Today is the 25th day of 2023. There are 340 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HGHLIGHT

1949: The first Emmy Awards are presented; only six categories are recognised and nominated shows are limited to those that air in the Los Angeles area.

OTHER EVENTS

1945: In an effort to prevent tooth decay, Grand Rapids, Michigan, becomes the first US city to add fluoride to its water system.

1961: US President John F Kennedy holds the first presidential news conference carried live on radio and television.

1971: Charles Manson and three female followers are convicted in Los Angeles of murder and conspiracy in the 1969 slayings of seven people; their crimes inspired the best-selling book Helter Skelter in 1974.

1975: Sheik Mujibur Rahman abolishes parliamentary rule in Bangladesh and assumes absolute powers as president.

1981: The 52 Americans held hostage by Iran for 444 days return home.

1989: Cambodia’s Premier Hun Sen rejects the proposal for an international peacekeeping force in his country.

1992: Russian President Boris Yeltsin says Russia will stop targeting US cities with nuclear missiles.

1993: Two French UN peacekeepers are killed and three wounded as Serb-Croat clashes rage on in southern Croatia.

1994: Michael Jackson settles a lawsuit regarding the molestation of a young boy without admitting guilt, the terms of which settlement leave the boy “very happy”, the youngster’s attorney says.

1995: Jews from around the world return to Auschwitz-Birkenau, the Nazis’ biggest death complex where 1.5 million people were killed before it was liberated 50 years prior.

1998: The pope holds a sermon on the virtues of democracy in Havana, Cuba, with dictator Fidel Castro in the audience.

1999: An earthquake devastates a coffee-growing region in Colombia, killing at least 940 people.

2000: Former Tehran Mayor Gholamhossein Karbaschimayor, serving a two-year jail term for embezzlement after running afoul of the hard-line leadership, is pardoned by Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

2001: Israel and the Palestinians continue to make good progress in drawing the borders of a future Palestinian State, negotiators announce.

2005: Outspoken, former communist-era government spokesperson Jerzy Urban is convicted of libel and fined for insulting the Polish-born Pope John Paul II in his satirical magazine.

2006: Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians crowd polling stations in their first parliamentary elections in a decade; Hamas emerges as winner — a stunning victory for Islamic radicals.

2007: Russian President Vladimir Putin offers to build four new nuclear reactors for energy-starved India, cementing his country’s traditional role as India’s main nuclear benefactor.

2008: A car bomb rips through eastern Beirut killing three plus Lebanon’s top anti-terrorism investigator who was probing the assassinations of prominent anti-Syrian figures.

2010: Suicide bombers strike in quick succession at three Baghdad hotels favoured by Western journalists, in well-planned assaults that kill at least 37 people and wound more than 100.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Edmund Campion, English Jesuit (1540-1581); Robert Burns, Scottish poet (1759-1796); Virginia Wolff, English author (1882-1941); Witold Lutoslawski, modern Polish composer and conductor (1913-1994); Etta James, US blues singer (1938-2012); Paul Foreman, Jamaican Olympian (1939-2020 ); Alicia Keys, US R&B singer (1981- )

— AP