Today is the 8th day of 2013. There are 357 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1998: Ramzi Yousef, an Arab of uncertain nationality, is sentenced to life in prison plus 240 years for masterminding the World Trade Center bombing in New York that killed six people in 1993.

OTHER EVENTS

1654: Ukraine joins Russia.

1815: The Battle of New Orleans takes place with Andrew Jackson defeating the British army in the closing engagement of the War of 1812.

1912: The African National Congress is founded in Bloemfontein.

1915: Heavy fighting breaks out in areas of the Assee Canal in Belgium and Soissons, France, in World War I.

1918: US President Woodrow Wilson outlines his 14 points for peace after World War I.

1926: Ibn Saud becomes king of Hejaz on King Hussein’s expulsion and changes name of kingdom to Saudi Arabia.

1959: Charles de Gaulle assumes the presidency in France, inaugurating the Fifth Republic.

1964: US President Lyndon Johnson declares an “unconditional war on poverty in America”.

1972: Bangladesh leader Sheik Mujibur Rahman arrives in London after being released by Pakistan and appeals for recognition of his new nation.

1973: Secret peace talks between the United States and North Vietnam resume near Paris.

1974: Khmer Rouge in Cambodia intensify pressure on Phnom Penh with strikes north and south of the capital.

1982: Settling an antitrust lawsuit from the US Justice Department, the American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) monopoly divests itself of the 22 regional Bell System companies.

1989: Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev says Kremlin is besieged by financial problems that are sapping his reforms.

1990: East German official discloses that 60,000 members of secret police are still on government payroll despite the previous month’s pledge that organisation would be dismantled.

1992: US President George H W Bush collapses to the floor at a state dinner in Tokyo. The White House says he is suffering from stomach flu.

1993: The deputy prime minister of Bosnia is shot to death by Serbian gunmen while Serbian rebel leaders consider an international peace settlement.

1996: A cargo plane crashes into a crowded market in Kinshasa, Zaire (Congo), killing 255 people by the official count. The unofficial death toll reaches 1,000.

2003: A US Court of Appeals rules that US citizens detained in combat abroad could be held indefinitely, without access to a lawyer, with only “limited judicial inquiry” into their detention.

2004: Britain bans airlines from Albania, Sierra Leone, Equatorial Guinea, Gambia, Liberia, Tajikistan, Congo, and Cameroon from flying in British airspace, citing inadequate safety and security regulations.

2006: A US Army Black Hawk helicopter crashes and kills all 12 Americans believed to be aboard, while five Marines die in weekend attacks in Iraq.

2007: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez announces plans to nationalise the country’s electrical and telecommunications companies, one of his boldest moves in trying to transform Venezuela into a socialist state.

2009: Leonidas Vargas, a convicted Colombian drug baron with links to two major smuggling cartels, is shot dead in a Madrid hospital.

2011: Spain’s leading broadcaster says it will no longer show the country’s centuries-old tradition of bullfighting in order to protect children from viewing violence.

2012: Iran begins uranium enrichment at a new underground site built to withstand possible airstrikes, a leading hard-line newspaper reports, in another show of defiance against Western pressure to rein in Tehran’s nuclear programme.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jose Ferrer, Puerto Rican-born actor-director (1912-1992); Elvis Presley, US singer (1935-1977); Shirley Bassey, Welsh-born singer (1937-); Yvette Mimieux, French actress (1942-); David Bowie, English singer-actor (1947-); Michelle Forbes, US actress (1965-); Gaby Hoffman, US actress (1982-)

—AP