This is the 174th day of 2023. There are 191 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1998: The first large-scale test of an AIDS vaccine begins in the US city of Philadelphia when the first of 5,000 volunteers get injections.

OTHER EVENTS

1757: The British under Robert Clive defeat the forces of the nawab of Bengal at Plassey, leaving British masters in Bengal.

1797: The peasant “Army of the Holy Faith” enters Naples, ending the republic installed by the French and paving the way for the return of the Bourbon king.

1848: The “June Days” civil war begins when workers fired by the Government put up barricades in Paris; they are brutally put down by the army three days later.

1952: The US Air Force bombs hydroelectric plants in North Korea.

1970: Japanese students clash with police in Tokyo in a huge demonstration against an ongoing US-Japan security pact.

1985: All 329 people aboard an Air-India Boeing 747 die as it crashes into the Atlantic Ocean on a flight from Toronto to Bombay; Sikh separatists are accused of planting a bomb.

1993: Nigeria’s military dictator, General Ibrahim Babangida voids the results of presidential elections and halts a return to democracy.

1995: Chechen and Russian negotiators agree to extend a ceasefire in the secessionist southern republic, despite violations on both sides.

1996: Archbishop Desmond Tutu retires as archbishop of Cape Town and head of the Anglican Church in South Africa.

1997: In the Central African Republic soldiers fire on foreign peacekeepers in the third major rebellion since May 1996 as the army objects to the 1993 election of President Ange-Felix Patasse and eventually deposes him in 2003.

1999: The European Union says it will fund efforts to undermine Slobodan Milosevic’s rule in Yugoslavia.

2001: Peru’s fugitive ex-spy Vladimiro Lenin Montesinos, wanted on human rights and corruption charges, is captured in Caracas, Venezuela.

2002: China allows 26 North Korean migrants, who had sought asylum in foreign diplomatic compounds in Beijing, to leave the country for South Korea.

2003: The US Supreme Court upholds the use of race as one of many factors in the University of Michigan’s admissions but rejects a “points-based method” of racial preferences that fails to examine each student application on an individual level.

2004: Facing global opposition fuelled by the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal, the United States drops a contentious UN resolution that seeks to renew an exemption shielding American troops from international prosecution for war crimes.

2005: Rights groups show a smuggled video of hundreds of thousands of poor Zimbabweans living in the open in the winter cold after the Government tore down their homes in what it described as an urban renewal project.

2006: The World Health Organization details the first evidence that a person likely caught the bird flu virus from a human, then passed a slightly mutated version to another person, but experts say the genetic change does not increase the threat of a pandemic.

2008: A Pakistani court rules that former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif is not eligible to run in upcoming parliamentary elections because he had been convicted of a crime.

2013: Islamic militants disguised as policemen kill 10 foreign climbers and a Pakistani guide in a brazen overnight raid against their campsite at the base of one of the world’s tallest mountains in northern Pakistan.

2014: An Egyptian court convicts three Al-Jazeera journalists and sentences them to seven years in prison on terrorism-related charges, following a trial dismissed by rights groups as a sham.

2016: The United Kingdom votes to leave the European Union in a Brexit referendum. A ceasefire agreement is signed between the Colombian Government and Farc rebels — ending more than 50 years of conflict.

2017: Saudi Arabia and allies Egypt, United Arab Emirates and Bahrain issue a list of 13 conditions to Qatar in return for lifting sanctions, including closing Al Jazeera TV.

2018: Indian chess prodigy Rameshbabu Praggnanandhaa becomes the second-youngest grandmaster at 12 years, 10 months and 13 days.

2019: The biggest protests in Prague since the fall of communism are launched against Czech Prime Minister Andrej Babis, with an estimated 250,000 in Letna Plain park.

2020: Pilots numbering 125 are grounded by Pakistan International Airlines after revelations that many had cheated in exams or held fake licences.

2021: The US Supreme Court rules in favour of a teen kicked off her cheerleading team following a profane social media post, saying the school violated her right to free speech.

2022: In a 6-3 vote the US Supreme Court declares for the first time that there is a constitutional right to carry a handgun in public for self defence, striking down a century-old gun law in New York that limited licences.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Fanny Eaton, Jamaican artist’s model (1835-1924); Josephine, French empress and wife of Napoleon Bonaparte (1763-1814); Edward VIII (Duke of Windsor), abdicated king of England (1894-1972); Anna Akhmatova (pseudonym of Anna Andreyevna Gorenko), Russian poet (1889-1966); Alan Turing, British mathematician and computer pioneer (1912-1954); Randy Jackson, talent judge on American Idol (1956-)

— AP/ Jamaica Observer