01|An estimated 250,000 people in the United Kingdom, including farmers, landowners, and hunting enthusiasts flood central London to demonstrate against a Labour Party bill currently before Parliament that would outlaw hunting with hounds. Demonstrators also protest the recent ban on selling beef on the bone--a government measure to prevent the spread of "mad cow" disease.|
02|The United Nations Security Council endorses Secretary General Kofi Annan's agreement with Iraq on weapons inspections. However, the final wording of the resolution, which threatens "the severest consequences" if Iraq fails to give UN inspectors full access to all sites, including presidential palaces, falls short of backing the United States in its threat of military attack if Iraq violates the agreement.|
02|The governments of South Korea and Indonesia reveal, in separate announcements, that the forced devaluation of their currencies in late 1997 and early 1998 has triggered inflation that appears to be edging towards hyperinflation, which economists define as price increases running at between 40 to 50 percent annually.|
03|Microsoft Corporation Chairman William H. Gates testifies before the Senate judiciary committee concerning charges that Microsoft restricts its Internet partners from dealing with Microsoft's Internet competitors, particularly Netscape Communications and Sun Microsystems. The Justice Department is currently suing Microsoft for forcing personal computer manufacturers to load only Microsoft's World Wide Web browsing program as a condition for receiving a license to install Microsoft's Windows operating system. In the antitrust suit, the Justice Department contends that Microsoft uses its dominant position in operating system software to gain control of new markets.|
04|Restoration of electrical power to central Auckland, New Zealand, a city of 1 million people, fails after repeated attempts at repairing cables between the downtown area and a hydroelectric plant to the south. An official with Mercury Energy, the city's utility company, announces that it could take as long as 10 weeks to fully restore power. With stores and businesses closed, downtown Auckland has been largely deserted since February 20, when the lights went out after the fourth of four underground cables servicing the city broke down under the stress of a summer heat wave. The first cable failed on January 22.|
05|Scientists with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announce that a NASA spacecraft, the Lunar Prospector, has detected evidence of water on the Moon. The water, in the form of ice crystals mixed in dirt, may exist in sufficient quantities to sustain lunar colonies.|
05|More than 30 people are killed and 300 wounded when a bus loaded with bombs explodes outside a train station at one of the busiest intersections of downtown Colombo, the Sri Lankan capital. The blast is strong enough to rip facades from surrounding buildings. The Colombo police superintendent blames the violence on the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, a group seeking an independent homeland for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority.|
06|The three surviving Dionne quintuplets--Cecile, Annette, and Yvonne--accept a $2.8 million settlement from the Canadian province of Ontario, which in the 1930's had removed the world's first surviving quintuplets from their parents and placed them on public display. The 63-year-old sisters, who live together in the Montreal area, sued the province in an attempt to establish an inquiry into what happened to a trust fund that had been set up for them as well as to the millions of dollars the province gathered in tourist fees when the girls were exhibited behind glass.|
07|Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R., Mississippi), speaking on the Cable News Network, states that the time has come for Special Investigator Kenneth Starr to finish what has become multiple investigations, collectively known as Whitewater, into the business affairs and personal relationships of President Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton. In contrast, Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (R. Georgia), speaking at a Cobb County (Georgia) Republican Party breakfast in his home district in suburban Atlanta, urges Starr to continue his inquiries, which have run for four years and cost $40 million.|
08|A vast storm system over the United States produces blizzard conditions from Wisconsin through Kansas in the Midwest and thunderstorms and torrential rain in the South. Nebraska is blanketed under a foot (31 centimeters) of snow, and Iowa receives as much as 18 inches (45 centimeters), stranding motorists on interstate highways behind drifts 12 feet (3.6 meters) high. In Alabama, the town of Elba is inundated with six feet (1.8 meters) of floodwater when the Pea River breaks through a levee.|
08|James McDougal, former business partner of President Bill Clinton, dies of heart disease in prison in Texas, where he was serving a sentence on felony charges related to the failed Whitewater land development scheme. McDougal was the former head of an Arkansas savings and loan and Clinton's partner in the Whitewater investment. McDougal began cooperating with Kenneth W. Starr's investigation of the Arkansas land partnership and other dealings with the Clintons in 1996. McDougal's former wife, Susan McDougal, remains in prison for refusing to testify before a grand jury.|
