Today is the 348th day of 2015. There are 17 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2000: Vladimir Putin, the first Russian president to visit Cuba since the collapse of the Soviet Union, holds talks with Fidel Castro in Havana.

OTHER EVENTS

1952: Eighty-four Korean Communist prisoners interned on Pongam Island are killed during a riot after attempting to escape.

1958: The United States, Britain and France reject Soviet demands that they withdraw their troops from West Berlin and agree to liquidate the Allied Forces’ occupation in West Berlin.

1962: North Rhodesia’s first African-dominated Government is formed under Kenneth Kaunda.

1967: Israel submits to the United Nations a five-year plan to solve the Arab refugee problem, conditioned on a general peace settlement between Israel and the Arab states.

1972: US Apollo 17 astronauts blast off from the moon after three days of exploration on lunar surface.

1977: The South African Government eases job restrictions on blacks.

1981: Israel annexes Golan Heights, captured from Syria in 1967.

1985: Wilma Mankiller becomes the first woman to lead a major American Indian tribe, taking office as principal chief of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma.

1988: Sixty more survivors are pulled from the rubble of an earthquake that rocked Armenia.

1989: Opposition Leader Patricio Aylwin is elected president in Chile’s first free election since 1970.

1990: In Hong Kong, 10 Vietnamese boat people set fire to themselves to protest a screening policy that could prevent them from settling in the West.

1991: Former East German leader Erich Honecker, facing extradition to Germany and trial on manslaughter charges, is offered asylum in North Korea.

1997: Iranian President Mohammed Khatami says he is ready to re-establish dialogue with the United States, the first such statement since the 1979 revolution in Iran.

1998: In the presence of US President Bill Clinton, the Palestinian Council votes to revoke a paragraph in its charter that demanded the destruction of Israel.

1999: US and German negotiators agree to establish a fund of $5.2 billion for Nazi-era slaves and forced labourers.

2001: Israeli troops raid four Palestinian towns and villages in the West Bank, killing eight Palestinians and arresting dozens of suspected militants.

2002: A ferry carrying 200 passengers capsizes near the coastal town of Robersport in north-west Liberia. At least 50 people died, and more than 100 others are missing.

2003: Pakistani President General Pervez Musharraf escapes an assassination attempt when a powerful bomb explodes on a bridge in Rawalpindi less than a minute after his motorcade crosses it.

2004: Hundreds of Belgrade university students and other Serbs demonstrate in the capital to protest the election of Ramush Haradinaj, Kosovo’s new prime minister — a former ethnic Albanian rebel leader whom Serbs accuse of war crimes.

2005: Top European Parliament officials propose to set up an inquiry committee to establish whether US intelligence agents held terror suspects in secret prisons in Europe.

2006: The Israeli Supreme Court upholds Israel’s policy of targeted killings of Palestinian militants, allowing the army to maintain a practice that has drawn widespread international condemnation.

2008: Voters in Turkmenistan cast ballots in a parliamentary election, the first since the death of dictator Saparmurat Niyazov in late 2006.

2009: The military may not finish its surge of 30,000 American troops to Afghanistan until nearly a year from now, a senior US commander says — a slower pace than President Barack Obama has described. The White House insisted it was sticking with a goal of completing the build-up by late summer.

2010: Silvio Berlusconi pulls off another astonishing escape from the political dead, scraping through two confidence votes in a dramatic parliamentary showdown as violent street protests show growing unease with his rule.

2011: A commercial US satellite company says it has captured a photo of China’s first aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea off China’s coast.

2012: A man opens fire inside an elementary school in the north-east state of Connecticut killing 26 people, including 20 children, in the second-deadliest school shooting in the US.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Nostradamus, French astrologer and physician (1503-1566); Tycho Brahe, Danish astronomer (1546-1601); James Bruce, Scottish explorer (1730-1794); Roger Fry, English artist (1866-1934); Shirley Jackson, US author (1919-1965)