Corpus Christi Caller Times Caller.com - Clinton trial, Columbine top stories of '99

Marketplace \| Services \| Contact Us \| Community \| Arts & Entertainment \| Local Guides

Monday, December 27, 1999

Clinton trial, Columbine top stories of '99
AP asks editors, broadcasters to rank nation's newsmakers
By Arlene Levinson
Associated Press

The year started with a dose of deja vu. Last year's sex scandal in the White House spilled into 1999 with the Senate trial and acquittal of President Clinton. The dramatic end was ranked this year's top story in the annual Associated Press poll of American newspaper editors and broadcast executives.
   When a pair of murderous misfits opened fire in a Colorado high school, they shocked the nation with what became the year's No. 2 news story. The plight of outcasts of another kind - Albanians in the tormented Yugoslav province of Kosovo - ranked as this year's No. 3 story.
   Most votes were cast before Britain restored self-rule to Northern Ireland, six firefighters died on the job in Worcester, Mass. and riots overtook the World Trade Organization conference in Seattle.
   Visitors to the AP's Web site largely agreed with the journalists on the top 10 stories, including their order. The sole exception was their choices for No. 7; news executives selected the crash of EgyptAir 990 while Web site users picked Microsoft's trial on federal antitrust charges.
   Here, according to the AP poll of news executives, are the top 10 stories of 1999:
   1. Clinton impeachment trial: Last year, it was gossip, denial, confession, impeachment for Bill Clinton over Monica Lewinsky. This year, the Senate acquitted him of perjury and obstruction of justice. For the second time in U.S. history, the country came close to firing its chief executive. The ordeal over, relief seemed to reverberate coast to coast.
   2. Columbine High School shooting: Teen-agers Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, masterminded a massacre at their school in Littleton, Colo., killing 12 classmates and a teacher before killing themselves. Columbine - the delicate state flower that gave the school its name - also named the catastrophe.
   3. Kosovo: The world witnessed large-scale cruelty as Kosovo's Albanian majority fled Serbs and government-approved terror. NATO's 78 days of bombing tried to stop it. Yet Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, indicted for war crimes by an international court, clung to power. Though most of the 850,000 ethnic Albanians returned, they still need the protection of foreign peacekeepers.
   4. The Y2K computer bug: While many people reflected on the past 1,000 years, some hunkered over computers, trying to stamp out a little electronic bug. If computers read "00" as 1900 instead of 2000, as early programs told them to, they could turn clocks back a century. If not, their users may cheerfully uncork champagne and look ahead.
   5. Death of JFK Jr.: When John F. Kennedy Jr. was killed at 38, Americans saw again the little boy who lost his president father to an assassin - and doubly felt the loss. With his wife, Carolyn, and her sister Lauren Bessette, Kennedy perished off Martha's Vineyard when his private plane crashed. "He had a legacy, and he learned to treasure it," his uncle, Sen. Edward Kennedy, told mourners.
   6. U.S. Economy: Some likened the boom to Goldilocks, an economy not too hot or too cold, but just right. Unemployment around 4 percent, a 29-year low. Inflation under 3 percent. And, soon, perhaps the longest U.S. expansion ever. But while many Americans enjoyed new riches, others struggled.
   7. EgyptAir Flight 990: The death trip of the EgyptAir jet bound for Cairo from New York became as much mystery as tragedy. U.S. investigators found no evidence of explosion or mechanical failure. Did the relief co-pilot send the Boeing 767 into the sea off Massachusetts that killed all 217 aboard? Angry Egyptians blamed anti-Arab bias for this theory. The cause remains unknown.
   8. Mass Shootings: Besides Columbine, random gun violence erupted with frightening regularity: at a high school in Conyers, Ga.; in a single spree on city and suburban streets of Illinois and Indiana; at two Atlanta brokerage firms; at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles and along a postal worker's route; a Baptist church in Fort Worth; a Xerox warehouse in Honolulu. Hatred of minorities fueled many of these.
   9. Earthquakes: Shifting tectonic plates ripped and shattered lives all over the globe. Most devastating were Turkey's pair of quakes three months apart that killed 18,000 people. In Taiwan, some 2,400 died as thousands of buildings crumbled.
   10. Hurricanes: This year's Atlantic hurricane season, June 1 to Nov. 30, included five in Category 4 - Bret, Cindy, Floyd, Gert and Lenny - that brought top sustained winds of at least 131 mph. Floyd was the most destructive, damaging 12,000 homes, killing more than 50 people. It inflicted an estimated $6 billion damage in North Carolina, where it choked rivers with raw sewage and agricultural chemicals. Lenny roared through the northern Caribbean, including the U.S. Virgin Islands. A dozen people died and St. Croix sustained at least $31.5 million in damage.
   This was the 64th year that the AP polled U.S. news executives.

| Talk about this story | Next Story | Home |

[ Printer-friendly version ]
[ Subscribe to newspaper ]

SEND THIS PAGE TO A FRIEND

[an error occurred while processing this directive]