01|General elections in France give the Socialist Party and its allies control of the French National Assembly. The Socialists promise to give jobs and social programs priority over France's participation in the European Union's new currency. Conservative French President Jacques Chirac, who called elections one year ahead of schedule in the hope of gaining public support for his economic policies, must now name Socialist Party leader Lionel Jospin prime minister and preside over a divided government.|
02|Timothy J. McVeigh is found guilty by a federal jury in Denver of 11 counts of conspiracy and murder for the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, on April 19, 1995. Although the explosion resulted in the deaths of 168 people, McVeigh is convicted of killing only 8 people, all of them federal law-enforcement officers whose murder is a federal, as opposed to a state, offense.|
03|Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien's Liberal Party wins sufficient seats in the national election to retain control of Parliament, but the election costs the Liberals 19 seats. Canadian newspapers speculate that the narrow victory weakens the prime minister to the point that he may not be able to hold the country together in the face of another separatist referendum in Chretien's own province of Quebec.|
04|The Texas state legislature passes a bill that allows consumers to sue health maintenance organizations (HMO's) for medical malpractice. Although the bill is the first such legislation passed in the United States, similar measures responding to the growing public backlash against HMO's are pending in a number of other states.|
05|Algerians vote for a multiparty parliament for the first time since the outbreak of civil war in 1992 between the government and Islamic fundamentalists. Despite threats of violence by Islamic militants and accusations that the election is a sham, people vote in record numbers. Officials in Algiers, the capital, interpret the large turn-out as a sign that the majority of Algerians support the government in the five-year conflict that has left 60,000 civilians dead.|
06|The Department of Labor reports that the U.S. unemployment rate, which has fallen for the fourth consecutive month, stands at 4.8 percent, its lowest level since 1973. In response, the Dow Jones Industrial Average soars above 7,400 points for the first time in history.|
07|A member of Sinn Fein, the political wing of the Irish Republican Army (IRA), wins a seat in the Parliament of the Republic of Ireland in Dublin. Caoimhghin O'Caolain, who is the first Sinn Fein member to be elected to the Parliament in 16 years, will be the first IRA member to enter Parliament since Ireland won independence from Great Britain in 1922. IRA members who were elected to Parliament in the past refused to accept their seats because the party maintained, until 1982, that the Republic of Ireland was not a valid state.|
08|The Cobras, a private militia loyal to former Congo Republic President Denis Sassou Nguesso, seizes the center of Brazzaville, the capital, from government forces. The conflict was triggered on June 5, when government troops surrounded the house of the former president and demanded that he disband his militia in anticipation of national elections scheduled for July 27. During the last parliamentary elections, in 1993, fighting between armed members of political parties resulted in the deaths of more than 2,000 people.|
09|U.S. Air Force General Joseph W. Ralston withdraws his name from consideration as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ralston's candidacy had been supported by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen, despite the general's admission that he had committed adultery in the mid-1980's. Cohen's claim that there was a difference between Ralston's adultery and that of Lieutenant Kelly Flinn, the B-52 pilot who was discharged from the Air Force in late May 1997 on grounds that included adultery, led to charges that the Air Force was applying different standards to male and female officers.|
10|The United States National Transportation Safety Board recommends that the 50 states pass laws making it illegal for children under the age of 13 to ride in the front seats of cars. The recommendation addresses the issue of children killed by airbags when riding in front seats. Since 1990, 40 children have died in the United States from the force of an inflating airbag.|
11|In Tokyo, the Japanese finance minister reports that Japan's trade surplus rose by 92.7 percent in April 1997 to 1.09 trillion yen (9.8 billion dollars). In response, U.S. Deputy Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers warns that [Japan] "could hurt global growth and fuel protectionism" if it relies on exports to fuel recovery after more than four years of economic slowdown.|
12|Congress, after weeks of political haggling, passes an $8.6 billion disaster relief bill that President Bill Clinton says he will sign. The bill will aid people in 35 states, including victims of spring floods in Minnesota, South Dakota, and North Dakota. Previous versions of the bill were vetoed for provisions that were unrelated to disaster relief but popular with conservatives in Congress.|
13|A federal district court jury in Denver, Colorado, votes unanimously that Timothy J. McVeigh, the man convicted on June 2 of the Oklahoma City federal building bombing, should be sentenced to death for conspiracy and murder. One hundred and sixty-eight people died and 850 people were injured in the April 19, 1995, bombing, which was the worst act of terrorism ever committed on American soil.|
14|A report issued by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, finds "substantial evidence" linking health problems experienced by more than 80,000 veterans of the Persian Gulf War (1991) with nerve gas and other chemical weapons. The report, prepared for Senate and House committees, is critical of previous investigations, made by the U.S. Defense Department and a presidential panel, which concluded that exposure to Iraqi chemical weapons appeared to be unrelated to physical symptoms exhibited by veterans of the war. The Defense Department adamantly denied that troops had been exposed to chemical or biological weapons until it disclosed in 1996 that at least 20,000 Americans had inhaled substantial amounts of sarin, a nerve gas, when an Iraqi chemical weapons dump was blown up in March 1991.|
15|Rebel forces in Colombia release 70 state soldiers and marines, held hostage since August 1996, after the government in Bogota agrees to withdraw all military forces from an area in southern Colombia around the city of Cartagena del Chaira. The agreement effectively gives insurgents control over a region the size of the state of Connecticut.|
