Today is the 307th day of 2023. There are 58 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

Jamaican triple jumper and many-time national champion Kimberly Williams is born this day 1988.

OTHER EVENTS

1394: Charles VI orders Jews expelled from France.

1534: England’s Parliament confirms King Henry VIII holds all judicial and political powers formerly held by the Pope in England.

1839: An opium war flares up when a British frigate sinks Chinese fleet.

1918: Poland declares its independence from Russia.

1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2, the second man-made satellite, into orbit; a dog on-board named Laika is sacrificed in the experiment.

1982: Suriname’s largest labour union, Moederbond, ends a five-day general strike after the nation’s military commander promises free elections, a new constitution and the restoration of civil liberties.

1986: Ash-Shiraa, a pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, breaks the story of US arms sales to Iran, a revelation that escalates into the Iran-Contra affair.

1990: Mozambique’s Parliament approves new constitution ending 15 years of one-party rule.

1991: Israeli and Jordanian-Palestinian delegates agree to pursue talks on interim self-government in Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

1994: A Bosnian refugee, determined to call attention to the slaughter in his homeland, hijacks an airliner only to surrender when he believes the world had heard his plea.

1995: A teen convicted of killing a British tourist at a highway rest stop is sentenced to life in prison in Florida.

1996: Relief officials scramble to find a way to bring aid to a million Rwandan Hutu refugees engulfed in a rebellion in eastern Zaire.

1997: Iraqi President Saddam Hussein threatens to shoot down United States planes that are monitoring the disarmament of his country but the threat never materialises.

2000: Singapore Airlines apologises for its first fatal crash after investigators discover the pilot of a Los Angeles-bound jumbo jet missed clear warning signs and crashed while trying to take off on a runway full of construction equipment.

2004: Ending one of the US Army’s longest desertion cases, Charles Robert Jenkins is sentenced to 30 days in a military jail for abandoning his unit in North Korea nearly 40 years prior.

2005: Allegations that the Central Intelligence Agency set up secret jails in eastern Europe and elsewhere to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners trigger a flurry of denials from governments in the former Soviet sphere and prompt EU officials and human rights organisations to demand answers.

2006: Latin American and Caribbean nations endorse Panama for a seat on the United Nations Security Council, after Guatemala and Venezuela withdrew to break a deadlock that dragged through 47 votes.

2007: General Pervez Musharraf declares a state of emergency in Pakistan, suspending the constitution, replacing the chief justice before a crucial Supreme Court ruling on his future as president, and cutting communications in the capital.

2009: North Korea claims that it has successfully weaponised more plutonium for atomic bombs, a day after warning Washington to agree quickly to direct talks or face the prospect of a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.

2010: President Barack Obama signals a new willingness to yield to Republican demands on tax cuts and gets rid of a key energy priority, less than 24 hours after he and fellow Democrats absorbed election losses so severe he called them a shellacking.

2011: The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumps by the biggest amount on record, the United States Department of Energy calculates, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

2012: Three Syrian tanks enter the demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights, prompting an Israeli complaint to United Nations peacekeepers over the first such violation in 40 years.

2013: The United States and Egypt try to put a brave face on their badly frayed ties and commit to restoring a partnership undermined by the military ouster of Egypt’s first democratically elected president.

2014: New York’s 104-storey One World Trade Center officially opens — 13 years after the September 11 attacks.

2015: Game-maker Activision Blizzard (Call of Duty) buys King.com (Candy Crush) for US $5.9 billion

2017: A Pakistani woman is charged with poisoning 17 members of her husband’s family in attempt to escape her forced marriage, in Punjab Province.

2018: A tuck loses control, hitting 31 cars and killing at least 15 people near a tollbooth in Lanzhou, China.

2019: Delhi reaches its worst pollution levels of the year, over 900 AQI, with authorities declaring a public health emergency.

2021: Four-year old Cleo Smith is found by police in Carnarvon, western Australia, 18 days after she disappeared from a family tent.

2022: Oregon approves a drug-policy reform ballot legalising psilocybin (magic) mushrooms for use in therapy, along with decriminalising possession of small amounts of drugs.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Karl Baedecker, German guide book compiler-publisher (1801-1859); Andre Malraux, French novelist and cultural minister (1901-1976); Charles Bronson, US actor (1922-2003); Adam Ant, British pop singer (1954- ); Kate Capshaw, US actress (1953- )

— AP/ Jamaica Observer