The Short List: Whole Foods apologizes for overcharging; BP settles ...

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Whole Foods is sorry it's been ripping us off (more than usual)

Remember in late June when a New York consumer protection agency said Whole Foods had been routinely overcharging customers? Whole Foods denied the allegations. They called it "overreaching." Fast forward to this week. Now, the company is apologizing to customers and admitting they messed up. "Straight up, we made some mistakes. We want to own that," co-CEO Walter Robb said alongside co-CEO John Mackey in a video posted to the company's blog. An investigation by the New York City Department of Consumer Affairs tested 80 different types of prepackaged food from the city's Whole Foods locations. It found all categories included products with incorrect weights, which led to overcharges that ranged from 80 cents for a package of pecan panko to $14.84 for coconut shrimp. Robb said in the video that the mislabeled weights were "unintentional" and pushed back on DCA's claims that the mislabeling was systemic. Either way, the company could face fines for thousands of violations of mislabeling goods.

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Finally: BP settles for $18.7 billion in the largest offshore oil spill in U.S. history

BP is paying up for the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and it's the largest environmental settlement ever. The $18.7 billion deal between five Gulf states and the British oil giant could resolve years of litigation over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spill. BP was leasing the rig when it exploded and sank off the Louisiana coast, killing 11 crew and releasing about 200 million gallons of crude into the Gulf. What's in the settlement? A total of $5.9 billion in claims by state and local governments; $5.5 billion in Clean Water Act penalties and $7.3 billion in natural-resource damages, which help states reverse damage from the spill. (BP had committed an additional $1 billion in natural-resource damages for early restoration.) And even though the settlement has been reached, a judge still needs to sign off. Attorney General Loretta Lynch did a slow clap when she heard the news. "If approved by the court, this settlement would be the largest settlement with a single entity in American history," Lynch said. "It would help repair the damage done to the Gulf economy, fisheries, wetlands and wildlife; and it would bring lasting benefits to the Gulf region for generations to come."

Gunfire report made for a tense morning at Washington Navy Yard

There was a massive show of force at Washington Navy Yard on Thursday after an employee reported a possible shooting, but it turns out it was a false alarm. We're not totally sure what happened, but police don't believe it was a hoax. There's a lot of sensitivity around the site because of a 2013 shooting when a lone gunman killed 12 people inside the facility. D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser said Thursday a Navy Yard employee told people she may have heard gunshots. The facility was placed on lockdown, but a sweep showed there was no shooter, no shooting and no one injured. If you don't know much about Navy Yard, it has a pretty interesting history. The oldest shore establishment of the U.S. Navy has been operating since the early 19th century. Today, the facilities are headquarters for the Chief of Naval Operations, Naval Sea Systems Command, the U.S. Navy Judge Advocate General's Corps and other naval offices. Take a look at some of the key roles it's played in U.S. history.

Google driverless cars keep getting in accidents. But they're not the ones causing them

We are. Self-driving cars are all the rage. Uber's into it. Ford's into it. Google's been into it for years, and it's been testing its autonomous vehicles all over the streets around its California headquarters. The testing hasn't been without some bumps on the road, though. The vehicles have gotten in more than a few accidents, but the interesting thing is that Google says faulty tech isn't to blame. The company says people in other vehicles are the ones who've caused the dozen or so fender benders. In the past three instances, Lexus Google cars were rear-ended at stoplights. Until recently, Google's been pretty quiet about how their testing has been going. The company was reporting accidents to the California Department of Motor Vehicles, but not broadcasting the data publicly. Consumer watchdogs put the pressure on, and Google reversed its stance a month ago. Now it has a website for a range of updates about its car project. On a totally separate Google note, the company said Thursday it's sorry for putting Nazi concentration camps in one of its mobile games. The statement follows another apology this week — that one was for its new Photos app, which labeled two black people "gorillas." Good thing the car stuff's going well.

Why fans aren't looking for a second 'Tiger Woods era'

Tiger Woods' inconsistency is maddening. He was impressive at the Masters, but then played atrociously at the U.S. Open. So when news came down that he had played well Wednesday during his Pro-Am, even Woods' bullishness didn't do much to convince fans he's actually in a good place. For the record, Woods isn't "back." That doesn't mean he's never going to win again — he might, and he might even win another major or two — but the kind of dominance we saw from him even as recently as 2013 is gone. There's no need to brace for a second "Tiger Woods era." And all of that is fine — because that's not the goal anymore. It's probably not even his goal. At this point, fans don't expect to see the kind of sustained greatness from Woods that they once witnessed — it would be unreasonable to demand that of any aging, 39-year-old athlete. What we want is normalcy — and occasional flashes of his once-in-a-generation talent. That's what we got on Thursday at the Greenbrier Classic.

Today in Election 2016: USA TODAY's Rem Rieder explains how Ted Cruz's outburst reflects the rise of political fact-checking. Donald Trump tells Don Lemon he loves the Mexican people — while his Miss USA pageant gets rescued. Meanwhile, the GOP field will grow even larger July 13, when Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker plans to formally announce his presidential campaign. Oh, and Democrat Jim Webb joins the race.

Today in the Greek debt crisis: Not much happened — well, except for the Greek finance minister saying he'd rather cut his arm off than sign a deal without debt relief — which means it's a good time to take a moment and try to wrap your head around one of the most confusing international stories this year. Cheat with our explainer.

If you only read one thing tonight, read this: A USA TODAY investigation found TSA paid millions to passengers for claims that airport security screeners broke, lost or stole their luggage or items inside.

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Have you seen it? A guacamole recipe that brought Republicans and Democrats together. #GuacAcrossTheAisle

Hey, have an awesome Fourth of July weekend. We know some of you will be blasting this.

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This is a compilation of stories from across USA TODAY.

Contributing: Marco della Cava, Laura Mandaro, Jessica Guynn, Hadley Malcolm, Nathan Bomey, Doug Stanglin, Rick Jervis, Susan Miller, Aamer Madhani, USA TODAY; Luke Kerr-Dineen, For the Win; Steve DiMeglio, USA TODAY Sports; Associated Press

Facebook's growing use of facial recognition sounds privacy alarms

SAN FRANCISCO — Of all the information Facebook collects about you, nothing is more personal than your face.

With 2.2 billion users uploading hundreds of millions of photos a day, the giant social network has developed one of the single-largest databases of faces and — with so many images to train its facial recognition software — one of the most accurate.

The question of whether you should let Facebook save your face is gaining in urgency as it moves to expand its deployment of facial recognition, rolling it out in Europe, where it was scrapped in 2012 over privacy concerns and scanning and identifying more people in photos.

At the same time, the giant social network is attempting to quash efforts to restrict the use of facial recognition in the U.S., from legislation to litigation. And consumer groups are asking the Federal Trade Commission to investigate Facebook's widening use of the technology.

The biggest threat to Facebook’s collection of facial recognition data is a class-action lawsuit in California brought by three Illinois residents who are suing Facebook under a state law, the Biometric Information Privacy Act, one of only two in the nation to regulate commercial use of facial recognition.

This week, a California federal judge ruled the case could proceed, potentially exposing Facebook to billions of dollars in damages.

Facebook is reviewing Monday’s ruling, spokeswoman Genevieve Grdina said in an emailed statement. But the company believes that the kind of facial recognition it performs is not covered by the Illinois law.

"We continue to believe the case has no merit and will defend ourselves vigorously," she said.

Should people trust Facebook with one of their most sensitive data points which, unlike a credit-card number, can’t — or at least can’t easily — be changed?

Distrust over how Facebook treats its customers' personal data has jumped after 87 million users had their data pilfered by Cambridge Analytica, the British political firm with ties to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign.

A survey taken after Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg's congressional testimony last week showed a sharp decline in public confidence. Some 27% respondents agreed with the statement, "Facebook is committed to protecting the privacy of my personal information," down from 79% in 2017, according to think tank the Ponemon Institute.

Most forms of tracking target the technology you use. Cookies on your computer. Digital fingerprints your browser leaves behind. GPS on your smartphone. What makes this technology different: It tracks the most identifiable part of your body.

"You can delete cookies. You can change browsers. And you can leave your smartphone at home," says facial recognition expert Alvaro Bedoya, executive director of Georgetown Law's Center on Privacy & Technology. "But you can't delete your face, and you can’t leave it at home."

Facebook’s facial recognition technology analyzes photos and videos to create a unique "template" to identify you. The technology is a shortcut that scans photos to suggest names of friends to tag.

The company says it has no plans to make people's facial recognition data available to advertisers or outside developers. But the more Facebook can glean from users’ photos about their interests, activities and social circles, the more precisely it can target advertising.

Facebook says it has tight control over its database of people's likenesses. Even if someone were to obtain a "template," it does not function like other face recognition systems.

"When we provide our biometric information to Facebook, we don’t know where that information is going," Electronic Frontier Foundation senior attorney Jennifer Lynch said. "Facebook says: 'Trust us to keep it safe.' But Facebook has shown time and time again that it makes the wrong choices when it comes to protecting users' data."

Facial recognition, sometimes called faceprinting, is used by major technology companies around the globe. Apple last year replaced its fingerprint reader with a camera that uses your face to unlock the iPhone.

Facebook expands photo identification

In December, Facebook expanded the scope of its technology with the announcement that it would let users know when someone posts a photo of them, even if they are not tagged in it. The technology informs you if someone uses a photo of you in their profile picture to help detect impersonations. It also makes it possible for the visually impaired to have screen readers tell them who's tagged in friends' photos.

What may seem harmless — allowing Facebook to create an impression of your face — can be more telling than some people think. And soon it could reveal even more, including the state of your health, privacy experts say. The technology is becoming so sophisticated that Facebook can recognize people in photos and videos even if their faces are obscured, picking up clues from posture and body shape.

"This technology is powerful in a way that our society isn’t really used to," Bedoya says.

On Wednesday, Facebook announced changes to how it asks users for permission to collect their personal data — including facial recognition data — to comply with strict new European privacy rules coming next month. Facebook says it has made it easy for users to understand their choices and to turn off the facial recognition feature, but critics say the process is rigged to nudge them not to. It's on by default; users need to go into settings to turn it off.

"As members of the public and as users of Facebook, we need to know more about how that database is being utilized," says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum. "We just don’t know enough."

Privacy experts have been sounding the alarm over the potentially invasive uses of facial recognition for years as cameras proliferate and the technology advances, from retailers using it to identify shoplifters to sporting venues to spot potential troublemakers.

Consumers frequently don't realize their faces can be scanned and connected to their identity including income, education, demographics and other data, according to the ACLU.

In fact, very little is known about how extensive these practices already are. There is no federal law governing the use of facial recognition technology, and only two states — Illinois and Texas — regulate it.

During his testimony on Capitol Hill this month, Zuckerberg said Facebook is committed to getting "affirmative consent" from users for sensitive technologies such as facial recognition.

Yet Facebook has aggressively pushed back against limits that states have considered imposing on commercial uses of facial recognition, according to the Center for Public Integrity, an investigative non-profit.

Of legislation that would have created new privacy protections for facial recognition proposed in 2017, all failed but one, and then only after the scope was limited, according to the group. Facebook keeps its fingerprints off the bills by relying on trade groups for stealthier pushes on legislation that would hand users more control over how their likenesses are used, the Center for Public Integrity said, citing interviews with lawmakers and records. Facebook declined to comment.

The law requires companies to get permission from consumers before collecting biometric data such as fingerprints, iris scans and images of faces. In 2015, three users sued on behalf of millions of Facebook users in Illinois under the law, claiming that Facebook did not obtain written consent from users or properly notify them about how their information would be used or or how long it would be kept.

Now, just as the company is embroiled in this potentially costly class action, Illinois lawmakers are considering an amendment that would substantially weaken the law. Facebook denies having lobbyists or outside groups advocate on its behalf. But it has tried to get the 10-year-old biometric law changed before.

Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., asked the Facebook CEO about his company's efforts when Zuckerberg appeared on Capitol Hill.

"I'm afraid Facebook has come down to the position of trying to carve out exceptions to” the Illinois law, Durbin said. “I hope you'll fill me in on how that is consistent with protecting privacy."

Durbin’s time expired before Zuckerberg could respond.

More:Facebook's facial recognition violates user privacy, watchdog groups plan to tell FTC

More:Facebook introduces new privacy safeguards in Europe

More:How to stop Facebook from recognizing your face and tracking your online moves

More:Facial recognition: iPhone today, tomorrow the airport?

Ukraine updates: Russia artillery hits mosque, another hospital

Editor's note: This page recaps the news from Ukraine on Saturday, March 12. Follow here for the latest updates and news from Sunday, March 13, as Russia's invasion continues.

With the Russian invasion now in its third week, attention is increasingly focused on the West's efforts to arm and re-supply Ukrainian forces against an enemy with vastly superior weaponry.

Days after the Biden administration rejected Poland's proposal to provide Soviet-built MiG-29 fighter jets to the U.S. to give to Ukraine, Pentagon spokesman John Kirby told reporters Friday other military equipment was continuing to reach Ukrainian fighters.

"We are working with allies and partners to help get the kinds off capabilities that we know the Ukrainians need and are using very well inside Ukraine," he said. "Some of that material we have and we are providing. Some of that material we don't have but we know others have were helping coordinate that as well and that security assistance is flowing."

That drew a warning from Russia's deputy foreign minister Saturday who said convoys transporting foreign weapons into Ukraine will become “legitimate targets” for attacks.

Also Saturday, President Joe Biden authorized the State Department to provide up to $200 million for arms and equipment to aid Ukraine.

Devastating economic sanctions from the U.S. and its allies haven't stopped Russia's assault on Ukraine, which resulted in damage to another hospital — this time a cancer hospital in the southern city of Mykolaiv, according to Ukrainian officials.

Several hundred patients were in the hospital during the attack but no one was killed, according to the hospital’s head doctor, Maksim Beznosenko.

And on Saturday, Ukraine's Foreign Ministry accused Russian forces of shelling a mosque in Mariupol where more than 80 children and adults were seeking shelter.

Russia currently appears to be regrouping from recent losses and possibly gearing up for operations against Kyiv. Fighting has intensified close to Ukraine's capital, where doctors are bracing for the prospect of widespread casualties from war.

More:Biden says the Ukraine crisis shows why the U.S. must become energy independent. Is that possible?

Meanwhile, Russia's economy is in shambles: The ruble has crashed and the Moscow stock market remains closed.

U.S. leaders have hinted the economic pressure is intended to provoke the Russian people to take action against their government.

In the meantime, experts warn the Ukrainian people will continue to suffer, especially if fighting in Kyiv escalates.

“Where that leads, I think, is for an ugly next few weeks in which he doubles down with scant regard for civilian casualties, in which urban fighting can get even uglier,” said CIA Director William Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to Russia.

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Tracking the latest:Mapping and tracking Russia's invasion of Ukraine

Full coverage: Updates, analysis, commentary on Ukraine

Latest developments:

► Ukraine's Foreign Ministry said Russian forces shelled a mosque in Mariupol sheltering more than 80 children and adults.

► Russia's deputy foreign minister warned Saturday that convoys transporting foreign weapons into Ukraine will become “legitimate targets” for attacks.

►Russia announced it will ban Instagram beginning March 14, citing messages on the social media platform encouraging and provoking violent acts against Russians.

► President Joe Biden on Friday called for a removal of normal trade relations with Russia, allowing for new tariffs on Russian imports in yet another effort to ratchet up sanctions over Moscow’s intensifying invasion of Ukraine. Biden said the move will be another “crushing blow” to Russia’s economy.

► Ukraine's chief prosecutor’s office says at least 79 children have been killed since the invasion began on Feb. 24. At least 2.5 million people have fled the country, according to the United Nations refugee agency.

► Some 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed since Russia began its invasion, according to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

► On Friday, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy accused Russia of kidnapping the mayor of the city of Melitopol.

Russia pounds military range in Ukraine's west

Russian forces carried out an air strike on a military range near Lviv in western Ukraine, expanding its offensive closer to the border with Poland.

The Russian military on Sunday morning fired eight rockets at the Yaroviv military range 30 kilometers northwest of Lviv, the Lviv regional administration said, without offering any details about possible casualties.

The Yaroviv military range, also known as the Yaroviv International Peacekeeping and Security Center, is located 35 kilometers from Ukraine’s border with Poland.

Since 2015, the U.S. has regularly sent instructors to the Yaroviv military range to train Ukraine’s military. The range has also hosted international NATO drills.

On Friday, Russian forces shelled two airfields in the western cities of Lutsk and Ivano-Frankivsk, firing more than 10 cruise missiles from Tu-95MS strategic bombers, the Ukrainian General Staff said.

- The Associated Press

Explosions reported outside Lviv, Ukraine's western capital

Multiple explosions were reported in the northwestern city of Lviv on Sunday morning, according to CNN and journalists in the area.

The explosions were reported about 6 a.m. local time Sunday on the outskirts of the city, near Ukraine's border with Poland, CNN said.

The explosions were from Russian missiles fired at the International Peacekeeping and Security Centre in the Yavoriv district, about 20 miles northwest of Lviv, according to reports from CNN and the BBC.

Air raid sirens went off throughout the night in Lviv and many other regions in Ukraine and continued through the morning, the BBC reported.

Lviv has been identified as a potential capital if Kyiv falls to the Kremlin.

USA TODAY reporters this week spent 36 hours with a team of overseas nurses, engineers and logistics personnel invited by Ukraine's authorities to build a field hospital for emergency and specialized trauma care on the outskirts of Lviv.

Already, Lviv was feeling the strain of hundreds of people pouring off trains each day as they flee for destinations in western Europe and beyond. About 1.5 million people have left Ukraine for Poland and other neighboring countries, according to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.

Lviv's streets this week were congested with vehicles, people and pockets of patrolling soldiers. Some private buildings, such as art galleries, have been hastily converted into impromptu distribution centers for humanitarian aid.

