. The National Zoo has been without a panda since November 1999.|
22|The U.S. Supreme Court, voting 5 to 4, strikes down part of a 1996 law regulating the hours that cable television providers can broadcast adult-oriented programming. The law, designed to shield children from sexually-explicit programming, required that cable providers either scramble images and sound or show such programs only during late-night hours. According to the court's ruling, sections of the law violated the right of free speech guaranteed by the First Amendment to the Constitution.|
23|Governor Jim Hodges of South Carolina signs into law a bill that specifies the removal the Confederate flag from the Capitol dome in Columbia, the state capital. The controversial flag was the emblem of the 11 Southern States that seceded (withdrew) from the United States in 1860 and 1861, resulting in the Civil War (1861-1865). Under the new law, the flag will be moved from the dome to a Confederate memorial that stands in front of the Capitol.|
24|Israel pulls the last of its troops out of southern Lebanon, ending 22 years of occupation. Witnesses describe the withdrawal, which began on May 21, as chaotic, with soldiers abandoning weapons and vehicles to flee on foot. Israel occupied the buffer zone, a 9-mile (15-kilometer) strip along the Israeli-Lebanese border, to protect Israeli territory from attack by Hezbollah, a pro-Iranian, militant Islamic group that operates out of southern Lebanon. Although Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak announced in 1999 that he would order all 1,500 Israeli troops out of the security zone by July 2000, many Israelis, including members of the conservative Likud Party, characterize the withdrawal as a "shameful retreat" in the face of recent Hezbollah aggression.|
24|The U.S. House of Representatives votes 237 to 197 to grant the People's Republic of China a permanent trade agreement. The U.S. Senate will vote on the measure in June.|
25|The Ethiopian army takes the strategically important town of Zalambessa, where a force of some 80,000 to 100,000 Eritreans had dug in to defend the approaches to their country's mountainous center. Claiming a great victory, Ethiopia vows to continue to wage war until all Eritrean forces have withdrawn from disputed territories along the border. Eritrea denies being pushed out of Zalambessa, claiming that it vacated the town in compliance with peace proposals put forward by the Organization of African Unity.|
26|Astronauts with Space shuttle Atlantis leave the International Space Station after completing a six-day repair mission. The astronauts outfitted the station with fresh batteries, smoke detectors, a new antenna, and a crane.|
26|The provincial coroner of Ontario, Canada, announces that his office will conduct inquests into the deaths of five people who died between May 21 and 25 in an outbreak of E. coli bacteria in Walkerton, Ontario. Walkerton is a farming community 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Toronto. Ten percent of the town's 5,000 residents were made ill by the bacteria, which officials believe entered the local water supply during a heavy rainstorm. According to Walkerton's medical officer, officials of the town's Public Utility Commission failed to inform the public that the water was unsafe even after tests made on May 18 proved contamination.|
27|Thousands of people in and around Eunice, Louisiana, a town of 12,000 in the southwestern part of the state, are forced to evacuate their houses when 25 to 30 cars of a 113-car Union Pacific freight train derail. Ten of the derailed cars, which carried hazardous chemicals, explode, sending toxic fireballs 200 feet (322 kilometers) into the air.|
28|Alberto Fujimori is reelected president of Peru in a runoff election boycotted by his opponent, Alejandro Toledo. A week before the second round of balloting, Toledo, a former World Bank economist, asked supporters to spoil their ballots by writing "no to fraud" to protest an election that many international observers believe is seriously compromised. The first round of the election in April proved controversial when Toledo received 40.2 percent to Fujimori's 49.9 percent after exit polls conducted by independent companies showed the challenger in the lead. Constitutional experts also question the legality of the election because the Peruvian Congress in 1997 removed judges from the bench who had ruled that Fujimori could not stand for a third term because the 1993 constitution limits presidents to two terms in office.|
29|North Korean leader Kim Jong Il arrives in Beijing, the Chinese capital, for three days of secret meetings. The trip is the first North Korea's reclusive "Great Leader" has taken outside of his country since he succeeded his father in 1994. International affairs experts believe that political leaders in China, North Korea's only important ally, will continue to shore up Kim's regime to avoid instability in the area. Foreign experts estimated in 1999 that 1.5 million to 3 million people died in North Korea from malnutrition between 1995 and 1998.|
29|At least 44 are killed and hundreds injured when Muslims attack two Christian villages on the Indonesian island of Halmahera, in the Moluccans. The Indonesian military has standing orders to shoot to kill participants in the sectarian violence that is raging across the Moluccan Islands. On May 17, security forces opened fire on a warring mob in Ampon, killing 21 people after 23 had already been killed in the melee.|
30|Wildfires burn out of control in areas of five Western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah. Near Pecos, New Mexico, 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of Sante Fe, a fire in the Sangre de Christo Mountains scorches 6,500 acres (2,630 hectares) of ponderosa pine and mixed conifers, sending smoke thousands of feet into the air.|
31|Military leaders in Fiji, who recently took control of the government, appoint Ratu Epeli Nailatikau prime minister. Nailatikau, a native Fijian, replaces Mahendra Chaudhry, Fiji's first ethnic Indian premier. On May 19, Fijian rebels attacked the parliamentary complex in Suva, the capital, and took Prime Minister Chaudhry and about 30 Cabinet members hostage. The rebels demanded the resignation of the president and the abolition of the constitution, which they claim favors Fiji's ethnic Indian population. Although the military forced President Ratu Sir Kamisese Mara out of office on May 30 and revoked the constitution, the rebels continue to hold the former prime minister and his Cabinet captive.|