09|More than 50,000 people march in Pristina, capital of Yugoslavia's Kosovo province, to protest the Serbian crackdown on ethnic Albanian separatists. Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of the population of Kosovo, Yugoslavia's southernmost province. Approximately 75 people, including many women and children, have died in the latest sweep of separatist guerrillas, which Serbian officials have vowed to "liquidate." Most victims were from the village of Prekaz, a stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, and Italy condemn Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic's "unnecessary use of force" and vote to impose economic sanctions. Russia, which historically has been allied with the Serbs, refuses to join in the condemnation.|
10|General Augusto Pinochet steps down after 25 years as commander of the Chilean army. Although the aging dictator gave up the presidency to a democratically elected government in 1990, he retained his position as head of the army. In a public ceremony on March 11, Pinochet is granted the title senator for life, a position protecting him from prosecution. during a public ceremony. During the years of Pinochet's military junta, which followed the 1973 overthrow of President Allende, more than 3,000 of Pinochet's political opponents either died under mysterious circumstances or disappeared.|
11|The Red Cross withdraws from Kosovo after receiving repeated anonymous death threats against the only outside aid workers in Yugoslavia's highly troubled southernmost province. Red Cross workers were also the only outside observers in an area where approximately 75 ethnic Albanians were killed in the recent government sweep against separatist rebels. On March 9, the United States, Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Russia requested that the Red Cross be allowed into central Kosovo, a stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation Army, where most of the killing took place. The population of Kosovo is 90 percent ethnic Albanian. The government in Belgrade, the capital, is dominated by Serbians who form a majority in the provinces north of Kosovo and Montenegro.|
12|Dozens of prosecutors and law-enforcement officers raid the Bank of Japan, the country's highly influential central bank, and arrest the head of the capital markets division, who is charged with leaking confidential information to commercial banks. Assuming responsibility, the bank's governor, Yasuo Matsushita, offers his own resignation. The raid, conducted under the scrutiny of television cameras broadcasting the scene live, deeply shocks the Japanese public. Central to the regulation of national monetary policy, the Bank of Japan had been widely perceived, nationally and internationally, as incorruptible and a force of stability amid the series of scandals that in recent years have rocked Japan's closely tied government and financial systems.|
12|Arjun Dey, a post-doctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, announces that he and a group of astronomers from the University of California at Berkeley and the Keck Observatory in Hawaii have discovered a small, misshapen galaxy that is the most distant object yet observed from Earth. Dey calculates that the galaxy was formed only about 820 million years after the big bang, or birth of the universe, and thus is about 13 billion years old. Its light takes approximately 12.2 billion years to reach Earth.|
13|Sergeant Major Gene C. McKinney, who had once been the top enlisted solider in the U.S. Army, is found innocent of 18 charges of sexual misconduct brought against him by six female soldiers with whom he had served. At the same court-martial proceedings at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, McKinney is found guilty of one count of obstructing justice.|
13|Joseph Kennedy II, eldest son of the late Senator Robert F. Kennedy, announces his plans to retire from the U.S. Congress in order to devote more time to his family and the family of his brother Michael, who was killed on Dec. 31, 1997, in a skiing accident. Earlier in 1997, Joseph Kennedy dropped out of an election for the governorship of Massachusetts after being politically wounded by a series of disclosures, which included his own attempts to obtain a Roman Catholic annulment and rumors about the private life of his brother Michael, who served as manager of the campaign.|
14|The attorneys general of more than 30 U.S. states reach an agreement with the American Family Publishers specifying that the sweepstakes company is to pay participating states $50,000 each to settle charges of deceptive advertising. The states of New York, Connecticut, Indiana, and Florida withdraw from the settlement charging that American Family Publishers continued to practice deceptive sales promotions as late as December 1997, even while negotiating with the attorneys general.|
15|President K. R. Narayanan of India invites Atal Bihari Vajpayee to form a government and serve as prime minister. Vajpayee is the leader of the Hindu nationalist party, which, along with its political allies, won a slim majority in Parliament in national elections earlier in the month. Vajpayee served as prime minister in 1996 but was forced to resign after only 13 days when his coalition collapsed. On March 14, 1998, Sonia Gandhi, the Italian-born widow of the assassinated prime minister Rajiv Gandhi, was elected president of the Congress Party, which under the leadership of the Nehru/Gandhi family held power through much of India's 50 years of independence.|
16|The Chinese National People's Congress, meeting in Beijing, confirms Li Peng as Communist Party chairman. Li, whose reputation was tarnished by his active role in the suppression of student demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, has served as prime minister for the last 10 years. Control in China remains in the hands of President Jiang Zemin, who is also chairman of the Central Military Commission and the actual head of the Communist Party.|
