01|U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld orders the U.S. Navy to temporarily halt bombing exercises on Vieques, a Puerto Rican island on which the Navy maintains a 900-acre (364-hectare) bombing range. Vieques, which has a civilian population of 9,400 people, is the focus of a long-standing dispute between the Navy and Puerto Rico's government, which demands that the Navy permanently shut down the range and withdraw from the island. The Navy has used Vieques for target practice since World War II (1939-1945).|
02|Days of heavy rain cause massive flooding along the Zambezi River in Mozambique, killing more than 50 people and forcing thousands of others from their houses.|
03|The Afghani army, using heavy artillery, begins shelling the Bamiyan Buddhas, two figures that stand 175 feet (53 meters) and 120 feet (36 meters) tall. The statues, which are located in the Bamiyan Valley 90 miles (145 kilometers) west of Afghanistan's capital, Kabul, were carved into the side of a mountain between A.D. 200 and 500. The commander of the Taliban, an organization of Islamic extremists in control of much of Afghanistan, ordered their demolition along with the destruction of all images of human beings and animals, which the Taliban considers idolatrous. According to an Afghani information minister, the Kabul Museum's collection of 6,000 statues and relics, dating from before the late 600's, is also to be destroyed.|
03|A military transport plane assigned to the U.S. Army Air Nation Guard crashes near Robins Air Force Base in central Georgia, killing all 21 people aboard--3 Army crew members and 18 members of the Virginia Air National Guard. According to officers at the base, the plane, a twin-engine propeller C-23 Sherpa, was enroute from Hurlburt Field, near Fort Walton Beach, Florida, to Oceana Naval Air Station in Virginia.|
04|Sheep on nine different French farms test positive for the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease, announce French agricultural officials. Foot-and-mouth disease, also known as hoof-and-mouth disease, is a highly contagious virus to which animals with <I>cloven</I>(divided) hoofs, such as cattle, hogs, and sheep, are subject. French officials remain unsure whether the sheep, all of which were imported from the United Kingdom, merely carry the virus or had actually developed the disease and contaminated other animals.|
04|More than 70 people are killed when a bridge collapses into Portugal's Douro River, approximately 180 miles (290 kilometers) north of Lisbon, the capital. The level of the Douro is 33 feet (10 meters) higher than normal for this time of year, and engineers speculate that the fast-moving flood waters undermined support columns. People who used the bridge regularly had complained to authorities that the structure, which was 116 years old, shook and appeared to be unstable.|
05|Thirty-five Muslim pilgrims are killed in a stampede during the ritual of the stoning of Satan on the third day of the Hajj, the annual Muslim pilgrimage to the Saudi Arabian city of Mecca. More than 2 million Muslims were taking part in the ritual in which each participant throws seven pea-size pebbles at three columns of stone that symbolize the devil.|
05|French agricultural officials order the destruction of more than 50,000 head of livestock that were either imported from the United Kingdom or came into contact with imported animals. Tests on sheep imported from Great Britain disclosed that the animals had developed antibodies from being exposed to the virus that causes foot-and-mouth disease. To prevent the spread of the highly contagious virus, French officials are stopping vehicles at roadblocks in five rural regions to disinfect tires on vehicles. Drivers are being urged to step through a disinfectant solution as well.|
06|European Union (EU) agricultural officials order the 15 EU member nations to close all livestock markets for two weeks in an effort to contain the spread of foot-and-mouth disease. The EU also extends its ban of livestock, meat, and dairy-product exports from the United Kingdom, where the current outbreak of the disease was initially discovered in February.|
06|China's minister of finance announces plans to increase military spending by nearly 20 percent in 2002, to more than $17 billion, in a drive to modernize the country's army, the largest in the world. In a separate announcement, a government spokesperson in Beijing, the capital, warns the United States not to sell Taiwan high-tech weapons. The Chinese government insists that Taiwan is part of "one China" and has threatened to invade if Taiwan were to formally declare independence.|
07|Ariel Sharon is sworn in as Israel's fifth prime minister in six years. In his inaugural address, Sharon, a former general of the Israeli Army, announces that his primary goal is to provide security to Israel and combat violence and terrorism.|