16|The Irish Republican Army (IRA) claims responsibility for killing two police officers in Northern Ireland within hours after the Royal Ulster Constabulary officers were shot in the head at point blank range. British officials in London immediately call off further contact with Sinn Fein, the political arm of the IRA. Officials of the new British labor government first met with Sinn Fein leaders on May 21, breaking a silence that began when the IRA shattered a previous cease-fire in February 1996 with a London bomb attack that resulted in the deaths of two people.|
17|Soldiers loyal to Cambodia's first prime minister, Prince Norodom Ranariddh, exchange rocket and gunfire with soldiers loyal to the second prime minister, Hun Sen, in the streets of Phnom Penh, the capital. A stray rocket explodes in the garden of the U.S. embassy, throwing people from their beds and shattering windows. Embassy officials draw no connection between the violence in the capital and fighting in the countryside, reported to have begun when Son Sen, a leader of the Communist insurgent Khmer Rouge, was murdered by order of the infamous Pol Pot, Khmer Rouge founder. As many as 1 million Cambodians are believed to have been murdered by the Khmer Rouge when Pol Pot was in control of Cambodia between 1975 and 1979.|
18|Necmettin Erbakan, Turkey's first pro-Islamic prime minister, resigns under intense pressure from senior army officials. Disturbed by the prime minister's overtures to leaders of Iran and Libya and furious with Erbakan's refusal to curb private, Islamic schools, the generals claim that the prime minister has undermined the nonreligious basis on which the Turkish republic was founded in 1923 and has upset Turkey's long-standing relations with its allies of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.|
19|The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, a body of the United Nations, votes to allow limited international trade in elephant ivory from three southern African countries. For the first time in nearly 10 years, Zimbabwe, Namibia, and Botswana will be allowed to sell an annual quota of ivory from existing stockpiles accumulated from poachers, elephants culled due to overpopulation, or animals that died naturally or were shot because they threatened or killed people.|
20|Tobacco companies, state attorneys general, and lawyers representing individuals and health groups come to a historic $368-billion agreement that restricts advertising of tobacco products and could lead to the government regulation of tobacco. If ratified by the U.S. Congress and signed by the president, the agreement would provide billions of dollars in compensation to states, finance nationwide antismoking programs, and underwrite health care for uninsured children. In addition, cigarette packages would bear a warning that smoking is lethal and addictive. The measure would also allow the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to regulate nicotine as an addictive drug. In return, the agreement would curb smokers' lawsuits against tobacco companies for health-related injuries resulting from smoking.|
21|Members of Yasir Arafat's cabinet describe rioters as "the Palestinian masses defending their land" but deny that they have encouraged Hebron's week-long series of clashes between Israeli soldiers, armed with rubber bullets, and Palestinians, protesting additional Jewish settlements with firebombs.|
22|The U.S. Justice Department's Bureau of Justice Statistics announces that the prison population in the United States now stands at 1.2 million people. In 1996, 55,900 new inmates, an increase of 5 percent from 1995, were incarcerated in the nation's severely overcrowded prisons.|
23|The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 5 to 4 decision, rules that sexual offenders judged dangerous but not mentally ill after completing prison sentences can be confined to state mental institutions for indefinite periods. The decision upholds a 1994 Kansas law intended to protect citizens from sexual offenders deemed likely to repeat the crimes for which they were imprisoned. The opinion written by Justice Clarence Thomas characterized such confinements not as punishment, but as "forcible civil detainment of people who are unable to control their behavior."|
24|The U.S. Air Force issues "The Roswell Report--Case Closed," a 231-page statement claiming that the mysterious bodies discovered in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 were not aliens from unidentified flying objects, as many people have asserted. The Air Force report said rather that dummies used in high-altitude parachute tests were mistaken for aliens. Skeptics of the Air Force report counter that such tests were being conducted near Roswell in the early 1950's, not the late 1940's.|
25|An unoccupied cargo vessel collides with Russia's Mir space station, puncturing the outer skin of the station and causing a loss of pressure in a section of the crew's quarters. The collision also shut down much of the ship's power. Although the crew appears to be safe, officials at the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration question how much longer the aging space station can operate.|
26|The U.S. Supreme Court, in a 9 to 0 decision, rules that states can continue to ban doctor-assisted suicide. However, Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, who wrote the primary opinion, notes that the current ruling does preclude future claims by the terminally ill that they have the constitutional right to take their own lives with the assistance of a physician.|
27|The U.S. Supreme Court rules 5 to 4 that parts of the Brady gun control law, a 1993 statute mandating that states run background checks on prospective handgun buyers, is unconstitutional. Writing for the majority, Justice Anthonin Scalia calls the law a violation of "state sovereignty."|
28|U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright lays the first stone of a new American consulate in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. The consulate is being built on the site of the former U.S. embassy in Saigon, where in April 1975, U.S. Ambassador Graham Martin, the last American to leave Vietnam in the final days of the Vietnam War, was dramatically airlifted from the roof by rescue helicopter.|
29|Under the watch of 500 election monitors and a 7,000-member, European-backed peace keeping force, Albanians turn out in record numbers for parliamentary elections. They vote the Democratic Party of President Sali Berisha out of office. Berisha had presided over months of chaos that has paralyzed the country. Socialist Party leader Fatos Nano, a Marxist economist who claims he will form a moderately liberal government, claims victory.|
30|On the stroke of midnight, the People's Republic of China takes control of Hong Kong and the city's 6.3 million citizens after 156 years of British colonial rule. The transfer of power is marked by martial music, dancing dragons, extravagant fireworks, and speeches by President Jiang Zemin of China and Prince Charles of the United Kingdom.|
