01|Israeli troops withdraw from Ram Allah, ending the siege that kept Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat imprisoned within his headquarters compound since March 29. The pull out takes place as Palestinian authorities surrender six militants who the Israeli government allege are assassins and terrorists. The governments of the United States and Saudi Arabia brokered the end of the stalemate in Ram Allah by convincing Arafat to allow the six prisoners to be jailed in Jericho on the West Bank under British and U.S. supervision.|
01|As many as 1 million people march through French cities protesting the presidential candidacy of right-wing politician Jean-Marie Le Pen. In Paris, at least 400,000 people crowd into the Place de la Republique for a massive anti-Le Pen rally. Le Pen, who faces the incumbent president, Jacques Chirac, in the May 5 runoff election, is running on an anti-immigration and anti-European Union (EU) platform that has triggered controversy both in France and other EU member nations.|
02|U.S. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell announces that the United States will join with the United Nations, the European Union, and Russia in sponsoring an international conference on establishing peace in the Middle East. Foreign ministers, rather than heads of state, are to attend the conference, which is to take place during the summer of 2002. An exact date and location have yet to be determined.|
02|British troops launch a major offensive in southeastern Afghanistan in a hunt for any remaining members of the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network that remain holed up in the mountainous region. British Royal Marines, backed by U.S. Canadian, Australian, and Afghan soldiers, have moved into the region from both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border and are searching every cave to flush out remaining militants. U.S. Special Forces flying Apache attack helicopters and A-10 Warthog jets are providing air cover.|
03|The U.S. unemployment rate climbed from 5.7 percent in March to 6 percent in April, its highest level since August 1994, report officials with the U.S. Department of Labor.|
04|War Emblem, a three-year-old ridden by Victor Espinoza, leads the 128th Kentucky Derby in Louisville from out of the gate, winning the $875,000 race in 2 minutes and 1.13 seconds.|
04|An EAS airliner crashes into a densely populated area of Kano, a city in north-central Nigeria, killing 145 people, including 72 of the 76 people aboard the BAC -1-11-500 jet.|
05|Residents in rural areas of three Midwestern states discovered a total of 14 pipebombs planted in mailboxes since May 3, report investigators with the U.S. Post Service. Bombs found in central Nebraska failed to explode upon discovery, but bombs planted in northwestern Illinois and eastern Iowa injured six people, including four postal workers. Identical typewritten notes with antigovernment messages accompanied the devices. Postal inspectors believe that all were set up to explode when mailboxes were opened. Agents with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have yet to determine whether the perpetrator is an individual or whether members of a group are involved.|
05|French voters reelect President Jacques Chirac with 82 percent of the vote, the highest margin in the 44-year history of the French Republic. Chirac's opponent, right-wing candidate Jean-Marie Le Pen, takes 18 percent of the vote.|
06|Myanmar's military government releases prodemocracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi after 19 months of house arrest with the guarantee that she is free to pursue her activities as head of Myanmar's prodemocracy opposition party. Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1991 for her attempts to institute a democracy in her homeland, which has been under the control of a military junta (group) since 1988.|
06|Maverick, right-wing Dutch politician Pim Fortuyn is assassinated as he leaves a radio station in Hilversum, the Netherlands. Fortuyn, a sociology professor, was campaigning for the upcoming Dutch parliamentary elections on an anti-immigrant, prolaw-and-order platform. His murder sends shock waves across the Netherlands, a country that prides itself on its democratic traditions and tolerance toward nonconformity.|
06|Energy traders at Enron increased corporate profits by driving up the price of electricity in California during the height of the state's energy crisis in 2000 and 2001, reveal documents released by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. Memoranda written by Enron lawyers disclose that the Houston-based energy company submitted false delivery schedules to California utilities to increase energy costs and charged for transporting energy that never existed. Under one strategy, Enron traders moved electricity out of California into another state and re-released power into the California grid only after prices had climbed sufficiently high to dramatically increase profits. During the same period, California Governor Gray Davis authorized spending at least $20 billion in state funds to purchase enough electricity to stabilize the system.|
06|The Bush administration formally renounces a United Nations-sponsored treaty establishing an international criminal court. A spokesperson for the administration notes that the president will not send the treaty, which was signed by President Bill Clinton, to the U.S. Senate for ratification. The treaty creates the world's first permanent court for the prosecution of war criminals and dictators. Bush administration officials argue that the court, which is to be located in The Hague, Netherlands, exposes U.S. soldiers and officials stationed overseas to frivolous or malicious prosecution.|
