01|In Tokyo, the Nikkei 225 stock index falls to a 12-year low, triggering massive sell-offs in London and New York City. Other Asian stock markets also declined, including those in South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand. Economists traced the decline of the Tokyo market, which was worth 30 percent of its 1990 value, to disarray in Japan's banking industry. Japanese banks, which invest heavily in stocks, were saddled with an estimated $1 trillion in bad debts, according to economists.|
02|The postal service in Moscow and across much of Russia stops accepting mail that cannot be delivered by hand--including millions of monthly pension checks. The Railway Ministry refused to transport any public mail until it received some 210 million rubles in overdue bills--the equivalent of about $13 million. The post office's failure to pay long-overdue shipping also resulted in the suspension of most air-mail deliveries.|
03|The governor of the Bank of Japan, Masaru Hayami, tells U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert E. Rubin and Federal Reserve System Chairman Alan Greenspan that Japan's biggest banks are in serious trouble. At a private meeting in Tokyo, the head of Japan's central bank revealed that cash reserves among the country's top 19 banks had fallen below 8 percent of all outstanding loans, the minimum that banks were required to maintain in order to operate internationally.|
03|Australia's conservative government, led by Prime Minister John Howard, wins reelection, but with a diminished majority in Parliament. Pauline Hanson, leader of the One Nation party that proposed halting Asian immigration and cutting welfare programs to Aborigines, lost her parliamentary seat.|
04|Brazil reelects President Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who is credited with ending Brazil's crippling inflation. Cardoso had warned voters before the election that belt-tightening measures would be inevitable in the face of the country's current economic crisis. Since August, the Brazilian stock market had lost 40 percent of its value.|
05|Members of the House Judiciary Committee vote 21 to 16, strictly along party lines, to recommend that the United States House of Representatives open an impeachment investigation of President Bill Clinton. David Schippers, an investigative council representing the Republican Party, outlined 15 possible impeachable offenses, including obstruction of justice, tampering with a witness, and giving false grand jury testimony in regard to the nature of his relationship with Monica Lewinsky, a former White House intern. Independent counsel Kenneth Starr, who spent four years investigating Clinton, charged the president with 11 such offenses when he submitted his summary report of the investigation to Congress on September 9.|
05|The U.S. Department of Justice charges two of the country's biggest hospital corporations with fraud. The Justice Department contended that Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation and the Quorum Health Group routinely overcharged the government for treating Medicare and Medicaid patients.|
06|Bulgarian government officials in Sofia, the capital, confirm that mushrooms picked in southern Bulgaria were contaminated with cesium-137, a radioactive isotope. Bulgarian scientists said that the mushrooms registered radioactive levels twice the limit considered acceptable and that the contamination was the highest recorded in Bulgaria since radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in Ukraine drifted across eastern Europe.|
07|Researchers at the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, announce that the number of people in the United States who died from AIDS in 1997 fell 47 percent compared with the number who died in 1996. The number of 1997 AIDS deaths was at its lowest level since 1987, the first year for which data was available, according to NCHS. Researchers credited new drug therapies for the decline and said that, for the first time since 1987, AIDS was no longer one of the top 10 causes of death in the United States. However, the number of new infections of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, remained constant between 1997 and 1996, at approximately 40,000 cases, according to the NCHS.|
08|After three hours of bitter debate, the U.S. House of Representatives, votes 258 to 176 to launch a full-scale inquiry into whether President Bill Clinton should be impeached. All House Republicans and 31 Democrats voted in favor of the inquiry.|
09|The U.S. Senate votes 50 to 47 to reject a measure to define the rights of patients and to regulate health maintenance organizations (HMO's). U.S. insurance companies were regulated only by individual states, whose laws varied widely. Sponsors of the bill asserted that national standards were necessary to protect millions of Americans who have experienced problems with HMO's.|
09|The Italian government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Romano Prodi, collapses after a 313-312 parliamentary nonconfidence vote. Prodi, who presided over a coalition of center-left factions, held office for two and a half years, Italy's second-longest government since World War II (1939-1945). Political scientists pointed to Italy's many political parties--more than 40 in 1998--as the source of its long history of political instability.|
10|Clark Clifford--a Washington, D.C., attorney and former secretary of defense in the Johnson Administration--dies at age 91. Clifford helped organize the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the Marshall Plan that rescued European nations devastated by World War II (1939-1945). He also drafted the legislation creating the Defense Department and the Central Intelligence Agency. He was credited with persuading Harry Truman to recognize the newly formed state of Israel and persuaded Lyndon Johnson to begin peace talks with North Vietnam during the Vietnam War (1957-1975).|
