Today is the 325th day of 2013. There are 40 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2000: Research published in a British medical journal shows children who use mobile phones risk suffering memory loss, sleeping disorders and headaches. The study says that those younger than 18 are more vulnerable to cellphone radiation because their immune systems are less robust.

OTHER EVENTS

1620: The Mayflower ship, carrying the first permanent European settlers to New England, lands in what is now Provincetown, Massachusetts.

1783: The first manned balloon flight sails over Paris for 25 minutes.

1806: Napoleon Bonaparte of France issues Berlin Decrees, declaring blockade of Britain.

1877: American Thomas A Edison announces invention of the phonograph.

1922: Rebecca L Felton of Georgia is sworn in as the first woman to serve in the US Senate.

1938: Western border areas of Czechoslovakia are forcibly incorporated into German Reich.

1958: A Soviet-East German commission meets in East Berlin to discuss the transfer to East German control of Soviet functions and end to the occupation status in Berlin.

1962: China agrees to a ceasefire on India-China border.

1963: Roman Catholic Vatican Council authorises use of vernacular instead of Latin in the Sacraments.

1977: An estimated 3,000 people are believed to have perished in cyclone that strikes south-eastern India, submerging entire villages in tidal waves.

1980: A fire at the MGM Grand Hotel-Casino in Las Vegas kills 87 people.

1985: Former US Navy intelligence analyst Jonathan Jay Pollard is arrested and accused of spying for Israel. He pleads guilty and is sentenced to life in prison.

1987: Riot police stand guard to prevent violence by rival supporters as presidential candidates in South Korea trade charges of corruption and cruelty.

1990: Michael R Milken, Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc’s former “junk-bond” chief, is sentenced to 10n years in prison. It is the most severe sentence handed down in a series of Wall Street securities fraud cases dating from 1986.

1991: The UN Security Council chooses Boutros Boutros-Ghali of Egypt to be the new secretary general.

1992: US Senator Bob Packwood of Oregon issues an apology but refuses to discuss allegations that he made unwelcome sexual advances to 10 women over the years.

1993: Three former Panamanian soldiers are found guilty of involvement in the previously unsolved 1971 murder of Hector Gallego, a Colombian Roman Catholic priest.

1994: NATO retaliates for repeated Serb attacks on a UN safe haven by bombing an airfield in a Serb-controlled section of Croatia.

1995: Former Nazi Captain Erich Priebke is extradited from Argentina to Italy to face charges in the massacre of 335 Italian civilians in Nazi-occupied Rome.

1996: A gas explosion at a shoe store in San Juan, Puerto Rico, kills 19 people and injures about 80.

1997: UN weapons inspectors return to Iraq a month after inspections were halted when the Iraqi government refused to let the teams include American members.

1998: Italian officials release Kurdish separatist leader Abdullah Ocalan, the head of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, the main Kurdish rebel group.

1999: China successfully completes an unmanned spacecraft test, a breakthrough leading towards China eventually becoming the third country to put humans in space, after the United States and the former Soviet Union.

2000: Research published in a British medical journal shows children who use mobile phones risk suffering memory loss, sleeping disorders and headaches. The study says that those younger than 18 are more vulnerable to cell phone radiation because their immune systems are less robust.

2001: Maoist rebel leaders in Nepal withdraw from their four-month-old cease-fire with the government, and launch their worst-ever attacks, killing more than 200 people.

2003: The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says an outbreak of hepatitis A, that killed three people and left 605 sick in Monaca, Pennsylvania, was caused by tainted scallions imported from Mexico.

2004: A strong earthquake rocks the Caribbean islands of Dominica and Guadeloupe, killing at least one person and destroying numerous homes.

2005: UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan warns that Sudan’s volatile Darfur region faces an increasing threat of complete lawlessness and anarchy, and says it is crucial that the government and rebels conclude a peace agreement by the end of the year.

2006: Pierre Gemayel, an anti-Syrian politician and scion of Lebanon’s most prominent Christian family, is gunned down in a carefully orchestrated assassination that heightens tensions between the US-backed government and the militant Hezbollah.

2007: Costa Rican President Oscar Arias signs into law a free trade agreement with the country’s Central American neighbours, the United States and the Dominican Republic.

2008: Somali pirates release a hijacked Greek-owned tanker MV Genius with all 19 crew members safe and the oil cargo intact after payment of a ransom.

2009: After offering a home in his church to disaffected Anglicans, Pope Benedict XVI assures the archbishop of Canterbury that he is still committed to seeking closer relations between Roman Catholics and Anglicans.

2010: The Obama Administration’s troubled attempt to revive Mideast peace talks takes another blow when the Palestinian president rejects the latest US plan to get the sides talking again.

2011: Thwarted internationally, the Obama Administration cobbles together a new set of best-available sanctions against Iran that underline its limited capacity to force Tehran to halt its suspected nuclear weapons programme. The US action was coordinated with Britain and Canada.

2012: Israel and the Hamas militant group agree to a ceasefire to end eight days of the fiercest fighting in nearly four years, promising to halt their air strikes and rocket attacks that have killed scores.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Carlo Fragoni, Italian poet (1692-1768); Voltaire, French poet-philosopher (1694-1778); Bjork, Icelandic singer/actress (1965-); Goldie Hawn, US actress (1945-)

— AP