►On the ground:In Lviv, Ukraine's beleaguered government plans for what might happen in war with Russia

Medical train carries Ukraine kids with cancer

About 60 child cancer patients from Ukraine boarded a medical train in a Polish town Saturday, bound for hospitals in Warsaw and elsewhere.

Medical workers carried some young patients in their arms, on stretchers and in a wheelchair at a station in Medyka, near the Ukrainian border.

“Some of them will require oxygen, will require some form of intensive care,” and some have COVID-19 and have to be kept separate from others,” said Dominik Daszuta, an anesthesiologist from Warsaw Hospital. He said the train has transported 120 children with cancer so far.

The United Nations refugee agency says at least 2.5 million people have fled Ukraine in the two weeks since Russia invaded it.

-The Associated Press

A third Russian general has died in fighting, Ukraine officials say

A Russian general was killed in fighting at Ukraine's southern city Mariupol, Ukrainian officials said.

Maj. Gen. Andrei Kolesnikov would be the third Russian general to die since the invasion of Ukraine began, making an unusual loss of such a high-ranking military official during fighting. Kolesnikov was the commander of Russia's Eastern Military District, according to Ukraine's military.

Russia did not confirm Kolesnikov's death, and has not shared many details about its military losses during the invasion of Ukraine. Maj. Gen. Andrei Sukhovetsky, the commanding general of the Russian 7th Airborne Division, and Maj. Gen. Vitaly Gerasimov, who had fought with Russian forces in Syria and Chechnya, had previously been reported killed.

Ukraine: 7 dead, including one child, after shooting in humanitarian corridor

The Ukrainian Ministry of Defence said Saturday that seven people, including one child, were killed Friday by Russian soldiers while traveling along a humanitarian corridor, calling the act a “military crime.”

The ministry claimed Russian soldiers shot at a group of civilians, consisting primarily of women and children, behind “the agreed ‘green’ corridor.” The attack allegedly occurred during an evacuation attempt in the village of Peremoga, which is in the Baryshevskyi district of the Kyiv region. The number of non-fatal injuries from the shooting is unknown, the agency said.

The defense ministry additionally claimed that after the shooting, Russian soldiers would not allow other individuals to escape.

“At present, it is practically impossible to contact them, as well as to provide humanitarian and medical care,” the agency said.

- Ella Lee

More:Putin war crimes in Ukraine will be investigated, but Russian leaders unlikely to be prosecuted

Kamala Harris: ‘When democracy is threatened anywhere, it threatens us all.’

Hours after returning from a trip to Poland and Romania, Vice President Kamala Harris told Democratic Party officials Saturday that the U.S. must do whatever it can short of direct military action to help Ukraine resist the Russian invasion.

"When democracy is threatened anywhere, it threatens us all," Harris said during an otherwise campaign-style speech at the winter meeting of the Democratic National Committee.

The vice president emphasized the U.S. military alliance with the European nations of NATO, and told Democratic supporters that "the ocean that separates us will not leave us untouched by this aggression."

She also referred to the invasion as "Putin's war."

Harris spoke shortly after President Joe Biden, who is spending the weekend at Camp David in Maryland, authorized an additional $200 million for arms and equipment to help Ukraine fight off the Russian military.

– David Jackson

Ukraine Foreign Ministry: Mosque sheltering 80+ children, adults shelled

Russian forces shelled a mosque sheltering more than 80 children and adults in the war-ravaged city of Mariupol, the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry said Saturday.

Both the ministry and Ukraine’s first deputy minister of foreign affairs shared images of the mosque to Twitter.

“At this very moment, the (Russian) army is bombing the Magnificent Mosque, which was built in memory of Suleiman the Magnificent and Hürrem Sultan,” Emine Dzheppar, the deputy minister of foreign affairs, tweeted Friday.

The ministry said that Turkish citizens were also hiding in the mosque when it was shelled, which the Ukrainian Embassy in Turkey confirmed. The embassy said a group of 86 Turkish nationals, including 34 children, were among the people who sought safety in the mosque.

- Ella Lee, Associated Press

Russian Foreign Ministry: Foreign weapons convoys ‘legitimate targets’

Convoys transporting foreign weapons into Ukraine will become “legitimate targets” for the Russian Armed Forces, Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov said on Russian television Saturday.

"We warned the United States that pumping Ukraine with weapons from a number of countries orchestrated by them is not just a dangerous move, but these are actions that turn the corresponding convoys into legitimate targets," Ryabkov said on Russia’s Channel One, according to state-run media RIA Novosti.

Western countries have pledged to provide Ukraine with weaponry to support its fight against Russia, but attacks on convoys could make that aid more difficult to offer.

“We’ve actually been flowing more stuff forward, uniforms, protective equipment, some munitions and weaponry,” British Armed Forces Minister James Heappey said in a Feb. 28 interview with British Forces radio. “We reach a stage now, though, where because combat operations are ongoing, routes for the Ukrainians to get the stuff into the country are much more challenging.”

The New York Times reported March 6 that in less than a week’s time, the U.S. and NATO transported more than 17,000 antitank weapons into Ukraine from neighboring countries like Poland and Romania. Those weapons had to make the trip to Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, by land, as airspace over the country has become a war zone in which Western countries have vowed to steer clear.

- Ella Lee

Zelenskyy asks world leaders to help him free kidnapped Ukrainian mayor

Ukraine President President Volodymyr Zelenskyy called on world leaders Saturday to help secure the release of a mayor he says was kidnapped by the Russians.

“We appeal to all world leaders who speak to Moscow – France, Germany, Israel, and others,” he told reporters.

On Friday night, the Ukrainian president announced that Russian soldiers had abducted Melitopol Mayor Ivan Fedorov during their occupation of that city in the southeasternn part of Ukraine.

Zelenskyy said Saturday he raised Fedorov's fate in talks with French President Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.

"I ask my partners to help in releasing the captive mayor of Melitopol," Zelensky tweeted. "Prospects for peace talks also discussed. We must stop the aggressor together."

- David Jackson

Biden authorizes $200M in additional State Department aid for Ukraine

President Joe Biden on Saturday authorized the State Department to provide up to $200 million in additional aid to Ukraine.

The funds could finance weapons, education, training and other military services as Ukraine continues its efforts to beat back Russian troops.

Congress on Thursday passed a bill that included $13.6 billion in emergency military and humanitarian aid for Ukraine. About $6.5 billion of those funds will cover the cost of sending U.S. troops and weapons and equipping allied forces. $6.8 billion was marked for refugees and giving help to allies. Other funds will help U.S. federal agencies enforce sanctions against Russia and protect against cyber attacks.

The U.S. provided Ukraine with more than $1 billion in the last year, according to the Department of Defense.

- Ella Lee

1,300 Ukrainian troops killed since start of invasion, Zelenskyy says

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Saturday that about 1,300 Ukrainian troops have been killed since Russia began its invasion of Ukraine in late February.

"Some 1,300 military people died in our country, and more than 12,000 in Russia,” Zelensky said, according to the Ukrainian news website Hromadske. “One to ten. I'm not happy that 12,000 of them died. This is not my vision of the world.”

The Ukrainian president had not previously offered a figure for the number of troops killed since the first day of the attack, when he said 137 Ukrainian soldiers and civilians were killed with hundreds more wounded.

It's not clear on what Zelenskyy is basing his estimate of Russian forces killed. Russia has reported only 2,095 casualties – 498 killed and 1,597 wounded – but that was 10 days ago and hasn't been updated by Moscow. Some Western sources told the BBC the number of Russians killed is closer to around 6,000.

Zelenskyy also claimed that 500 to 600 Russian troops on Friday surrendered to Ukraine's armed forces, though USA TODAY could not independently verify this information.

- Ella Lee

In call with Putin, Macron, Scholz urge 'immediate cease-fire'

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and French President Emmanuel Macron spoke Saturday with Russian President Vladimir Putin urging him to agree an “immediate cease-fire in Ukraine.”

Scholz’s office said the 75-minute call Saturday was part of “ongoing international efforts to end the war in Ukraine.”

It said the leaders of Germany and France called on Putin to begin the process of finding a diplomatic solution to the conflict.

Further details of the call were not released.

Separately, Scholz spoke earlier Saturday with President Volodymyr Zelenskyy to get his assessment of the current situation.

- Associated Press

How global conflicts like the war in Ukraine impact US gas prices

Propelled by the highest inflation in 40 years and Russia's war in Ukraine, gas prices are the most expensive in U.S. history, not accounting for inflation.

President Joe Biden on Tuesday announced a ban on the U.S. import of all Russian energy products to target "the main artery of Russia’s economy." But he warned there will be costs at home.

More:Inflation reaches highest level since 1982 as consumer prices jump 7% in 2021

Some Americans told USA TODAY they have already started canceling road trips, carpooling, giving up side gigs, walking to work, streamlining errand runs and doing more shopping online to cut down on driving.

In a report this week, Goldman Sachs strategists warned the war in Ukraine could result in the fifth largest one-month disruption in global commodities markets since World War II.

The U.S. also saw sharp increases in crude oil prices in the 1970s, stemming from the Yom Kippur War and Arab oil embargo in 1973 and the Islamic Revolution in Iran in 1979.

What can the U.S. learn from its past? "Unlike in the 1970s ... we're really on the verge of a sort of renewable future," one expert told USA TODAY. Read more.

— Grace Hauck

Russia to ban Instagram, citing ‘calls for violence against Russian citizens’

Russia will ban Instagram beginning March 14, the country’s communications agency Roskomnadzor announced Saturday.

“Messages are circulating on the Instagram social network encouraging and provoking violent acts against Russians, in connection with which the Russian Prosecutor General's Office demanded that Roskomnadzor restrict access to this social network,” the announcement reads.

More:Oil, gold, trade: Congress is looking for options to punish Russia for invading Ukraine

Reuters first reported Thursday that Meta, the parent company of Instagram and Facebook, would make a temporary change to its hate speech policy to allow users in some countries to call for violence against Russians in the context of the Ukraine invasion. A Meta spokesperson confirmed the matter to several news organizations, adding that the company “still won’t allow credible calls for violence against Russian civilians.”

Head of Instagram Adam Mosseri tweeted the news Friday, calling Russia’s decision to block the social media app “wrong.”

“On Monday, Instagram will be blocked in Russia,” he said. “This decision will cut 80 million in Russia off from one another, and from the rest of the world as ~80% of people in Russia follow an Instagram account outside their country. This is wrong.”

Russia restricted access to Facebook and Twitter on March 4, Forbes reported.

- Ella Lee

War toll: 79 children killed, more than 280 educational institutions 'destroyed

Dozens of children have been killed and more than 100 injured since Russia began its invasion, the Ukrainian Office of the Attorney General said Saturday in a Telegram post.

The agency said that 79 children have died during the 16 days Ukraine has been at war with Russia, but the figure is “not final” due to the inability to inspect locations still under attack. Most deaths occurred in the Kyiv, Kharkiv, Donetsk, Sumy, Kherson and Zhytomyr regions, according to the post.

More:'Worse than hell': Mariupol mother fears for her daughter as Russia lays siege to the Ukrainian city

More than 280 educational institutions also were attacked, of which nine were “completely destroyed, the agency said. Of those institutions, 110 were in the Donetsk region, 28 in the Sumy region and 17 in Kyiv. Ten children’s medical institutions were also attacked, the post says.

“On average, 17 educational institutions are destroyed daily by the occupier during the war,” the attorney general’s office said. “As a result, 7 million children are deprived of the opportunity to study due to active hostilities on the territory of Ukraine and the deliberate destruction of such institutions.”

- Ella Lee

Misinformation abounds amid Russia-Ukraine war

Misinformation and disinformation is easily spreading on social media — here's the latest from the USA TODAY fact-check team:

Italy seizes Russian billionaire's $578M yacht

MILAN — Italian financial police has seized a Russian-owned superyacht valued at $578 million in the port of Trieste as part of seizures of oligarch wealth to pressure Russian President Vladimir Putin to halt the war on Ukraine.

The "Sy A" yacht was identified by Italian police as belonging to belonging to billionaire Andrey Igorevich Melnichenko, who made a fortune in fertilizer production and coal energy. It was seized Friday evening.

Video shows police in cars with flashing lights approaching the triple-mast yacht and officers boarding it.

Italian authorities last week seized some $156 million in luxury yachts and villas belonging to Russian billionaires in such picturesque retreats as Sardinia, the Ligurian coast and Lake Como.

– Associated Press

UK: Bulk of Russian ground forces about 15 miles from the Kyiv's center

LONDON — Britain's Defense Ministry says fighting northwest of Kyiv has continued with the bulk of Russian ground forces now around 15 miles from the center of the city.

A daily intelligence update says elements of the large Russian military column north of Kyiv have dispersed. It says this is likely to support a Russian attempt to encircle the Ukrainian capital. According to the brief, it could also be an attempt by Russia to reduce its vulnerability to Ukrainian counterattacks, which have taken a significant toll on Russian forces.

The update says that beyond Kyiv, the cities of Kharkiv, Chernihiv, Sumy and Mariupol remain encircled and continue to suffer heavy Russian shelling.

– Associated Press

Russia's space agency demand an end to sanctions, cites ISS

Russia's space agency has sent NASA and other international partners a letter demanding an end to sanctions, saying they could threaten the International Space Station.

In a tweet Saturday, the head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, said the letter appealed to the space agencies of the United States, Canada and Europe to keep the space station operational.

He illustrated the appeal with a map showing the flight path of the ISS — and a potential fall zone that straddles much of the world but barely touches upon Russia.

Four NASA astronauts, two Russian cosmonauts and one European astronaut are currently on the space station.

– Associated Press

Ukraine receives more Starlink internet access terminals

SpaceX's Starlink network of internet satellites in Earth orbit continues to make its case during real-world crises, this time with the delivery of more hardware to Ukraine.

Mykhailo Fedorov, vice prime minister of Ukraine, this week confirmed his country's government received its second shipment of Starlink user terminals, each of which include a satellite dish and built-in WiFi router. Non-traditional communications channels, especially satellite-based, are critical during crises like war or natural disasters.

SpaceX founder Elon Musk this month agreed to open up the satellite-based internet service to Ukraine after Russia's invasion. Users only need the terminal, power, and a device like a smartphone or laptop to access the internet, meaning Starlink's connectivity is less prone to being knocked out by Russian forces.

– Emre Kelly, Florida Today

Downtown Kyiv hospital braces for carnage doctors fear will come

As Russian troops accumulate on the outskirts of Kyiv, Dr. Vitaliy Krylyuk said an uneasy calm has settled at the city's largest downtown hospital.

Doctors at the Kyiv Hospital of Emergency Medicine are tending to conventional injuries such as car crashes and gunshot wounds. But Krylyuk, who spoke with USA TODAY over a video call, fears things will soon worsen if Russian missiles target the city or enemy troops close on the heart of Ukraine’s capital.

“The biggest problem we need to think about is a mass casualty situation,” said Krylyuk, who serves at the Ukrainian Scientific and Practical Center of Emergency and Disaster Medicine, a division of Ukraine’s Ministry of Health. “We’ve never had a mass casualty situation. We know this theoretically, not practically.”

Emergency planners have sought to address gaps that would emerge if the number of people with life-threatening wounds outstripped the hospital's capacity to care for them. They sought to figure out which hospital entrance to direct ambulances to quickly get patients to hospital beds. Government planners have drafted documents on how to prioritize patients, ensure patients can breathe, secure blood transfusions or notify family members if a loved one is killed or wounded.

— Ken Alltucker

As companies leave Russia, their assets could be seized

Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday that if foreign companies shut down production in Russia, he favored a plan to “bring in outside management and then transfer these companies to those who want to work.”

A draft law could allow Russian courts to appoint external administrators for companies that cease operations and are at least 25% foreign-owned. If the owners refuse to resume operations or to sell, the company’s shares could be auctioned off, the ruling United Russia party has said, calling it “the first step toward nationalization.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki criticized “any lawless decision by Russia to seize the assets of these companies,” saying that it “will ultimately result in even more economic pain for Russia.”

“It will compound the clear message to the global business community that Russia is not a safe place to invest and do business,” she said in a tweet, adding that "Russia may also invite legal claims from companies whose property is seized.”

Even before its invasion of Ukraine, Russia was already trying to domesticize its food supply following sanctions it had placed on the European Union in 2014. With little to no fresh food imported from those trading partners, Russia put greater focus on domestic food and importing from friendlier countries like Turkey.

One voice pushing back against confiscating foreign firms’ assets is billionaire metals tycoon Vladimir Potanin, who compared it to the Russian Revolution of 1917, when Communists took power.

“It would set us back 100 years to 1917 and the consequences of a step like this one — global distrust in Russia by investors — would be felt by us for many decades,” he said in a statement Thursday on the social media of his company, Nornickel.

– Associated Press

Contributing: The Associated Press

An0m: the surveillance sting of the century | The Week UK

An encrypted phone used by criminals around the world to conduct their operations in the shadows had just one flaw: it had been conceived, built, marketed and sold by police, who were monitoring every text exchange. The rain pattered lightly on the harbour of the Belgian port city of Ghent when, on 21 June 2021, a team of professional divers slipped below the surface into the emerald murk. The Brazilian tanker, heavy with fruit juice bound for Australia, had already crossed the Atlantic, but its journey wasn’t halfway done as the divers felt their way along its hull. They were looking for the sea chest, an inlet below the waterline through which the ship draws seawater to cool its engines. Tucked inside, they found what they were hunting for: three long sacks, wrapped in a thick plastic bag. When the Belgian police opened the first, a stack of bricks of cocaine slid out. Had this cargo reached Australia, the haul would have been worth more than A$64m (£34m). Smuggling tens of millions of dollars of Class A drugs across the ocean requires total secrecy and a significant amount of international logistical coordination. But the police knew about the alleged plot thanks to intelligence gleaned from a device that had, since its launch in 2018, become something of a viral sensation in the global underworld. An0m, as it was called, looked like any off-the-shelf smartphone, but it could not be bought in a shop or on a website. First you had to know a guy, then you had to be prepared to pay: $1,700 for the handset with a $1,250 annual subscription, an astonishing price for a phone that was unable to make calls or browse the internet. Almost 10,000 users around the world had agreed to pay, not for the device so much as for an application installed on it. Opening the phone’s calculator allowed users to enter a sum that functioned as a kind of numeric open sesame to launch a secret messaging application. Skip advert The people selling the phone claimed that An0m was the most secure messaging service in the world. Not only was every message encrypted so that it could not be read by a digital eavesdropper, it could be received only by another An0m phone user. Moreover, An0m could not be downloaded from any of the usual app stores.