07|State police in Nevada arrest a 21-year-old student in connection with a series of pipebomb attacks in five states that began on May 3. The suspect, Luke John Helder of Pine Island, Minnesota, is charged with using an explosive to maliciously destroy property and with using a destructive device to commit a crime of violence. Helder, who attended school at the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie, is alleged to have placed 18 pipebombs in mailboxes in rural areas of Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, and Texas. The bombs discovered in Texas, Colorado, and Nebraska failed to detonate. Four people were injured by bombs hidden in mailboxes in Iowa and Illinois.|
07|A suicide bomber detonates an explosive device in a crowded pool hall in Tel Aviv, killing at least 16 people and wounding more than 60 others. The Islamic militant group Hamas claims responsibility. Upon learning of the attack, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon excuses himself from a meeting with U.S. President George W. Bush and leaves Washington, D.C., to return to Israel.|
07|A China Northern airliner plunges into Bo Gulf in the Yellow Sea, 10 miles (16 kilometers) off the coastal city of Dalian in northeast China, killing 112 passengers and crew members aboard the MD-82 jet.|
08|A suicide bomber detonates a car bomb along side a shuttle bus in front of the Sheraton Hotel in downtown Karachi, Pakistan, killing 15 people. Eleven of the victims are French engineers working in Pakistan on a military project. Authorities in Islamabad, the capital, characterize the bombing as an Al-Qa'ida attack on Pakistan's Western community. Experts on domestic affairs in Pakistan describe the terrorist attack--the third directed against foreigners in Pakistan in less than four months--as a major blow to President Pervez Musharraf and his campaign to shut down Islamic militant groups.|
09|At least 35 people, including 12 children, are killed when a powerful bomb packed with nails and bolts explodes in the Caspian Sea port of Kaspiisk, which is about 1,000 miles (1,610 kilometers) south of Moscow in the Russian republic of Dagestan. The explosion, triggered by remote control, rips through a marine band and spectators lining the route of a parade commemorating the anniversary of the end of World War II (1939-1945). Russian President Vladimir Putin labels the bombing a terrorist attack carried out by "bandits," a term Russian officials use to describe Chechen separatists and other Islamic militants.|
10|The siege of Bethlehem's Church of the Nativity ends after five weeks with 123 unarmed Palestinians and 84 civilians leaving the ancient complex. European Union and U.S. officials brokered the end of the siege by convincing Israel to exile 13 of the militants that Israeli security officials most wanted to capture. The group is flown to Cyprus and held under European control. A second group is taken to the Gaza Strip where the militants face charges of terrorism. The rest are set free in Palestinian-controlled territory. The siege in Bethlehem began on April 2, when the Palestinians ran into the church to escape capture by Israeli troops then entering the city.|
10|A British passenger train derails at a speed of 100 miles (160 kilometers) per hour and smashes into a commuter platform at Potters Bar, a suburb north of London. Seven people are killed and more than 80 others are injured in the crash, which is the fifth fatal train accident in England in six years.|
11|A top planning official with the Chinese government in Beijing, the capital, warns Chinese bankers that a rapidly widening gap between rich and poor, which was virtually nonexistent in China 20 years ago, now threatens the nation's stability. According to the deputy director of the government's Development Research Center, Lu Zhiqiang, 70 percent of the Chinese people are dissatisfied by what they regard as irrationally high incomes enjoyed by people who control industrial monopolies and by public officials who have made themselves rich through graft or corruption.|
12|The central committee of Israel's Likud Party defies the party leader, Prime Minister Aerial Sharon, and votes to oppose the creation of a Palestinian nation. Political experts interpret the vote as an indication that party regulars are abandoning Sharon for former Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is expected to challenge Sharon in the 2003 general election.|
13|U.S. forces in Afghanistan discover two caches of enemy arms, which U.S. Army officers describe as the largest such finds since the beginning of the war in October 2001. American troops seize more than 1.8 million rounds of heavy-caliber ammunition as well as artillery and mortar shells; 1 million rounds of machine-gun ammunition; some 600 rocket-propelled grenades; 2,200 mortar rounds; and five Russian-made tanks.|
14|Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter, speaking in a live television broadcast on Cuba's state-controlled network, calls on President Fidel Castro to liberalize Cuba's Communist regime through the adoption of democratic reforms. Carter also appeals to the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush to end more than 40 years of economic embargo against Cuba. Carter's visit to Cuba is the first by a current or former president since Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.|
15|The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informed President George W. Bush on Aug. 6, 2001, that operatives of Osama bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida terrorist network planned to hijack commercial U.S. airliners, confirms a spokesperson for the Bush administration. The administration alerted law enforcement agencies but did not pass the FBI warning on to commercial airlines or inform the public of the danger of flying. According to the administration spokesperson, the FBI had no specific information about when, where, or how the hijackings would be carried out and no knowledge that the terrorists planned to use hijacked planes as attack missiles.|
