1998 was designated as the International Year of the Ocean. Events January January 6 – The Lunar Prospector spacecraft is launched into orbit around the Moon, and later finds evidence for frozen water, in soil in permanently shadowed craters near the Moon's poles. January 11 – Over 100 people are killed in the Sidi-Hamed massacre in Algeria. January 12 – Nineteen European nations agree to forbid human cloning. January 17 – The Drudge Report breaks the story about U.S. President Bill Clinton's alleged affair with Monica Lewinsky, which will lead to the House of Representatives' impeachment of him. February February 3 – Cavalese cable car disaster: A United States military pilot causes the deaths of 20 people near Trento, Italy, when his low-flying EA-6B Prowler severs the cable of a cable-car. February 4 – The 5.9 Afghanistan earthquake shakes the Takhar Province with a maximum Mercalli intensity of VII (Very strong). With up to 4,000 killed, and 818 injured, damage is considered extreme. February 7–22 – The 1998 Winter Olympics are held in Nagano, Japan. February 20 – Iraq disarmament crisis: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein negotiates a deal with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan, allowing weapons inspectors to return to Baghdad, preventing military action by the United States and Britain. February 28 A massacre in Likoshane, FR Yugoslavia starts the Kosovo War. A study led by Andrew Wakefield is published in The Lancet suggesting an alleged link between MMR vaccine and autism. Now known to be full of data manipulation, the study was instantly controversial and fueled the nascent anti-vaccination movement. Although subsequent large epidemiological research found no link between vaccines and autism, the study contributed – in the following years and decades – to a sharp drop in vaccination rates and the resurgence of measles in several countries. The study, fully retracted in 2010, was later characterised as "perhaps the most damaging medical hoax of the 20th Century". March March 2 – Data sent from the Galileo probe indicates that Jupiter's moon Europa has a liquid ocean under a thick crust of ice. March 5 – NASA announces that the Clementine probe orbiting the Moon has found enough water in polar craters to support a human colony and rocket fueling station. March 11 – 1998 Danish general election: Prime Minister Poul Nyrup Rasmussen is re-elected. March 13 – The High-Z Supernova Search Team becomes the first team to publish