Users’ confidence in An0m was, it seemed, bolstered by some novel functionality included on every device. In the past, phones marketed to hyper security-conscious users were sold with the option to remotely wipe the device’s data. This would enable, say, a smuggler to destroy evidence even after it had been collected. But police had started to use Faraday bags – containers lined with metal that would prevent a phone from receiving a kill signal. The An0m phone came with a workaround: users could set an option to wipe the phone if the device went offline for a specified amount of time. Users could also send voice memos in which the phone would automatically disguise the voice. An0m was the ideal channel to arrange the passage of A$64m of cocaine across the world. It was not, however, a secure phone app at all. Every message sent on the app since its launch in 2018 – 19.37 million of them – had been collected, and many of them read by the Australian Federal Police (AFP) who, with the FBI, had conceived, built and sold the devices. On 7 June 2021, more than 800 arrests were made around the world, all of people who had in some way fallen under suspicion thanks to these devices that sent information to the AFP. In Belgium, two weeks later, the divers did not have to hunt for the sacks of cocaine for long; they knew where to look. Operation Ironside (or Operation Trojan Shield, as it was known in the US) was the largest coordinated law enforcement effort in Australian history. Richard Chin, head of transnational operations in the AFP, had taken to calling 7 June “Big Bang”. If all went to plan, the operation had the potential to reshape the criminal world. Big Bang’s targets constituted an array of underworld figures: mobsters, bikers, neighbourhood drug barons, whose alleged crimes ranged from money laundering to attempted murder. What they had in common was their choice of texting app. Skip advert The scheme was seeded ten years earlier, in Vancouver. There, in 2008, Vincent Ramos, a young entrepreneur who started out as a bathtub salesman, founded Phantom Secure, a telecoms company that promised users absolute privacy. Phantom Secure’s phones were BlackBerries modified to remove the camera, microphone and GPS tracking software, and installed with a remote-wipe feature. Every message sent from one device to another was encrypted and routed through servers in Panama and Hong Kong.

On Phantom Secure’s website, the phones were marketed to the “sophisticated executive”. While it was company policy not to collect clients’ names, Ramos became aware that his customers were not, in fact, legitimate businessmen, but criminals drawn by the promise of a means to communicate beyond the reach of the law. Ramos made no checks on clients. He did not believe it was his responsibility: he was a mere humble salesman of aftermarket BlackBerries – albeit one who drove a Lamborghini. In 2015, the San Diego office of the FBI began investigating Owen Hanson, a former American football player who had turned to drug trafficking after the collapse of his real-estate business. Hanson was a Phantom Secure customer who idolised Hollywood gangsters, had a silverplated AK-47 stamped with the Louis Vuitton logo, and owned a restaurant with a backroom he referred to as the “wise-guy room”. An undercover FBI agent gained his trust and was given a Phantom Secure phone. In acquiring one for the first time, the FBI had gained access to the criminal equivalent of WhatsApp: a messaging service filled with accumulating piles of digital evidence. By the time of Hanson’s arrest in 2015, he regularly shipped cocaine to Australia for $175,000 a kilogram. Two years later, Hanson was imprisoned for 21 years on charges of drug trafficking and racketeering. The logistics were planned on Phantom Secure phones, devices that had come to dominate the Australian criminal market. The FBI now began a joint venture with the AFP to infiltrate the global Phantom Secure network. With the help of one of Phantom Secure’s distributors – an individual who had agreed to become a confidential source–the FBI arrested Ramos in 2018. They offered him a deal: the possibility of leniency in sentencing if he agreed to place a backdoor in the Phantom Secure network. Either because ofalack of technical know-how, or fear for his safety, Ramos refused, and was sentenced to nine years in prison. Without an “in”, the FBI was left with no choice but to shut down the Phantom Secure servers. The disappearance of the platform left a gap in the market. Agents reasoned: what if, rather than attempting to infiltrate an existing encrypted phone network, we built our own? Skip advert To launch a desirable encrypted phone product, the AFP and FBI not only needed to think like a tech start-up, they effectively had to become one. “We positioned ourselves as a small, bespoke brand coming into the organised crime marketplace,” says Chin.

The aim was to assure prospective clients of the product’s “security, privacy and anonymity”. The An0m application and bespoke operating system were provided by a former distributor of the Phantom Secure phones, whom the FBI recruited in exchange for a chance of a reduced sentence. The source was paid $180,000 by the FBI in salary and expenses, and built “a master key” that, the FBI explained in court documents, “surreptitiously attaches to each message and enables law enforcement to decrypt and store the message as it is transmitted”. Every message sent via An0m was effectively bcc’d to the police. Next, the AFP began a grassroots marketing campaign, identifying influencers within criminal subcultures. One was Hakan Ayik – now known as Hakan Reis – a member of a gang responsible for smuggling an estimated $1.5bn of drugs into Australia every year. Reis, cartoonishly muscular and often photographed topless and flexing, had fled Australia in 2010, and became An0m’s first official user and influencer. His unwitting support of the AFP’s efforts directly resulted in the arrests of many criminal associates, Chin says. (Reis is currently believed to be hiding in Turkey; the AFP has expressed “significant concerns for the safety and welfare of [his] wife and two children”.) As soon as An0m devices were in the wild, the AFP began to receive messages sent via the app. “On a daily basis, we were receiving messages about drug distribution, drug importation into Australia and elsewhere,” says Chin. Some users felt so confident in its security that they dispensed with euphemisms, naming drugs and weight measurements. An0m’s success in Australia was soon replicated overseas, with distributors in Mexico, Turkey, the Netherlands, Finland and Thailand – as well as, allegedly, at least one British citizen, James Flood, believed to be living in Spain. As An0m’s reach expanded to 12,000 devices in more than 90 countries, Chin and his colleagues’ net was forced to expand accordingly. The operation quickly revealed the sophistication with which major criminal organisations run their communication policies. The millions of decoded messages presented the AFP with a pressing ethical dilemma: when to interfere to prevent a single planned crime, and when to allow crimes to take place, preserving the integrity of the wider operation. Skip advert Eventually, the AFP decided to intervene primarily in instances where there was a“serious chance someone might get killed”, Chin says. During the 18 months leading up to 7 June, the agency acted on 21 such threats to life. In March 2021, An0m’s active user base suddenly tripled after Belgian police dismantled Sky Global, a rival service. The surge in popularity caused a drastic increase in the amount of information Chin and his team had to parse, increasing the potential threats to life to unmanageable proportions for the AFP.

After crippling rounds of sanctions, these are the Russian oligarchs ...

(CNN) As Russia's invasion of Ukraine enters a new month, the wealthy elite close to Russian President Vladimir Putin are facing a radically changing set of circumstances far from the frontlines.

The invasion prompted Western nations to impose restrictive sanctions on Russian individuals and banking institutions. And while a handful of oligarchs -- those billionaires who made much of their fortunes under the watchful eye of Putin -- have called for peace, many have stayed quiet as nations cut off their access to markets and commerce.

On March 2, The US Justice Department announced a collaborative effort with the European Union and other allies for a special task force targeting their yachts, jets, real estate and other assets abroad. In addition, on Thursday, the US Treasury Department announced a slew of new sanctions against hundreds of members of the Russian State Duma, dozens of Russian defense companies, and the CEO of Sberbank, which is Russia's largest financial institution.

Officials say their intentions are to squeeze those who have profited from Putin's rule and potentially apply internal pressure for Russia to scale back or call off the offensive in Ukraine. Traditional financial safe havens like Switzerland and Monaco even announced their own measures aimed against those close to Putin, and nations far from the conflict such as Australia and Japan have also moved to freeze finances.

The sanctions' impacts have rippled across the business and sporting worlds as members of Putin's inner circle have their assets frozen.

Here's a look at some of the oligarchs close to the Kremlin who have commented on the war, and those who have stayed quiet.

Oleg Deripaska

Oleg Deripaska, a close ally of Putin who made his fortune in the aluminum business, was slapped with sanctions on March 10 by the UK government, which noted Deripaska's estimated wealth of £2 billion and stakes in En+ Group, a major energy company and owner of one of the world's major aluminum producers.

Shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Deripaska said on the Telegram messaging app: "Peace is very important! Negotiations need to start as soon as possible!"

As the ruble collapsed and Russia's stock market failed to open for trading, Deripaska said he wanted "clarifications and intelligible comments on the economic policy for the next three months," adding that the central bank's decision to dramatically hike interest rates and force companies to sell foreign currency was the "first test of who will actually be paying for this banquet."

Deripaska was previously sanctioned by the US in 2018 in response to Russian inference in the 2016 election. The US investigated him for money laundering and accused him of "threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official, and taking part in extortion and racketeering," according to the Treasury Department, which added, "Deripaska has said that he does not separate himself from the Russian state."

Mikhail Fridman

Mikhail Fridman, chairman of conglomerate Alfa Group, has a net worth of $11.4 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaire's Index. He was recently sanctioned by the European Union, which said he "has managed to cultivate strong ties to the administration of Vladimir Putin, and has been referred to as a top Russian financier and enabler of Putin's inner circle."

Before being sanctioned, Fridman, who was born in western Ukraine, wrote in a letter to staff days after the invasion that he wanted the "bloodshed to end."

"My parents are Ukrainian citizens and live in Lviv, my favorite city. But I have also spent much of my life as a citizen of Russia, building and growing businesses. I am deeply attached to Ukrainian and Russian peoples and see the current conflict as a tragedy for them both," wrote Fridman.

"This crisis will cost lives and damage two nations who have been brothers for hundreds of years. While a solution seems frighteningly far off, I can only join those whose fervent desire is for the bloodshed to end," he added in the letter, which was provided by his office. The Financial Times was first to report the letter.

Friedman called the violence a "tragedy," adding "war can never be the answer" -- but he stopped short of criticizing Putin directly.

"If I make any political statement that is unacceptable in Russia it will have very clear implications for the company, for our customers, for our creditors, for our stakeholders," Fridman said.

Roman Abramovich

Another oligarch who expressed public dismay over the crisis but failed to criticize Russia is Roman Abramovich , owner of Premier League club Chelsea, who has moved to sell the team amid his own sanctions. Abramovich "is one of the few oligarchs from the 1990s to maintain prominence under Putin," according to the UK, yet he has always denied such a link.

Prior to being sanctioned by the UK on March 10, Abramovich said the net proceeds of the club's sale would be used to establish a charitable foundation "for the benefit of all victims of the war in Ukraine."

The European Union sanctioned Abramovich last week, citing his "long and close ties to Vladimir Putin" and remarking that his "privileged access" to the president helped him "maintain his considerable wealth."

The superyacht, Solaris, owned by Roman Abramovich, arrives on March 12 in Tivat, Montenegro.

Notable oligarchs have stayed quiet

Many Putin allies and members of his inner circle have not commented publicly on the war, potentially underscoring Fridman's remarks that questioning the Russian leader comes with consequences.

The sanctions from Western nations against Russian government officials and leaders continue to mount , including those against:

All of whom have remained publicly silent on the war. CNN has reached out to each individual for comment.

Russian elite speak out

Comments from other high-profile figures, however, demonstrate that disapproval of the war could run deep among the nation's elite.

Evgeny Lebedev -- the son of Alexander Lebedev, who describes himself as an ex-oligarch -- wrote a public statement to Putin in the UK paper Evening Standard , which he owns. "As a Russian citizen I plead with you to stop Russians killing their Ukrainian brothers and sisters," Lebedev said.

"As a British citizen I ask you to save Europe from war. As a Russian patriot I plead that you prevent any more young Russian soldiers from dying needlessly. As a citizen of the world I ask you to save the world from annihilation," he added.

Vladimir Potanin, the country's richest businessman and president of metals giant Norilsk Nickel, implored Russia not to take the assets of Western companies fleeing the country.

"Firstly, it would take us back a hundred years, to 1917, and the consequences of such a step -- global distrust of Russia on the part of investors -- we would experience for many decades," he said in a message posted on Norilsk Nickel's Telegram account last week.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov was sanctioned by the US government on March 3 for being the "lead propagandist" of the Russian Federation. On Friday, Peskov's wife and two of his adult children -- including daughter Elizaveta Peskova -- were also sanctioned by the US.

Peskova, who has more than 180,000 followers on Instagram, shared an anti-war message on her verified account the day after the invasion commenced, posting the hashtag #нетвойне, which means "no to war."

A couple of hours later the message was deleted.

Conch contest, golf tree: News from around our 50 states

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Alabama

Montgomery: The state Senate passed a bill Thursday that would ban gender therapies such as prescription hormones or gender confirmation surgery for minors. The legislation would make it a felony for medical providers to prescribe puberty-blockers or hormones to anyone under age 19 or to perform gender confirmation surgery on minors. The bill, sponsored by Trussville Republican Sen. Shay Shelnutt, passed 22-3, news outlets report. The legislation now moves to the state’s House of Representatives, where a similar bill was also approved by a health committee last month. Proponents have said it would stop “vulnerable children” from getting medical procedures and medications with uncertain long-term effects. LGBTQ activists and opponents of the bill have countered it is discriminatory and spreads misinformation. The American Academy of Pediatrics advised in 2018 that such treatments can be part of certain care models for children.

Alaska

Kodiak: Shoppers will no longer see a blue-sticker label on Gulf of Alaska cod after its sustainability certification is suspended starting in April. The label designates which fish are sustainably caught. Alaska’s Energy Desk reports the Marine Stewardship Council, which sets standards for sustainable fishing, will suspend the label starting April 5. Gulf of Alaska cod have had the certification for about 10 years. The impacts of losing certification are unclear. An independent audit found there were not enough young cod entering the gulf fishery, which led to the suspension. But auditors blame a climate change-caused heatwave from 2013 to 2016 for reducing gulf cod by more than half and pushing them to near-overfished status last year.

Arizona

Flagstaff: The U.S. Forest Service has given final approval to a project to replace and upgrade a ski lift at the Arizona Snowbowl. The Forest Service’s decision allowing replacement of the current chairlift is based on an environmental assessment published in October. Forest officials concluded that replacing the new lift would not significantly impact the land and environment, despite claims that it would affect Native American cultural values, the Arizona Daily Sun reports. Arizona Snowbowl is located on the Coconino National Forest on the west side of the San Francisco Peaks, near Flagstaff. Arizona Snowbowl said the current chairlift will be replaced with a high-speed combination version that includes enclosed eight-person gondola cars and open-air six-person chair seats. The new lift will be installed in time for the 2020-21 season, the ski area said.

Arkansas

Bentonville: A film festival co-founded by Academy Award-winning actress Geena Davis announced Friday that it’s moving to later in the year because of concerns about the new coronavirus. The Bentonville Film Festival, in northwest Arkansas, announced it will move this year’s festival, originally scheduled for April 29-May 2, to Aug. 5-8. The festival said it will honor passes and badges that have already been purchased for the festival. The official lineup will be announced by June, organizers said. “Our number one concern is the safety of our content creators and our community of attendees,” Davis, who is also the festival’s chairwoman, said in a statement. The Bentonville Film Festival began in 2015 and last year screened 162 films. Arkansas has not had any cases of coronavirus, which causes the illness called COVID-19.

California

Los Angeles: Los Angeles International Airport will experiment with a limited restoration of taxi pickups in the central terminal area beginning later this month. Taxi drivers have been pushing to resume pickups there since taxi and ride-hailing pickups were moved to a lot outside the terminal loop last fall to ease traffic amid major construction. Airport officials said one taxi pickup location will be established in a parking structure near the Tom Bradley International Terminal and adjacent Terminal 3. Another taxi stand will be put back into service for travelers passing through Terminals 7 and 8. Last October, the airport moved all taxi and ride-hailing pickups from curbside to a satellite lot, dubbed LAX-it. Airport officials said the move was necessary to reduce traffic for construction of an automated people-mover train and its stations, as well as redevelopment of every terminal. Passengers can walk there or take constantly circulating shuttles.

Colorado

Denver: The owner-operator of a Denver-area oil refinery will pay $9 million to settle air quality violations dating to 2017, state officials announced Friday. The settlement with Calgary-based Suncor Energy is the biggest leveled by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to resolve air pollution violations. The Colorado Sun reports the settlement was announced by John Putnam, the agency’s environmental director, at a news conference. Suncor’s Commerce City refinery produces about a third of gasoline used by motor vehicles in Colorado and most of the jet fuel used at Denver International Airport. It processes about 98,000 barrels of oil daily, most of that from drillers along Colorado’s Front Range. On Dec. 11, the refinery released an ashy substance that blanketed adjacent neighborhoods. Suncor called the clay-like material catalyst and said it wasn’t hazardous.

