Today is the 291st day of 2012. There are 75 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

1997: Former Rwandan Prime Minister Jean Kambanda is charged by the UN International Criminal Tribunal with genocide and crimes against humanity in the 1994 slaughter of a half-million Rwandans.

Other Events

1918: Republic of Yugoslavia is formally established.

1912: Turkey declares war on Bulgaria and Serbia.

1933: Albert Einstein arrives in the US as a refugee from Nazi Germany.

1945: Col Juan Peron stages coup in Buenos Aires and becomes absolute dictator of Argentina.

1957: French author Albert Camus is awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

1961: Authorities crack down on Algerians in Paris who are demonstrating for independence. Historians estimate at least 200 were killed.

1977: West German commandos storm a hijacked Lufthansa jetliner in Mogadishu, Somalia, freeing all 86 hostages.

1979: Mother Teresa wins Nobel Peace Prize for her work with the destitute in Calcutta, India, over three decades.

1993: Indian officials try to talk Muslim separatists occupying Kashmir's holiest shrine into surrendering, but the rebels refuse, threatening to blow up the mosque if soldiers enter.

1996: Boris Yeltsin fires security chief Alexander Lebed one day after the former general is accused of building his own army in an attempt to seize power.

1997: The remains of revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara are laid to rest in his adopted Cuba, 30 years after his execution in Bolivia.

1999: The head of Pakistan's new military regime Gen Pervez Musharraf announces a reduction of troops on the Indian border, the establishment of a military-technocrat ruling council and an eventual return to civilian rule.

2000: A high-speed passenger train travelling from London to Leeds derails in the commuter belt north of the British capital, killing four and injuring 34.

2001: Israel's tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi, who advocated the ouster of all Palestinians from the West Bank and Gaza Strip, is shot dead in the first ever assassination of a serving Cabinet minister.

2002: The Patriotic Movement of Ivory Coast, a newly formed rebel group that launched a violent uprising in September, signs a truce with West African international mediators to halt the rebellion and begin peace talks with the government.

2005: China celebrates the successful landing of the country's second manned space flight as a boost to its status as a space power.

2006: A British-educated civil servant, Lateefa al-Geood, becomes the first-ever female to serve as an elected member of Bahrain's parliament.

2008: The US government declares that the beluga whales of Alaska's Cook Inlet are endangered and require additional protection to survive.

Today’s Birthdays

Mikhail Naimy, Lebanese poet-philosopher (1889-1988); Arthur Miller, US

playwright (1915-2005); Rita Hayworth, US actress (1918-1987); Eminem, US

rapper (1972-).

— AP