Today is the 333rd day of 2023. There are 32 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHTS

1996: The Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, passes its first sentence, giving a 25-year-old Croat soldier Drazen Erdemovic a 10-year prison sentence for his role in the massacre of 1,200 Muslims in Bosnia.

2017: Bosnian war criminal Slobodan Praljak commits suicide by poison in court at The Hague, after his 20-year prison term is read out.

2018: Tens of thousands Indian farmers protest the agrarian crisis at Parliament in Delhi.

OTHER EVENTS

1947: The United Nations General Assembly adopts a resolution calling for the partition of Palestine into two separate states, an Arab and a Jewish one, that would retain an economic union.

1958: Eleven more people are sentenced to death for their part in Nigerian political riots in March, bringing the number up to 48.

1972: Co-founder of Atari, Nolan Bushnell releases Pong in Andy Capp’s Tavern in Sunnyvale, California, it is the first commercially successful video game.

1987: A North Korean agent is arrested in Bahrain and confesses to planting a bomb on her Government’s orders to disrupt the 1988 Seoul Olympics.

1989: In response to a growing pro-democracy movement in Czechoslovakia, the Communist-run Parliament ends the party’s 40-year monopoly on power.

1990: The UN Security Council adopts a resolution allowing the use of “whatever means necessary” to dislodge Iraq from Kuwait if Iraqi forces are not withdrawn and all foreign hostages released by January 15.

1999: Northern Ireland’s rival parties form a Protestant-Catholic Government that requires bitter enemies to share power for the first time in history.

2001: Representatives of the diamond industry and more than 30 governments agree to certify all legitimate shipments of rough diamonds, in an unprecedented effort to weed out the trade in gems that has been used to fund civil wars in Africa.

2003: Britain rules against the extradition of Akhmed Zakayev, a representative of the separatist Government-in-exile from the Chechnya region in Russia, citing the likelihood that Zakayev would be tortured by Russian authorities if he was returned.

2004: China moves to expand its influence in a region long dominated by the United States, signing an accord with Southeast Asian nations aimed at creating the world’s largest free trade area by 2010 — a sprawling market of nearly two billion people.

2006: Officials find traces of radiation on two British Airways jets, a twist in the inquiry into the poisoning death of a former Russian spy.

2008: Two days of ferocious ethnic and religious violence between Muslims and Christians in Jos, Nigeria, end with the imposition of a curfew; at least 400 people die during the fighting.

2009: Iran approves plans to build 10 industrial-scale uranium enrichment facilities — an expansion of the programme in defiance of UN demands to halt enrichment.

2010: Adele releases the Rolling in the Deep single; it wins Billboard Song of the Year for 2011, and a Grammy Award each for Record of the Year and Song of the Year in 2012.

2011: Hard-line Iranian protesters storm British diplomatic compounds, hauling down the Union Jack, torching an embassy vehicle, and pelting buildings with petrol bombs in what began as an apparent State-approved show of anger over the latest Western sanctions to punish Tehran for defiance regarding its nuclear programme.

2016: Former NFL player Darren Sharper sentenced to 20 years in prison for a series of rapes.

2019: K-pop stars Jung Joon-young and Choi Jong-hoon are sentenced to prison for gang-raping unconscious fans and distributing footage of it.

2021: British socialite and former girlfriend of Jeffery Epstein Ghislaine Maxwell is found guilty of sex trafficking in a federal court in Manhattan, USA.

2021: Jack Dorsey announces he is stepping down as CEO of Twitter.

2022: For the first time, fewer than half the people in England and Wales call themselves Christian, according to the 2021 census. Singapore’s Parliament repeals British-era Section 377A that decriminalises gay sex but introduces amendments to protect the current definition of marriage.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Gaetano Donizetti, Italian opera composer (1797-1848); Christian Doppler, Austrian physicist (1803-1853); Louisa May Alcott, US writer of Little Women novel (1832-1888); Cixi, empress dowager of China (1835-1908); C S Lewis, Irish-born author and scholar (1898-1963); Jacques Chirac, president of France (1932-2019); Robert Lightbourne, Jamaican innovator, industrialist, politician, music composer for Jamaica’s national anthem (1909-1995)

— AP/Jamaica Observer