Connecticut

New Britain: The state’s wine and spirits industry has joined forces with environmentalists to reduce litter, especially mini bottles of wine and spirits known as nips. The anti-litter partnership, known as Three Tiers for Connecticut, plans to launch the retail portion of its “Don’t Trash Connecticut - Nip it in the Bin!” campaign Tuesday. The campaign will focus on signage at retail locations, urging consumers to properly dispose of the bottles. A news conference is planned Tuesday at CT Beverage Mart in New Britain. The partnership has already held two community cleanup events in Norwalk and West Haven. More more cleanups and initiatives are scheduled for the coming year. Wine and spirits companies and organizations in Connecticut formed the partnership last year with the group Live Green CT, a statewide environmental organization that’s dedicated to eradicating land-based litter by 2025.

Delaware

Wilmington: A federal judge has refused to dismiss a whistleblower lawsuit against the state’s largest hospital system. The lawsuit filed by former Christiana Care compliance officer Ronald Sherman and backed by the federal government alleges that the hospital system defrauded taxpayers by funneling Medicaid payments to independent doctors as kickbacks in exchange for patient referrals. The judge denied Christiana’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit after holding a hearing Friday. Christiana Care argued that Sherman had no standing to file the lawsuit because he had previously executed a release discharging all causes of action against the hospital system when he was terminated in 2014. Christiana also argued that Sherman, on behalf of Christiana Care, had disclosed the allegations contained in his complaint to the government through compliance disclosure logs submitted to the Department of Health and Human Services’ inspector general’s office.

District of Columbia

Washington: A federal magistrate on Friday excoriated the government for refusing to turn over its investigative file in the death of a Virginia man shot by U.S. Park Police. The files are sought by the family of Bijan Ghaisar, who died in 2017 after he was shot by Park Police officers multiple times at the conclusion of a stop-and-go chase on the George Washington Parkway. Ghaisar’s family is suing the government and the officers who shot Ghaisar. At a hearing Friday, U.S. Magistrate Ivan Davis said the government had no right to withhold the file from the Ghaisar family’s lawyers. He ordered the government to turn over the entire file by next Friday. Government lawyers said they have been delayed in turning over the file because the material in the file is sensitive and voluminous. Judge Davis, though, was unsympathetic. “You’re required to produce, period,” Davis said. “You do not decide unilaterally for yourself” whether material should be turned over.

Florida

Key West: A woman who plays the French Horn in the Royal Canadian Navy took top honors in Key West’s 58th annual Conch Shell Blowing Contest on Saturday. Alliszon Zaichkowski of Victoria, British Columbia, won the women’s title performing excerpts from several melodies including composer Igor Stravinsky’s “The Firebird” and Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” She’s such a fan of the quirky “instrument” that she had a large conch shell tattooed on her arm. “I like to think of the conch shell as my travel horn because I can’t bring my French horn everywhere, and you also don’t want to be playing a French horn at the beach,” she said. “So I always just take my conch shell with me, and that’s my vacation instrument.” In the men’s division, Vinnie Marturano of Big Pine Key tooted his way to victory by playing a portion of Aram Khachaturian’s “Sabre Dance.” The fluted, pink-lined conch shell, an enduring symbol of the Florida Keys, has been used as a signaling device in the islands for centuries. Today, native-born residents are known as Conchs, and the Keys island chain is often called the Conch Republic.

Georgia

Atlanta: Some students at a private school have been suspended indefinitely after a video surfaced showing them conducting an apparent mock lynching of another student with toilet paper in a school bathroom, officials said. Several boys at Cristo Rey Atlanta Jesuit High School were seen on video wrapping toilet paper around their heads and cutting holes for their eyes, news outlets report. Some were also seen wrapping what appears to be a toilet paper noose around another boy’s neck as he appears to pull up on a bathroom stall support beam as if being hanged. Officials at the college preparatory school acknowledged the incident Thursday. They said the act was reprehensible and wouldn’t be tolerated. They also said the students were suspended indefinitely while the school investigates. A school statement didn’t say how many youths were suspended, and the races of those involved weren’t immediately disclosed.

Hawaii

Honolulu: A million trees could be planted in the state each year under a proposed program to increase the number of noninvasive trees. The Legislature is considering backing the tree-planting project started by University of Hawaii geography professor Camilo Mora to offset carbon emissions, the Honolulu Star-Advertiser reports. The Carbon Neutrality Resources initiative is responsible for planting thousands of trees in Hawaii. The most recent project involved 2,000 volunteers planting 11,000 trees in December, Mora said, adding that he hopes to increase to 100,000 this year and plant a million in 2021. The bill would place the state Department of Land and Natural Resources in charge of a program to plant a million native trees statewide each year. It was approved by the Senate on Tuesday and passed its first reading in the House on Thursday.

Idaho

Boise: The FBI is investigating after hackers stole as much as half a million dollars of state payments that were intended to go to contractors. Idaho State Controller Brandon Woolf’s office revealed the theft in a statement late Friday afternoon, saying the hackers posed as state vendors and then changed the vendor’s banking information, diverting the payments into the hackers’ bank accounts. The fraud was first noticed by a controller’s office employee Feb. 26, according to the office. Few details were released about exactly how the thefts occurred, but officials said the hackers were able to change the banking information by “navigating state procedures.” “Regular payments made to those vendors by 20 state agencies were then diverted and stolen,” the release said. “The State has recovered some of the funds to date, however, the total amount of funds diverted is under $550,000.”

Illinois

Chicago: Officials from the city and the NHP Foundation celebrated the opening of a renovated historic housing unit offering affordable single-room occupancy. Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Friday that restoration of the Mark Twain on Chicago’s Near North Side will help keep the city affordable. The city teamed up with the NHP Foundation, a nonprofit real estate organization dedicated to preserving and expanding affordable housing, in a $54 million rehabilitation of the building. It created 148 affordable apartment units with private bathrooms and added private kitchenettes. It has all new plumbing and electrical systems, a rooftop deck, a restored vintage facade and nearly 10,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor. The Chicago Housing Authority will provide rental assistance to the Mark Twain’s occupants. Fifty residents who lived there before the renovation have returned; the rest of the units will be leased to people on the authority’s waiting list.

Indiana

West Lafayette: The city will start supplying free feminine hygiene products in all city building restrooms, including men’s and gender-neutral restrooms. The decision came after Purdue University’s move to offer an assortment of menstrual care products for free in campus bathrooms. After the City Council approved a similar resolution, Mayor John Dennis said West Lafayette was ready to start stocking feminine products in all restrooms in city facilities, including the $31.5 million Wellness and Aquatic Center scheduled to open in early 2021. City Council members Shannon King and Kathy Parker sponsored the resolution. “The mayor gave us a thumbs up, and he really had our back,” King said. During a pilot project in restrooms at Purdue, the faculty-led University Senate found the building averaged $27 a month to restock menstrual care products used from seven dispensers.

Iowa

Des Moines: The names of three nominees to fill a vacant state Supreme Court seat have been passed to Gov. Kim Reynolds, who now has 30 days to appoint one of them as the high court’s next justice. The Judicial Nominating Commission on Friday afternoon announced the finalists: Mary Chicchelly, District Court Judge in the Sixth Judicial District out of Cedar Rapids; Matt McDermott, an attorney at Belin McCormick, P.C. in Des Moines; and David May, an Iowa Court of Appeals Judge in Polk City. The commission, composed of eight individuals elected by Iowa lawyers and nine commissioners appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Senate, interviewed 15 applicants Friday to fill the seat that will be left empty upon former acting chief justice David Wiggins’ retirement in the coming weeks. The finalist will be Reynolds’s fourth appointment to the court since taking office in May 2017.

Kansas

Lawrence: A couple hundred million years ago, an ocean covering Kansas teemed with prehistoric life. Yet for millennia, Kansas has been a dry, sometimes even dusty place. The ocean is long gone, but traces of that long-ago aquatic life were captured for the ages in fossil form. Now, paleontologists from the University of Kansas have an app they hope will help motivate people to go out and find that evidence, reports the Kansas News Service. The Digital Atlas of Ancient Life app was created by a group of paleontologists and researchers led by KU ecology and evolutionary biology professor Bruce Lieberman. The app boasts an extensive database with detailed pictures of fossils common to Kansas. KU owns thousands of fossil specimens, especially trilobites, cephalopods and ancient clams. The app is one way to share all of that information to smartphones around the world. If it motivates people to go out and find some of their own, Lieberman said, all the better.

Kentucky

Frankfort: The state House overwhelmingly passed its version of a new two-year budget Friday, but some lawmakers said the unwillingness to tap into more revenue sources would shortchange many of the state’s pressing funding needs. The GOP-crafted spending plan drew bipartisan support in clearing the House 86-10. The measure now goes to the Republican-dominated Senate, which will put its imprint on the budget. The differences will likely be ironed out by legislative leaders in a conference committee. The House version changed Democratic Gov. Andy Beshear’s proposed pay raise for teachers to spread it to other school employees. It boosted school-security funding to hire hundreds of counselors. The House plan also scaled back Beshear’s proposal to add more social workers but offered salary enhancements to hire and retain more of them working in child protective services. The only new revenue source to help support the House spending plan would come from new taxes on vaping and tobacco productions, which would raise nearly $50 million over two years.

Louisiana

Lafayette: The opening of an urban park is being delayed because the nonprofit organization behind the project has obtained more money for additional features. Lafayette Central Park Inc. initially hoped to open Moncus Park this spring, but with an extra $5 million in money raised, the organization is planning to open later in the year. Features already completed include a dog park. Features being added this year are an amphitheater and a “family area,” which includes a tree house, splash pad and playground. The nonprofit has received some contributions earlier than expected. For example, plans for the amphitheater were put into motion when Iberia Bank advanced a pledge of $1 million to the park, which wasn’t expected for another three years. With the additional money, the nonprofit and its board had to consider whether to push back the park’s opening date; use sporadic openings of sections; or have construction underway while the park is open.

Maine

Bar Harbor: A historical museum that is part of the state’s popular Acadia National Park will be closed to the public this season as it undergoes rehabilitation work. The Islesford Historical Museum has been in the midst of rehab since November 2019. The National Park Service said the work will “allow for the protection and longevity of a historic building and for the safe exhibition of historical objects.” The museum is on the National Register of Historic Places and opened in the summer of 1928. The rehab work will include replacement of the original slate roof. The park service said money for the $1.1 million rehab is coming from entrance passes purchased at Acadia National Park and the service’s repair and rehabilitation funds. The service said the museum is scheduled to reopen during the following season with an exhibit about the Cranberry Isles.

Maryland

Annapolis: A comprehensive education measure that will cost billions of dollars over the next decade with the goal of making the state’s K-12 schools among the world’s best was approved by the House of Delegates on Friday night. The House voted 96-41 for the bill, which still needs Senate approval. The legislation, known as the Blueprint for Maryland’s Future, is based on the recommendations of a state commission that worked for three years on the proposal. The plan focuses on five policy areas: expanding early childhood education like pre-K; increasing teacher salaries; college and career readiness; aid for struggling schools; and accountability in implementation. The proposal would be phased in over a 10-year period. It would cost an additional $4 billion in fiscal year 2030, with a majority of the cost paid by the state while local governments also contribute.

Massachusetts

Westborough: Fish and wildlife officials have started stocking the state’s ponds, lakes and rivers with more than 500,000 trout raised in five hatcheries. The Massachusetts Division of Fisheries and Wildlife stocking program began last week with bodies of water on Cape Cod, as well as in southeastern Massachusetts and areas west of Boston. Some of the places stocked with rainbow trout include Spectacle Pond in Sandwich, Lake Cochituate in Natick and Houghton’s Pond in Milton. Other bodies of water will be stocked with brook, brown and tiger trout raised in hatcheries in Sandwich, Palmer, Belchertown, Sunderland and Montague. These fish, coupled with the more than 60,000 stocked last fall, will provide some excellent fishing in the coming months, the agency says. Most of the trout are longer than 12 inches, with more than 600 brown trout and 500 brook trout over 18 inches.

Michigan

Detroit: Five people who worked in a wildlife disease lab have been diagnosed with a latent form of tuberculosis, a spokesman said Friday. The Department of Natural Resources’ lab processes thousands of deer heads during the annual hunting season to check for chronic wasting disease and bovine TB. An illness caused by bacteria that attack the lungs, TB can be fatal, although a latent form shows no symptoms, doesn’t make people feel sick and is not contagious, according to federal health experts. It typically involves treatment to prevent full-blown TB. The DNR learned about the infections last year, including three people in June and two later in the summer, spokesman Ed Golder said. He said it was the department’s “working assumption” that the workers got TB from infected deer, “but we can’t say for sure.” The lab is located at Michigan State University.

Minnesota

St. Paul: Overall graduation rates for the state’s high school students have hit a historic high. The state Department of Education released data Thursday that shows a graduation rate of 83.7% for the class of 2019. That’s up half a percentage point from the prior year and up nearly 1.5 points over the past five years. Minnesota Public Radio News reports black and Hispanic students made the biggest gains, with improvements of more than 3 percentage points for Hispanics and more than 2 points for black students. Racial and socioeconomic disparities persist, with graduation rates higher for white students than they are for students of color. The data shows the rate for Native American students fell slightly this year. The rate remains the lowest among Minnesota high school students at just over half.

Mississippi

Jackson: State legislators have killed bills that would either ban or regulate kratom, an herbal drug that can be used for pain relief. Kratom is currently unregulated in most parts of the United States but has been outlawed by a few local governments in Mississippi amid concerns that it can be harmful. Kratom is derived from a tree that’s native to Southeast Asia. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency says the leaves can be crushed and then smoked, put into capsules, or taken with water or other liquids. The DEA characterizes kratom as one of its “drugs of concern.” The agency says people have used it to relieve muscle strains and as a substitute for opium; the drug has also been used to manage withdrawal symptoms from opioids. Bills to either ban or regulate kratom died Tuesday when committees did not consider them before the first big deadline of the legislative session.

Missouri

Clayton: More than 170 firearms seized or recovered by police during an eight-month period last year were purchased from a single St. Louis-area pawn shop, federal authorities said in announcing charges against three men connected to the shop. Carlos Jones, 31; Robert Thornton, 36; and Steven Johnson, 44, were charged Thursday with unlawful transfer of firearm to a convicted felon and making false statements on firearm records. All three men worked at Piazza Jewelry and Pawn in Overland, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb. The federal complaint said the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives traced 170 seized and recovered guns to sales at the pawn shop, with 102 of those guns recovered in the city of St. Louis. ATF Special Agent Chad Foreman wrote in an affidavit released Thursday that six of the confiscated guns were used in homicides, four in robberies and 20 in weapons offenses and were found in 36 cases in which a prohibited person was in possession of a firearm.

Montana

Billings: A landslide was blocking a BNSF Railway freight line in eastern Montana on Friday. The slide happened about 10 p.m. Wednesday about 10 miles west of Miles City, BNSF Railway spokeswoman Maia LaSalle said. Dirt covered about 800 feet of railway that runs along the Yellowstone River. Crews were still working Friday to clear the tracks, but the slide activity had not been stabilized, LaSalle said. Freight traffic was being rerouted around the blockage on Montana Rail Link tracks. The track that is blocked is part of a path that connects trains from North and South Dakota to southern routes through the Powder River region into Wyoming, The Billings Gazette reports. No trains were in the area at the time of the slide, and no injuries have been reported, BNSF said.

Nebraska

Ogallala: The state game and parks commission will vote March 20 on banning both alcohol possession and consumption at Lake McConaughy and neighboring Lake Ogallala in western Nebraska. The alcohol ban in the state-controlled areas is among several agreements the state worked out with local leaders to avert drastic cuts in access, The North Platte Telegraph reports. The commission had been considering access restrictions following complaints about overcrowding and rowdy behavior last Fourth of July. The proposed changes, which would have taken effect later this year, were meant to address the overcrowding on the lake’s beaches. But the commission delayed action in January after hundreds of people showed up for a hearing on the proposed rules. Most said they wanted more law enforcement and greater attention to checkpoints, not a crackdown to limit access.

Nevada

Reno: Social media comments about protecting bears that were posted by Lake Tahoe activists and referred to a longtime wildlife biologist as a murderer constitute “good faith communications” protected as free speech, the state Supreme Court says. The recent opinion doesn’t end a lawsuit filed in Washoe County District Court in Reno. But it settles a key legal question in the dispute between Carl Lackey, a Nevada Department of Wildlife biologist, and Carolyn Stark, who administers a Facebook page that posts criticism of the state’s bear control tactics. The lawsuit is the latest development in a yearslong legal and public relations battle between the agency and a group of activists who oppose state methods for managing bears. In 2018, a judge issued a protective order to keep Stark away from another state biologist who says Stark stalked her in a dispute over the capture of nuisance bears.

New Hampshire

Concord: Gov. Chris Sununu has written to congressional leaders asking for continued funding of the State Opioid Response Grant program, which helped New Hampshire create a new “hub and spoke” caregiver system. The state used its $45.8 million share of funding to set up its Doorway program of nine regional recovery centers. Sununu, in his letter Friday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, said the program served more than 7,300 people in 2019 and provided more than 3,200 clinical evaluations to identify needed services. Of that group, over 2,400 people had opioid-related needs, and more than 5,000 referrals were made to medication-assisted treatment, outpatient, residential and peer recovery services.

New Jersey

Margate: Residents in a Jersey Shore town that hates its new sand dunes will get a chance to say whether they support building a boardwalk. Margate’s government decided late Thursday to authorize a nonbinding referendum during the November general election asking voters whether they support building a boardwalk in the wealthy town south of Atlantic City. The proposal arose from widespread unhappiness with a beach replenishment project completed in 2017. Mayor Michael Becker said Friday that the town is not committing itself to building one if the vote goes that way. Rather, he said, there needs to be a mechanism for the town’s voters to clearly express their preference, and the commission will then weigh the pros and cons before deciding. Margate had a boardwalk in the early 1900s; it was destroyed by a hurricane in 1944.