07|A "nor'easter," a heavy storm blowing from the northeast, pounds New England for the third straight day. Along the Atlantic Coast, 20-foot (6-meter) waves driven by 60-mile- (96-kilometer-) per-hour winds cause flooding in seaport towns north and south of Boston. On Nantucket, winds gust up to 65 miles (105 kilometers) per hour, near hurricane force. Snow piles 8 to 16 inches (200 to 400 millimeters) high in Boston and Cape Cod, while areas of New Hampshire and Maine are hit with as much as 30 inches (760 millimeters) of snow.|
08|China's prime minister, Zhu Rongji, tells reporters in Hong Kong that he is certain that a deranged suicide bomber was the cause of a March 6 explosion in a rural school in Jiangxi province in southeastern China. According to the prime minister, the bomber entered the school with bags of explosives, which he set off, killing himself and at least 40 other people. Most of the victims were third and fourth grade students. Many parents in the village of Fanglin, where the explosion took place, insist gunpowder already stored in the school exploded, probably by accident. They contend that the government is attempting to cover up the fact that school authorities had set up a firecracker factory in the school and used the children as forced labor.|
09|President George W. Bush issues an executive order forbidding mechanics at Northwest Airlines to go on strike. Speaking to a crowd at an airport in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, the president announces that he will not allow workers at any major U.S. airline to use a strike to disrupt air service in the United States. The four U.S. largest carriers--American, United, Northwest, and Delta airlines--are all scheduled to negotiate new union contracts in 2001.|
09|An international team of fertility experts, meeting in Rome, announces that they plan to clone a human being. The work is scheduled to begin in October in an unidentified Mediterranean country. Two members of the team, Italian obstetrician Severino Antinori and U.S. scientist Panayiotis Zavos, describe the project as therapeutic in that human cloning may eventually lead to finding cures to a range of degenerative diseases.|
10|Israeli army bulldozers, protected by tanks, begin digging trenches that will encircle Jericho and cut through the main road in and out of Ramallah. Both West Bank cities are centers of Palestinian unrest. Army engineers designed the trenches to force vehicles to stop at checkpoints. According to Israeli authorities, this will limit the movement of attackers who use the roads to flee back to the safety of the Palestinian-controlled West Bank after carrying out terrorist attacks in Israel.|
11|A crowd of 100,000 people in Mexico City's historic Zocalo Plaza cheer the arrival of 24 Zapatista rebels completing a 15-day, 2,000-mile (3,200-kilometer) journey from their hideout in the jungles of Chiapas. The rebels marched on the capital to focus attention on the failure of the Congress to ratify the San Andres Accords, which guarantee full civil rights to Mexico's 10 million Indians. Addressing the crowd, the Zapatista leader, the man known as Subcomandante Marcos, proclaims, "We are here to shout for and to demand democracy, liberty, and justice." The Zapatistas launched a violent uprising in Chiapas on Jan. 1, 1994, the day the North American Free Trade Agreement went into effect. They have since staged peaceful demonstrations protesting official mistreatment of Indians, who make up 10 percent of Mexico's population.|
12|NATO agrees to allow Yugoslavia to move troops into a small, demilitarized zone along Serbia's border with Kosovo and Macedonia. The troops, primarily from Serbia, may not bring armored cars, helicopters, mines, or rocket launchers into the zone, which was created in June 1999 to separate warring Serb and Kosovar forces. Yugoslavia's president, Vojislav Kostunica, urged NATO to either shrink or eliminate the buffer zone. According to Kostunica, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian militants are using its protection to recruit and train people to attack Serb border police. In the last 10 days, Kosovar rebels have also clashed with police along Kosovo's border with Macedonia. NATO officials in Kosovo believe that the militants are attempting to drive non-Albanians out of Kosovo, enlarge the province, and gain independence from Serbia.|
12|Islamic militants terrorize two Algerian villages, killing 18 people, including 11 members of a single family. According to authorities, rebels in Algeria have killed at least 150 people since the beginning of March. Various militant Islamic groups, particularly the Islamic Salvation Front (ISF), use terrorist tactics against civilians as a way of destabilizing the government. The civil war in Algeria began in 1992 when military leaders canceled parliamentary elections that the ISF was slated to win.|
13|The United States Department of Agriculture bans the importation of animals and animal parts from the 15 member nations of the European Union. The ban is issued in response to the March 12 announcement by the government of France that foot-and-mouth disease had been diagnosed in a herd of cattle in northwestern France, confirmation that the disease had spread from the British Isles to continental Europe.|
14|President Yoweri Museveni is reelected president of Uganda with 69.3 percent of the vote. His challenger and former physician, Kizza Besigye, receives 27.8 percent. Experts in African affairs describe Uganda under Museveni, who has held office since 1986, as relatively peaceful and prosperous.|
15|The prime minister of Macedonia, Ljubco Georgievski, threatens to launch an all-out war against ethnic Albanian rebels from Kosovo as special police units pound rebel positions with mortar rounds for a second day. The Kosovar rebels, who call themselves the National Liberation Army, are positioned on a wooded hill above Tetovo, Macedonia's second largest city, 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the capital, Skopje.|
16|The New York and NASDAQ stock exchanges close the week of March 12 with the three major indexes of stock values down by more than 6 percent. The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which tracks stock prices of 30 major companies, closes below 9,900 points--a decline of 7.7 percent for the week and more than 16 percent since the Dow peaked at 11,722.98 points in January 2000. The NASDAQ closes below 1,900 points, down 7.9 percent for the week. The value of the NASDAQ index, which lists many high-technology stocks, has fallen 62.5 percent since it hit 5,048.62 points in March 2000. The Standard & Poor's (S & P) index of stock prices of 500 companies traded on the New York Stock Exchange closes down 6.7 percent for the week, a 24-percent decline since the S & P topped 1,500 points in March 2000.|
16|At least 108 people are killed in a series of coordinated explosions occurring miles apart in Shijiazhuang, capital of Hebei province, and a city of 8 million people in central China. Authorities allege that the blasts, which level a five-story residential block and severely damage three other public housing structures, are the work of a person who they describe as a "deaf man wanted in connection with other extremely serious crimes."|
16|Saudi Arabian special forces storm a hijacked Russian airliner parked on a runway at the airport in Medina, Saudi Arabia. Three people, a passenger, a flight attendant, and one of the hijackers, are killed before police gain control of the aircraft. Three Chechen men commandeered the Vnukova Airlines charter jet minutes after it took off from Ataturk International Airport in Istanbul, Turkey, on March 15. The plane was bound for Moscow with 174 passengers and crew members. The Chechens, who claimed to have brought a bomb aboard the aircraft, demanded that Russia end its war against the breakaway republic of Chechnya.|
17|Amtrak's California Zephyr, en route from Chicago to the San Francisco Bay area with 210 passengers, derails in southwest Iowa, killing one person and injuring 90 others.|
18|A boat that had been adrift in the Caribbean for 24 days crashes into a coral reef off the coast of Haiti, killing 57 of 60 passengers aboard--illegal immigrants from the Dominican Republic attempting to reach the United States through Puerto Rico.|
19|The sudden failure of two large power plants in California forces the state's two main electrical utility companies to order rolling blackouts. The blackouts, which last for up to two hours, leave at least 1 million people without electricity in an area stretching from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Utility company officials blame the power failure on a transformer fire coupled with high demand for air-conditioning because of unusually warm temperatures. They also point out that low rainfall has diminished hydroelectric production in the Pacific Northwest, cutting the amount of electrical power typically imported to California. A number of power plants in the state also are running at below capacity. The owners claim they are unable to buy fuel due to financial problems caused by flaws in the state's laws governing the deregulation of public utilities.|
20|The Federal Reserve (the Fed), the central bank of the United States, lowers its key interest rate on overnight loans between banks from 5.5 percent to 5 percent. Officials also reduce the discount rate on loans to banks from the Federal Reserve system from 5 percent to 4.5 percent. Economists see the latest round of cuts, the third in 2001, as another attempt by Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan to stimulate a slowing U.S. economy.|
