Sunday January 2 12:48 AM ET

Y2K Experts Shift Focus to Market Openings

SINGAPORE (Reuters) - The world's computers appear to have ridden out the millennium bug without a sneeze, with experts turning their focus to Monday when big financial markets and businesses reopen.

As revelers watched the sun rise on 2000, they found that lights still shined, bank machines spat out cash, telephones functioned and planes stayed airborne.

Predictions of cyberspace chaos proved as empty as the prophecies of Christian doomsday cultists in Jerusalem, leaving experts to question whether the $600 billion price tag to immunize business and government against the Y2K bug was necessary.

The fears were that computers would read 2000 as 1900 and shut down. But industry and government officials warned against premature celebrations.

Until millions of workers switch on their computers on Monday, air-traffic control systems handle a full load and global banking systems pump money smoothly through Tokyo, London and New York, they cannot know whether the Y2K bug still lurks in networks, ready to disrupt ordinary life.

Best Laid Plans

``The best laid plans of mice and men are apt to go astray, but this seems to have worked out fine,'' said Michael Dorfsman, spokesman for the U.S. Bond Market Association.

The Chicago futures exchanges will be the first major international market to start electronic trading at 5:30 p.m. local time Sunday. Officials said tests on trading floors Saturday went without a hitch.

Earlier, no digital disasters struck any of the world's stock or bond markets or banking systems when the date tripped from 1999 to 2000.

Stock markets in Australia, New Zealand, Manila, Bangkok and elsewhere reported passing grades in Y2K testing. Across Asia, markets, telecommunications and other infrastructure officials reported all systems were go.

So smoothly were U.S. systems operating overall that the federal government on Saturday evening began scaling back from its virtual war footing.

``It is possible that as early as Wednesday we could go just to the day shift,'' said Y2K trouble-shooter John Koskinen after sending home half of the 800 people on 24-hour shifts.

Even countries where chaos and disruption can be daily ordeals reported plain sailing.

Venezuela, engulfed by deadly mudslides and floods earlier this month, said its oil industry operations were working normally. So were oil operations in Nigeria, Africa's most populous nation where experts feared its chaotic infrastructure would buckle.

All-Clear At Japan N-Plants

Of the 170 countries reporting their Y2K status to the International Y2K Cooperation Center, 133 of them said 11 sectors, including power and telecommunications, were operating normally, according to the Washington-based center.

Computer malfunctions at Japanese nuclear power plants, possibly connected with the Y2K bug, had all been cleared up, company spokesmen said on Sunday.

Five different problems, most connected with data monitoring, emerged at four separate nuclear plants on Saturday.

Japan suffered its worst nuclear accident in September. A nuclear chain reaction at a uranium processing plant in Tokaimura, north of Tokyo, killed one person and exposed more than 100 others to radiation.

At Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado, Russian and U.S. military experts were elated after working around the clock in an unprecedented show of cooperation to prevent missiles from being launched by a Y2K computer bug.

``It was a great success,'' said Maj. Gen. Thomas Goslin, director of operations of the U.S. Space Command. ``Everything has gone just as we though it would.''

Operations of a U.S. spy satellite were disrupted, however. For several hours, the Y2K bug idled intelligence gathering until a ground back-up system kicked in, U.S. Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said.

The nearest hint of a problem in the international energy systems came in Turkey's monitoring of a pipeline from Iraq. Oil was kept flowing by switching the computer date back to 1995 from 1999.

Other than that, ``it's a green light across the world,'' said David Knapp, head of the markets division of International Energy Agency.

In London, home of the Greenwich meridian, ministers said the bug could still strike.

Margaret Beckett, the minister in charge of navigating Britain through any potential millennium bug problems, said that any bugs were more likely to surface over the coming days as people went back to work.

Beckett added that vigilance was needed up until February 29 -- it being a Leap Year, February has an extra day -- when computer crashes have also been forecast because of the unusual date.

[ENDS]

-- John Whitley (jwhitley@inforamp.net), January 02, 2000

Answers

Hey John,

didn't anyone tell you?

CNNABCCBSMSNBCUPIAPREUTERS said it was all over.

we can all turn out the lights...

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.

Man, Andy, relax. Your point is made; I, for one, am sitting and waiting, and just about all the sources you cite in your increasingly lengthy and unwieldly anagram are reporting similar to the above. Smile at some point, you'll get too stressed otherwise. ;-)

-- Ned Raggett (ned@kuci.org), January 02, 2000.

Stressed? Nope, just amazed at how dumb some folks are - they've been spoon fed crapola all their lives from these anagrams and know no better i guess - even so....

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), January 02, 2000.