New Mexico

Magdalena: The National Radio Astronomy Observatory is canceling group tours of its Very Large Array to prevent the spread of the new coronavirus. The observatory said Friday that the visitor center and gift shop will remain open, and self-guided walking tours will continue. But a semi-annual open house, guided tours and special tours for school groups will be put on hold between March 15 and May 31. The move is meant to protect visitors and the workers who keep the facility running, Tony Beasley, the observatory director, said in a news release. “Our first priority is the safety and health of our visitors and our staff, and these cancellations are being done to minimize the risk of exposure to this virus,” Beasley said. Astronomers use the Very Large Array to observe natural radiowaves from distant stars and planets.

New York

New York: Video showing New York City police officers arresting a young black man sparked outrage and elicited questions about the amount of force used to make the arrest in a city where mistrust of police remains high more than five years after Eric Garner’s death from an officer’s chokehold. Fitzroy Gayle, 20, pleads for help in the video, recorded by a woman who then tweeted it, as several officers wrestle him into submission Wednesday evening on a Brooklyn sidewalk. When Gayle asks a lone plainclothes officer why he was being stopped, the officer does not appear to answer before uniformed backup rushes in. Police Commissioner Dermot Shea said he was ordering an internal investigation. The man in the video had fled officers who approached him and another man as they were smoking marijuana in a park about 7 p.m., Shea said. The officers were responding to an automated alert to gunshots, Shea said. Both men were later apprehended, but there is no indication they were linked to the gunfire, he said.

North Carolina

Raleigh: The state’s residents are getting more site-specific information this year about the air that they breathe and whether it might make sense to keep inside. The state Division of Air Quality announced last week that daily air-quality forecasts will now be issued for 91 of the state’s 100 counties and two mountain ridge zones. In the past, forecasts have been regional. A website provides real-time air quality index measurements, while next-day and extended forecast products will be posted each afternoon and updated in the morning. Index readings correspond to a color-coded advisory system that describes when the air can be unhealthy for some or many. Last week started what’s considered the ozone season, or when concentrations of the gas can be highest in the air as days get warmer. The division says ozone concentrations have been declining due to emission reductions from power plants, cars and industry.

North Dakota

Fargo: New rules for the state’s presidential caucuses are likely to drive up turnout and could shrink Bernie Sanders’ organizational advantage over Joe Biden when the state’s Democratic voters get their say this week in what has essentially become a two-man race. North Dakota is the smallest prize of the six states holding caucuses or primaries Tuesday, with only 14 pledged delegates at stake. As a result, it hasn’t gotten much attention from either candidate. What’s new for North Dakota voters in 2020 is that the system is more like a primary than a traditional caucus. People are free to vote and leave. Democrats can vote at 14 locations across the state, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. CST and 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. MST. Republicans will have seven polling places open from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. local time, where voters can express their support for President Donald Trump. And in a boon to rural voters, mail-in ballots will be accepted.

Ohio

Toledo: A tree that appeared overnight during the 1979 U.S. Open to become a part of golf lore has met its end. The Black Hills spruce known as “The Hinkle Tree” was partially uprooted by a gust of wind last week at Inverness Club in Toledo and was cut down. The tree dated to the 79th Open, when a journeyman pro named Lon Hinkle came up with a way to outsmart the course during the first round. Hinkle noticed he could take a shortcut by hitting through a gap of trees near the eighth tee and drive his ball on the adjacent 17th fairway, shaving 75 yards off the dogleg hole. It made for an easy birdie, but U.S. Golf Association officials were not amused. The USGA dispatched the course’s greens chairman to bring in a tree from a nursery and block the shortcut. Overnight, the Black Hill spruce, about 20 feet tall, appeared in the gap. But during the next round, Hinkle and his playing partner, Chi Chi Rodriguez, decided to hit their tee shots over the tree.

Oklahoma

Tulsa: A man who ran unsuccessfully for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in 2018 has been found guilty of assault and battery for shooting a process server trying to give him legal documents. Jurors on Thursday rejected Christopher Jonathan Barnett’s argument that he shot and wounded the man who came to his Tulsa home in July in self defense. On the stand, Barnett asserted the process server presented a threat to him, though he conceded the man never pointed a weapon at him. Jurors recommended Barnett be sentenced to 32 years in prison and fined $10,000. A judge will sentence Barnett in April. The Tulsa World reports video and audio evidence presented to the jury showed the process server just flashed legal documents at Barnett, who kept his front door closed while they spoke. Defense attorney Jason Lollman said he plans to appeal and believes the sentencing recommendation was too harsh.

Oregon

Salem: The state has reached an agreement with private health insurance companies to waive co-payments, co-insurance and deductibles for Oregonians who undergo testing for COVID-19 at a facility that’s within their insurance network, Gov. Kate Brown announced. The agreement also will apply to a vaccine for the virus if one becomes available, she said in a statement Thursday. The state is pursuing the same agreement with self-insured health plans and also seeking clarification from the federal government about exceptions to cost-sharing for Medicare Advantage plans, as well as health savings account-eligible high-deductible health plans, she said. “No one should have to ask if getting a COVID-19 test is something they can afford. I hope this agreement sets a framework that other states can follow nationwide,” Brown said in the statement.

Pennsylvania

Ephrata: A small family-owned pharmacy chain is closing its five central Pennsylvania stores after a 141-year run. Royer Pharmacy in Lancaster County calls itself one of the oldest continuously operating independent pharmacies in the nation. It’s been operated by two families since a young pharmacist named George Royer bought the business in 1879. Company officials cited the age of the owners and decreasing insurance reimbursements that made it difficult to remain in business. “It’s been a great run,” Royer President Donald Sherman said in a news release. Royer said patient files will be transferred to CVS after the stores close by March 18, and employees would be considered for jobs at the nationwide chain. Royer had locations in Ephrata, Lancaster, Akron and Leola.

Rhode Island

Providence: The state’s highest court has refused to hear a strip club’s appeal of a punishment the city had levied against it over allegations of prostitution. The Rhode Island Supreme Court on Thursday rejected the Wild Zebra’s bid to have its adult entertainment license restored. The court did not explain why it would not consider the appeal. The Providence Board of Licenses heard testimony in January from two detectives who said that while undercover at the Wild Zebra Gentlemen’s Club in May dancers offered to have sex with them or perform sexual acts on them in exchange for money. The club denies the allegations of prostitution. An attorney for the club didn’t respond to a request for comment from The Providence Journal. The Providence board stripped the Wild Zebra of its liquor and adult entertainment licenses. A state regulatory department gave the club its liquor license back while it pursues its appeal, but it has remained closed.

South Carolina

Columbia: With spring just around the corner, emergency officials in the state say it’s time to begin preparing for severe weather. Gov. Henry McMaster declared this week South Carolina Severe Weather and Flood Safety week. Emergency officials will work all week with the National Weather Service to give safety and preparation tips for floods, tornadoes and severe storms that became more likely as the weather warms. On Wednesday, there will be a statewide tornado drill as schools and businesses across the state are asked to take shelter under their tornado safety plans and as forecasters test weather radios and other devices programmed to go off when a tornado warning is issued. Emergency officials are also pushing for flood safety. Flash floods after massive rains in October 2015 killed 19 people in South Carolina.

South Dakota

Pierre: State wildlife officials have decided to scale back Gov. Kristi Noem’s program that pays bounties for predators that raid migratory birds’ nests. KELO-TV reports the South Dakota Game, Fish and Parks Commission voted 6-2 on Friday to extend the program for a second year. But the commission reduced the spending cap from $500,000 to $250,000. It also reduced the size of the bounty from $10 per tail from a raccoon, striped skunk, opossum, red fox or badger to $5 per tail. Bounties will now be paid regardless of whether the predator is shot or trapped; last year bounties applied only if a predator was trapped. The program starts April 1 and runs through July 1. Only South Dakota residents can participate. Chairman Gary Jensen and Mary Anne Boyd were the only two commissioners who voted against continuing the program. Jensen said science doesn’t support the program, and it’s designed to help trappers, whom he says are doing well anyway.

Tennessee

Memphis: The Tennessee Valley Authority plans to move toxin-laden coal ash from a retired plant in the city to an off-site landfill, at the cost of roughly $300 million, the federal utility said Friday. TVA is considering six landfills in the South after it decided to move 3.5 million cubic yards of coal ash – the byproduct of burning coal for power – from the old Allen Fossil Plant in south Memphis, rather than keep the material in place. The TVA said it prefers taking the coal ash to an offsite landfill rather than moving it to a processing facility because construction and operation of the facility would delay economic development of the Allen site and lead to issues with air and noise emissions, safety risks and public disruption, the TVA said in an environmental impact report. Removal would cost about $300 million and take about seven to 10 years, TVA spokesman Scott Brooks said.

Texas

Santa Fe: A teenager accused of fatally shooting 10 people at a high school in 2018 was able to buy more than 100 rounds of ammunition online because his age was not verified, according to a lawsuit alleging the website involved broke federal law. Dimitrios Pagourtzis was a 17-year-old junior at the time of the May 2018 shooting at Santa Fe High School. Federal law prohibits minors from purchasing handgun ammunition and bars licensed gun companies from selling handgun or shotgun ammunition to minors or anyone they have reason to believe is under the age of 21. According to an amended lawsuit filed Thursday, Pagourtzis initially ordered 50 rounds of hollow-point handgun ammunition and 105 rounds of 12-gauge shotgun ammunition, the Houston Chronicle reports. Two weeks later, he purchased an additional 35 rounds of shotgun ammunition – both times from the website Luckygunner.com that did not require him to make an account, submit proof of age or set-up a secure two-step authorization, the filing said.

Utah

Salt Lake City: A slimmed-down version of a measure to require warning labels on pornography passed the state Senate on Friday. The proposal would now mandate a one-sentence warning label for online or print material deemed legally obscene, the Salt Lake Tribune reports. A relatively small slice of porn is considered obscene, but that hardcore material has fewer constitutional protections. The label would say that “exposing minors to obscene material may damage or negatively impact minors.” A website could also embed in its metadata the searchable text, “utahobscenitywarning.” The porn industry has objected to the plan, saying it could have constitutional problems and open the floodgates for lawsuits. If it does not appear on a print publication or is not displayed for 15 seconds online, producers could be fined $2,500 for each civil violation.

Vermont

Montpelier: Three out of about a dozen Vermont towns passed resolutions on Town Meeting Day to become Second Amendment “sanctuary” towns, supporting gun rights and opposing more state and federal gun control laws, organizers said. About a half-dozen towns where the resolution was proposed did not take up the measure on Town Meeting Day on Tuesday because officials did not feel it was appropriate for the setting, said Eric Davis, president of Gun Rights Vermont. Lowell, Eden and Whittingham passed the resolution, he said. The town of Barton rejected the proposal. The voice vote Tuesday was close, Town Clerk Kristin Atwood told the Caledonian Record. Select boards in the towns of Holland and Pittsford adopted the resolution to become sanctuary towns earlier this year. The resolutions are not legally binding.

Virginia

Hampton: Three black astronauts joined hundreds of other mourners Saturday at a memorial service for pioneering African American mathematician and NASA researcher Katherine Johnson. Johnson, who calculated rocket trajectories and Earth orbits for NASA’s early space missions and was later portrayed in the 2016 film “Hidden Figures,” about pioneering black female aerospace workers, died Feb. 24 at the age of 101. More than 700 people turned out for Saturday’s memorial service at the Hampton University Convocation Center. “I think about the journey that she’s going on now,” astronaut Leland Melvin said. “We can’t calculate the speed that she’s traveling to get to heaven.” Melvin was joined by fellow astronauts Yvonne Cagle and Mae Jemison, the first black woman in space. Johnson was remembered not just as a pioneering researcher but as a faithful church leader and family matriarch. “Grandma, because of you, our world will forever be unlimited,” grandson Michael Moore said. “And because of you, I have no bounds.”

Washington

Olympia: The state has become the 10th to prohibit homicide defendants from claiming a defense based on panic over a victim’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Gov. Jay Inslee signed the measure Thursday. It takes effect in June. Nine other states – California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Nevada, New Jersey New York and Rhode Island – have already banned the use of gay or transgender panic as a legal defense. The Washington state measure is named after Nikki Kuhnhausen, a transgender teen who was killed last year, The Columbian reports. It was approved with bipartisan support in the state House and the Senate, though some lawmakers questioned if the legislation was necessary since a panic defense has never been used in Washington.

West Virginia

Charleston: Foster parents who adopt children with special needs may soon get more money under a wide-ranging proposal passed Friday by the state Senate to reduce the state’s overburdened foster system. Senators voted unanimously to approve the proposal. It now moves back to the House of Delegates for that chamber to approve the Senate’s amendments. The measure directs state officials to expand a tiered system that would give higher payments to people who take in children with emotional, behavioral or intellectual problems. It sets aside $16.9 million for the payment system. The tiered system would have to be up and running by July 2021. Child-placing agencies would also get $1,000 every time they finalize an adoption.

Wisconsin

Spring Green: The school that architect Frank Lloyd Wright started nearly 90 years ago may stay open after all. The board of the School of Architecture at Taliesin announced in January that the school would close in June because the board and the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, the school’s biggest financial supporter, had failed to come up with a way to keep the school open. The foundation said then that the school lacked a sustainable business model. The Wisconsin State Journal reports the board voted Thursday to keep the school open in light of new funding. The decision to remain open is still subject to approval by the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation. The foundation issued a statement Friday saying it has little information about the new funding sources. Board Chairman Dan Schweiker said new supporters have come forward.

Wyoming

Jackson: Jackson Hole’s largest elk herd is thriving and appears to have grown slightly over the past year after hunters had a historically tough time finding animals and filling tags. Wyoming Game and Fish Department harvest data for 2019 estimates that 794 hunters who targeted zones roamed by the Jackson Elk Herd found success and filled their freezer, according to the Jackson Hole News & Guide. “That’s about half of what it normally is,” Game and Fish wildlife biologist Aly Courtemanch said. “Usually, there’s more like 1,500 or 1,600 elk harvested, both bulls and cows.” The 30-year average harvest in the Jackson Herd is 2,098 elk, though the kill hasn’t surpassed 2,000 since the early 2000s – when the herd size started shrinking by design. Fall 2019 elk hunts were slow across the board.

From USA TODAY Network and wire reports

Most Important Event the Year You Were Born – 24/7 Wall St.

Angelo Young and John Harrington

24/7 Wall Street

Over the past 100 years we’ve witnessed some of the most profound changes in human history.

Between wars, technological developments, progress in civil rights and breakthroughs in science and medicine, the old order that held back hundreds of millions of people has been swept away.

Centuries-old empires crumbled as new ideologies – from communism to fascism – for better or worse found roots in many places of the world. Progressive human rights ideas also emerged and changed the world as women, blacks, and the LGBT community demanded, and often won, equal rights. Technology evolved, modifying and innovating our lives in ways never dreamed of.

The world certainly has progressed, but wars have raged on, and climate change has picked up speed, endangering the ecosystems of our planet.

To put this in perspective, 24/7 Wall St. has compiled a list of the most important event in each of the past 100 years. We drew on research material and news reports to determine what event had the biggest impact in a particular year.

1919: National booze ban

• Date: Oct. 28

• Location: Washington D.C.

Congress passes the 18th Amendment that bans the production, transport or sale of alcoholic beverages in the United States. The legislation opens the way for Prohibition, which lasts from 1920 to 1933. The public flouts the law, which succeeds in enriching gangsters and contributing to the rise of organized crime.

1920: Women's suffrage

• Date: Aug. 26

• Location: Washington, D.C.

Though the United States was founded under democratic principles, only a minority of its population (starting with white landowning males over the age of 21) could actually vote. But after the 19th Amendment of the Constitution is passed, women finally gain a voice and the right to cast their ballots.

Sports gambling:Why sports betting hasn't gone nationwide yet after Supreme Court ruling

1921: Chinese Communists rise

• Date: July 1

• Location: Beijing

In a prequel to the rise of Mao Zedong and Red China, the Chinese Communist Party is founded, and three weeks later it convenes its first National Congress that is attended by Mao. It would take another 28 years before the Republic of China becomes the People's Republic of China.

1922: British Empire shrinks

• Date: Feb. 28

• Location: London

The British Empire was at its peak toward the end of World War I, commanding a global population estimated to be as many as 570 million people, or about a fourth of the world's population at the time. The empire's size began to shrink in 1920, when Britain declared limited independence for Egypt, which leads to full independence two years later.

1923: Great Kanto earthquake

• Date: Sept. 1

• Location: Tokyo, Yokohama, Japan

The Great Kanto earthquake, also known as the Tokyo-Yokohama earthquake, strikes the Japanese mainland at noon on Sept. 1, 1923, with a magnitude of 7.9 on the Richter scale. The death toll is estimated at 140,000 people. The force of the temblor destroys hundreds of thousands of homes that either collapse or are engulfed in fire. The quake sets off a tsunami that reaches a height of almost 40 feet at Atami in the Sagami Gulf, killing 60 people there. The most significant outcome of the catastrophe is the rebuilt Tokyo that would become a modern metropolis.

1924: From Lenin to Stalin

• Date: Jan. 21

• Location: Moscow

Following the death of Vladimir Lenin on Jan. 21, the new leader of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, immediately begins a purge of political rivals. Some are simply moved to different positions, while others, like Leon Trotsky, the presumed successor to Lenin, are exiled. Stalin's paranoia grows as he takes control of the nation, and with it the level of violence and killing of anyone perceived to be a threat to his power and control.

1925: Scopes monkey trial

• Date: July 10

• Location: Dayton, Tennessee

After teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee high school, the state prosecutes science teacher John Thomas Scopes because state law prohibits such teaching as it runs counter to Biblical beliefs. The trial pits well-known Christian fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan against renowned attorney Clarence Darrow. The jury rules against Scopes, forcing him to pay a fine of $100 (about $1,460 in 2017 dollars). It would take another 43 years before the U.S. Supreme Court rules that laws punishing people for teaching evolution violate the First Amendment.