15|Dutch voters turn against the current leftist government led by the Labor Party and give the center-right Christian Democratic Alliance 43 seats in the 150-seat Parliament. The anti-immigration, law-and-order party formed in February by Pim Fortuyn, who was assassinated on May 6, comes in second place with 26 seats. Political experts expect the Christian Democrats to invite Fortuyn's party to participate in a coalition government.|
16|The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) acknowledges that FBI officials were aware as early as 1996 of a specific threat that Osama bin Laden's Al-Qa'ida terrorist network might employ an aircraft in a suicide terrorist attack against the United States. The FBI also acknowledge that a bureau agent stationed in Phoenix, Arizona, submitted a memo in the summer of 2001, urging his superiors in Washington, D.C., to investigate men from the Middle East who were enrolling in U.S. flight schools.|
16|The government of Iraq grudgingly accepts a revised United Nations (UN) humanitarian program that speeds the delivery of Western food and medicine into the country but strengthens the military embargo imposed on Iraq at the conclusion of the Gulf War in 1991. The UN program allows Iraq to sell oil for food, medicine, and educational services and allows most civilian goods to enter the country. However, it prohibits Iraq from buying civilian items with potential for military use. The new program specifies items from a 332-page checklist that Iraq is banned from importing without preapproval from UN officials.|
17|Irish voters hand Prime Minister Bertie Ahern's Fianna Fail Party a major victory in parliamentary elections--83 seats, one seat short of an overall majority in the 166-seat Parliament.|
17|Temperatures in southern India hit 122 degrees F (50 degrees C.). A month-long heat wave that meteorologists attribute to an unusual low pressure system hanging over the Bay of Bengal has resulted in the deaths of as many as 600 people in the state of Andhra Pradesh.|
18|India expels Pakistan's ambassador to New Delhi, the Indian capital, in response to the recent bombing of an army camp in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir. The bombing left 34 Indians dead. India claims the attack was carried out by Pakistan-based Kashmir separatists, which Pakistan denies. Both Indian and Pakistan are lobbing shells across the Line of Control, a highly fortified area that divides the Kashmiri territory claimed by both countries.|
18|War Emblem wins the second leg of horseracing's Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes, at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, in 1 minute and 56.35 seconds. The victory earns the horse's owner, Prince Ahmed bin Salman of Saudi Arabia, a $650,000 purse.|
19|Kofi Annan, the secretary general of the United Nations, hands control of East Timor over to Jose Alexandre Gusmao, the president of the new nation, in a ceremony attended by thousands of East Timorese in Dili, the capital. The ceremony, which marks the end of nearly 500 years of foreign domination, is attended by representatives of more than 90 nations, including former U.S. President Bill Clinton and Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri. Indonesia invaded East Timor in 1975, after East Timor was abandoned by its colonial ruler Portugal. Indonesia held East Timor until the United Nations sent a peacekeeping force there in September 1999.|
19|A Palestinian suicide bomber disguised as an Israeli soldier detonates a bomb in a crowded open-air market in Netanya, killing himself and at least two Israelis and injuring more than 50 other people.|
19|Ahmed Tejan Kabbah is reelected president of Sierra Leone with more than 70 percent of the vote. President Kabbah is generally credited with bringing peace to the impoverished West African country after more than 10 years of civil war.|
20|The director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) warns that the United States is now the target of the kind of suicide bombings that have resulted in the deaths of hundreds of people in Israel. Speaking at a conference of the nation's top law enforcement officials, Robert S. Mueller III notes that such attacks are "inevitable" given the current U.S. war against terrorism. The FBI director's warning comes one day after U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney cautioned that another attack by the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network was "almost certain."|
21|New York City police set up check points at both ends of major bridges and tunnels after the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) informs city officials that FBI agents had uncovered vague and uncorroborated threats against the Brooklyn Bridge and the Statue of Liberty. U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld also warns the public that terrorist groups like the Al-Qa'ida network inevitably will gain access to weapons of mass destruction through their connections with such countries as Iraq, Iran, Libya, North Korea, and Syria.|
22|India's prime minister, Atal Behari Vajpayee, calls on Indian troops massed along the Line of Control dividing the Pakistani- and Indian-administered parts of Jammu and Kashmir to prepare for a "decisive battle" against Pakistan. President Pervez Musharraf of Pakistan responds that his country is prepared to defend itself but is willing to negotiate peace. Nearly 1 million troops backed by tanks, warplanes, and missiles stand on the highest alert on both sides of the border between the two nuclear-armed countries, and five Indian warships have moved into position along India's west coast near Pakistan. The latest build-up was triggered by the assassination of a Kashmiri separatist and the bombing of an Indian army camp, which left 34 people dead. India blamed the attack on Pakistan-based Kashmir separatists, a claim that the government of Pakistan denied.|