20|Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Christie Todd Whitman announces that new drinking water standards approved by President Bill Clinton in January would not be adopted. The standards would have reduced the level of arsenic acceptable in drinking water by 80 percent. Arsenic, a poison that can cause cancer, is a chemical element that occasionally occurs in its pure form in nature but is most widely produced as a by-product of <I>smelting</I> (melting ores to retrieve metals). Whitman notes that there is little rationale to change existing standards, adopted in 1941, because there is no scientific consensus on the level at which arsenic in drinking water poses an unacceptable risk to human health.|
20|The world's largest oil platform, owned by the Brazilian state oil company Perturbs, tumbles into the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Brazil. A series of explosions ripped through the 40-story rig on March 15, killing at least 10 workers and damaging an underwater support column. Heavy seas further destabilized the platform, which contained more than 400,000 gallons (1.5 billion liters) of fuel and crude oil.|
20|Twenty-five percent of all adults in South Africa--4.7 million people--are infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, report government officials in Pretoria, the country's administrative capital. Although 500,000 South Africans contracted the virus in 2000, the rate of infection is slowing. During the 1990's, the percentage of infected adults jumped from less than 1 percent to 20 percent of the total population in less than eight years.|
21|Ethnic Albanian rebels from Kosovo, who refer to themselves as the National Liberation Army (NLA), declare a ceasefire in their current offensive into border areas of Macedonia. The ceasefire comes just hours before a deadline set by Macedonia's prime minister, Ljubco Georgievski. In an ultimatum issued on March 15, Georgievski demanded that the rebels lay down their weapons and withdraw from occupied villages or face an all-out army assault.|
21|A 3.5-million-year-old skull may present a new view of human origins, reports paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey at the National Museums of Kenya in Nairobi. Leakey announces that the skull is from an entirely new branch of the early human family. A research team under her direction found the fossil on the western side of Lake Turkana in northern Kenya in 1999. Study of the nearly complete skull, which exhibits a flattened face and small molar teeth, led the scientists to conclude that it represented a different genus from <I>Australopithecus</I>. Various species of the <I>Australopithecus</I> genus lived in Africa from 4 million years to between 1 million and 2 million years ago. Most anthropologists regard <I>Australopithecus</I> as one of the earliest humanlike creatures. Leakey and her research team named the new species </>Kenyanthropus platyops</I> which means flat-faced man of Kenya.|
22|Officials in Dublin confirm that foot-and-mouth disease has been diagnosed in Ireland. A veterinarian found a single diseased sheep on a farm near the border with Northern Ireland, where a case was diagnosed earlier in March. Since February 19, when the initial outbreak was detected in a slaughterhouse in Great Britain, the highly contagious disease also has spread across the English Channel to France and the Netherlands.|
22|Bush administration officials inform the American Bar Association (ABA) that the names of possible candidates for federal judgeships would no longer be submitted to the ABA for competency evaluations.|
23|The Russian space station Mir breaks apart as it reenters Earth's atmosphere and crashes into the Pacific Ocean in a remote area approximately 1,800 miles (2,900 kilometers) east of New Zealand. Personnel at Mission Control outside Moscow broke Mir's orbit with a 20-minute burst of its engines and guided the craft's descent to Earth, ending a record-breaking 15 years in space.|
24|A 6.4-magnitude earthquake centered off the coast of Japan at a depth of some 40 miles (64 kilometers) rocks southwest Japan, causing buildings to collapse and power lines to snap in the city of Hiroshima. Two people are killed and some 175 people are injured.|
24|Air Caraibes Flight 1501 crashes on approach to St. Jean Airport on the Caribbean island of St. Barts. All 19 passengers and crew members aboard the de Havilland Twin Otter plane are killed. The occupant of a house located 1,500 feet (458 meters) from a runway also dies in the crash.|
24|Car bombs explode simultaneously in three neighboring Russian towns, Mineralnye Vody, Adygek-Khabl, and Yessentuk. Russian officials blame the explosions, which kill at least 21 people and injure 90 others, on insurgents from Chechnya. All three of the towns are within 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the break-away republic.|
25|The Macedonian army, equipped with Soviet-era arms and backed by Soviet-made tanks and helicopters, launches a major offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels positioned in the hills above Tetovo, Macedonia's second largest city. Officials in Skopje, the capital, claim the rebels are offering little resistance and that Macedonian forces are in control of several villages formerly held by the rebels, who refer to themselves as the National Liberation Army (NLA). NATO officers believe that the NLA is being supplied by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). The KLA, which supposedly had disbanded, was the ethic Albanian guerrilla army that fought against Yugoslav forces in Kosovo until NATO drove the Serbs out in 1999.|
