01|An Israeli soldier, who was off duty, empties the clip of his M-16 automatic rifle into the crowded, open-air market in Hebron on the West Bank and wounds seven Arabs before being overpowered by other Israeli soldiers. The incident, according to the gunman, is to keep Hebron from being handed over to Palestinian control.|
02|Taliban, the Muslim fundamentalist group in control of approximately two-thirds of Afghanistan, including Kabul, the capital, announces that Afghan citizens who fail to perform their prayers, which are offered five times daily, will be punished by the government, which will monitor observances in all Mosques.|
03|The Serbian government, dominated by Slobodan Milosevic, rejects a call endorsed by 54 nations to install in office those candidates who were victorious in the Nov. 17, 1996, local elections, but who were disqualified by their opposition to Milosevic. The refusal is interpreted as a sign that Milosevic remains unmoved by more than six weeks of daily demonstrations by tens of thousands of Serbs in the streets of Belgrade.|
04|Winter storms, which have battered the West Coast for two weeks, result in massive flooding in Washington, Oregon, and northern California and cause the death of more than 30 people, the evacuation of at least 125,000 people, and damage to property in excess of $1 billion.|
05|The Carolina Panthers, an expansion team that had played in the National Football League only two seasons, beat the Dallas Cowboys 26 to 17 in a major upset that ends the Cowboys' chances of competing in a second straight Super Bowl. On January 4, in a similar David and Goliath contest, the Jacksonville Jaguars, also a 2-year-old expansion team, clipped the Denver Broncos, 30 to 27.|
06|An advisory panel of private citizens, appointed in 1994 by Secretary of Health and Human Services Donna E. Shalala, suggests that the federal government invest Social Security revenues in the stock market if the retirement program is to remain solvent in the next century.|
07|Newt Gingrich, a Republican from Georgia, is reelected speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives. Nine Republicans, disturbed by Gingrich's admission that he had violated various ethical standards of the House, defected from the party by voting for other candidates or by abstaining.|
08|Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who underwent quintuple bypass surgery in November 1996 and returned to full-time work in the Kremlin in late December, is hospitalized in Moscow, the capital, for pneumonia.|
09|All 26 passengers and 3 crew members aboard a twin-engine, turboprop plane are killed when the commuter carrier crashes on approach to the Detroit Metropolitan Airport during a heavy snowstorm. Operated by Comair, a commuter airline associated with Delta Air Lines, the plane, en route from Cincinnati, Ohio, goes down in a field 18 miles (29 kilometers) southwest of the airport.|
10|In Tokyo, the Japanese stock market drops 4.26 percent in a single day. Since the market reopened after the New Year holiday on January 6, the Nikkei index of 225 leading stocks had dropped more than 10 percent. Experts claim market levels mirror Japan's current economic malaise and general pessimism. The Japanese government fears that the abrupt drop might trigger a crisis among the country's shaky banking industry, which has absorbed enormous losses from bad loans made during the 1980's.|
11|Bulgarians by the tens of thousands take to the streets of Sofia, the capital, demanding early elections in order to oust the highly unstable, Socialist-controlled government. The Socialist Party is an outgrowth of Bulgaria's former Communist Party. Police, swinging clubs and firing guns, work their way through the crowds to free lawmakers trapped in the parliament. On January 10, protesters pelted the building with rocks and set it afire before being driven back by police with tear gas. The demonstrations were triggered by Bulgaria's current economic crisis. Inflation in 1996 reached 312 percent, and wages by year end had fallen to an average of $30 a month, the lowest in Europe.|
12|The National Footfall League's Green Bay Packers eliminate the Carolina Panthers 30 to 13 to win the National Conference championship. The New England Patriots take the Jacksonville Jaguars 20 to 6 to become the American Conference champions. The Packers and Patriots will meet at Super Bowl XXXI in New Orleans on January 26.|
13|A letter bomb explodes in the London offices of an Arabic language newspaper, Al Hayat, injuring two employees. The newspaper, which is owned by a Saudi prince, had in recent weeks received similar letter bombs at its offices in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Alexandria, Egypt; Washington, D.C.; and New York City. Al Hayat employees are baffled as to why the paper became the object of terrorist attention. Al Hayat, an influential publication among the Arab-speaking world, is generally regarded as a highly independent voice that has been at various times critical of both moderate and conservative elements in the Middle East.|
14|President Bill Clinton unveils a plan to rescue Washington D.C. from the capital's current financial crisis. A central component of the plan involves transferring from city to the federal government certain responsibilities--such as the operation of prisons, the collection of taxes, and the improvement of roads--that the government of Washington D.C. has proved unable to perform since winning home rule nearly 25 years ago.|
15|Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat agree on the details and timing of an Israeli pullout of Hebron, the largely Palestinian city on the West Bank of the Jordan River. Hebron is sacred to both Jews and Muslims as the traditional burial place of the Biblical prophet Abraham. The Hebron deal, announced by the American mediator Dennis Ross, includes an agreement on additional steps to be taken by both sides to continue the peace process laid out in the 1993 and 1995 Oslo accords. By January 17, Israel removes all its troops from 80 percent of the city of Hebron.|