22|The George W. Bush administration releases a document that reveals that members of the administration had more contact with Enron, the Houston-based energy trading company, than was previous known. Contacts included a series of meetings, letters, e-mails, and telephone conversations in which government officials consulted with Enron executives on the new national energy policy published in May 2001. Discussions also covered the California energy crisis of 2000 and 2001 and Enron's slide into bankruptcy in December. The seven-page document reveals that Enron's former chairman Kenneth Lay, a frequent guest at the White House, was consulted on a number of government appointments, including who would be named chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The administration releases the document hours after the Senate Government Affairs Committee voted 9 to 8 to issue subpoenas to President Bush and to Vice President Cheney for additional information on the extent of contacts between the government and the Houston-based corporation.|
23|U. S. President George W. Bush, addressing a special session of the German parliament in the Reichstag in Berlin, the capital, urges the nations of Europe to support the U.S. war against terrorism. The president warns that Iraq and other so-called rogue nations are willing to supply terrorists with weapons of mass destruction that threaten all nations, not just the United States.|
24|U.S. President George W. Bush and Russian President Vladimir Putin sign a landmark nuclear arms treaty in which the governments of both countries pledge to cut their nuclear arsenals by two thirds over the next 10 years. Both the United States and Russia currently have between 6,000 and 7,000 nuclear weapons. Speaking from the Kremlin in Moscow, President Bush announces that the treaty "liquidates the Cold War legacy of nuclear hostility."|
25|All 225 passengers and crew members aboard a 22-year-old China Airlines jet are killed when the Boeing 747-200 breaks up over the Taiwan Straight, off Taiwan's western coast about 180 miles (290 kilometers) from Taipei, the capital.|
25|At least 196 people are killed when railroad passenger cars packed with weekend visitors to South Africa crash into the back of a freight train parked at a rail station near the town of Moambain in southern Mozambique. The crash takes place after the passenger train is disabled and four large stones, lodged in front of the wheels of the disconnected cars, give way, allowing the cars to barrel down a hill.|
26|More than 500 feet (152 meters) of a bridge on Interstate Highway 40 in southeast Oklahoma collapses into the Arkansas River after an empty barge smashes into one of the concrete pylons supporting the span. At least 12 cars and trucks fall 75 feet (23 meters) into the fast-moving river, killing 14 people. Men and women fishing near the bridge, which is downriver from the town of Webber Falls, rescue five people.|
26|Voters in Colombia elect 49-year-old Alvaro Uribe, a conservative who was educated in the United States and Great Britain, president with 53 percent of the vote. Political experts see the rare majority vote as a clear mandate for Uribe's hard-line stance against the country's leftist rebels. The president-elect promises a $1-billion military build-up against guerrilla rebels, which is a sharp departure from the failed peace efforts of his predecessor, President Andres Pastrana. Uribe also proposes to recruit 1 million ordinary citizens to fight crime, specifically Colombia's powerful drug lords.|
27|A suicide bomber kills himself and two Israelis and wounds at least 20 other people, including infants, in an explosion that rips through an ice cream parlor in a Tel Aviv suburb. The Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade claims responsibility. In East Jerusalem, Israeli police disarm a second bomb, packed with some 100 pounds (45 kilograms) of explosives, nails, and bullet cartridges, that was discovered in an apartment building. The device was attached to a cell phone that was to act as a detonator.|
27|An official in China's Xinjiang province demands that the United States turn over 300 Chinese Muslim extremists captured in Afghanistan, where the ethnic Uighurs were fighting along side the Taliban. The Chinese government consider the Uighurs to be terrorists waging an insurgency in Xinjiang province in an attempt to create an independent nation. China claims that at least 1,000 Uighur separatists received terrorist training in Afghanistan by the Taliban and Al-Qa'ida operatives. According to international affairs experts, U.S. Department of State officials are reluctant to place the Uighur on its list of foreign terrorist organizations because of China's history of repressing political and religious dissent.|
28|The leaders of the 19 nations that make up the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), including U.S. President George W. Bush, meet in Rome with Russian President Vladimir Putin to sign an agreement establishing the NATO-Russia Council. The council allows Russian officials to join NATO officials in decision-making processes regarding security in Europe, with the goal of uniting Russian and NATO efforts in the fight against terrorism and halting proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.|