26|A fire in a school dormitory filled with sleeping boys in Machakos, Kenya, leaves 64 teen-aged students dead and 27 others seriously injured. Many of the victims were crushed as they attempted to escape from the burning building. Police investigating the fire claim it was set by students accused of cheating on their college entrance examinations.|
27|The California Public Utilities Commission passes the largest rate hike in the state's history, boosting the price the public pays for electricity by up to 46 percent. According to members of the commission, the increase is necessary to avoid more rolling blackouts and to keep utility companies from going bankrupt. A 1996 law that deregulated California's electric industry mandated that utilities buy power on the open market at market prices but barred passing increases on to customers until 2002. Between January 2000 and January 2001, the wholesale price of electricity in California jumped by more than 1,000 percent, pushing electricity producers to the edge of bankruptcy.|
27|Eight people are killed in Pecrot, Belgium, when a commuter train collides with an empty train that was being run on the wrong tracks.|
28|Two Palestinians, a military officer and a civilian, are killed when Israeli helicopter gunships bomb the headquarters of Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat's personal security forces in Ramallah, on the West Bank, and in Gaza. The bombings, the first ordered by Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon since he took office on March 7, are made in retaliation for a Palestinian suicide bombing that left two Israeli teen-age boys dead in the West Bank settlement of Kedumin. Four other teen-agers, waiting for a school bus, were severely injured by flying nails that had been packed into the bomb. The radical Islamic group Hamas claimed responsibility for the bombing.|
28|The population of Detroit slipped from 1.02 million in 1990 to 951,270 people in 2000, report officials with the U.S. Bureau of the Census. In 1950, the city had a population of 1.849 million. Detroit is the first U.S. city of more than 1 million residents to ever drop below the 1 million mark.|
29|Fighting between ethnic Albanian rebels of the National Liberation Army and the army of Macedonia spills into Kosovo where at least 3 people are killed and 16 others are wounded. The rebels continue to offer fierce resistance to Macedonia's drive to push them back across the border. According to officials with NATO, the rebels moved into ethnic Albanian villages in Macedonia in an attempt to enlarge Kosovo before claiming independence from Serbia. NATO peacekeeping troops stationed in Kosovo are stepping up border patrols to try to stop the flow of rebels and arms into Macedonia.|
30|Serb riot police storm the Belgrade residence of Slobodan Milosevic and exchange gun fire with his bodyguards. According to Yugoslav government officials, the former Yugoslav president refuses to accept a warrant for his arrest on charges of abuse of power and corruption. Milosevic has been under indictment for war crimes by the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, since 1999. During his years in office, the Milosevic government fought and lost four wars against former Yugoslav republics and the Serbian province of Kosovo.|
30|At least 10 Islamic militants are arrested in Yemen in connection with the Oct. 12, 2000, bombing of the U.S.S. <I>Cole</I>, which left 17 U.S. sailors dead and 30 others wounded. Yemeni officials are holding eight other men, who are to be tried for their suspected roles in the bombing. In December 2000, the president of Yemen, Ali Abdullah Saleh, noted that the Saudi millionaire Osama bin Laden may have been involved in the attack. U.S. authorities have accused bin Laden, who is believed to live in Afghanistan, of masterminding and financing the bombings of two U.S. embassies in Africa in 1998.|
31|At least 60 new cases of foot-and-mouth disease are confirmed in Great Britain over a 24-hour period, bringing the total number of known cases in Britain to 846. Scientific advisors to the Ministry of Agriculture described the current outbreak as "out of control" and recommended the additional slaughter of hundreds of thousands more livestock. According to a government spokesperson, Prime Minister Tony Blair is considering ordering the use of vaccination as a tool against the spread of the disease. Government officials and many British farmers are reluctant to use vaccination, because it would extend the length of the European Union ban on British livestock and meat exports.|