16|Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives reveal that the independent counsel for the House ethics committee has submitted a report highly critical of Speaker Newt Gingrich, a Republican, for his admitted ethical lapses. In the report, the committee suggests that the speaker be heavily fined and recommends that the matter be turned over to the Justice Department. A public hearing on the Gingrich matter, scheduled for January 17, is delayed by House Republican leaders.|
17|Ireland's High Court grants the first divorce in the country's modern history approximately one month before various statutes dealing with divorce go into effect. Irish voters in 1995 narrowly approved a constitutional amendment allowing divorce in the predominantly Roman Catholic country.|
18|Paul E. Tsongas, the 1992 Democratic presidential candidate credited with forcing fellow candidates to deal with the nation's economic problems, dies at the age of 55. A native of Lowell, Massachusetts, Tsongas was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1974 and to the Senate in 1978. He retired from the Senate after a single term upon discovering that he had cancer.|
19|Two bombs explode in a Tulsa, Oklahoma, abortion clinic, which was hit by firebombs on January 1. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) announces on January 20 that in light of similar bombings at an Atlanta, Georgia, abortion clinic during the week of January 12, the FBI will take over the investigation from local authorities. The 24th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court case that led to the legalization of abortion, is January 22.|
20|William Jefferson Clinton, the 42nd president of the United States, is inaugurated for a second term before the west front of the Capitol in Washington, D.C. In his inaugural address, Clinton appeals for racial harmony and exhorts Congress to put aside political differences to "move on with America's mission."|
21|Members of the U.S. House of Representatives vote 395 to 28 to reprimand Speaker Newt Gingrich for using tax-exempt money to promote a Republican Party agenda and for giving false information to the ethics committee investigating his behavior. It is the most severe rebuke ever visited on a presiding officer of the House. Gingrich was fined $300,000 for discrediting the House but announces through a spokesperson that he has not yet decided whether to use unused campaign funds to pay the fine.|
22|A federal jury in Greensboro, North Carolina, awards Food Lion, a super-market chain, more than $5.5 million in punitive damages for a 1992 segment of the American Broadcasting Company (ABC) television show "Primetime Live," which accused the chain of selling spoiled meat. While Food Lion denied the accusations, which included bleaching spoiled fish to mask the smell, the chain sued ABC not for libel, but rather for trespass and fraud for employing undercover reporters and hidden cameras. Food Lion, which is owned by a Belgian company, operates 1,100 markets in 14 states.|
23|Madeleine K. Albright, the former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, is sworn in as the first female secretary of state of the United States. She was unanimously confirmed in her position by the Senate on January 22.|
24|William Cohen is sworn in as U.S. secretary of defense. Cohen, formerly a senator representing Maine, is the first Republican member of the Clinton Cabinet.|
25|Tens of thousands of people, demanding the return of their money from failed pyramid schemes, battle riot police and set fire to government offices in several cities in Albania, including the capital, Tirana. The pyramid schemes, which were invested in by hundreds of thousands of people, were highly promoted on Albania's state-owned television, giving the impression of official endorsement.|
26|The Green Bay Packers win Super Bowl XXXI, 35 to 21, over the New England Patriots. Green Bay's Desmond Howard is voted the game's Most Valuable Player after gaining 244 return yards, including a 99-yard kickoff return for a touchdown in the third quarter. The Packers last won a National Football League title 29 years earlier.|
27|Switzerland's ambassador to the United States, Carlo Jagmetti, resigns after the publication of a cable that he wrote to his government in December 1996 on the controversy surrounding Switzerland's role as banker to both Nazi Germany and Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Jagmetti's memo warned that victims or their heirs who sought compensation from those Swiss banks that had "lost track" of the accounts of murdered Jews were "opponents" who "cannot be trusted" in "a war" that Switzerland "must win."|
28|South Africa's Truth and Reconciliation Commission, a state-sponsored committee investigating abuses under apartheid, announces that former policemen had confessed to a number of notorious murders of the apartheid era, including the 1977 killing of Black Consciousness Movement leader Steve Biko.|
29|America Online Inc. (AOL), the internet subscription service that has ushered some 8 million Americans into cyberspace, agrees to offer credits and millions of dollars of refunds to compensate customers for network traffic jams that have tied up internet access since early December 1996. The announcement comes in response to a deluge of complaints, which in turn led attorneys general of several states to threaten AOL with suits for deceptive business practice.|
30|The Internal Revenue Service (IRS), after publicly admitting to a Congressional panel that it had spent $4 billion on interrelated computer systems that do not work, proposed hiring independent contractors to process paper tax returns. If adopted, the outsourcing of such work would allow for the first time nongovernment workers access to confidential information about the incomes of individuals.|
31|A juror serving on the O. J. Simpson civil trial is dismissed after deliberations had begun. The woman, the only African American serving, failed during jury selection to disclose that her daughter worked for the prosecution team that tried Simpson in 1994 and 1995 for the murder of his wife, Nicole Brown Simpson, and her friend, Ronald Goldman. The juror is replaced by one of the four remaining alternates, an Asian American man, and the jury is instructed to begin deliberations over.|