28|Intelligence agents from the United States, Pakistan, and India confirm that leaders of the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network have forged links with Islamic militants in Pakistan. Al-Qa'ida leaders have filtered across the border from Afghanistan into major Pakistani cities, where they appear to be collaborating with Islamic extremists who bitterly oppose U.S.-Pakistani cooperation in the war on terrorism. Al-Qa'ida also is operating in the disputed territory of Kashmir, where intelligence agents believe they are actively attempting to provoke a war between India and Pakistan.|
28|An agent at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) field office in Minneapolis, Minnesota, accuses officials at FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., of dismissing her requests to obtain a warrant to wiretap the phone and search the computer of Azcarias Moussaoui. Moussaoui, a French-Moroccan, is to be tried as a conspirator in the terrorist attacks against the United States on Sept. 11, 2001. Agent Coleen Rowley charges her superiors with bureaucratic incompetence that undermined an investigation that might have "limited the September 11 attacks and resulting loss of life." In a memo delivered to the FBI and to various members of Congress, Rowley suggests that FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III mischaracterized her investigation of Moussaoui when the director publicly denied that the bureau had any knowledge that Islamic militants might be planning a terrorist attack involving hijacked aircraft.|
29|Hundreds of British troops in Afghanistan are deployed along the Afghan-Pakistani border to prevent the remnants of Al-Qa'ida and Taliban forces from slipping back into Afghanistan from Pakistan. Leaders of the U.S.-led coalition in Afghanistan warn that the Al-Qa'ida network is attempting to move guerrilla fighters back into Afghanistan in order to attack or sabotage the grand council meeting scheduled for June at which Afghans are to form a new government. Allied military leaders also believe that the Pakistani government is preparing to transfer all troops away from its border with Afghanistan because of current tensions with India over disputed territory in Jammu and Kashmir.|
29|Indian security forces kill two Islamic militants after the militants gun down three police officers in an attack on a police base in the Indian administered part of Jammu and Kashmir. The attack takes place as cross-border shelling between Indian and Pakistani forces stationed along the so-called Line of Control results in the deaths of at least 23 civilians. The two countries currently have more than 1 million soldiers stationed along the disputed border.|
29|The primary focus of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is to be redirected toward the prevention of future terrorist attacks on the United States, announces FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. The director acknowledges that the terrorist attacks on the United States on September 11 might have been prevented if his agency had not ignored information that was available to FBI officials. Mueller describes a May 1998 memo from an agent in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, who reported that an unusually large number of men from the Middle East were enrolled in flight classes in the United States. The agent warned that this "recent phenomenon" suggested that terrorist organizations might be planning to deploy aircraft in future attacks.|
30|U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft expands the authority of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to monitor U.S. political and religious organizations and to survey commercially available databases and Internet chat rooms for signs of terrorist activity. Ashcroft explains that the FBI must be granted greater power if the agency is to successfully redirect its focus from crime investigation to prevention of domestic terrorism.|
30|Islamic militants are recruiting young Dutch Muslim immigrants at mosques in the Netherlands to join "holy wars" in Afghanistan and Kashmir, reports the Dutch Internal Security Agency. The director of the agency, Sybrand van Hulst, reveals that the bodies of two Dutch-Muslim brothers have been discovered in Kashmir, where they had joined Muslim separatists in their fight against India. Van Hulst notes that the agency is investigating reports that Islamic militant groups in the Netherlands are linked to the Al-Qa'ida terrorist network, which urges young Dutch Muslims to get military training by joining the Dutch Army.|
30|Thousands of people gather at the former site of the World Trade Center in New York City to participate in a ceremony marking the end of the official recovery effort that followed the terrorist attack on the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001. The ceremony begins with the removal by truck of the last remnant of the two 110-story buildings, a steel girder weighting 58 short tons (52.6 metric tons). The recovery effort, which continued around the clock for 260 days, ends with no remains uncovered for more than half of the approximately 2,800 people who died in the attack.|
31|The U.S. Department of State urges the more than 60,000 Americans living or traveling in India to immediately leave the country because of escalating tensions between India and Pakistan over disputed territory in Jammu and Kashmir. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell authorizes nonessential State Department employees assigned to India to return to the United States as quickly as possible. State Department officials fear that a conventional attack by either India or Pakistan could escalate into a nuclear war. The governments of Canada, Germany, and the United Kingdom also issue travel advisories to their citizens in India.|
