Today is the 354th day of 2022. There are 11 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHIGHT

2003: Political opponents of President Hugo Chavez submit to the National Electoral Council petitions with 3.4 million signatures seeking a referendum to recall Chavez.

OTHER EVENTS

1922: Fourteen republics merge to form the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

1944: The Cuban Government agrees with importers to establish a flour subsidy to end shortages that have left Havana without bread.

1954: France sends 20,000 troops to Algeria to put down an independence movement.

1963: The Berlin Wall opens for the first time to West Berliners, who are allowed one-day visits to relatives in the Eastern sector for the holidays.

1971: President Aga Khan resigns after Pakistan loses control over East Pakistan, now Bangladesh.

1972: Gunmen kill eight men and wound five in one of the bloodiest days of the Northern Ireland conflict.

1973: Spain’s Premier Luis Carrero Blanco is killed when assassins bomb his car in Madrid.

1986: Up to 30,000 students march for democracy through the streets of Shanghai in China’s largest demonstration since the Cultural Revolution.

1987: More than 3,000 people are killed when the Dona Paz, a Philippine passenger ship, collides with the tanker Vector off Mindoro island, setting off a double explosion.

1989: Some 12,000 US troops arrive in Panama to overthrow the Government of General Manuel Antonio Noriega.

1990: Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze resigns suddenly, warning Parliament that hardliners are pushing the country toward dictatorship.

1991: South Africa’s Government, the African National Congress, and other parties begin talks on rewriting the country’s constitution.

1992: Welcomed by thousands of cheering Somalis, US Marines and Belgian paratroopers pour ashore in broad daylight and quickly take control of Kismayu’s port and airport.

1994: Mexico lowers the peso’s trading floor, triggering a drastic devaluation.

1995: An American Airlines jetliner carrying 164 people from Miami to Cali, Colombia, crashes into a mountain in the Andes. All but four people are killed.

1997: Two days after winning the presidential election in South Korea, President Kim Dae-jung pardons former presidents Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, two ex-military dictators who tried to kill him when he was a dissident.

1998: Nkem Chukwu of Houston, Texas, becomes the first woman to give birth to eight live babies.

1999: The Vermont Supreme Court rules that gay couples must be granted the same benefits and protections given married couples of the opposite sex, in the first ruling of its kind in the United States.

2001: Argentine President Fernando de la Rua resigns amid riots sparked by the country’s collapsing economy.

2004: A tribunal upholds President Olusegun Obasanjo’s victory in Nigeria’s first-ever civilian-run vote.

2005: The first full session of Afghanistan’s new Parliament almost breaks down in an uproar after a woman lawmaker demands that all warlords — some of whom are lawmakers — be brought to justice.

2006: Jamaican renowned radio broadcaster Neville Willoughby dies following a motor vehicle accident. Journalist Gao Qinrong, serving a 13-year jail term in China for reporting about a bogus irrigation project, is released five years early, a decision touted as evidence of the country’s willingness to empower the media.

2008: Mexico says it has extradited a record 85 criminal suspects to the United States so far for the year.

2009: China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases, lauds the outcome of a historic UN climate conference that ended with a non-binding agreement that urges major polluters to make deeper emissions cuts — but does not require it.

2010: North Korea backs off threats to retaliate against South Korea for military drills and reportedly offers concessions on its nuclear programme — signs it is looking to lower the temperature on the Korean peninsula after weeks of soaring tensions.

2011: Around 10,000 women march through central Cairo demanding Egypt’s ruling military step down — an unprecedented show of outrage over soldiers who abused them during a fierce crackdown on activists the past week.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

George Roy Hill, US film director (1922-2002); Kim Young-sam, former president of South Korea (1927-2015 ); Kylian Mbappé, French footballer (1998- ); Dylan Wang, Chinese actor (1998- )

­— AP/Jamaica Observer