Today is the 9th day of 2013. There are 356 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2001: Some British schools begin handing out the morning-after pill to students, setting off a debate over parental rights as the government tries to curb an alarming rate of teenage pregnancy.

OTHER EVENTS

1951: United Nations headquarters opens in New York.

1962: Soviet Union and Cuba sign trade pact.

1964: Anti-US rioting breaks out in the Panama Canal Zone, resulting in the deaths of 21 Panamanians and three US soldiers.

1965: An estimated 500 people suspected of being rebels are executed by Congo government forces in Stanleyville in six weeks since city was retaken.

1973: White-ruled country of Rhodesia closes its borders with Zambia to try to cut off black liberation forces.

1977: Palestinian nationalist, Abou Daoud, suspected of having planned attacks on Israeli athletes at 1972 Olympic games in Munich, is arrested in Paris by French intelligence agents.

1978: Islamic revolution erupts in Iran.

1987: The White House releases a memorandum prepared for US President Ronald Reagan in January 1986 that showed a definite link between US arms sales to Iran and the release of American hostages in Lebanon.

1991: US defence officials adopt a set of press rules for the impending war in the Persian Gulf that is criticised as bordering on censorship.

1992: Serbs in Bosnia-Herzegovina proclaim their own state.

1993: In a symbolic victory, government troops capture the headquarters of UNITA rebel leader Jonas Savimbi in central Angola. Savimbi, however, escapes.

1995: Russian forces close in on the Chechen presidential palace in Grozny.

1996: Chechen rebels demanding an end to the war in their breakaway republic seize a hospital and at least 2,000 hostages in Kizlyar, Dagestan, and battle Russian troops in the town’s streets. At least 40 people die.

1997: Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak inaugurates a pumping station designed to send Nile river waters west from Nasser Lake to create a second river valley for Egypt’s growing population.

1998: Eight inmates die when a riot erupts in a prison in south-eastern Brazil.

2000: An investigation into leaks in Switzerland’s vaunted bank secrecy turns up 13 people in eight countries who illegally received data on other people’s Swiss bank accounts.

2002: Hamid Karzai, head of the interim Afghan government, announces a plan to disarm Afghan citizens and create a national army.

2003: Weapons inspectors Hans Blix and Mohamed ElBaradei tell the UN Security Council they had not uncovered any “smoking gun” evidence proving that Iraq possessed or sought to develop chemical, biological or nuclear weapons.

2004: US National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice admits that the United States has no credible evidence that Iraq moved weapons of mass destruction into Syria early in 2003 before the US-led war that drove Saddam Hussein from power.

2005: Mahmoud Abbas is elected Palestinian Authority president by a wide margin, winning a decisive mandate to renew peace talks with Israel, rein in militants, and try to end more than four years of Mideast bloodshed.

2008: Kosovo’s Parliament elects former rebel leader Hashim Thaci as prime minister in a vote foreshadowing a declaration of independence from Serbia.

2009: A US federal appeals court reinstates a human rights lawsuit against Mohamed Ali Samantar of Fairfax, Virginia. He is a former prime minister of Somalia who is accused of overseeing killings and other atrocities.

2011: Men and women walk to election stations in the middle of the night to create a new nation, Southern Sudan, after a two-decade civil war with the north, a conflict that left 2 million people dead.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Pope Gregory XV (Allesandro Ludovisi) (1554-1623); Thomas Warton, English poet laureate (1728-1790); Karel Capek, Czechoslovak author (1890-1938); Richard M Nixon, US president (1913-1994); Sekou Toure, first president of Guinea (1922-1984); Joan Baez, US folk singer (1941-); Jimmy Page, English guitarist w/rock group Led Zeppelin (1944-)

 — AP