TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1970: Voters in Switzerland reject proposal to force almost one-third of a million aliens to leave that country.

OTHER EVENTS

1099: The First Crusade reaches its target, Jerusalem, and starts to besiege the city.

1862: Britain and US sign treaty to suppress the slave trade.

1989: Foreign embassies rush to get their citizens out of Beijing after crackdown against pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.

1990: US House of Representatives votes to bar the sale of computers and telecommunications gear to Soviet Union until Moscow begins negotiating Lithuania’s independence.

1994: After two months of genocide, the US agrees to a UN peace-keeping mission to Rwanda after receiving assurances that UN troops would not be called on to fight.

1995: Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui is greeted in California by a cheering crowd of ethnic Chinese as he becomes the island’s first president to set foot in the US.

1996: Negotiators in Vienna agree on how, and when to reduce arms stockpiles across the former Yugoslavia.

1997: Foreigners flee heavy fighting between rival militias in Brazzaville, Republic of Congo.

1998: Lebanon holds its first municipal elections in 35 years. Muslim and Christian voters in Beirut endorse religious harmony.

1999: Indonesians vote in democratic elections for the first time since 1955. More than 96 per cent turn out for the unexpectedly peaceful voting.

2000: A suspected Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam suicide bomber shatters Sri Lanka’s first-ever War Heroes Day, killing a Cabinet minister and 20 others during a fund-raiser for the families of slain soldiers.

2001: Former Argentine president Carlos Menem is placed under house arrest as part of an alleged arms-trafficking probe. He is released in November after Argentina’s Supreme Court ruled that prosecutors failed to prove he led the conspiracy.

2002: Israeli troops shell Yasser Arafat’s headquarters. The previous day 17 people were killed in a Palestinian suicide attack that detonated a car bomb by a crowded bus.

2003: A vehicle packed with explosives detonates next to a bus carrying German peace-keeping troops in Kabul, Afghanistan’s capital, killing four soldiers including an Afghan bystander and wounding 31 others.

2004: Prime Minister Ariel Sharon survives no-confidence votes in parliament, a sign that his coalition is in no immediate danger of collapse, despite Cabinet approval of a divisive Gaza withdrawal plan a day earlier.

2005: Riot police in La Paz fire tear gas and clash with protesters, demanding more power for Bolivia’s impoverished Indian majority as an offer by the president to resign fails to halt a crippling blockade in the Bolivian capital.

2006: King Abdullah II of Jordan warns that his country can never again serve as a “substitute homeland” for Palestinians, signalling that Jordan fears a destabilising flood of refugees if Israel unilaterally redraws its borders.

2010: Egypt says that it will leave its border with Gaza open indefinitely for humanitarian aid and restricted travel after three years of cooperating in the Israeli blockade of the Palestinian territory.

2011: US officials say Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh was burned over 40 per cent of his body and suffered bleeding in the brain from last weekend’s attack on his palace, indicating his wounds were worse than initially reported. The revelation casts doubts on a quick return to Yemen and spells a deepening power vacuum.

2012: Two US officials testify at a court martial hearing that the State Department took extraordinary steps to limit harm to foreign relations and individuals, after an Army private allegedly sent 250,000 classified diplomatic cables to the secret-sharing website WikiLeaks.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Alexander Pushkin, Russian writer (1799-1837); Paul Gauguin, French painter (1848-1903); Henry Lawson, Australian poet (1867-1922); Imre Nagy, Hungarian premier (1896-1958); Tom Jones, Welsh-born pop singer (1940-); Liam Neeson, actor (1952); Orhan Pamuk, Turkish writer (1952-); William Forsythe, US actor (1955-); Prince, rock singer (1958-2016), Dave Navarro, rock guitarist (1967-).

— AP