01|Japan orders the evacuation of all 3,850 residents from Miyake Island, which is part of Japan's Ise chain of islands. Frequent volcanic eruptions and earthquakes powerful enough to be felt in Tokyo, the capital, 120 miles (193 kilometers) to the north, have wracked the island for more than two months. |
02|A platoon of nearly 200 riot police forcibly remove Myanmar's prodemocracy leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi from her car and return her to the capital, Yangon (Rangoon). She had been detained in the car since August 22 when she attempted to leave Yangon to visit followers in another city. Mrs. Aung San Suu Kyi, who heads Myanmar's National League for Democracy, received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her nonviolent efforts to restore democracy to her country.|
03|Foreign-born workers make up 12 percent of the U.S. labor force, the highest percentage since the 1930's, report officials with the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Between 1997 and 1999, the total number of foreign workers in the United States jumped 17 percent to reach 15.7 million people. Experts on U.S. immigration estimate that 5 million of the 15.7 million are illegal immigrants.|
03|An earthquake registering 5.2 shakes California's wine country, north of San Francisco, along a previously unknown fault line. The earthquake's epicenter is under Mount Veeders, a prominent peak in the area between Yountville and Napa.|
04|French truckdrivers and farmers, protesting the high cost of fuel, form barriers outside 60 of France's oil depots. The protesters demand that the government of France cut taxes on gasoline.|
05|A three-day summit meeting, sponsored by the United Nations (UN), opens in New York City with 150 of the world's leaders in attendance. UN Secretary General Kofi Annan calls for international cooperation to revolve worldwide problems of war, disease, poverty, and pollution.|
06|The price of crude oil for October delivery on the New York City market pushes to $35.35 a barrel, a 10-year high last hit when the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait set off a worldwide oil shortage.|
07|An enormous Mayan palace dating from the 700's A.D. has been unearthed in a Guatemalan jungle by an international team of archaeologists, announces Arthur Demarest, an archaeologist at Vanderbilt University. Demarest, coleader of the expedition, believes the palace, which consists of 170 rooms and covers an area larger than two football fields, rivals in importance Tikal, one of the largest cities of the Maya civilization. The newly discovered palace is within the ruins of Cancuen (Place of Serpents), an ancient city on the Pasion River in northeastern Guatemala. Cancuen appears to be unique among Maya cities for the absence of pyramid temples. The archaeologists also found no evidence that the city's rulers engaged in war. Demarest speculates that Cancuen became wealthy and powerful through commerce.|
08|A truckload of explosives detonates west of Urumqi, capital of China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, killing 60 people and injuring 170 others. Islamic separatists in the region claim responsibility for a number of similar terrorist bombings that have been carried out since 1996.|
09|Wimbledon champion Venus Williams beats Lindsay Davenport, 6-4, 7-5, to take the U.S. Open women's single championship, which was won by Williams's sister Serena in 1999.|
10|The Palestinian Central Council adjourns without proclaiming the existence of a new Palestinian nation. In July, Palestinian leaders announced that the council would declare sovereignty if a peace accord was not reached by September 13, the date the Israelis and Palestinians initially targeted for the agreement. Peace negotiations at Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, deadlocked on July 25 with Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat unable to reach an agreement over the division of Jerusalem, which both sides claim as their capital.|
10|Russian tennis player Marat Safin upsets four-time champion Pete Sampras to win the United States Open, 6-4, 6-3, 6-3. |
11|U.S. film and video producers are intentionally marketing violent R-rated movies and M-rated video games to children as young as 12 years old, report officials with the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). According to the tenets of a voluntary rating system, children under 17 years of age are not admitted to R-rated films unless accompanied by an adult, and M-rated video games are not sold to children under 17. |
12|A blockade by British truck, bus, and taxicab drivers halts the delivery of gasoline in the United Kingdom, forcing most gas stations to close. British Prime Minister Tony Blair vows not to capitulate to the demand to reduce fuel taxes, noting that policy will not be "dictated by illegal blockades, pickets, or direct action." Protests over the high cost of fuel, now spreading across Europe, began in France when truck drivers blockaded oil refineries and storage depots.|
