Today is the 328th day of 2021. There are 37 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: In a potential blow to Caribbean markets, the European Union agrees on a major overhaul of its sugar subsidy programme, cutting prices by 36 per cent in a landmark deal that the EU said will strengthen its hand in upcoming world trade talks.

OTHER EVENTS

1859: British naturalist Charles Darwin publishes On the Origin of Species, explaining his theory of evolution.

1874: Barbed wire is patented by American Joseph F Glidden.

1947: A group of writers, producers and directors known as the Hollywood 10 are cited for contempt by Congress for refusing to answer questions about alleged Communist influence in the movie industry.

1956: The UN General Assembly presses Britain, France and Israel for withdrawal of their troops from Egypt. The United States joins the Soviet and Arab-Asian blocs in voting in favour of the withdrawals.

1961: UN Security Council calls on UN members to make Africa nuclear weapons-free zone.

1963: Lee Harvey Oswald, accused assassin of US President John F Kennedy, is shot to death by Jack Ruby in Dallas, Texas.

1964: Belgian paratroopers, Congolese army and mercenaries recapture Stanleyville in the Congo from rebels.

1970: Japanese writer Yukio Mishima, who wants to lead Japan back to the way of the samurai, leads sword attack on army general’s office in Tokyo, then kills himself in traditional hara-kiri fashion.

1971: Hijacker Dan Cooper parachutes from a Northwest Airlines 727 over Washington state with US$200,000 in ransom. His fate remains unknown.

1972: United States and Thailand agree that America will maintain substantial military presence — mostly air power — in Thailand for an unspecified period after any Vietnamese ceasefire.

1974: US President Gerald Ford and Soviet leader Leonid I Brezhnev meet in Vladivostok and reach tentative agreement to limit number of offensive strategic nuclear weapons.

1975: Earthquake hits eastern Turkey, taking at least 574 lives, and Government says total could reach more than 3,000.

1977: Archaeologist says tomb uncovered near Salonika, Greece, is that of Macedon’s King Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.

1985: Egyptian commandos storm hijacked Egyptian airliner at Malta. An explosion during the assault kills 60 aboard. Two of the dead are hijackers.

1987: The United States and the Soviet Union agree to scrap short- and medium-range missiles in the first superpower treaty to eliminate an entire class of nuclear weapons.

1989: Elias Hrawi is elected president of Lebanon following assassination of Rene Mouawad; Czech Politburo resigns after massive protests.

1990: South Africa’s pan-Africanist Congress announces it will join with African National Congress in opposing the white-led Government.

1991: The US space shuttle Atlantis carries out a military mission where a missile-detection satellite is deployed and astronauts practise sighting strategic installations on the ground.

1992: A Chinese airliner crashes into a mountain 25 kilometres (15 miles) from its destination in the southern city of Guilin, killing all 144 on-board. The crash is the fifth in China in four months.

1993: Two 11-year-old British boys are convicted in the murder of a Liverpool toddler.

1994: A man who hijacked a Russian plane releases all 69 hostages and surrenders in Tallinn, Estonia.

1995: Irish voters decide to legalise divorce, passing a referendum by narrow margin.

1996: A court annuls election results for the Belgrade, Yugoslavia, city council where an Opposition coalition appeared to have won a majority. More than 30,000 people demonstrate against the ruling.

1997: The Taliban rulers of Afghanistan agree to uproot the poppy crop, the source of half the world’s heroin supply.

1998: America Online confirms it will buy Netscape Communications in a deal worth US$10 billion.

2000: Japan announces that Peru’s disgraced ex-President Alberto Fujimori can live permanently in the land of his ancestors if he so wishes because proof exists that his parents were Japanese. It also means he cannot be extradited.

2003: The High Court in Glasgow, Scotland, rules that Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, a Libyan intelligence agent convicted in 2001 for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, will serve 27 years in prison before becoming eligible for parole.

2007: Australia’s Conservative Prime Minister John Howard suffers a humiliating defeat to the left-leaning opposition Labor Party head Kevin Rudd in elections.

2008: Muslim charity, the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development, and five of its former leaders are convicted by a federal jury in Dallas, Texas, of funneling millions of dollars to the Palestinian militant group Hamas.

2012: The No 2 leader in the Islamic military group Hamas that rules Gaza says the group will not stop arming itself because only a strong arsenal, not negotiations, can extract concessions from Israel.

Today’s Birthdays

Baruch Spinoza, Dutch philosopher (1632-1677); Abdel-Illah, crown prince of Iraq (1913-1958); William F Buckley, US magazine publisher and conservative thinker (1925-2008); Alfredo Kraus, Spanish tenor (1927-1999); Arthur Chaskalson, first chief justice of South African Constitutional Court (1931-2012)

— AP