The United States withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol on global climate change; Christie Whitman, the administrator of the EPA, announced that “we have no interest in implementing that treaty.” President Bush told German chancellor Gerhard Schr�der that “We will not do anything that harms our economy, because first things first are the people who live in America.” North Korea’s dear leader Kim Jong Il sent a large floral wreath to the funeral of Chung Ju Yung, the founder of the Hyundai group, in a further display of goodwill toward the south by the ruler of the Hermit Kingdom. Israeli prime …

President Bill Clinton, on his last day in office, made a deal with independent counsel Robert Ray to avoid indictment for lying under oath, which concluded the $60 million Whitewater investigation and gave Bill Clinton banner headlines on the day of George W. Bush’s inauguration.President Clinton pardoned 140 criminals, including Patty Hearst, a revolutionary; his brother Roger, who had a fondness for cocaine; and former CIA director John Deutch, who found it difficult to leave classified information in the George Bush Center for Intelligence.Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist, wearing his tacky Gilbert and Sullivan-inspired gold-striped robe, which he himself …

Chile’s former dictator General Augusto Pinochet was arrested, in Chile.The terms of the amnesty he negotiated upon his abdication included murder but not kidnapping, and the bodies of nineteen people who were abducted by the “Caravan of death,” a helicopter-borne death squad led by one of Pinochet’s close aides, were never found, world-historical ruthlessness giving rise to world-historical ironyâ�?�?which then devolved into farce when an appeals court suspended the arrest order.Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak, his government about to fall, called for an early election.Mary Robinson, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights, recommended sending international monitors to the …

Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Palestinian leader Yasir Arafat failed to meet President Bill Clinton’s deadline for making peace in the Middle East; Clinton declared the summit over and flew to Okinawa for a meeting of the G8, the world’s seven richest industrialized countries plus Russia, where the leaders issued a strongly worded statement decrying the alarming lack of Internet access in sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. They pledged to form a “dot force” to combat this “digital divide.” Barak and Arafat remained at Camp David, chaperoned by Madeleine Albright, who received an encouraging note from the G8 leaders, each …