Today is the 63rd day of 2014. There are 302 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: Flags fly at half-staff as Canadians grapple with the deadliest attack on police officers in 120 years, after four Mounties were slain during a raid on a marijuana farm in a rural western hamlet.

OTHER EVENTS

1681: England’s King Charles II grants a charter to William Penn for land that later becomes Pennsylvania.

1789: The Constitution of the United States goes into effect as the first Federal Congress meets in New York City.

1829: An unruly crowd mobs the White House during the inaugural reception for US President Andrew Jackson.

1917: German army begins major withdrawal on Western Front in World War I.

1933: The start of US President Franklin Roosevelt’s first administration has the first woman to serve in Cabinet: Labour Secretary Frances Perkins.

1965: Syria orders nationalisation of nine oil companies, including affiliates of two US concerns.

1970: French submarine with 57 aboard is lost in Mediterranean Sea off the Riviera.

1973: Eight Black September terrorists end their occupation of Saudi Arabian Embassy in Khartoum, Sudan, after slaying three foreign diplomats.

1987: US President Ronald Reagan addresses the nation on the Iran-Contra affair, acknowledging his overtures to Iran had “deteriorated” into an arms-for-hostages deal.

1994: Four Muslim extremists are convicted in the World Trade Centre bombing in New York.

1997: Convoys of policemen and soldiers move into chaotic southern Albania, where the government has lost control after protests that began with the failure of pyramid investment schemes.

1998: Flash floods in Pakistan kill at least 300 people, including dozens of schoolchildren trapped by raging waters. Another 1,500 people are missing and feared dead.

2002: The parliament of the Serbian province of Kosovo elects ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova as president, ending a political deadlock that delayed the formation of a government.

2004: The White House defends President George W Bush’s campaign commercials that show images from September 11, 2001. The ads anger several victims’ relatives and the International Association of Fire Fighters Union demands the ads be pulled.

2006: The Arab League announces that it will open offices in Iraq for the first time since the 2003 US-led invasion, part of its efforts to help reconcile the country’s Sunni Arab, Shiite and Kurdish communities.

2007: Ivory Coast President Laurent Gbagbo and rebel leader Guillaume Soro sign a peace accord reuniting the country by dismantling a vast buffer zone that separated the two sides.

2008: Thousands of bus and train drivers, pre-school teachers and waterworks employees walk off their jobs in most of Germany’s 16 states in an effort to win higher pay for German public service workers.

2009: Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton swipes hard at Iran, accusing its hardline rulers of fomenting divisions in Arab countries and promoting terrorism.

2010: Turkey, a key Muslim ally of the United States, angrily withdraws its US ambassador after a congressional committee approves a resolution branding the World War I-era killing of Armenians a genocide.

2011: Moammar Gadhafi’s regime strikes back at its opponents with a powerful attack on the closest opposition-held city to Tripoli and a barrage of tear gas and live ammunition to smother new protests in the capital. At least 37 people died in fighting and in an explosion at an ammunition depot in Libya’s rebellious east.

2012: Vladimir Putin claims victory in Russia’s presidential election before tens of thousands of cheering supporters, even as the opposition and independent observers insist the vote has been marred by widespread fraud.

2013: Dozens of Syrian soldiers who had crossed into Iraq for refuge are ambushed in an attack that killed 48 of them and heightened concerns that the country could be drawn into Syria’s civil war.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Prince Henry the Navigator, patron of explorers (1394-1460); Antonio Vivaldi, Italian composer (1648-1741); Sir Henry Raeburn, Scottish artist (1756-1823); Charles Goren, US contract bridge authority (1901-1991); Miriam Makeba, South African singer (1932-2008); Patricia Heaton, US actress (1958-); Chastity Bono, daughter of Sonny and Cher (1969-); Catherine O’Hara, US actress (1954-); Scott Hicks, Australian director (1953-)

— AP