Today is the 191st day of 2023. There are 174 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2000: The US Census Bureau releases figures at the 13th International AIDS Conference that indicate AIDS may cause life expectancy in some sub-Saharan African countries to fall to as low as 30 by 2010.

OTHER EVENTS

1559: Mary, Queen of Scots, claims title of Queen of England, in opposition to Elizabeth I; Scottish nobles rebel and she is beheaded in 1587 as a Catholic threat to the English throne.

1609: The Catholic League is formed in Munich to oppose the Protestant Union, raising tensions in Germany that erupt into the Thirty Years’ War.

1962: The Telstar satellite is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, bringing live television from the United States to Europe for the first time.

1973: The Bahamas gains independence after three centuries of British rule.

1976: Four mercenaries — three British and one American — are executed by firing squad in Angola as three rebel movements struggle for power following the country’s decolonisation from Portugal in 1975.

1989: A rocket barrage kills 20 people in Kabul, Afghanistan.

1991: Boris Yeltsin takes the oath of office as the first elected president of Russia. US President George H W Bush lifts economic sanctions against South Africa.

1992: The Polish Parliament approves the country’s first woman prime minister, Hanna Suchocka.

1995: Opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi is freed from house arrest in Rangoon, Burma, now known as Yangon, Myanmar, days before completing her six-year detention.

1997: Some 100,000 people demonstrate in London against a proposed ban on fox hunting.

1998: A UN conference produces a draft treaty for a world criminal court that would grant the prosecutor sweeping authority, a measure vigorously opposed by the US.

1999: Six nations fighting in Congo’s civil war sign a long-awaited peace accord but squabbling rebels balk at this, dashing hopes for a speedy end to the continent’s biggest conflict.

2000: A mountain of garbage loosened by rain collapses and bursts into flames at the biggest dump in Manila, Philippines, flattening squatters’ shanties and killing at least 216 people.

2001: A New York jury spares the life of a Tanzanian national in the deadly 1998 bombing of a US embassy in Africa, opting instead for a sentence of life in prison without parole.

2004: Saudi Arabia says it will hold municipal elections in September, the first polls to be held in decades in the conservative kingdom where political parties are banned and press freedoms are limited.

2006: Chechen rebel leader Shamil Basayev, responsible for terror attacks that led to the deaths of more than 800 people, is killed when a dynamite-laden truck in his convoy explodes.

2007: Pakistani troops storm the compound of Islamabad’s Red Mosque after a week-long stand-off, prompting a fierce firefight with pro-Taliban militants accused of holding about 150 hostages inside; at least 50 rebels and eight soldiers are killed.

2008: Kuwait announces it will name its first ambassador to Iraq since Saddam Hussein’s troops invaded the country in 1990, a major step in healing the two countries’ painful past.

2009: Pope Benedict XVI stresses the church’s opposition to abortion and stem cell research in his first meeting with President Barack Obama, pressing the Vatican’s case with the US leader who is already under fire on those issues from some conservative US Roman Catholics and bishops.

2010: Psychologists in the United States are warned by their professional group not to take part in torturing detainees in US custody.

2011: British tabloid News of the World publishes its last edition after 168 years and Rupert Murdoch swoops into Britain to face the growing phone-hacking scandal that prompted the closure and threatens to derail a US$19-billion broadcasting deal.

2012: The American Episcopal Church becomes the first to approve a rite for blessing gay marriages.

2013: Canadian officials tell distraught families that 30 people still missing after the fiery crash of a runaway oil train in eastern Quebec are all presumed dead, bringing the death toll in the derailment and explosion to 50.

2015 The Confederate flag is taken down for the last time from South Carolina Capitol grounds, one day after the state legislature ordered it removed.

2018: Drake surpasses The Beatles’ record of most singles on the Billboard Hot One 100 with a total seven from his album Scorpion against their five. Real Madrid forward Cristiano Ronaldo joins Italian champions Juventus in a deal worth £99.2 million, becoming one of the four most expensive players of all time.

2019: The earliest evidence of modern humans outside Africa is found with the discovery of a 210,000-year-old skull from Apidima Cave, in southern Greece, which is published in the journal Nature. Taylor Swift is named the world’s highest-paid entertainer by Forbes, earning US$185 million in 2018. German automaker Volkswagen ends production of the Beetle, the first model of which had been introduced in 1938.

2022: Novak Djoković wins his fourth-straight and record-equalling seventh Wimbledon singles title.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Jean Calvin, French religious reformer (1509-1564); Toyohiko Kagawa, Japanese writer (1888-1960); Giorgio de Chirico, Italian painter (1888-1978); Herb McKenley, Jamaican Olympian and world record breaker (1922-2007); Hugo Banzer, president of Bolivia (1926-2002); Arthur Ashe, US tennis player (1943-1993); Sofía Vergara, Colombian actress (1972- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer