Today is the 332nd day of 2012. There are 33 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1990: Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Kwan Yew steps down after 31 years in power.

OTHER EVENTS

1520: Portuguese navigator Ferdinand Magellan reaches Pacific Ocean from the Atlantic after passing through a South American strait now bearing his name.

1821: Panama declares itself independent of Spain and joins the Republic of Colombia.

1885: British forces occupy Mandalay in Burma.

1897: Germany occupies Kiao-Chow in northern China, where German missionaries were slain.

1905: Sinn Fein Party, part of the Irish Republican movement, is founded in Dublin, Ireland.

1916: German planes make their first raid on London, already subject to Zeppelin bombardments.

1919: Lady Astor is elected first woman member of Britain’s Parliament.

1922: Six former ministers of Greece are executed.

1942: Almost 500 people perish in fire that destroys Coconut Grove nightclub in Boston, Massachusetts.

1943: US President Franklin D Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet leader Josef Stalin meet in Tehran, Iran, during World War II.

1944: Albania is liberated from German occupation.

1958: The African nation of Chad becomes an autonomous republic within the French community.

1960: Mauritania becomes independent republic, separating from France.

1967: Communist China is turned down for admission to the United Nations for the 18th time.

1977: Rhodesia announces 1,200 have been killed in its recent raids against black nationalist guerrillas across the border in Mozambique.

1980: Haitian police arrest some 200 journalists, politicians, human rights activists, doctors and teachers for alleged communist-inspired agitation and criticising the Government’s economic policies.

1987: South African Airways jet plane with 159 people aboard crashes in Indian Ocean near Mauritius.

1990: Britain’s Queen Elizabeth II confers prime ministership on John Major.

1991: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi says he will not surrender two Libyans accused of the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland.

1994: Norwegians reject European Union membership.

1996: A former Rio de Janeiro state trooper, Nelson Oliveira dos Santos Cunha, is found guilty of murdering eight homeless youths in July 1993. He is sentenced to 261 years in prison.

1999: Hsing-Hsing, the only panda at the Washington National Zoo in the US capital, is put to sleep after months of failing health.

2000: Rescuers in Jakarta struggle to find survivors after devastating floods and landslides on Indonesia’s Sumatra island kill more than 100 people.

2001: Enron Corp, the largest US energy-trading concern, collapses after its credit is downgraded to junk-bond status and its smaller rival, Dynegy Inc, backs out of a US$9-billion deal to buy the troubled company.

2003: Opponents of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez hold a drive to collect the 2.4-million signatures needed for a recall election to remove Chavez from office.

2004: Iran agrees not to test any centrifuges as part of a total suspension of nuclear activities that could yield weapons-grade uranium, in what diplomats describe as an apparent about-face to avoid possible UN Security Council sanctions.

2006: Russia announces it is lifting its ban on Moldovan wine and meat products, a move that appears to be aimed at easing Moscow’s entry into the World Trade Organisation.

2007: President Pervez Musharraf steps down from his powerful post as Pakistan’s military commander, a day before he is to be sworn in as a civilian president in a long-delayed pledge not to hold both jobs.

2010: Hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters protest outside vote-counting stations, scuffling with police and denouncing what they called widespread fraud in Egypt’s parliament elections, as the Government appears determined to ensure its monopoly on the legislature in uncertain political times.

2011: European leaders rush to stop a rampaging debt crisis that threatens to shatter their 12-year-old experiment in a common currency and devastate the world economy as a result.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAY

Jose Iturbi, Spanish pianist-conductor (1895-1980); Keith Miller, Australian cricket star (1919-2004); Gary Hart, former US senator and presidential candidate (1937-); Jon Stewart, US television host (1962-); Ed Harris, US actor (1950-); Berry Gordy Jr, US Motown Records founder (1929-)

—AP