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1996
• On 4 March, a Palestinian suicide bomber sponsored by the extremist group Hamas kills 19 people in Jerusalem, at almost the same time and place as a bomb that had killed 26 people the previous week. • On 20 March, the British government announces that there is a likely link between bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE) – commonly known as 'mad cow disease' – and a variant of Creutzfeld-Jacob disease (CJD), which causes dementia in humans. The 'worst-case scenario' given is an eventual 500,000 deaths from CJD in Britain, later reduced to 160,000. By October 2000, 80 people had died of CJD. • In June in Russia, Boris Yeltsin is re-elected president. • On 28 August in Britain, the divorce between Prince Charles and Princess Diana is finalised. • On 5 November, Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto of Pakistan is dismissed by President Farooq Leghari, who charges her with sponsoring police hit squads, condoning bribery and nearly bankrupting the government. • On 6 November, US president Bill Clinton wins re-election against his Republic opponent Robert Dole – the first Democrat since Franklin D Roosevelt to win a second term. • China agrees to a world ban on testing nuclear bombs. • There is controversy over claims to property – confiscated by Nazis from Jews in Hitler's Germany – still being held by Swiss banks more than 50 years after the end of World War II. |
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