1926: U.S. starts numbered highway system

• Date: Nov. 11

• Location: U.S.

In a precursor to the modern interstate highway system, the federal government introduces a national highway numbering system in an effort to standardize roadways, especially local roads and trails with names unfamiliar to outsiders. The U.S. Numbered Highway System makes it easier for the growing number of car owners to figure out how to get from one city or town to the next and opens the way for the great American road-trip tradition.

1927: Lindbergh nonstop to Paris

• Date: May 21

• Location: New York to Paris

When the monoplane The Spirit of St. Louis touches down at Le Bourget Field in Paris on the evening of May 21, Charles Lindbergh becomes the person to fly over the Atlantic Ocean nonstop. Lindbergh would become one of the heroes of the age. His feat fires the imagination of aspiring aviators about the commercial possibilities of flight. Lindbergh would stay in the news, but for regrettable reasons. A strong advocate for American isolationism in the 1930s, he is criticized for his admiration of Nazi Germany's aircraft industry. Also, his son would be killed during a bungled kidnapping attempt in 1932.

1928: Earhart crosses Atlantic

• Date: June 17-18

• Location: Wales

Amelia Earhart becomes the first woman to pilot a plane across the Atlantic, from Newfoundland to Wales, making her an American national heroine and feminist icon who would go on to set numerous aviation records. She would later set another record as the first person – man or woman – to fly solo from Hawaii to the U.S. mainland. Earhart and her co-pilot Fred Noonan would vanish over the Pacific Ocean in 1937 during Earhart's attempt to circumnavigate the globe. Recent evidence has emerged indicating Earhart may have sent distress signals after surviving a crash, possibly on the remote Gardner Island in the western Pacific Ocean.

1929: Wall Street crashes

• Date: Oct. 24-29

• Location: New York City

The "Roaring Twenties" come to a halt on Black Tuesday in October 1929, when stocks take a nosedive, contributing to the Great Depression. Reasons for the worst economic downturn in American history include over-lending by weakly regulated banks, excessive stock price valuation, too many stocks purchased on margin, unrestrained exuberance that sends millions of people to convert their savings into stocks, tightening of the credit by the Federal Reserve and an agricultural drought.

1930: Ho Chi Minh rises in Vietnam

• Date: Feb. 2

• Location: Hanoi

In an event that would have repercussions for U.S. foreign policy decades later, Vietnamese independence fighter Ho Chi Minh founds the Communist Party of Vietnam as part of his effort to oust French colonial occupiers. "Uncle Ho," as he was known to his many supporters, was inspired by the Russian Bolsheviks, who oppose the Tsarist autocracy, seeing parallels between that struggle and the fight against the foreign occupiers of his country.

1931: Empire State Building completed

• Date: May 1

• Location: New York City

President Herbert Hoover inaugurates the completion of the Empire State Building on May Day. It becomes the tallest building of the iconic Manhattan skyline until the construction of the World Trade Center Towers are completed in 1973. Incredibly, the 86-story office building took only 13 months to build, with construction starting in March of the previous year.

1932: Hitler becomes German

• Date: Feb. 25

• Location: Germany

Seven years after Adolf Hitler renounces his Austrian citizenship, a fellow member of the Nazi Party gets him a low-level government job, which comes with automatic citizenship. This opens the way for him to run for office. Already a well-known party activist, it takes Hitler only two years from receiving his citizenship status to becoming the leader of Germany.

1933: FDR elected

• Date: March 12

• Location: Washington, D.C.

With the Great Depression sending millions of Americans to soup kitchens and chasing whatever work they can find, newly elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt begins his weekly "Fireside Chats" as Americans are eager for guidance and solace during those dark times. FDR's first radio talk explains to Americans in plain language why he ordered that banks would close temporarily at different time in different parts of the country. The purpose, he explains, is to curb panic rushes of withdrawals, which has been hurting efforts to stabilize the banking system.

1934: Hitler consolidates power

• Date: June 30

• Location: Berlin

Germans, who had been suffering from a disastrous economic depression in 1929-30, begin to embrace the ideas of the Nationalist Socialist Workers Party – the Nazi Party. It becomes the largest party after the 1932 elections. In 1933, Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany. After President Paul von Hindenburg dies in 1934, Hitler then purges members of his own party – the bloody Night of the Long Knives – with the help of Nazi storm troopers and becomes the unquestioned leader of Germany.

1935: FDR launches New Deal

• Date: Aug. 14

• Location: Washington, D.C.

President Roosevelt, grappling with the Great Depression, signs into law his signature Social Security Act, a law that creates the country's first retirement security system. Earlier that year, as part of his "New Deal" policy, the president established the Works Progress Administration, a massive economic stimulus program, putting millions of Americans to work building the country's public infrastructure.

1936: Owens flouts Nazis

• Date: Aug. 3

• Location: Berlin

As the concept of racial purity and superiority dominates Germany in the 1930s, African-American sprinter Jesse Owens of Oakville, Alabama, shows them who is the master racer. During the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, and under the gaze of Adolf Hitler, Owens wins four Olympic gold medals for the 100-meter and 200-meter sprints, the long jump, and the 100-meter relay.

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1937: UAW changes car industry

• Date: Feb. 11

• Location: Flint, Michigan

Nearly two years after the establishment of the United Automobile Workers (UAW), the union scores a major victory in Flint, Michigan. Workers at the General Motors Fisher Body Plant Number One lay down their tools and occupy the factory, demanding union representation, a fair minimum wage, safer working conditions, and not to outsource labor to non-union plants. Despite efforts by GM and local police to extricate them from the plant, including shutting off the heat, cutting off food supply, and attacks that leave 16 workers and 11 police officers injured, the strike lasts 44 days. The strike leads to an agreement between GM and the UAW, which includes a 5% pay raise and permission to talk in the lunchroom.

1938: Anti-Semitism surges

• Date: Nov. 9

• Location: Germany, Austria, Sudetenland

Growing anti-Semitic scapegoating amid Germany's crippling economic conditions culminates in the Kristallnacht, or "Night of Broken Glass," a pogrom sparked by a speech from German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels. Storm troopers and other Nazi groups are ordered to attack and destroy Jewish businesses, homes and houses of worship. In one night of attacks in Germany, Austria and the German-speaking area of the Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, dozens of Jews are killed and tens of thousands are rounded up and sent to concentration camps.

1939: World War II starts

• Date: Sept. 1

• Location: Westerplatte, Poland

Under the cover of predawn darkness, a German battleship floats quietly into the center of Danzig Harbor and opens fire on a Polish stronghold in Westerplatte, the first shots of World War II. In the following weeks, Nazi forces, including 2,000 tanks and 1,000 aircraft, would shatter Polish defenses and surround Warsaw, which surrenders 26 days after the Danzig Harbor attack.

1940: McDonald's founded

• Date: May 15

• Location: San Bernardino, California

Brothers Richard and Maurice McDonald open McDonald's Barbecue Restaurant, offering BBQ ribs, pork sandwiches and 23 other menu items. Eight years later, they would restructure their popular local business to focus on hamburgers, milkshakes and fountain sodas, emphasizing speed, a simple menu and low prices. In the 1950s, businessman Ray Kroc would buy out the brothers and grow McDonald's into what it is today – the world's largest restaurant chain.

1941: Attack on Pearl Harbor

• Date: Dec. 7

• Location: Oahu, Hawaii

Knowing the U.S. is gearing up to engage them in the Pacific Ocean theater of World War II, Japan deploys a massive air attack on U.S. Navy ships parked at Pearl Harbor. The surprise assault by 353 Japanese aircraft leads to the deaths of 2,403 people, including 1,177 sailors aboard the ill-fated USS Arizona, one of 19 vessels that were damaged or destroyed in the attack. Nearly 330 aircraft were also damaged or destroyed. The United States declares war on Japan the next day and three days later against Germany and Italy.

1942: GIs arrive in Europe

• Date: Jan. 26

• Location: Northern Ireland

The first U.S. troops destined to fight in Europe in the world's greatest war arrive in Northern Ireland. It is the beginning of a military buildup that would culminate in the invasion of France more than two years later. Before then, the United States was providing only material support to its ally across the Atlantic, while building up what President Roosevelt called the "Arsenal of Democracy" in anticipation for the inevitable entry of the United States into the war in Europe.

1943: Invention of LSD

• Date: April 19

• Location: Basel, Switzerland

Swiss chemist Albert Hoffman had been studying the potential medicinal value of lysergic compounds when he accidentally exposed himself to LSD-25, which he had created years earlier in his lab. This was the first LSD trip, a quarter-century before the counterculture endorses the hallucinogenic compound. Hoffman describes the "not unpleasant" experience as "uninterrupted stream of fantastic pictures, extraordinary shapes with intense, kaleidoscopic play of colors." Hoffman takes a second dose and writes a paper about his discovery. The U.S. Army tests the drug on soldiers numerous times from 1955 to 1967, briefly toying with the idea of using LSD as a weapon to disorient enemy soldiers during combat.

1944: D-Day

• Date: June 6

• Location: Normandy France

The plan for the biggest one-day military campaign in history, the invasion of Normandy by Allied forces to push the Nazis out of France, is hatched in extreme secrecy a year earlier. The plan is conceived during the Quebec Conference by Canadian Prime Minister William Lyon Mackenzie King, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt. The invasion starts at 6:30 a.m. on five beaches, and over the next 24 hours about 4,900 Allied soldiers are killed, many of them the instant the doors of their Higgins transport boats opened directly into German machine gun fire.

1945: World War II ends

• Date: Sept. 2

• Location: Multiple

The surrender of Japan marks the end of World War II amid one of the most tumultuous years of the 20th century. Earlier in the year, leaders of three nations – Benito Mussolini, Franklin Roosevelt and Adolf Hitler – die and Nazi Germany surrenders. Though the surrender of Japan was inevitable, the prospect of a horrific Allied assault on the Japanese mainland convinces the United States to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The atomic bomb attacks, along with the entry of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan, compel the Japanese to surrender.

1946: Baby boom starts

• Date: Jan. 1

• Location: U.S.

More American babies are born – 3.4 million – in 1946 than in any year in U.S. history up to then. The number of births grows to 4 million per year from 1954 to 1964, the last year of the baby boomer generation, the biggest generation at that point in history.

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1947: India gains independence

• Date: Aug. 15

• Location: Washington, D.C

The sun sets on the British Empire in India in 1947, as the Asian nation becomes the world's largest democracy. Independence is the culmination of decades of work by Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and Indian nationalists committed to throwing off the yoke of British colonialism. The transition to independence comes at a price. The subcontinent is partitioned into two nations, Hindu-majority India and Muslim-majority Pakistan. Violence erupts between Hindus and Muslims as Hindus migrate to India and Muslims shift to Pakistan. It is estimated that 1 million people die during the migration.

1948: Birth of Israel

• Date: May 15

• Location: Middle East

After Israel declares its independence following a UN resolution, neighboring Arab states with troops from Egypt, Iraq, Syria, Transjordan (now Jordan), Lebanon and Saudi Arabia attack the former British-controlled Palestinian mandate. The Arab-Israeli War ended with an armistice that leaves Israel with some territories as Egypt and Jordan retains control over the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, respectively.

1949: NATO founded

• Date: April 4

• Location: Washington, D.C.

Two years into the Cold War, the Soviet Union detonates its first nuclear bomb and quickly exerts its influence over Eastern Europe. It attempts to do the same in Western Europe, which is still recovering from the massive destruction of World War II. To respond to the Soviet threat, U.S. and Western European allies form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. Fundamentally, NATO simply states that an attack on any NATO member would be considered an attack on all NATO members. Cold War tensions ratchet up later that year when the communists take over China, the world's most populous nation.

1950: Korean War starts

• Date: June 25

• Location: Korea

The North Korean People's Army crosses the 38th parallel into South Korea, eliciting almost an immediate response from President Harry Truman, and starting the Korean War – a proxy battle between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Three years later, a ceasefire would halt the war. The uneasy relations between North Korea and South Korea last to this day.

1951: Rosenbergs sentenced

• Date: March 29

• Location: New York City

Husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their part in passing along atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during and after World War II. They are executed two years later. Not everyone is convinced of their involvement in the scheme. Supporters claim they are scapegoats swept up in the Cold War hysteria of the time. Documents revealed decades later would show the detailed extent of Julius Rosenberg's involvement in the spy ring, though Ethel's participation in the scheme remains inconclusive.

1952: First hydrogen bomb test

• Date: Nov. 1

• Location: Marshall Islands

The United States successfully detonates its first hydrogen bomb, a second generation thermonuclear device, in the Marshall Islands as part of Operation Ivy, one of a series of nuclear bomb tests. From 1946 to 1958, the United States used the remote Pacific Marshall Islands as its nuclear weapons testing site, detonating a total of 67 nuclear tests.

1953: The dawn of DNA

• Date: Feb. 28

• Location: Cambridge, England, U.K.

Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick announce they have discovered the fundamental behavior and double-helix structure of DNA. Though scientists had been aware of DNA since the 1860s and its role in genetic inheritance since 1943, Watson and Crick were the first to explain how DNA works to replicate itself and pass on genes from one generation to the next.

1954: Brown vs. Board of Education

• Date: May 17

• Location: Washington, D.C.

In a landmark case involving Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, who had to cross a railroad track to reach an all-black elementary school even though an all-white school was closer, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the segregated school system was unconstitutional on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The clause would be used again by the courts to reverse state-level racial segregation practices and ordinances.

1955: Parks starts a movement

• Date: Dec. 1

• Location: Montgomery, Alabama

Rosa Parks makes history by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. The arrest of Parks for insisting to remain seated leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the ascent of a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., as a local activist leader to advance the civil rights cause. A successful federal lawsuit by the NAACP against the city leads to the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system on Dec. 21 of the following year.

1956: Hungary suppressed

• Date: Nov. 4

• Location: Budapest

Nine years after the start of the Cold War, Hungarians took to the streets, demanding democratic reforms. Three days later, Soviet Red Army troops invade Hungary, killing thousands. Nine days after the incursion, Budapest is occupied by the Soviet troops in one of the largest and most aggressive actions taken by the Soviet Union since the end of World War II.

1957: The Little Rock Nine

• Date: Sept 24

• Location: Little Rock, Arkansas

President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops to protect nine African American high school students as they start classes at the all-white Little Rock Central High School. This would become one of the first high-profile actions by the federal government against state-level racial segregation.

1958: U.S. launches first satellite

• Date: Jan. 31

• Location: Cape Canaveral, Florida

The United States successfully launches Explorer 1, three months after the Soviet Union sent its first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. The two superpowers would go on to send more satellites into space, creating a Cold War space race to build ever more sophisticated orbital communications devices.

1959: Castro takes over Cuba

• Date: Jan. 1

• Location: Havana

U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Havana as Fidel Castro's forces advance on the Cuban capital. Days later, rebels led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city, followed two days later by Castro's forces, who quickly consolidate power in Cuba, establishing a communist government in the Caribbean's largest country.

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1960: Lunch Counter Sit-in

• Date: Feb. 1

• Location: Greensboro, North Carolina

When four African-American college students – Ezell A. Blair, Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil and David L. Richmond – sit down at a Woolworth's lunch counter and ask for service, they are denied. The young men refuse to leave, leading to a larger six-month protest that results in the desegregation of the lunch counter by that summer.

1961: Berlin Wall built

• Date: Aug. 13

• Location: Berlin, East and West Germany

By the late summer of 1961, the loss of skilled workers such as teachers, engineers, and doctors to the West reaches crisis levels in East Germany. On Aug. 12, 2,400 East Germans cross into West Berlin, the most in a single day. The next day, with the approval of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, East Germany builds a wall that would extend 27 miles through Berlin, dividing families and friends for the next 28 years. The wall would serve as an enduring symbol of the Cold War, used by presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to inspire a divided city.

1962: Cuban missile crisis

• Date: Oct.16-28

• Location: Multiple

When the United States learns that the Soviet Union is building nuclear missile installations 90 miles south of Miami in communist Cuba, the Kennedy administration starts a naval blockade around the island, which is at times tested, and Kennedy demands the removal of the missiles.The standoff is widely considered to be the closest the two nuclear superpowers come to direct military confrontation. Cooler heads prevail. The Soviet Union offers to remove the missiles in exchange for a guarantee that the United States will not invade Cuba. In secret, the administration also agrees to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey.

1963: JFK assassinated

• Date: Nov. 22

• Location: Dallas

As John F. Kennedy prepares for his re-election bid, the 34th president of the United States embarks on a multi-state tour in September 1963. He is murdered by a sharpshooter's bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald at about 12:30 p.m. as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Oswald himself is murdered two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

1964: LBJ's "War on Poverty"

• Date: Jan. 8

• Location: Washington, D.C.

Bogged down by the Vietnam War, President Lyndon B. Johnson struggles constantly to pivot away from the war to focus on his stated goals of reducing poverty, ending segregation, and establishing the social programs many Americans rely on to this day, including the immensely popular Medicare program. During his "War on Poverty" State of the Union Address of Jan. 8, 1964, LBJ outlines the need for the country to reduce poverty, end racial discrimination, attend to the health needs of the elderly, and other progressive goals. LBJ later ushers in the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Social Security Amendments of 1965.

1965: Civil rights turns violent

• Date: March 7

• Location: Selma, Alabama

The fatal shooting of protester Jimmy Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper sparks a march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama. Hundreds of civil rights activists march in what becomes known as "Bloody Sunday." Police would confront the marchers, led by John Lewis (who is a House Democrat from Georgia) and others. As the activists cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, police attack the protesters with tear gas and billy clubs, hospitalizing 50.

