Today is the 150th day of 2023. There are 215 days left in the year.

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT

2019: Louisiana Governor John Bel Edwards signs a new anti-abortion law, making it the fifth southern US state to ban abortion once a foetal heartbeat is detected.

OTHER EVENTS

1431: Joan of Arc is executed at age 19 when she is burnt at the stake in Rouen, France, by the English and their French collaborators, after being handed over by the church who judged her a heretic.

1606: Sikh Guru Arjun is tortured to death in Lahore — now part of Pakistan — on the orders of Mughal Emperor Jahangir, becoming Sikhism's first martyr.

1814: The first Treaty of Paris is signed between European countries and France, ending the Napoleonic Wars until the return of Napoleon from exile on Elba.

1913: Turkey loses almost all its European holdings to the Balkan states in a treaty signed in London, ending the First Balkan War.

1958: Unidentified US soldiers killed in World War II and the Korean conflict are buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.

1961: Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic, is assassinated by machine-gun fire while driving.

1963: The official death toll from a windstorm that strikes East Pakistan is put at 10,000.

1967: Egypt's President Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jordan's King Hussein sign a mutual defence treaty that prompts Israel to strike pre-emptively a week later, starting the Six-Day War.

1987: A mob of militant low-caste villagers massacre at least 42 members of upper-caste landlord families in India's impoverished eastern state of Bihar.

1989: Student demonstrators at Tiananmen Square in Beijing erect a 33-foot (10-metre) statue they call the Goddess of Democracy.

1991: A car bomb explodes near Civil Guard barracks in Vic, Spain, killing at least nine people and injuring 50.

1994: Israel releases hundreds of Palestinian prisoners as part of its autonomy agreement with the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

1996: Britain's Prince Andrew and the former Sarah Ferguson are granted an uncontested decree ending their 10-year marriage.

1998: A powerful earthquake rocks northern Afghanistan, burying entire villages and killing thousands of people.

2000: Moving to end Fiji's leadership crisis, the country's army commander imposes martial law and begins to isolate the rebels who have been holding the prime minister and other government officials hostage.

2003: The UN Security Council votes unanimously to send a peacekeeping force to Congo's north-eastern Ituri province.

2007: Mountaineering officials confirm that Katsusuke Yanagisawa, a retired schoolteacher, became the oldest person to climb Mount Everest at 71 years, two months and two days old when he reached the 29,035-foot (8,850-metre) peak on May 22.

2008: Zimbabwe's main Opposition group declares itself the country's new ruling party and convenes what it calls a session of Parliament, in defiance of President Robert Mugabe. A construction crane snaps and smashes into an apartment building on Manhattan's Upper West Side, killing two workers in New York City's second such tragedy in two and a half months. Diplomats from 111 nations meeting in Dublin, Ireland, formally adopt a landmark treaty banning cluster bombs but the United States and other leading cluster bomb makers — Russia, China, Israel, India and Pakistan — boycott the talks.

2010: China holds back from joining the chorus of nations condemning North Korea over the sinking of a South Korean warship, making quick international sanctions unlikely but perhaps buying time while China quietly leans on its unpredictable, nuclear-armed neighbour.

2011: Europe's economic powerhouse, Germany announces plans to abandon nuclear energy over the next 11 years, outlining an ambitious strategy in the wake of Japan's Fukushima disaster to replace atomic power with renewable energy sources.

2012: Iran and other Mideast countries are hit with a computer virus that can eavesdrop on computer users and their co-workers and filch information from nearby cellphones; suspicion immediately falls on Israel.

2013: Syria's President Bashar Assad says he is "confident of victory" in his country's civil war and warns Damascus will retaliate against any future Israeli air strike on his territory.

2017: Singer and actress Olivia Newton-John reveals her breast cancer has returned after 25 years.

2020: A record number of COVID-19 cases reported worldwide total 134,064, driven by hot spots in Brazil, Peru, Egypt, South Africa and Bangladesh. SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket launches, carrying the Dragon capsule from Cape Canaveral to the International Space Station; it is the first private company to launch astronauts into space.

2021: Tens of thousands of people march in Brazilian cities against President Jair Bolsonaro's handling of the COVID-19 pandemic.

2022: The European Union agrees to a plan to block two-thirds of Russian oil.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

Mikhail Bakunin, Russian anarchist (1814-1876); Howard Hawks, US film director (1896-1977); Hannes Alfven, Swedish astrophysicist/Nobel Prize laureate (1908-1995); George Headley, Panamanian legendary cricketer (1909-1983); Wynonna Judd, US country singer (1964- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer