Today is the 285th day of 2023. There are 80 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2009: Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu vows never to allow Israeli leaders or soldiers to stand trial on war crimes charges over their actions during a military offensive in the Gaza Strip, denouncing a UN report in a keynote address to Parliament.

OTHER EVENTS

1934: Peter II becomes king of Yugoslavia following the assassination of his father, King Alexander.

1956: The UK tells Israel the British will assist Jordan if Israel attacks that country.

1957: The Dr Seuss Yuletide tale How the Grinch Stole Christmas! is first published by Random House.

1961: US public health service reports an increase in radioactive iodine-131 in milk and fresh food in certain areas of the US because of a fallout from Soviet nuclear tests.

1973: US President Richard Nixon nominates House of Representatives Minority Leader Gerald R Ford to succeed Spiro T Agnew as vice-president; Agnew resigned after the US Justice Department revealed he had taken kickbacks.

1984: British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher escapes an attempt on her life when an Irish Republican Army bomb explodes at a hotel in Brighton, England, killing five people.

1987: George Harrison releases the single Got My Mind Set On You, which becomes his third solo number one hit and the last chart-topper by any of The Beatles.

1991: Pope John Paul II makes his second visit to Brazil in an effort to renew interest in the Roman Catholic Church, due to its loss of many Brazilian adherents to Protestant groups and African mystical cults.

1993: German Chancellor Helmut Kohl pledges to move most of the nation’s Government to Berlin from Bonn, the current capital, by the end of the year 2000.

1997: Cuban President Fidel Castro appoints his brother Raul as successor.

1999: The “Day of Six Billion” is proclaimed when the six billionth living human in the world is born.

2000: Seventeen sailors are killed in Yemen during a suicide bomb attack on US destroyer Cole.

2001: The United Nations and its Secretary General Kofi Annan win the Nobel Peace Prize.

2007: Former US Vice-President Al Gore and the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change win the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize for sounding the alarm over global warming.

2016: Wells Fargo announces that embattled CEO John Stumpf is stepping down, as the nation’s second-largest bank finds itself roiled by a scandal over its sales practices. At 17 James Charles becomes the first male face of make-up label CoverGirl.

2019: California is the first US state to pass a law banning the sale and manufacture of new fur products.

2020: China announces it will test the entire city of Qingdao — nine million people — for COVID-19 within five days, after a dozen cases were discovered.

2022: American conspiracy theorist, radio host, and provocateur Alex Jones is ordered by a Connecticut defamation trial jury to pay US$965 million to the families of those killed in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, for falsely and repeatedly claiming on his broadcasts that none of the 20 children and six adults killed had actually died, and that their relatives were crisis actors. Lebanon reports its first death from cholera since 1993, which had spread from neighbouring Syria.

2022: The UN General Assembly passes a resolution condemning Russia’s attempted annexation of Ukrainian territory.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Pedro I, first emperor of Brazil (1798-1834); James Ramsey MacDonald, British prime minister (1865-1937); Edith Stein, German Roman Catholic saint (Saint Teresa Benedicta Of The Cross) (1891-1942); Frank “Freddie” Reginald Martin, Jamaican former West Indian cricketer in the inaugural West Indies Test tour of England (1893-1967 ); Luciano Pavarotti, Italian tenor (1935-2007); Chris Wallace, US broadcast journalist (1947- ); Hugh Jackman, Australian actor (1968- ); Marcus T Paulk, American actor (1986- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer