Today is the178th day of 2023. There are 187 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: Surgeon General Richard Carmona issues a report which reveals that breathing any amount of someone else’s tobacco smoke harms non-smokers.

OTHER EVENTS

1991: Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall, the first black jurist to sit on the nation’s highest court, announces his retirement.

1992: Crown Prince Alexander, heir to the Yugoslav throne, receives an emotional welcome upon his return, hopeful of re-establishing the monarchy.

1994: Freezing temperatures cover large areas of Brazil’s coffee-growing regions, causing losses of nearly a quarter of the following year’s crop.

1996: US President Bill Clinton and other world leaders, at their annual G-7 summit in Lyon, France, pledge to combat international terrorism in the aftermath of a truck bomb that killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia.

1997: Tajikistan’s president and a rebel leader sign a peace pact ending five years of bitter civil war in the Central Asian nation, but fighting lingers.

2000: The United Nations releases a report that reveals AIDS killed 19 million people worldwide; the report predicts the disease will wipe out half the teenagers in some African nations, devastating economies and societies.

2001: The World Court, formally known as the International Court of Justice, rules 14-1 that the United States had violated an international treaty by not halting the execution by the state of Arizona of two German brothers in 1999.

2004: The premier, under ousted Haitian President Jean-Bertrand Aristide, is detained on suspicion of orchestrating killings during the February rebellion, officials report.

2005: The US Supreme Court rules that long-standing outdoor displays of the Ten Commandments on government property are permissable under the constitution but newer indoor displays of the Bible verses in courthouses violate the prohibition against government establishment of religion.

2006: A motion to recall President Chen Shui-bian of Taiwan is defeated. A constitutional amendment to ban desecration of the American flag dies in a Senate cliffhanger, falling one vote short of the 67 needed to send it to states for ratification.

2008: North Korea destroys the most visible symbol of its nuclear weapons programme, blasting the cooling tower at its main atomic reactor into a cloud of smoke as a sign of its commitment to stop making plutonium for atomic bombs.

2009: North Atlantic Treaty Organization and Russia agree to resume military ties in their first high-level meeting since Russia’s war with Georgia disrupted their relations 10 months before.

2010: A referendum on a proposed new constitution that reduces the power of the president and makes the country a parliamentary democracy takes place in Kyrgyzstan; the document is overwhelmingly approved.

2011: The International Criminal Court issues an arrest warrant for Moammar Gadhafi, accusing him of crimes against humanity for killing civilians who rose up against his rule. Venus and Serena Williams are eliminated in the fourth round of Wimbledon, the first time in five years neither sister advance to the quarter-finals at the All England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club.

2015: The Episcopal Church elects its first African American presiding bishop, choosing Bishop Michael Curry of North Carolina during the denomination’s national assembly in Salt Lake City.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Emma Goldman, Russian labour leader-anarchist (1869-1940); Byron Lee (Byron Lee and the Dragonaires), Jamaican musician, record producer and entrepreneur (1935-2008); Viktor Petrenko, Ukrainian Olympic gold and bronze medal figure skater (1969- ); Vera Wang, fashion designer (1949- ); Jo Frost, UK TV personality (Supernanny) (1970- ); Khloe Kardashian, reality TV star (1984- )

– AP and Jamaica Observer