11|Pope John Paul II canonizes Edith Stein--who was born a Jew and died in the Holocaust--as Saint Teresia Benedicta of the Cross. Scholars believed she was the first Jewish-born saint since the time of the Apostles and early Christian martyrs. Stein converted to Catholicism in 1922 and became a Carmelite nun in 1933. In 1942, Nazi troops removed Stein from a convent in Echt, the Netherlands, and shipped her to Auschwitz, the concentration camp and extermination center in Poland, where she died. Various Jewish groups and some of Stein's relatives objected to her canonization, saying that she did not die because she was a martyr to Christianity, as the Roman Catholic Church claimed, but because she was born a Jew.|
12|Japan's parliament, the Diet, passes legislation designed to save the Japanese banking industry, which may hold as much as $1 trillion in bad debt. The legislation was intended to inject more than $400 billion in public funds into Japan's banks and allow the government to nationalize any banks that were failing.|
13|Special envoy Richard C. Holbrooke of the United States announces in Belgrade, capital of Yugoslavia, that he and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic have come to terms over a cease-fire in the Province of Kosovo. The agreement averts the immediate threat of a North American Treaty Organization air strike against Milosevic's forces, which had attempted for seven months to crush an independence movement in Kosovo.|
13|The New York Yankees win the American League championship over the Cleveland Indians in the sixth game of the pennant play-off.|
14|The San Diego Padres beat the Atlanta Braves in six games to win the National League pennant.|
14|U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and FBI Director Louis Freeh announce that they have charged Eric Robert Rudolph with three 1996 bombings in Atlanta, Georgia, including the bombing at the Summer Olympics. Rudolph, a fugitive believed to be in hiding somewhere in North Carolina's Smoky Mountains, was previously charged with the Jan. 29, 1998, bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham, Alabama, which resulted in the death of a police officer.|
15| Prices on the New York Stock Exchange rally when Allen Greenspan, chairman of the Federal Reserve system, cuts interest rates by one-quarter of a percentage point. The Federal Reserve is an independent government agency that oversees the U.S. banking system. The unexpected move was the first unscheduled rate change that Greenspan had made in 4 1/2 years. Economists interpreted the cut as an attempt to strengthen the American economy, which had slowed as a result of the financial crisis that began in Asia in late 1997 and spread to Russia and South America in 1998.|
16| The Nobel Committee announces in Oslo, Norway, that John Hume and David Trimble, leaders of Northern Ireland's largest Roman Catholic and Protestant political parties, are awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their efforts to bring peace to the British province. Trimble and Hume were the main architects of the Belfast, or Good Friday, Agreement in April 1998 that provided a possible framework for lasting peace in Northern Ireland.|
17| More than 15 inches (38 centimeters) of rain falls over central Texas in six hours, sending creeks and rivers over their banks in 60 Texas counties and closing dozens of highways and expressways. Twenty-two people died in the floods statewide, including six people in San Antonio.|
17| An explosion at an oil pipeline 180 miles (290 kilometers) southeast of Lagos, Nigeria, kills at least 700 people, destroys several villages, and scorches surrounding crops. Authorities blamed the explosion on thieves attempting to siphon oil from the line by punching several holes in it.|
18|A commuter train running between Alexandra, Egypt, and Kafr el-Sheik jumps its tracks at a station southeast of Alexandria and plows through a crowded platform, killing at least 30 people. Inspectors said the engineer tried to change tracks at too great a speed.|
19|A Palestinian hurls two grenades at a crowd of Israeli soldiers in a bus station in Beersheba, Israel, wounding 67 people, some seriously. Many observers believed that the attack was an attempt to disrupt Israeli-Palestinian peace talks then underway in Maryland.|
19|The government of Russia releases figures confirming that the number of Russians living in poverty has risen to 44.3 million people--30 percent of the population--from 31 million one year ago. Russian government economists defined poverty as a monthly income of $31 or less.|
20|The president of BankAmerica Corporation, David Coulter, announces his resignation in light of a $372-million loss to the bank under his direction. The loss resulted from an unsecured loan that Coulter made in 1997 to a hedge fund, D. E. Shaw & Company. Hedge funds put investors' money into highly risky ventures in the hopes of spectacular returns. D. E. Shaw & Company was unable to repay the loan because of the enormous losses it incurred when the Russian ruble collapsed in August. BankAmerica Cooperation, one of the nation's largest banks, was formed on Sept. 30, 1998, when NationsBank merged with the San Francisco-based Bank of America.|
21|The New York Yankees win the World Series with a four-game sweep of the San Diego Padres. Yankee third baseman Scott Brosius was named Series Most Valuable Player.|
21|Massimo D'Alema becomes prime minister of Italy. In order to form a government, D'Alema, a former member of the Italian Communist Party, named Communists, conservatives, and six women to a cabinet designed to please all political parties involved in the new coalition.|