16|The Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews, a committee of the Roman Catholic Church, issues a 14-page statement, described as an "act of repentance," which expresses regret that some Roman Catholics may not have attempted to save Jews from the Holocaust, Germany's systematic genocide of European Jews during World War II (1939-1945). The statement neither comments specifically on Roman Catholics who collaborated in the Holocaust nor defends those who may have been aware of the death camps but remained silent. Pope Pius XII, who reigned during World War II, is frequently accused of remaining silent because of political considerations. While Vatican City, headquarters of the Roman Catholic Church, is an independent state, it is located in Italy, which during World War II was a fascist country allied with Nazi Germany.|
17|Zhu Rongji, who has guided economic policy in China for five years, is named prime minister of China by the National People's Congress meeting in Beijing.|
17|Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sets off a diplomatic tempest by canceling a dinner he was to host for the British foreign secretary, Robin Cook, who is visiting Israel as a representative of the European Union (EU). Netanyahu accuses Cook of breaking his word by paying an official call on members of the Palestinian Legislative Council on a site in Har Homa where the government plans to settle Jews. While denying any intention to provoke the prime minister, Robin Cook admits that he made the Har Homa visit to demonstrate EU opposition to the expansion of Jewish settlements on occupied lands.|
18|Israeli police question an Israeli teen-ager for allegedly infiltrating university research computers and the U.S. Army computer system at Army headquarters at the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C. The the 18-year-old suspect, who refers to himself on the Internet as the "Analyzer," is placed under house arrest without being charged with a crime. The attack, according to a U.S. Army spokesperson, was "the most organized and systematic" to date and was carried out with the help of two California hackers, also teen-agers, who were trained by the Analyzer to assist him.|
19|Senior U.S. State Department officials reveal that President Bill Clinton, at the urging of Pope John Paul II, will ease certain restrictions on humanitarian aid and travel to Cuba, including those regulations imposed after Cuban aircraft shot down two private planes in 1996. The president is expected to allow Cuban Americans to send money--up to $1,200 annually--directly to Cuban relatives and allow some direct flights to Cuba from the United States.|
20|President Bill Clinton, through lawyers, invokes executive privilege and attorney-client privilege to block independent counsel Kenneth Starr from questioning senior presidential advisers before the grand jury on the subject of Monica Lewinsky, a former White House volunteer. Starr has attempted to prove that Clinton committed perjury during a court deposition by demonstrating that the president lied about the nature of his relationship with Lewinsky.|
20|A tornado, striking just before dawn, cuts a swath through five counties in northeastern Georgia, killing 11 people as it rampages through more than 400 houses and mobile homes, 11 poultry farms, and 2 schools. The driver of a produce truck dies when his vehicle is blown across a highway and through a nearby house.|
21|The official Iranian news agency, IRNA, announces that President Bill Clinton has sent the people of Iran a good-will message to mark the beginning of the Iranian new year. According to observers, the message and its official announcement as well as Iranian President Mohammad Khatami's new year's television address, notable for its lack of anti-American oratory, suggest a thaw in U.S.-Iranian relations.|
22|Smoke from forest fires lowers visibility in the Indonesian city of Samarinda to 325 feet (100 meters) and sickens thousands of residents, many of whom appear on the streets wearing gas masks. From Samarinda, European environmentalists have tracked via satellite more than 1,000 fires on the island of Borneo. Most of the fires, intensified by drought, were set by timber companies and corporations using traditional slash-and-burn techniques to clear rain forest land for agriculture.|
22|Caterpillar employees in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Colorado approve a United Auto Workers contract with the Peoria, Illinois, based earth-moving equipment manufacturer after nearly seven years of bitter relations between management and labor. The contract, covering more than 13,000 employees, includes a two-tiered wage system that allows Caterpillar to hire people to do the same work as existing employees but at less money. Labor's dissatisfaction with this provision and others resulted in two long strikes since the union's last contract expired in 1991. Caterpillar, the world's largest maker of heavy construction machinery, reported a $1.7 billion profit in 1997.|
23|Russian President Boris Yeltsin, returning to the political stage after another bout of ill health, announces on television that he has fired his entire cabinet, including Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, long considered the president's political heir apparent.|
23|President Bill Clinton, in Ghana on the first leg of a 12-day, 6-nation tour of Africa, momentarily steps down from the podium above Independence Square in Accra, the capital, to shake hands in the crowd. In response, the throng, estimated at more than 1 million people, surges forward, trampling through steel barriers and over people in the front. Clearly alarmed, Clinton, wrapped in a ceremonial kente cloth despite the extreme heat and humidity, raises his arms and yells at the crowd to back up. As mounted police push through to beat back the crowd, Secret Service agents extricate the shaken president and whisk him, the first lady, and Ghanaian President Jerry Rawlings from the scene.|
