December 31, 1999
Web posted at: 11:39 p.m. EST (0439 GMT)

From staff and wire reports

(CNN) -- With most of the world already rolled over into 2000, international Y2K officials said computers so far have done well to avoid bouts with the millennium virus.

Despite a couple of false alarms and predicted congestion, the new year is "proceeding at least as good if not better than we thought," said Bruce McConnell, director of the International Y2K Cooperation Center.

"The basic story continues to be we have no reports of serious incidents related to Y2K," McConnell told reporters in Washington at about 8 p.m. EST.

With 104 of 120 participating countries into the new year, grim predictions of computer-related fiascoes had not been realized, he said.

A few countries have experienced minor glitches, like in South Korea, where letters went out listing 1900 as a court date.

Many Asian nations reported problems with phone line congestion, caused not by Y2K but too many users. Clogged phone lines are "rolling across the world" as people experience the millennium and will probably reach the United States "in a few hours," McConnell said.

International Y2K Cooperation Center said services around the world are running smoothly so far, including power supply and nuclear power plants.

"We have no reports of any serious incidents in any critical infrastructures," said McConnell.

In the United States, a major utility company based in the Midwest suffered a Y2K computer glitch at midnight GMT, hours before the millennium was to arrive in the United States.

A federal Y2K official reported the problem but didn't identify the utility. Customer service was not interrupted, he said.

U.S. Under Secretary of State Thomas Pickering, who participated in an earlier briefing, added that "there are no signs of stress in the financial sector."

Many markets are closed for the weekend. But when some open in the Middle East on Sunday, the world could experience some Y2K-caused business system errors. They could cause "hassles, headaches and hiccups," but should not be "a matter of serious disruptions," McConell predicted.

National Aeronautics and Space Administration tracking stations reported at 4:30 p.m. EST there were no Y2K problems in Moscow that would affect NASA systems or the International Space Station. All NASA systems and centers were reported as "green," meaning fully functional, with no incidents.

One of the things that worried people most was the possibility of an accidental nuclear missile launch.

But there seemed to be no worries on that front. A senior Pentagon official tells CNN that the only missile launches detected so far by the joint U.S.-Russian monitoring center in Colorado Springs, Colo., has been the launch of three Russian SCUDs into Chechnya Friday. Under the rules of the joint-monitoring center, any missile launches of under 500 kilometers are "non-reportable events" and no details can be released.

Pickering said the launches were not related to any Y2K problems, however. "We have confirmed with the Defense Department that this incident was not Y2K related," Pickering told reporters at Washington's Y2K command center.

A system that monitors radiation levels around a nuclear power plant in Japan was hit by problems shortly after midnight on January 1, according to local media reports. Staff were despatched to the plant but found radiation levels within the normal range. The cause of the problem, and whether it was Y2K-related or not, had yet to be determined, said the reports.

The U.S. Navy and Air Force both reported no Y2K computer-related problems at military installations in Guam, the first U.S. territory to enter the new year.

"We are fully mission ready," said Rear Adm. Tom Fellin of the U.S. Navy.

Maj. Gen. Daniel Dick of the U.S. Air Force also reported "no problems."

At the Pentagon, the U.S. military said there were no problems at the installation in the Kwajalein Atoll, the first U.S. military installation to ring in 2000.

But the Pentagon did report a problem on the Web -- one caused by human error, not a computer bug, officials said.

	ALSO
Y2K sites around the world Cellphone overload hits New Zealand

Public access to the Pentagon's main Web site, DefenseLINK, was down. The Pentagon intended to use the Web site as its primary way to reassure the public that Y2K was causing no problems for the Department of Defense.

Pentagon officials say public access to the site was accidentally disabled yesterday, when other Web sites were being taken down intentionally to prevent mischief from hackers.

In bringing back the site, Defense Department technicians somehow corrupted the domain name server, which translates IP addresses into names.

A spokesman said Pentagon computer specialists restored public access about 10:30 a.m. EST.

	ALSO
For more ITN millennium coverage, visit ITN on line.

Colgate tells CNN he expects to be able to report to the U.S. Y2K Information Center by 12:30 a.m. EST whether the "critical mission" computers are operating effectively.

The Internet is also surviving Y2K so far, despite occasional congestion shortly after revelers ring in the new year.

Systems in New Zealand, Australia and Beijing all had increased traffic and slowdowns about 30 minutes after Y2K arrived.

Net performance measurement firm Keynote Systems is testing major Web sites within each time zone to check how they handle the rollover.

"The 2000 rollover is going incredibly smoothly. Other than transitory spikes in download times centered on the hour of the rollover in localized areas; there have been no obvious Y2K-related performance problems," according to the Keynote site.

The Keynote Web sites are owned by Internet providers, computer firms, government and media sites. Keynote will test the People's Daily newspaper in China, the Vatican's site in Vatican City, the White House site in Washington, and Cisco Systems in San Francisco, among others.

The Internet comprises millions of routers, switches, name servers and other specialized computers that manage and carry Internet traffic. A Y2K-related problem in any of these components could produce a cascading effect on Internet performance.