1966: Mao purges rivals

• Date: Aug. 13

• Location: Beijing

At the end of a week-long session of the Communist Party Central Committee of the People's Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong condemns the political elites, calling on China's youth to rebel against the entrenched political hierarchy. It is the beginning of the decade-long Cultural Revolution that fundamentally transforms Chinese society. Intellectuals, members of the former Nationalist government, and people with ties to Western powers are persecuted, sent to re-education labor camps, or killed by the factions of Red Guards formed in the wake of Mao's call to action.

1967: Six-Day War

• Date: June 5

• Location: Middle East

Amid escalating tensions with its neighbors, Israel launches a preemptive strike that destroys most of Egypt's air force. Syria, Jordan, and Iraq also attack Israel. As the war continues, Israel takes the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, captures East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and in heavy fighting seizes the Golan Heights from Syria. A ceasefire went into effect on June 10.

1968: Dream denied

• Date: April 4

• Location: Memphis, Tennessee

Martin Luther King Jr. is fatally shot by James Earl Ray as the civil rights icon stands on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, a tragedy that sparks race riots nationwide. King's influence in words and actions touch and move not only the nation, but the world, and resonate to this day. Two months later, on June 4, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and brother of John F. Kennedy, is fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab Christian from Jerusalem, who believes Kennedy is "instrumental" in oppressing Palestinians.

1969: Landing on the moon

• Date: July 20

• Location: Merritt Island, Florida

President Kennedy's goal of a manned lunar landing before 1970 is realized six years after his assassination. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins blast off from the Kennedy Space Center at 9:32 a.m. aboard the Saturn V rocket. After three days of travel, Armstrong and Aldrin land the Eagle module on the lunar surface as Collins remains in lunar orbit to pilot the module. Upon their return to Earth, the three astronauts are put in 21-day quarantine to ensure they do not bring back any lunar contagions.

1970: Vietnam War turns to Cambodia

• Date: April 29

• Location: Eastern Cambodia

Although the United States should be scaling back U.S. troop presence in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon approves an operation with the South Vietnamese to invade Cambodia to oust Northern Vietnamese forces there. The Cambodian incursion inflames anti-war protests in the United States as it is perceived to be an escalation of U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia.

1971: Pentagon Papers

• Date: Feb. 8

• Location: Laos

The Pentagon Papers, a study by the U.S. Department of Defense about the country's involvement in the Vietnam War, are released and published first in The New York Times, then other newspapers. The documents expose several missteps and how several administrations have misled the American public regarding the war in Vietnam. They also reveal an expanded campaign in Cambodia and Laos, especially clandestine bombing in Laos, which today is considered the heaviest bombardment in history.

1972: Nixon goes to China

• Date: Feb. 21

• Location: Beijing

Nixon, a virulent anti-communist earlier in his political career, surprises the American public by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks in a historic first step toward normalizing relations between the United States and the People's Republic of China. Until this trip, the United States and communist China were de facto enemies, fighting proxy wars in the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s and South Vietnam at the time of Nixon's visit.

1973: Roe vs. Wade

• Date: Jan. 22

• Location: Washington D.C.

In a landmark 7-2 decision that will be known as Roe vs. Wade, the Supreme Court rules that under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, states cannot completely bar a woman's decision to terminate her pregnancy. However, the court adds that as the pregnancy develops, the state can balance a woman's right to privacy with its interest in preserving the "potentiality of human life." As a result, states can ban abortion in the third trimester except in cases where a pregnancy affects a woman's health.

1974: Nixon resigns

• Date: Aug. 8

• Location: Washington, D.C.

President Richard Nixon announces his resignation amid impeachment proceedings stemming from the Watergate scandal and his administration's attempt resist a congressional investigation. The scandal exposes abuses of power by the White House after five burglars were busted breaking in to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Nixon becomes the only president in U.S. history to resign.

1975: Saigon falls

• Date: April 30

• Location: South Vietnam

Two years after the last American troops leave Vietnam, communist troops from North Vietnam capture Saigon, ending nearly two decades of relentless war in the rice paddies and jungles of that Southeast Asian nation. The final tally of war dead for the United States is 58,220.

1976: The Concorde changes air travel

• Date: Jan. 21

• Location: London and Paris

Two supersonic Concorde jets take off simultaneously – one from London to Bahrain, operated by British Airways, and the other from Paris to Rio de Janeiro via Dakar in Senegal, operated by Air France – marking the first time paying passengers enjoy commercial travel at faster than the speed of sound. Though travel by one of the 16 Concordes ever put into service could slash travel time from New York to London in half, the high cost of maintenance, soaring ticket prices, as well as a fatal accident in 2000, sealed the fate of the narrow, slope-nosed aircraft.

1977: Rise of the personal computer

• Date: January

• Location: Chicago

Personal home computers began to emerge in the 1970s, but many of the earliest versions resembled calculators that would plug into televisions sets. By 1977, however, the desktop home computer begins to resemble their more modern versions – with an accompanying attached or separate computer screen and a magnetic tape or floppy disk storage device. The Commodore PET is unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago that year, while the first Apple II and Radio Shack's TRS-80 go on sale.

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1978: Cult's mass suicide

• Date: Nov. 18

• Location: Jonestown, Guyana

More than 900 people die in one of worst recorded acts of cult-related mass murder-suicide after most of the victims and perpetrators drink a powdered drink mix dosed with cyanide. Most of the victims are Americans, devotees of Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones, a former Methodist-trained preacher who built a following and led the flock to Guyana. Among the dead are 276 children who drink the poison. A small number of cult defectors are killed by Peoples Temple gunmen who also slay California congressman Leo Ryan, who had gone to Guyana to investigate Jonestown.

1979: Islamic Republic born in Iran

• Date: Feb. 11

• Location: Tehran

Worsening economic conditions, increasing discontent with the government, and wide support for religious leader in exile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini end the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The shah and his family flee Iran in January 1979. On Feb 11, the monarchy is dissolved, and on April 1, Khomeini declares Iran an Islamic republic. With support among the nation's clergy and their many followers, he begins rebuilding Iranian society based on conservative Shiite religious principles.

1980: Reagan elected

• Date: Nov. 4

• Location: Washington, D.C.

With the United States in an economic malaise and the Iranian hostage crisis hobbling the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president in a landslide. Reagan, who would serve two terms, was the oldest man elected president at the time. Reagan's election changes the trajectory of American politics, ushering in an era of conservative leadership. During his tenure, he takes a more aggressive approach to the Soviet Union and increases defense spending. Reagan convinces Congress to cut taxes, a move that many economists credit with triggering an economic boom in the 1980s.

1981: AIDS impacts America

• Date: June 5

• Location: Los Angeles

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a report about five gay men who had been diagnosed by local physicians with a rare form of pneumonia – the first reported U.S. cases of what would later become known as HIV/AIDS. The autoimmune disease spread so fast that by the end of the 1982, 500 Americans had died from what now the CDC called acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. The death toll would rise to 5,000 by 1985.

1982: Mexico triggers regional debt crisis

• Date: Aug. 12

• Location: Mexico City

Global economic stagnation in the 1970s and early 1980s, and excessive borrowing among Latin America's biggest economies, boils over when Mexico's Finance Minister Jesús Silva-Herzog tells the U.S. Federal Reserve his country can no longer service its debt to $80 billion. After the announcement, lenders realize virtually every country in Latin America, led by Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, are not able to pay back loans. The crisis would lead to years of eroding wages, weak-to-negative economic growth, sky-high unemployment, severe austerity measures, and political instability – known as the "lost decade" in Latin America.

1983: The internet is born

• Date: Jan. 1

• Location: Multiple

The internet as we know it today – a seemingly endless collection of websites hosted on servers scattered across the globe – is still more than a decade away. But at the beginning of 1983, the the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) – a small network for academics and researchers – transitions to the standard TCP/IP protocol of the World Wide Web. The protocol would become the internet's cornerstone and technical foundation as it allows expanded available address space and decentralizes the network, thus also expanding accessibility.

1984: Chemicals kill thousands in India

• Date: Dec. 2

• Location: Bhopal, India

The chemical disaster in Bhopal is still considered history's worst industrial disaster. About 30 tons of methyl isocyanate, an industrial gas used to make pesticide, are released at a Union Carbide Corp. plant. About 600,000 poor residents of nearby shanty towns are exposed to a highly toxic compound that kills about 15,000 people and countless farm animals, according to Indian government estimates. The calamity leads to a generation of birth defects. To this day, locals claim the now-abandoned site is riddled with toxic materials left behind by Union Carbide, which was acquired by Dow Chemical in 2001.

1985: Reagan, Gorbachev meet

• Date: Nov. 19

• Location: Geneva

Despite his often bellicose criticisms of the Soviet Union, Reagan agrees to meet with his counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, in Geneva in the first meeting between leaders of the two Cold War foes in nearly a decade. Though the meeting yields little of substance, it starts a closer relationship between the two men who both seem committed to scaling back the nuclear arms race between the two nuclear superpowers.

1986: Shuttle tragedy

• Date: Jan. 28

• Location: Off the coast of Florida

The 25th mission of the U.S. space shuttle program ends with the tragic loss of seven astronauts as space shuttle Challenger exploded 73 seconds after takeoff from Cape Canaveral, Florida. Among those killed are Christa McAuliffe, who would have been the first teacher in space. The failure is later identified as a problem with the so-called O-rings used to form a seal in the seams of the shuttle's external fuel tanks.

1987: Stock market tanks

• Date: Oct. 19

• Location: Worldwide

Oct. 19, 1987, is called Black Monday because on that day the Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, or more than 22%. The drop is worse than the crash in 1929. It is also worse than the market plunge after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. Among the reasons cited for the drop are rising tensions in the Persian Gulf, concern over higher interest rates and the belief that the bull market is ending. Computerized trading, relatively new at the time, accelerates trade orders, which speeds up the market drop. As a result of the collapse, exchanges put in place so-called circuit breakers intended to halt trading when stocks fall too fast. This measure is designed to provide investors a cooling off period and avoid a panic.

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1988: When the U.S. armed Iran

• Date: March 16

• Location: Washington, D.C.

Lt. Col. Oliver North and Vice Adm. John Poindexter are indicted on charges of conspiracy to defraud the United States for their involvement in the so-called Iran-Contra affair. The scandal involved members of the Reagan administration who illegally sold arms to Iran to help facilitate the release of American hostages, and then transfer the proceeds of the sale to fund the Nicaraguan contras, a loose affiliation of right-wing militias. North is convicted, but his conviction is vacated and reversed, while Poindexter's convictions are also reversed on appeal.

1989: The Berlin Wall falls

• Date: Nov. 9

• Location: Berlin, East and West Germany

Cracks in the monolithic Soviet bloc are starting to appear in the 1980s, and the very symbol of communist repression comes crashing down in November, when the Berlin Wall is breached, ending a 28-year division of the city. During the day on Nov. 9, a spokesman for East Berlin's Communist Party says starting at midnight that day, citizens of East Germany are free to cross the country's borders. Almost immediately Berliners start slamming the wall with axes and sledgehammers. By nightfall, the celebration turns into what one observer calls "the greatest street party in the history of the world" and the city is reunited. East and West Germany would reunite one year later.

1990: Democracy in Poland

• Date: Jan. 28

• Location: Poland

With the hold of the Soviet Union and communism on East Europe loosening, Poland's ruling communist party votes to dissolve and become more moderate. In the following elections, Lech Wałęsa, leader of the Solidarity Movement and the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wins the election and becomes president.

1991: America goes to war in Middle East

• Date: Jan. 17

• Location: Saudi Arabia and Kuwait

After Saddam Hussein's Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the United States sends forces to defend neighboring Saudi Arabia from being overrun and to protect its vital oil assets in Operation Desert Shield. With Saudi Arabia secured, U.S. implements Operation Desert Storm to push Iraqi forces back across the border with Kuwait in a military operation that lasts until a ceasefire takes effect in April.

1992: Cold War ends

• Date: Feb. 1

• Location: Camp David Maryland

Just weeks after the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, President George H.W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, meet at Camp David to formally declare the end of the Cold War that began shortly after the end of World War II. The meeting comes days after both countries announce they would stop aiming nuclear missiles at each other. Russia declares its 11 former communist satellite republics – from Armenia to Uzbekistan – independent.

1993: The EU becomes reality

• Date: Nov. 1

• Location: Brussels

The Treaty of the European Union, also known as the Maastricht Treaty, goes into effect in November, after a rough series of political wrangling that, among other concessions, allows the U.K. and Denmark to opt out of the common euro currency. The treaty opens the way to removing border controls among member states and invites new members to join the union.

1994: Amazon.com is born

• Date: July 5

• Location: Seattle

With an initial aim of becoming an online bookstore, Jeff Bezos and a handful of angel investors launch Amazon.com, just as e-commerce is about to take off . Twenty-four years later, after expanding from books to the so-called "Everything Store" and growing a business selling cloud services to companies like Netflix and Instagram, Bezos has become the world's richest man. Amazon.com, meanwhile is racing with Apple to become the world's first trillion-dollar American company.

1995: Domestic terror strikes Oklahoma

• Date: April 19

• Location: Oklahoma City

In the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, anti-government radicals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. They time the truck-bomb attack for a weekday morning in order to maximize casualties. For the murder of at least 168 people, including 19 children who were in a child care center in the building, and the injury of hundreds of others, an unremorseful McVeigh is executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. Nichols is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

1996: The dawn of cloning

• Date: July 5

• Location: Midlothian, Scotland, U.K.

Dolly the Sheep enters the annals of bioengineering when scientists at Scotland's Roslin Institute become the first to not only successfully clone a mammal, but also the first to do so using an adult cell rather than an embryonic one. After 277 so-called cell fusions that created 29 embryos, the teams managed to turn an udder cell into a nearly complete biological carbon copy of the sheep from which it came.

1997: Machine tops chess champ

• Date: May 11

• Location: New York City

Artificial intelligence and machine learning have been serious areas of study (and hype) for over 60 years. In 1997, one of the most significant victories for silicon logic came when IBM's Deep Blue became the first machine to beat a world chess champion. The the refrigerator-sized computer beat Garry Kasparov twice and tied him three times in a six-game match.

1998: The age of Google begins

• Date: Sept. 4

• Location: Menlo Park, California

With seed money from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, among others, Stanford University Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch the search engine Google. The digital advertising behemoth Google Inc., now Alphabet Inc., is an $854 billion company with several subsidiaries, including YouTube, autonomous-car development company Waymo and X, the company's research and development division.

1999: NATO's first independent strike

• Date: March 24

• Location: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

In order to get Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo during the Kosovo War, NATO forces initiate their first-ever military campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Montenegro and Serbia) without U.N. Security Council authorization as Russia and China oppose the attack. The NATO airstrikes are aimed at stopping an onslaught against ethnic Albanians by the government of Slobodan Milošević. The NATO attacks last nearly three months, culminating in the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.

Want to make money? Buy whisky

2000: International Space Station opens

• Date: Nov. 2

• Location: Low Earth orbit

Commanders Bill Shepherd from the United States and Yuri Gidzenko of Russia, along with Russian flight engineer Sergei Krikalev become the first temporary residents of the International Space Station two years after the first component of the research center was put into low-Earth orbit about 250 miles above sea level. Since that first crew, there have been 229 other visitors to the ISS,some of them multiple times, led by 146 from the United States and 47 from Russia.

2001: 9/11

• Date: Sept. 11

• Location: Multiple

In the worst attack on U.S. soil since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, 19 hijackers inspired by Islamist extremism kill nearly 3,000 people after crashing two passenger-laden commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan and one into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Airlines Flight 93, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew attempt to regain control of the plane headed toward Washington, D.C.

2002: Homeland Security

• Date: Nov. 25

• Location: Washington, D.C.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Congress and President George W. Bush enact the Homeland Security Act, the biggest government reorganization of national security efforts since the Department of Defense was created in 1947. The sweeping legislation creates the massive Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for everything from protecting infrastructure from cyberattacks to managing the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

2003: U.S. crushes Iraq

• Date: March 19

• Location: Iraq

With the help of British and other allied forces, the United States begins its invasion of Iraq with a rapid bombing "Shock and Awe" campaign with the intention of destroying Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction; the weapons are never found. Coalition forces manage to quickly topple the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, but have to fight insurgent forces for years afterward.

2004: Facebook founded

• Date: Feb. 4

• Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Mark Zuckerberg, a 23-year-old Harvard University student, creates "The facebook," a local social networking site named after the orientation materials that profiles students and faculty and given to incoming college freshmen. Fourteen years later, Facebook has become a $510 billion digital advertising behemoth so integral to many people's lives that it has been criticized for helping foreign powers and propagandists influence the U.S. political system.

2005: Katrina overwhelms New Orleans

• Date: Aug. 29

• Location: U.S. Gulf Coast

After spending four days in the Gulf of Mexico bulking up to a Category 5 hurricane, Katrina slams into New Orleans, inundating the city and creating a humanitarian crisis that lasts for weeks. The catastrophe underscores the precarious situation not only in the Big Easy but also the surrounding area of the Gulf Coast. At least 1,833 people in the storm's path are killed, and the storm inflicts $161 billion in damages to the region, the costliest storm in U.S. history.

2006: Hussein executed

• Date: Dec. 30

• Location: Baghdad

Three years after U.S. soldiers pulled him from a hole in the ground where he had been hiding, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is hanged after he was convicted for crimes against humanity, specifically for ordering the massacre of 148 Shiites in 1982 following a failed assassination attempt against him.

2007: The iPhone

• Date: Jan. 9

• Location: San Francisco

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011, first shows the world one of the most popular branded consumer electronic devices in history, the iPhone. Since the first-generation phone that Jobs introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show that year, there have been 18 versions of the mobile device, and more than 1.2 billion units have been sold globally through 2017. Only Samsung's Galaxy smartphone comes close to that volume.

