Today is the 293rd day of 2012. There are 73 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

1983: The commander of Grenada's armed force announces that Prime Minister Maurice Bishop, who was under house arrest, has been killed by soldiers after he tried to seize army headquarters.

Other Events

1943: The foreign ministers of the US, the Soviet Union and Britain open a conference in Moscow to discuss broad principles of cooperation.

1950: UN forces enter Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea.

1951: US President Harry Truman formally ends the state of war with Germany.

1960: The US imposes an embargo on exports to Cuba covering all commodities except medical supplies and certain food products.

1972: US and South Vietnamese officials meet in peace negotiations where the US and North Vietnam will move toward a cease-fire agreement in Indochina and a political accord that would replace the current government in Saigon.

1977: The supersonic Concorde airplane makes its first landing in New York after 19 months of delays caused by residents concerned about the aircraft's noise.

1987: The stock market crashes as the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, or 22.6 per cent in value -- its biggest-ever percentage drop in decades.

1990: The Supreme Soviet of the USSR adopts a long-awaited plan to reform the nation's economy.

1991: A clandestine assembly of ethnic Albanian legislators proclaim Kosovo to be an independent republic. The republic of Serbia annexed Kosovo in 1990.

1992: African National Congress President Nelson Mandela acknowledges that prisoners in congress military camps had been tortured during the 1980s and early 1990s. The camps, located in other African countries, had been training sites during the congress' guerrilla war against the South African government.

1995: A powerful bomb explodes at Sri Lanka's main oil storage tank in a Colombo suburb, causing mass evacuations as fires rage out of control.

1996: Chechen separatists install their military commander Aslan Maskhadov as prime minister of a makeshift coalition government.

2000: Minutes before President Chandrika Kumaratunga swears in a new cabinet to cement her shaky coalition and end a week-long political crisis, a suspected Tamil Tiger suicide bomber blows himself up in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

2004: Myanmar's secretive military regime forces out its prime minister, the long-powerful Gen Khin Nyunt, and places him under house arrest on corruption charges.

2005: Chile's Supreme Court strips former dictator Gen Augusto Pinochet of immunity from prosecution for corruption charges related to his multi-million-dollar bank accounts overseas.

2007: A global manhunt that began three years ago when police found hundreds of photos on the Internet of a man having sex with a dozen young Asian boys ends with the arrest in Thailand of Canadian schoolteacher Christopher Paul Neil.

2009: UN-backed fraud investigators throw out nearly a third of President Hamid Karzai's votes from the August election, undercutting his claim of victory and stepping up the pressure for him to accept a runoff.

2010: California-based technology giant says the Dead Sea Scrolls, among the world's most important, mysterious and tightly restricted archaeological treasures, are about to get Googled.

2011: Hundreds of youths smash and loot stores in central Athens and clash with riot police during a massive anti-government rally against painful new austerity measures that won initial parliamentary approval.

Today's Birthdays

Auguste Lumiere, Frenchman credited with making the first movie (1862-1948); John Le Carre, British writer (1931-); Jennifer Holliday, US singer (1960-); Evander Holyfield, US heavyweight boxing champion (1962-); John Lithgow, US actor (1945-).

— AP