24|Two boys, 11 and 13 years old, empty a Jonesboro, Arkansas, middle school by pulling a fire alarm, and brandishing rifles and handguns, shoot into the crowd exiting the building. Four students and one teacher die. Eleven are wounded. The boys are apprehended as they run toward a van stocked with additional weapons and ammunition.|
24|An elderly woman in Oregon suffering from breast cancer dies after taking a lethal dose of physician-prescribed barbiturates. An advocacy group claims that the woman is the first Oregonian to take advantage of the state's assisted-suicide law, the constitutionality of which has been tested in federal courts.|
25|The European Commission declares that 11 countries--Austria, Belgium, Finland, France, Ireland, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Spain--have qualified economically to join the European Union's single currency, scheduled to go into effect in January 1999.|
25|Italian paleontologists Cristiano dal Sasso of Milan and Marco Signore of Naples reveal the existence of a baby dinosaur fossil in which details of the animal's soft anatomy--including major portions of the intestines, colon, liver, muscles, and windpipe--are preserved. Previously, only minute fragments of fossilized dinosaur tissue have been available for study. The 113-million-year-old fossil was discovered by amateurs more than 10 years ago but was examined by qualified experts only recently. Paleontologists believe that careful examination of the internal organs, particularly their locations in relation to each other, may clarify the controversial question of kinship between modern birds and ancient dinosaurs.|
26|Illegal Indonesia immigrants in Malaysia, waiting to be deported across the Strait of Malacca, riot at a detention center at Semenyih, 25 miles (40 kilometers) from Kuala Lumpur, the capital. Wielding sticks and metal rods, immigrants torch the camp and attack police, killing 1 and injuring 30. In a counterattack, Malaysian authorities kill 8 rioters and injure dozens more before regaining control. Thousands of Indonesians, unemployed because of the current economic crisis in Southeast Asia, have attempted to enter Malaysia, in the hope of finding work. The Malaysian government, faced with unemployment problems of its own, has closed its borders to immigrants and launched a naval operation--dubbed "Go Away"--to keep immigrants from landing on its shores.|
27|Russian President Boris Yeltsin announces that he has appointed a 35-year-old technocrat and reformer, Sergei Kiriyenko, prime minister and publicly threatens to dissolve the Russian parliament if Kiriyenko fails to win parliamentary approval. Kiriyenko, who was plucked from obscurity four months ago when Yeltsin named him energy minister, replaces Viktor Chernomyrdin, long considered Yeltsin political heir apparent. Chernomyrdin was fired on March 23 when Yeltsin dismissed his entire cabinet.|
28|Viktor Chernomyrdin, who was removed from the office of prime minister of Russia on March 23 when President Boris Yeltsin dismissed the cabinet, announces that he will run for the office of president in the 2000 election. Observers in Moscow suggest that Yeltsin may have fired his entire cabinet in order to rid himself of Chernomyrdin, who may have overstepped boundaries by attempting to assume presidential powers during Yeltsin's many absences from the Kremlin in recent months due to repeated illness.|
29|An Israeli archaeologist, Ehud Netzer, announces that he and colleagues at Hebrew University in Jerusalem have discovered the ruins of a structure dating from 50 to 70 B.C., which they believe to be the earliest known synagogue. The ruins were unearthed beneath later ruins of a palace built by the Biblical figure King Herod on the banks of Wadi Kelt, an ancient resort area near Jericho. The discovery of the synagogue refutes the theory once held by scholars that such structures did not exist before the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in A.D. 70. The synagogue's layout, a colonnaded rectangle with a niche on one of the short walls, anticipates the basilica shape of Roman and early Christian religious structures.|
30|The University of Kentucky Wildcats beat the Utah Utes 78 to 69 to take the National Collegiate Athletic Association men's basketball championship for the second time in three years.|
30|Speaker Newt Gingrich (R. Georgia) and leaders of the Republican majority in the House of Representatives block bringing a campaign finance reform bill up for a vote before the House, effectively killing the legislation before the 1998 Congressional election. Congressional observers believe the reform bill enjoyed sufficient bipartisan support to guarantee its passage. Democrats and many Republicans in Congress denounce the speaker's parliamentary maneuvers, branding the debate on campaign finance reform a "sham." In February, Senator Majority Leader Trent Lott (R. Mississippi) blocked a similar reform bill from being brought up for a vote in the U.S. Senate.|
31|The U.S. Supreme Court, in an 8 to 1 ruling, rejects an argument that the military court ban on lie-detector test results violates the constitutional rights of defendants. Writing for the majority, Justice Clarence Thomas notes, "There is simply no consensus that polygraph evidence is reliable." The decision is likely to effect the introduction of lie-detector test results in civil as well as military courts.|
