Today is the 246th day of 2024. There are 120 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: Thousands of unpaid teachers across the Palestinian territories go on strike, shutting down schools on the first day of class — a backlash that tests the Hamas-led Government’s ability to survive.

OTHER EVENTS

1969: National hero and Jamaica’s first and only premier, Norman Manley dies.

1990: The Saudi defence minister says his country cannot be used as jumping-off point for any attack on Iraq.

1995: A boat on its way to a protest at the edge of Cuban territorial waters sinks near Key West, Florida, with 47 Cuban exiles on-board; one person dies.

1996: Muslim rebels and the Philippine Government sign a pact formally ending a 26-year insurgency that killed more than 120,000 people. A Tokyo court orders cult guru Shoko Asahara to pay US$7.5 million in damages to victims of a 1995 nerve gas attack on the city’s subways.

1998: A Swissair jetliner crashes off Nova Scotia, Canada, killing all 220 aboard.

2000: The four-day World Conference on Assisted Dying, attended by about 500 people from 22 countries, opens in Boston; members of the disabled rights group Not Dead Yet protest outside the venue.

2003: The US 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco votes to apply retroactively a recent Supreme Court decision on death penalty sentencing procedures, overturning more than 100 death sentences in Arizona, Idaho and Montana.

2005: A Belfast judge orders a suspected Irish Republican Army dissident to stand trial for the murders of 29 people in a 1998 car bombing in Omagh, Northern Ireland’s deadliest terrorist attack.

2007: The chief US negotiator says North Korea has agreed to declare and disable all its nuclear facilities by the end of the year.

2008: Thailand’s prime minister declares a state of emergency in Bangkok to restore order after overnight clashes between Government opponents and supporters leave one person dead and 43 injured.

2009: A Taliban suicide bomber attacks officials leaving a mosque east of Kabul, killing the country’s deputy intelligence chief and 23 other people in a major blow to Afghanistan’s security forces.

2010: British physicist and mathematician Stephen Hawking argues in his new book that there need not be a God behind the creation of the universe.

2010: American fast food chain Burger King agrees to be bought by the Brazilian-backed investment firm 3G Capital.

2011: Turkey expels Israel’s ambassador and cuts military ties over Israel’s refusal to apologise for the previous year’s deadly raid on a Gaza-bound aid flotilla, further straining a relationship that had been a cornerstone of regional stability.

2012: A Muslim cleric is accused of stashing pages of a Quran in a Christian girl’s bag to make it seem like she burned the Islamic holy book, a surprising twist in a case that causes international outcry over Pakistan’s strict blasphemy laws. A decades-long ban on veiled female news presenters is lifted from State television in Egypt.

2014: The militant Islamist group ISIL/ISIS releases a video showing the beheading of American freelance journalist Steven Sotloff, who was captured in Syria a year earlier, and warn President Barack Obama the acts will continue as long as US air strikes continue to hit the militant group; the execution is said to be in retaliation for the US campaign against the jihadist organisation.

2015: Earth’s trees number just over three trillion, according to a study in Nature by Thomas Crowther of Yale University.

2016: Following much speculation, the death of Islam Karimov, the first president of Uzbekistan, is officially announced.

2018: A major fire at National Museum of Brazil in Rio de Janeiro destroys most of its 20 million artefacts.

2019: British Prime Minister Boris Johnson threatens a snap general election if rebel MPs pass a Bill against a no-deal Brexit.

2020: A press conference with body camera evidence brings to light the death of African-American Daniel Prude, after being retrained by police back in March.

2021: At least 43 people die as the remnants of Hurricane Ida hit the US Northeast with record rains, tornadoes and flooding with New York and New Jersey declaring state of emergency

2022: The attempted assassination of Argentina’s Vice-President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner fails when the gun jams outside her home in Buenos Aires. Russian State-controlled energy firm Gazprom indefinitely suspends supplies of natural gas to Germany and Europe via the Nord Stream 1 pipeline, amid accusations of weaponising its energy supplies.

2023: India successfully launches its first spacecraft, Aditya-L1, to study the sun.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Ewald von Hertzberg, Prussian statesman (1725-1795); John Howard, English prison reformer (1726-1798); Hirobumi Ito, premier of Japan (1841-1909); Jimmy Connors, US tennis player (1952- ); Keanu Reeves, US actor (1964- ); Salma Hayek US actress (1966- ).

— AP/ Jamaica Observer