Today is the 306th day of 2014. There are 59 days left in the year

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1992: Bill Clinton defeats President George H W Bush in US presidential election.

OTHER EVENTS

1394: Charles VI orders Jews expelled from France.

1534: England’s Parliament confirms King Henry VIII holds all judicial and political powers formerly held by the Pope in England.

1839: Opium war flares up when a British frigate sinks Chinese fleet.

1900: The first automobile show in the United States opens at Madison Square Garden in New York under the Automobile Club of America.

1903: Panama proclaims its independence from Colombia.

1918: Poland declares its independence from Russia.

1928: Turkey switches from Arabic to Roman alphabet.

1935: Greek plebiscite recalls exiled King George II to throne.

1936: US President Franklin Roosevelt is re-elected in a landslide over Republican Alfred M Landon.

1946: Power in Japan is transferred from the emperor to elected assembly.

1956: Britain and France agree to accept a Middle East ceasefire in the Suez War if UN forces can keep the peace.

1957: The Soviet Union launches Sputnik 2, the second man-made satellite, into orbit. A dog on board named Laika is sacrificed in the experiment.

1968: Storms, landslides and floods take more than 100 lives and cause heavy damage in northern Italy.

1970: Marxist Salvador Allende becomes president of Chile.

1973: UN Emergency Force reports success in easing tension between Egyptian and Israeli troops at positions west of Suez Canal.

1978: The Soviet Union and Vietnam sign a 25-year treaty of friendship and cooperation.

1982: Suriname’s largest labour union, Moederbond, ends a five-day general strike after the nation’s military commander promises free elections, a new constitution and the restoration of civil liberties.

1986: Ash-Shiraa, a pro-Syrian Lebanese magazine, breaks the story of US arms sales to Iran, a revelation that escalates into the Iran-Contra affair.

1990: Mozambique’s parliament approves new constitution ending 15 years of one-party rule.

1991: Israeli and Jordanian-Palestinian delegates agree to pursue talks on interim self-government in Israeli-occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip.

1993: Bosnian Government troops storm through a Croat district north of Sarajevo, prompting 15,000 terrified civilians to flee into the countryside.

1994: A Bosnian refugee, determined to call attention to the slaughter in his homeland, hijacks an airliner only to surrender when he believes the world had heard his plea.

1995: A teen convicted of killing a British tourist at a highway rest stop is sentenced to life in prison in Florida.

1996: Relief officials scramble to find a way to bring aid to a million Rwandan Hutu refugees engulfed in a rebellion in eastern Zaire..

1999: The Government of Yugoslavia’s smaller republic, Montenegro, designates the German mark as its official currency, replacing the Yugoslav dinar.

2000: Singapore Airlines apologises for its first fatal crash after investigators discover the pilot of a Los Angeles-bound jumbo jet missed clear warning signs and crashed while trying to take off on a runway full of construction equipment.

2001: US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld visits Russia, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Pakistan and India to shore up support for ongoing US military operations in Afghanistan against the al-Qaeda terrorist network.

2002: The party of moderate President Ibrahim Rugova wins municipal elections in Kosovo, but loses some ground to parties headed by former ethnic Albanian rebels.

2004: Ending one of the US Army’s longest desertion cases, Charles Robert Jenkins is sentenced to 30 days in a military jail for abandoning his unit in North Korea nearly 40 years ago.

2005: Allegations that the CIA set up secret jails in eastern Europe and elsewhere to interrogate al-Qaeda prisoners trigger a flurry of denials from governments in the former Soviet sphere and prompt EU officials and human rights organisations to demand answers.

2006: Latin American and Caribbean nations endorse Panama for a seat on the UN Security Council, after Guatemala and Venezuela withdrew to break a deadlock that dragged through 47 votes.

2008: A US military jury at Guantanamo sentences Osama bin Laden’s former media aide, Ali Hamza al-Bahlul, to life for encouraging terrorist attacks.

2009: North Korea claims that it has successfully weaponised more plutonium for atomic bombs, a day after warning Washington to agree quickly to direct talks or face the prospect of a growing North Korean nuclear arsenal.

2010: President Barack Obama signals a new willingness to yield to Republican demands on tax cuts and gets rid of a key energy priority, less than 24 hours after he and fellow Democrats absorbed election losses so severe he called them a shellacking.

2011: The global output of heat-trapping carbon dioxide jumps by the biggest amount on record, the US Department of Energy calculates, a sign of how feeble the world’s efforts are at slowing man-made global warming.

2012: Three Syrian tanks enter the demilitarised zone in the Golan Heights, prompting an Israeli complaint to UN peacekeepers over the first such violation in 40 years.

2013: The United States and Egypt try to put a brave face on their badly frayed ties and commit to restoring a partnership undermined by the military ouster of Egypt’s first democratically elected president.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Karl Baedecker, German guide book compiler-publisher (1801-1859); Andre Malraux, French novelist and cultural minister (1901-1976); Charles Bronson, US actor (1922-2003); Adam Ant, British pop singer (1954- ); Kate Capshaw, US actress (1953- )

— AP