Today is the 68th day of 2012. There are 298 days left in the year.

Today’s Highlights

2011: The European Union adopts a plan to double its efforts to boost energy efficiency in order to cut greenhouse gases, partly by producing better household appliances, renovating public buildings and private homes, and driving improved cars.

Other Events

1702: England’s Queen Anne ascends the throne upon the death of King William III.

1765: Britain’s House of Lords passes Stamp Act to tax American colonies.

1865: A canal is begun in the Netherlands to connect Amsterdam with the North Sea.

1898: United States refuses to support Britain in its conflict with Russia over a loan to China.

1904: Germany revises 1872 anti-Jesuit law to permit return of some members of the Roman Catholic order.

1917: Riots and strikes break out in St Petersburg, marking start of Russian Revolution.

1942: Japanese forces capture Rangoon, Burma, during World War II.

1949: France recognises non-communist Vietnam nationalists under Bao Dai as independent state within French Union.

1950: Marshal Voroshilov announces the existence of the Soviet atomic bomb.

1957: Ghana is admitted to the United Nations.

1965: United States lands 3,500 Marines in South Vietnam.

1969: Soviet Union puts its Far East army on alert as warning to China after frontier clash on Ussuri River.

1970: Cyprus President Archbishop Makarios escapes assassination when terrorist snipers shoot down his helicopter.

1986: Guerrilla violence in Colombia takes seven lives a day before national elections.

1987: Sri Lankan troops launch large new offensive, killing 11 separatist Tamil Tiger rebels in northern Jaffna peninsula.

1989: Chinese troops converge on Tibetan capital of Lhasa to enforce martial law following three days of anti-Chinese rioting.

1990: West German parliament adopts resolution calling on united Germany to honour Poland’s western border.

1991: Forty foreign journalists and two US servicemen captured by Iraqi soldiers are turned over to Red Cross officials in Baghdad.

1996: China fires three ballistic missiles into waters off Taiwan’s main ports, two weeks before the island’s first presidential elections.

1998: James McDougal, one of the most important cooperating witnesses in Kenneth Starr’s investigation into President Bill Clinton’s Whitewater real estate dealings, dies in prison.

1999: The US Energy Department fires a Taiwanese-born scientist suspected of handing over nuclear missile technology to China in the 1980s.

2003: An Argentine court releases an indictment ordering the arrest of four former Iranian government officials for their alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, in which 85 people were killed.

2004: A female wing of Nepal’s Maoist rebel movement, the All Nepal Women’s Association (Revolutionary), calls a general strike to protest violence against women, bringing this Himalayan kingdom to a standstill.

2005: The UN war crimes court indicts Kosovo’s prime minister for alleged atrocities while commanding ethnic Albanian insurgents against Serb forces in the struggle for control of the province.

2006: Tens of thousands of Sudanese march through Khartoum, protesting plans to deploy UN peacekeepers in conflict-torn Darfur and demanding the expulsion of the top UN and US envoys in the country.

2007: Insurgents ambush a convoy of African Union peacekeepers sent to help stabilise Somalia’s violent capital, setting off a gunfight that kills at least 10 civilians.

2008: Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica dissolves Serbia’s government and calls for new elections.

2009: Roman Catholic and Protestant congregations pray together for peace after Irish Republican Army dissidents kill two Britsh soldiers — the first deadly attack on Northern Ireland security forces in 12 years.

2010: Hundreds of earthquake survivors huddle in aid tents and around bonfires in eastern Turkey, seeking relief from the winter cold after a strong temblor knocks down stone and mud-brick houses in five villages, killing 51 people.

Today’s Birthdays

Richard Howe, English admiral (1726-1799); Oliver Wendell Holmes, US jurist (1809-1894); Juana de Ibarbourou, Uruguayan poet (1895-1979); Cyd Charisse, US actress-dancer (1923-2008); Lynn Redgrave, British actress (1943-2010); Aidan Quinn, US actor (1959- ); Camryn Manheim, US actress (1961- ).