13|Officials with the New York City-based Chase Manhattan Corporation, the third largest banking company in the United States, announce the acquisition of J. P. Morgan & Company, of New York City, for $30.9 billion. Founded by financier J. Pierpont Morgan in 1861, the Morgan bank, for most of its history, was a commercial institution that specialized in financing corporations and governments.|
13|A car bomb explodes in a parking garage under Jakarta's 36-story Indonesian stock exchange. The explosion, the latest in a rash of terrorist violence to wrack Indonesia in recent weeks, kills 15 people and wounds dozens of others. While no individual or group claims responsibility, police authorities suggest the bombing is connected to the corruption trial of Suharto, Indonesia's former president, who is accused of stealing $500 million during his 30 years in office. |
14|Hundreds of demonstrators clash with police in Jakarta, Indonesia's capital, after former president Suharto failed to show up at his corruption trial for a second time. The court ordered new medical tests to verify that Suharto is as ill as he claims. |
14|The city of Philadelphia releases revised crime statistics for 1998 that reveal that the city's police department failed to report 37,000 major crimes for that year. The new figures were compiled by the city controller's office after the Federal Bureau of Investigation, which tracks local crime rates, rejected the statistics initially reported for 1998. The latest statistics raise Philadelphia's crime rate to 98.7 major crimes per 1,000 residents, second highest among U.S. cities after Detroit.|
15|The 27th Summer Olympic Games open in Sydney, Australia, with a four-hour ceremony celebrating inclusiveness with special attention to reconciliation between white and indigenous Australians. The Olympic cauldron is lit by runner Cathy Freeman, an aboriginal and Australia's gold-medal hope for the 400-meter and 200-meter sprints.|
16|The president of Peru, Alberto Fujimori, announces that he is calling for a new round of presidential elections in which he will not be a candidate. He also promises to dismantle the National Intelligence Service, a security organization that critics accuse of manipulating the last elections, held in April and May, in which Fujimori was reelected for an unprecedented third term. That contest was internationally condemned for election fraud and other irregularities.|
16|The rising waters of the Mekong River and its tributaries threaten more than 1 million people in Southeast Asia in what has been described as the worst flooding in the region in 70 years. Unseasonably heavy monsoons are inundating areas of Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam, forcing tens of thousands of people from their homes. Cambodian government officials estimate that flooding has resulted in the deaths of more than 90 people in Phnom Penh, the capital, and the destruction of hundreds of thousands of acres of rice fields in the countryside.|
17|Hurricane Gordon's outer bands buffet Florida's West Coast with winds of 50 miles (80 kilometers) per hour, driving a storm surge into Tampa Bay. The 4-foot (1.2-meter) high waves force the closure of most of the bay bridges and flood streets in Tampa and St. Petersburg. An estimated 280,000 people evacuated coastal areas between Tampa Bay and the panhandle in anticipation of the storm, which made landfall at Cedar Key, a small island off Florida's northwest coast.|
17|More than 300 firefighters battle a 700-acre (400-hectare) forest fire approximately 12 miles (19 kilometers) southwest of downtown Boulder, Colorado. According to Boulder County officials, the fire, which threatens about 250 houses, is being fueled by grass and pine needles dried out by this summer's high temperatures and low humidity. The fire is Colorado's fifth major blaze during the summer of 2000. Officials with the National Interagency Fire Center in Boise, Idaho, report that 23 fires are currently burning in seven Western states besides Colorado. |
18|European Union (EU) officials in Brussels publicly appeal to the people of Serbia to vote incumbent President Slobodan Milosevic out of office in the election scheduled for September 24. The EU and the United States promise to lift economic sanctions and provide aid to Serbia if a new president is allowed to take office. |
19|Members of the U.S. Senate vote 83 to 15 to normalize trade relations with China. The legislation, which President Bill Clinton supports, grants China permanent trade relations and ratifies a 1999 U.S.-China trade deal that lowers tariffs and duties on various goods and food stuffs that China imports from the United States. Passage of the legislation also opens the way for China to join the World Trade Organization.|
20|The investigation into whether President Bill Clinton and First Lady Hillary Clinton committed criminal acts in relation to a failed Arkansas real estate venture known as White Water is closed, announces Independent Counsel Robert Ray. Ray notes that there is insufficient evidence of criminal behavior, including perjury and obstruction of justice, to bring charges against the couple. Led by three independent councils, including Kenneth Starr, the White Water investigation ran for six years and cost taxpayers $52 million.|