22|Medical authorities in southern California disclose that the recent death of world-champion runner Florence Griffith Joyner was not associated with the use of steroids or drugs of any kind. An autopsy revealed that the 1988 Olympic sprint champion known as Flo Jo died of suffocation after suffering an epileptic seizure in her sleep. The seizure resulted from cavernous angioma--a congenital abnormality of the blood vessels in her brain.|
23|Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu sign an agreement that breathes life back into the Middle East peace process. President Bill Clinton of the United States, along with King Hussein of Jordan, brokered the agreement during nine days at Wye Plantation in eastern Maryland. The agreement committed Israel to withdraw from 40 percent of the West Bank over the next 12 weeks. In return, the Palestinians pledged to curb terrorism and remove the clause in their charter calling for the destruction of Israel.|
24|In Buffalo, New York, an obstetrician who performed abortions is killed by a sniper wielding a high-powered rifle. The doctor, Barnett Slepian, was the fifth doctor who performed abortions to be killed by a sniper in western New York and Canada since 1994.|
25|Typhoon Babs hits Taiwan and Hong Kong with more than 20 inches (50 centimeters) of rain and 80-mile- (128-kilometer-) per-hour winds. Babs smashed into the Philippines on October 22, leaving 400,000 people homeless and more than 190 people dead.|
26|President Jamil Mahaud of Ecuador and Alberto Fujimori of Peru sign a peace treaty ending a boundary dispute that had triggered three wars in 50 years. The treaty, which concerns a 48-mile (76.8-kilometer) slice of upland jungle, was expected to open borders between the two countries and encourage trade and commerce.|
26|A spokesperson for Boris Yeltsin announces that the Russian president has canceled a visit to Austria. While claiming that Yeltsin has fully recovered from a recent bout of bronchitis, the spokesperson noted that the president was suffering from fatigue.|
27| Hurricane Mitch, driving across the western Caribbean, slams into Honduras with winds of 180 miles (290 kilometers) per hour. The U.S. National Weather Service said that Mitch was one of the most severe hurricanes in the last 100 years.|
27| The United Nations world population report reveals the widespread and devastating effects that HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, has had in the 34 countries of sub-Saharan Africa. Of the 30 million people infected with HIV worldwide, 26 million people lived in Africa, where more than 90 percent of all AIDS deaths have also occurred, according to the UN. In some African countries, the epidemic had severely eroded population growth and life expectancy. In Zimbabwe, where every fifth adult was infected, the UN said, annual population growth dropped from 3.3 percent in 1985 to 1.4 percent in 1997. In Botswana, life expectancy dropped from of an average of 61 to 47 years in a single five-year span and was expected to continue to decline to an average of 41 years by 2005.|
28|Hurricane Mitch continues to batter Honduras, Guatemala, Nicaragua, and Belize, forcing the evacuation of thousands of people to higher ground as some 50 rivers flood their banks in Honduras. Ham radio operators on the island of Guanaja in the Bay Islands off the north coast of Honduras reported that at least 14 people died when winds of 125 miles (200 kilometers) per hour leveled nearly all buildings.|
28|The New England Journal of Medicine, publishes the results of two studies showing that levels of HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, rebound in infected people who stop taking the standard 20-to-30-pill daily regimen of antiviral drugs known as an AIDS "cocktail." Scientists had hoped that infected people's immune systems could keep the virus at bay once the cocktail repressed HIV levels. Patients could then reduce the number of drugs and escape some of their adverse effects. Researchers halted both studies so that people participating in the experiments could resume normal drug treatment.|
29|At age 77, John Glenn returns to space aboard the space shuttle Discovery. A crowd estimated at a quarter of a million people, including President Bill Clinton, watched the Glenn lift off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with an international crew of six other astronauts. Glenn was scheduled to take part in a series of experiments on aging. The flight was the 121st U.S. space mission since February 1962, when Glenn became the first American to orbit the Earth.|
30|Gale force winds and torrential rains from Hurricane Mitch, downgraded to a tropical storm, continue to sweep across Central America. Mudslides and floods triggered by the deluge trapped tens of thousands of people without telephone connections, power, food, or drinkable water. In Nicaragua, rain filled the crater of Casitas Volcano and collapsed the crater walls. A river of water and mud flowed down the volcano and buried entire villages. As many as 2,000 people were feared dead.|
31|A front over the Gulf of Mexico holds the remnants of Hurricane Mitch in a line along the Caribbean coasts of Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Belize, where the tropical storm is dumping as much as 24 inches (61 centimeters) of rain every 24 hours. Relief agencies feared the death toll from the massive flooding and mudslides could run as high as 10,000 people.|
31|A spokesperson for the government of Iraq announces that all cooperation with international arms inspectors is over and that all surveillance of Iraq's weapons programs is banned. While the 100 United Nations (UN) inspectors remaining in Iraq have not been expelled officially, Iraq's representative to the UN, Nizar Hamdoon, told reporters in New York City that the government of Saddam Hussein assumed that the inspectors would leave Baghdad soon.|
