Today is the 99th day of 2013. There are 266 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2002: The funeral of Queen Elizabeth, the queen mother, is held in London’s Westminster Abbey.

OTHER EVENTS

837: Halley’s Comet makes its closest known passage to Earth: five million kilometres (3 million miles).

1940: German forces invade Norway and Denmark in World War II.

1963: Britain’s former Prime Minister Winston Churchill is made an honorary US citizen.

1971: Jordan’s King Hussein accepts Syrian proposal to end two weeks of fighting with Palestinian guerrillas in Jordan.

1974: India, Pakistan and Bangladesh sign agreement to repatriate 195 Pakistani prisoners of war.

1988: China’s National Peoples Congress names Li Peng as premier.

1990: A three-decade ban on political activity is lifted in Nepal, and hundreds of thousands celebrate.

1992: Sali Berisha is elected Albania’s first non-communist president since World War II; former Panamanian ruler Manuel Noriega is convicted in Miami of eight drug and racketeering charges.

1994: US, French and Belgian troops arrive in Rwanda to evacuate foreigners from the country, torn by tribal warfare.

1995: President Alberto Fujimori wins a second five-year term in Peru’s first peaceful election since 1980.

1998: Some 150 Muslims are trampled to death in a stampede in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, on the last day of the annual hajj pilgrimage.

1999: Niger President Ibrahim Bare Mainassara is assassinated by his personal guard unit. The guard commander declares himself the new president two days later.

2005: Haitian police shoot and kill Remissainthe Ravix, a prominent rebel leader who helped force former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide into exile the previous year.

2006: Australia’s foreign minister denies UN accusations that his department was involved in alleged kickbacks paid by the country’s monopoly wheat exporter to Saddam Hussein’s regime.

2007: Iran announces a dramatic expansion of uranium enrichment, saying it has begun operating 3,000 centrifuges in defiance of UN demands it halt the programme or face increased sanctions.

2008: The Olympic torch touches down in San Francisco, its only stop in North America, where the relay is cut short and the closing ceremony is relocated because of demonstrators against China’s human rights record in Tibet.

2010: Russia threatens to suspend all child adoptions by US families after a seven-year-old boy adopted by an American woman was sent alone on a one-way flight back to Moscow with a note saying he was violent and had severe psychological problems.

2011: Thousands of demonstrators barricade themselves in Cairo’s central square with burned-out troop carriers and barbed wire and demand the removal of the military council ruling Egypt, infuriated after soldiers stormed their protest camp overnight, killing at least one person and injuring 71 others.TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Charles Pierre Baudelaire, French author (1821-1867); Leon Blum, French socialist statesman (1870-1950); Paul Robeson, US singer (1898-1976); Sir Robert Helpmann, Australian ballet star-actor (1909-1986); Joern Utzon, Danish architect (1918-2008); Jean-Paul Belmondo, French actor (1933-); Paulina Porizkova, Czech model-actress (1965-); Hugh Hefner, Playboy creator (1926-); Cynthia Nixon, US actress (1966-).

— AP