21|At least 80 people cheer home a Japanese whaling vessel, the Nisshinmaru, as the ship loaded with the meat of 88 minke whales enters the harbor at Tokyo's Oi Bay. Japan's official representative on the International Whaling Commission personally greets the crew, as they return from a 47-day voyage. In July, the International Whaling Commission, an international organization that provides for the proper conservation of whale stocks, refused to grant Japan permission to harvest minke whales. The commission banned all commercial whaling in 1982. |
22|President Bill Clinton announces that he has ordered the release of 30 million barrels of oil from the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve in an effort to bring down the price of home heating oil in the United States. In New England and New York State, where the use of heating oil is more prevalent than in the rest of the country, the price of heating oil is over $2 a gallon compared with an average price of $1.46 a gallon during the winter of 1999-2000.|
23|A week of flooding caused by late monsoon rains leaves 10 million people in India homeless. Authorities in the Indian state of West Bengal believe that since September 18 at least 600 people have drowned while attempting to flee the rising flood waters. |
24|Yugoslavians go to the polls in record numbers to vote in federal elections in which President Slobodan Milosevic faces an unprecedented challenge by Vojislav Kostunica of the multiparty Democratic Opposition of Serbia bloc. The government of Montenegro, Serbia's junior partner in the Yugoslav federation, is boycotting the elections by not running candidates for the Yugoslav parliament. |
25|A cholera outbreak in Badghis, a province in northwestern Afghanistan, has resulted in the deaths of more than 90 people, announce United Nations officials in Kabul, the capital. At least 20,000 people in the region are in need of emergency health aid. Cholera, an acute infectious bacterial disease, can result from the consumption of polluted water. A severe drought in a region stretching from Syria to Mongolia has destroyed crops, killed livestock, and made fresh water for drinking and cooking increasingly scarce. |
25|The French-language Self-Defense Brigade, a radical Quebec separatist group, claims responsibility for the firebombing of a Montreal church where an English-language rights group was scheduled to hold a fund-raising event. Montreal police believe the Self-Defense Brigade is responsible for a number of bombings and other terrorist acts against organizations and businesses with English names or English words in their names.|
26|Yugoslavia's Federal Election Commission announces that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic trails his chief challenger Vojislav Kostunica in September 24 election returns. According to the commission, which operates under the control of the government, Milosevic took 40.23 percent of the vote while Kostunica received 48.22 percent, making a runoff election necessary. The constitution of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia demands that a presidential candidate receive at least 50 percent of the vote to take office. Kostunica rejects the idea of a runoff, claiming he actually won 55 percent of the vote.|
26|At least 79 people drown when a ferry traveling between two Greek islands strikes a rocky outcrop and sinks in the Aegean Sea, near the island of Paros. The vessel was loaded with more than 500 passengers.|
27|A gas explosion in a coal mine in Shuicheng province in southwestern China kills 36 miners and traps an additional 122 men underground. |
28|Voters in Denmark overwhelmingly reject their government's plan to adopt the euro, the European Union's single currency. International affairs experts suggest that Denmark's failed referendum is an indication of the dissatisfaction felt by many Europeans with the process of European economic and political integration, which has been controlled largely by political leaders and bureaucrats at the European Union headquarters in Brussels.|
29|Thousands of Serbs across Yugoslavia rally in protest against President Slobodan Milosevic and the official results of the September 24 presidential elections. According to the Federal Election Commission, Milosevic's opponent, Vojislav Kostunica, failed to win 50 percent of the vote, making a runoff election necessary. Claiming widespread electoral fraud, Kostunica appeals to foreign governments, including Russia, to intervene and conduct an independent recount. |
30|At least 12 Palestinians are killed and hundreds of people are injured in violent street fighting between Palestinian protesters and Israeli troops in Jerusalem, the West Bank, and the Gaza Strip. Among the victims is a 12-year-old boy who with his father was caught in the crossfire. The violence began on September 28 when Ariel Sharon, a right-wing member of Israel's Likud Party, climbed to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City in a symbolic gesture of defiance toward Palestinian demands. The area, over which both Palestinians and Israeli claim sovereignty, contains sites sacred to both Muslims and Jews.|
