Europe's business day opens with NO troubles

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"One after the other, they reported everything was safe and sound," Zhang Qi, head of China's National Y2K Emergency Office, said Monday. "I was ecstatic."

Around Asia, markets only climbed as the computers were switched back on. Singapore's benchmark Straits Times Index was up more than 2.51 percent to 2541.89 a few hours after opening, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index jumped 1.6 percent to 17,233.36 -- both all-time highs.

In Europe, the Frankfurt, Germany, exchange climbed 20 points while the bourse in Paris was up 60 points. There were no reports of Y2K-related computer problems.

Chinese officials said the Shenzhen and Shanghai stock exchanges, closed on Monday, had tested smoothly and would reopen as scheduled on Tuesday.

"Trading has been fairly smooth so far," said John Yap, a dealer in Singapore. "There's been no indication of any glitches. Trading has been as smooth as we had hoped."

Cuba calls Y2K fears capitalist plot

It was the third virtually trouble-free day for the world's computers, prompting communist-run Cuba to suggest the Y2K bug was nothing more than a capitalist-hatched plot.

"The chaos that had been predicted was merely a scare," said a front-page editorial in Cuba's Juventud Rebelde (Rebel Youth) newspaper.

A fuller picture of the impact of the calendar rollover to 2000 was expected to emerge throughout Monday as billions of people worldwide return to work and computer systems rev up to their full capacity.

New Zealand, one of the first countries to enter Monday, reported no significant computer glitches on its first workday of 2000, according to the U.S. State Department.

Y2K fears prompted Jamaica to close its banks Monday as a precaution despite the absence of Y2K-related glitches over the weekend. The government has requested the banks use the day to check all computers before opening Tuesday, according to a Finance Ministry statement.

But in parts of the Middle East, where Sunday was the first work day of 2000, it is business as usual as Y2K failed to pose major problems.

Banks and stock exchanges in Egypt and Kuwait, among the first to open in 2000, declared their systems bug-free.

The Chicago Mercantile Exchange -- one of the first major Western markets to open in 2000 -- also showed no Y2K-related problems in early futures trading Sunday.

Monitoring centers scaled back

Meanwhile, numerous governments and organizations throughout the world began shutting down or scaling back their Y2K monitoring centers as the lack of Y2K glitches became apparent.

Canada canceled all its Y2K briefings for the coming days. Britain's Government Millennium Center was expected to have a staff of 15 by Monday, down from 40 people on Friday night.

Singapore Airlines closed its Y2K command center Sunday, and the International Civil Aviation Organization, the U.N. agency responsible for air safety, sent some workers home. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank of New York has reduced its Y2K monitoring staff as well, according to a spokesman.



-- [Well-known troll] (but@interesting.news), January 03, 2000

Answers

Hmmm. Who are the omniscient people who know what is happening with all the millions and millions of SMEs around the world? Who are the omniscient people who know whether or not "quiet" Y2K errors are slowly and insidiously corrupting corporate and government databases? Personally, I've no idea how much longterm impact Y2K will have. It may not have much impact at all--certainly the embedded system threat turned out to be tremendously exaggerated--but I think it's a little early for officials, the news media, etc., to be making sweeping announcements of "victory" over Y2K. Let's wait and see how all this pans out in the weeks ahead, shall we?

-- Don Florence (dflorence@zianet.com), January 03, 2000.

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