2008: Dow plunges

• Date: Sept. 29

• Location: New York City

The Dow Jones Industrial Average records the largest-ever intraday drop, 777.68 points, after Congress rejects a massive $700 billion bailout of U.S. banks. The bill would pass days later. The market reacts also to months of global market turmoil amid the 2008 global financial crisis spurred by the U.S. subprime mortgage market crash. The Dow fell by more than half during the 2007-09 Great Recession, tumbling from 14,164 on Oct. 9, 2007, to 6,594 on March 5, 2009.

2009: America's first African-American president

• Date: Jan. 20

• Location: Washington, D.C.

After winning in a landslide against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, amassing in 365 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote, Barack Obama is sworn in as the first African-American president of the United States. Obama inherits the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but with his party holding majorities in both houses of Congress at the time, the president is able to pass a stimulus package and his signature Affordable Care Act in March 2010.

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2010: Catastrophic oil spill

• Date: April 20

• Location: Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana

Eleven workers die and 17 are injured after an explosion and fire erupts on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig 40 miles from the Louisiana coast. The explosion causes the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, spewing 3 million barrels of crude over the three months it takes to stop the leak. British oil company BP says costs climbed to $65 billion in claims for the accident, including a $1.7 billion charge it took as recently as the fourth quarter of 2017.

2011: Bin Laden killed

• Date: May 2

• Location: Abbottabad, Pakistan

In an intense 40-minute nighttime firefight, 25 U.S. Navy SEALs hunt down and kill al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Within hours, bin Laden's body is identified using DNA and then buried in the Arabian Sea.

2012: The "God Particle" is (probably) discovered

• Date: July 4

• Location: Near Geneva

Nearly 600 feet below the France-Switzerland border at CERN's Large Hadron Collider Facility, an international team of scientists discovers a new particle widely believed to be the elusive Higgs boson, known as the "God Particle," which is thought to be a fundamental component of the universe. Higgs boson has been an important element of particle physics theory for decades, but until 2012 there had been no physical evidence to support its existence.

2013: Snowden reveals secrets

• Date: June 6

• Location: Hong Kong

After surreptitiously leaving his job at U.S. National Security Agency contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, computer security consultant Edward Snowden meets secretly in Hong Kong with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. He reveals the first of a series of secrets about numerous U.S. and European government surveillance operations. Hailed as a courageous whistleblower and privacy champion by some, and a traitor that compromised counterterrorism efforts by others, the American now resides in exile in Moscow.

2014: Russian bear bites Ukraine

• Date: March 16

• Location: Crimea

Exploiting political unrest in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin orchestrates the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The action incites peals of condemnation from world leaders and a raft of economic sanctions against Moscow. This strategically important and predominantly Russian-speaking region on the Black Sea has been coveted by the Russians as part of their strategic efforts to check NATO expansion along Russia's western border.

2015: NASA flies by Pluto

• Date: July 14

• Location: 3 billion miles from Earth

NASA spacecraft New Horizons becomes the first human-made object to fly past and observe the dwarf planet Pluto. New Horizons sends back stunning photographs of this enigmatic and distant member of the solar system, including images of a mountain range and massive icebergs floating in frozen nitrogen. New Horizons is now en route to the Kuiper Belt, a massive asteroid belt at the far reaches of the solar system.

2016: Trump elected

• Date: Nov. 8

• Location: U.S.

Running on a populist agenda, Donald Trump is elected the 45th president of the United States and the fifth president in U.S. history (the second since the 2000) to win despite losing the popular vote. The real estate developer and television personality ran on a platform of putting "America First" in global trade and foreign policy negotiations and cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

2017: Hurricane triple-whammy

• Date: August-September

• Location: Multiple

Within just four weeks, three massive hurricanes – Harvey, Irma and Maria – strike Texas, Florida and the Caribbean, killing 228 people, inflicting a combined $265 billion in damages and displacing millions of homeowners. Hurricane Maria inflicts immense damage to the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which was already struggling from economic insolvency.

Detailed findings & methodology

There is little doubt that in the last 100 years, mankind has progressed dramatically. People live longer, eat better, have greater access to improved medical care and are freer to express their opinions and associate with whomever they want.

That optimism can be seen in population growth. Despite the two most devastating wars in human history, the world population has nearly tripled, from 1.9 billion to 7.5 billion, since 1917.

One hundred years is an eye blink in history, yet 100 years ago, women did not have the right to vote in the United States. African-Americans were prevented from voting in the American South. Labor unions were in their infancy and were weak, and laws reforming child labor had yet to be passed by Congress. All that changed because of women’s suffrage, the inexorable march of civil rights and the strengthening labor unions.

One hundred years ago, a person anywhere in the world was more likely than not to be illiterate. And there was a good chance he or she was the subject of colonial rulers in South America, Africa and Asia. Two world wars would spell the end of imperial houses in Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia, and weaken the grip of another, Great Britain. Independence movements sprouted in Europe, Africa and Asia, yearning for freedom and expressing national pride.

Nationalism had its dark side, though, with fascist governments ruling Italy and Germany. It would take a world war to remove their scourge. Another form of totalitarianism, communism, would dominate the USSR and Eastern Europe for several generations, as well as China and other countries in Asia, before the West would triumph over the Soviet Union and its allies in the Cold War.

Speaking of the Cold War, that conflict launched the space race and accelerated technological progress, hastening the use of personal computers and cell phones. These inventions have fundamentally changed our lives – from the way we communicate to the way we shop and socialize – and made billions of dollars for the companies that make them and their founders. These products and innovations are a major part of the culture today.

To determine the most important event the year you were born, 24/7 Wall St. drew on research materials and media sources to compile its list. Deciding the most important event in a given year by its nature is a subjective exercise. In reaching our decisions, we chose the event that had the most far-reaching impact and was not necessarily the most famous event in a given year.

24/7 Wall Street is a USA TODAY content partner offering financial news and commentary. Its content is produced independently of USA TODAY.

Winemaker: New Arizona wine group 'divisive'

Richard Ruelas

The Republic | azcentral.com

A newly formed Arizona wine group that aims to help consumers by touting quality wines will also have to sell itself to Arizona’s winemakers, as one of the leading makers on Tuesday called the Arizona Vignerons Alliance “divisive.”

The group, made public Monday, asks winemakers to voluntarily submit their bottles for tastings and lab analysis. If the wines meet certain standards and are proven, through an audit, to come exclusively from Arizona vineyards, the wines can display the Arizona Vignerons Alliance logo on the label.

But Eric Glomski, owner of Page Springs Cellars, one of the state’s largest and most decorated wineries, said he did not plan to submit his bottles to the group.

“It doesn’t sound like a leadership role,” Glomski said. “It does seem like it’s divisive.”

Glomski, one of only two Arizona winemakers to have a bottle awarded 90 points (out of a possible 100) by Wine Spectator, said he worried that the AVA risks “bifurcating our whole industry.” Glomski said he has received several calls from other winemakers since the group was announced Monday. Those winemakers, he said, consistently used the word “elite” to describe the new group.

New Arizona wine group promotes local quality

Glomski said he is not against having high standards for wine. “If somebody wants to uphold a group of ideals for themselves, that’s wonderful,” he said. “But, just go do it.”

Todd Bostock, co-owner of Dos Cabezas WineWorks in Sonoita, and one of the founding directors of the AVA, said Tuesday he knows his group will have to gain the trust of the state’s winemakers.

He said details of how winemakers submit their wines for certification would be forthcoming, some as soon as an event that will launch the group. An evening reception is planned for the Farm at South Mountain on March 11.

Bostock said submitted wines will be tasted blind by a group of outside experts, though, he said, the panel would likely include some of the founding members of the AVA.

He said that while the group used the word “audit” on its website to describe the submission process, that audit will not extend to financial information.

“It’s just, 'You say you have a vineyard in Willcox,' ” Bostock said. “Do you really have a vineyard in Willcox?”

Besides Bostock and his wife, Kelly, the founding members include Lisa and Kent Callaghan of Callaghan Vineyards in Elgin, Sarah and Rob Hammelman of Sand-Reckoner Vineyards in Willcox and Jennifer and Maynard James Keenan of Caduceus Cellars in Jerome.

None of the founding members have the right to place the logo on their bottles, Bostock said, because none have gone through the certification process. Bostock said he expected the first certifications to begin this summer.

“The whole goal is to help the whole place work on quality,” he said. “We’re holding our own feet to the fire. We’re trying to push everybody, including ourselves.”

Glomski had been business partners with Keenan in Arizona Stronghold, a winery the pair turned into a nationally distributed brand, before the partnership split in 2014. He said Tuesday the ultimate judge of quality wine should be the consumer.

“I don’t need Maynard Keenan or Kent Callaghan to tell me whether my wine is quality or not,” he said. “The person buying and drinking that bottle is the one who needs to decide.”

Map guide to Arizona wineries, wine-tasting rooms

Bostock said the certification is a tool that will help enhance and protect the state’s reputation. He said it will also help the consumer standing at a grocery store shelf looking at an array of Arizona wines.

“You see that bottle that says it’s from Arizona and you know nothing about it,” he said. “Wouldn’t it be helpful before you spend 30 or 40 bucks to at least know something about what that wine is about?"

Bostock said rather than being divisive, he hopes the certification program is embraced and becomes inclusive. He said the group is designing the certification fee to be minimal, aiming to have it be the lowest line item that would go into producing a bottle of wine.

Bostock said his vision is that all the wineries in the state would carry the AVA seal. “That’s the hope,” he said. “The hope is we see as many as possible.”

5 questions with winery leader Bill Oliver

Amy Lynch

For Bill Oliver, the business of winemaking is a family affair.

Bill’s father, a law professor at Indiana University, fell in love with winemaking as a hobby and launched Oliver Winery in 1972. Bill took charge as president in 1983; his wife, Kathleen, joined the team as general manager in 1993.

Under Oliver’s direction, the oldest and largest winery in Indiana produces more than 360,000 cases annually in a diverse portfolio of products. This year, Oliver was honored with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the Eastern Winery Exposition in Lancaster, Pa. He recently transitioned into the role of CEO to make way for the winery’s new president, Julie Adams. In turn, he plans to focus on team building, capital projects and the creation of a new facility that will triple the winery’s production capacity.

“New products are another priority for me, as our growth depends on having great new wines that resonate with consumers,” he said. “My background is mostly from the winemaking side of our business, so I’m frequently showing up in the winemaking offices tasting and collaborating with the winemaking team.”

Although Oliver’s Soft Red and Soft White remain favorites among Hoosier wine drinkers, he said it’s a mistake to generalize about the characteristics of Indiana wines.

“We make classic vinifera wines from our own grapes that would stand up against any California wine, but the world is awash in great vinifera wines such as Chardonnay and Cabernet Sauvignon,” he said. “We’ve found a growth opportunity in unique wines with solid appeal. Some of those are dry; some are sweet.”

Oliver also is quick to point out just how much Indiana’s booming wine industry has evolved over the past few decades.

“The wine has gotten a lot better, for sure,” he said. “There’s a higher level of business savviness as well. Social media has been a great thing for smaller wineries, giving them a platform to build a brand and build relationships.”

As to the wine industry’s future in Indiana, Oliver predicts we’ll see continued quality improvements and increased sales.

“I believe consumers want to buy from businesses that not only offer a great product, but that also offer a personal relationship,” he said. “Indiana wineries are real businesses operated by people you can meet in person simply by visiting their tasting rooms. We sit on the genuine side of the spectrum, and that speaks to consumers who want authenticity.”

Question: What does the word “leader” mean to you?

Answer:Leadership is about creating a vision and getting others on board to collectively work toward achieving that vision. Good leaders inspire and bring the best out of others.

Q: What are your biggest successes you’ve had on the job?

A:Building one of the largest wineries in the eastern U.S. — and doing so with my wife as my primary business partner — has been my biggest achievement. I’m very proud of the team we’ve built across winery functions — winemaking, sales, marketing and hospitality. We have the best crew of hardworking and dedicated people that we’ve ever had. Our employees are simply good people and make coming to work loads of fun.

Ten years ago, we transitioned Oliver Winery to 100 percent employee ownership through an Employee Stock Ownership Plan. Employees are incentivized by sharing in the company’s successes, and this is a model that has contributed to our success.

Q: If you weren’t involved in wine, what would you be doing?

A:That’s actually a question I ponder on occasion. My other love is aviation. I can see myself as a commercial pilot, but probably not for airlines. I’m more of an Alaskan Bush pilot kind of guy. Or perhaps running a school teaching aerobatics, and showing up in the air-show circuit.

Q: Do you have a business philosophy you try to follow?

A:My business philosophy is fundamentally the four operating principles of Oliver Winery — respect people, expect quality, think differently and get stuff done.

Q: What is the best piece of career advice you’ve ever received?

A: Unquestionably, it would be to never give up. You need tough skin, patience and perseverance to succeed in any business.

More about Bill Oliver

Job title: CEO of Oliver Winery.

Education: MBA from Indiana University, 1993.

Prior employment: Commercial balloon pilot and instructor.

Family: Wife, Kathleen; three sons.

Favorite pastimes: Wilderness travel, skiing, bicycling, aviation and cooking.

Favorite musical artists: Jimmy Buffett, Bonnie Raitt, Aaron Neville, Pentatonix.

Favorite quote: “We’re free to live average lives on average decisions. We’re free to custom build our lives with unusual choices on wild creative decisions. We can do all of these, if we want, in one lifetime. Who’s to stop us?” — Richard Bach

Trump, wars, civil rights, tech advances: Top news stories since 1950

John Harrington and Grant Suneson

24/7 Wall Street

Each year there are major news events that capture the world’s attention. These stories range from massive conflicts or catastrophes that leave thousands dead or stranded to technological developments and supreme court decisions that completely change our daily lives.

24/7 Wall St. reviewed the biggest news stories in each year since 1950. The event we chose for a given year wasn’t always the most talked-about story when it occurred, but each one in retrospect proved to have the biggest impact on history.

Major milestones in civil rights, wars and conflicts, and breakthroughs in science and medicine stand out in news coverage over this time period. As technology evolved, modifying and innovating our lives in ways never dreamed of, progressive ideas also found footing and changed the world. Women, African Americans, and the LGBTQ community demanded, and often won, equal rights – from the ratification of the 19th Amendment to the legalization of same-sex marriage. Here are the most important human rights milestones since 2000.

Increasingly, major news events in recent years include severe weather events and other catastrophes tied to global climate change. Devastating changes to our climate now endanger the ecosystems of our planet. In the coming years, natural disasters will have an increasingly large role on the course of history. Here are 26 disaster scenarios caused by climate change.

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1950: Korean War starts

• Date: June 25

• Location: Korea

The North Korean People’s Army crosses the 38th parallel into South Korea, eliciting an almost immediate response from U.S. President Harry Truman and marking the beginning of the Korean War – a proxy battle between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. The parties would agree to a ceasefire three years later. The uneasy relations between North Korea and South Korea last to this day.

1951: Rosenbergs sentenced

• Date: March 29

• Location: New York City

Husband and wife Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of espionage for their part in passing along atomic secrets to the Soviet Union during and after World War II. They are executed two years later. Not everyone is convinced of their involvement in the scheme. Supporters claim they are scapegoats swept up in the Cold War hysteria of the time. Documents would reveal decades later the extent of Julius Rosenberg’s involvement in the spy ring, though Ethel’s participation in the scheme remains inconclusive.

1952: First hydrogen bomb test

• Date: Nov. 1

• Location: Marshall Islands

The United States successfully detonates its first hydrogen bomb, a second-generation thermonuclear device. The detonation in the Marshall Islands is part of Operation Ivy, one of a series of nuclear bomb tests. From 1946 to 1958, the United States used the remote Pacific Marshall Islands as its nuclear weapons testing site, conducting a total of 67 nuclear tests.

1953: The dawn of DNA

• Date: Feb. 28

• Location: Cambridge, England, U.K.

Cambridge University scientists James Watson and Francis Crick announce they have discovered the double-helix structure of DNA. Though scientists had been aware of DNA since the 1860s and of its role in genetic inheritance since 1943, Watson and Crick were the first to explain how DNA works to replicate itself and pass on genes from one generation to the next.

1954: Brown v. Board of Education

• Date: May 17

• Location: Washington D.C.

In a landmark case involving Linda Brown of Topeka, Kansas, who had to cross a railroad track to reach an all-black elementary school even though an all-white school was closer, the U.S. Supreme Court rules that the segregated school system is unconstitutional on the basis of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution. The clause would be used again by the courts to reverse state-level racial segregation practices and ordinances.

1955: Parks starts a movement

• Date: Dec. 1

• Location: Montgomery, Alabama

Rosa Parks makes history by refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger on a Montgomery bus. Her arrest for insisting to remain seated leads to the Montgomery Bus Boycott and the ascent of a young pastor named Martin Luther King, Jr., as a local activist leader working to advance the civil rights cause. A successful federal lawsuit by the NAACP against the city leads to the desegregation of the Montgomery bus system on Dec. 21 of the following year.

1956: Hungary suppressed

• Date: Nov. 4

• Location: Budapest

Nine years after the start of the Cold War, Hungarians take to the streets, demanding democratic reforms. Three days later, Soviet Red Army troops invade Hungary, killing thousands. Nine days after the incursion, Soviet troops occupy Budapest in one of the largest and most aggressive actions taken by the Soviet Union since the end of World War II.

1957: The Little Rock Nine

• Date: Sept 24

• Location: Little Rock, Arkansas

U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower orders federal troops to protect nine African American high school students as they start classes at the all-white Little Rock Central High School. This would become one of the first high-profile actions the federal government would take against state-level racial segregation.

1958: US launches first satellite

• Date: Jan. 31

• Location: Cape Canaveral, Florida

The United States successfully launches Explorer 1, three months after the Soviet Union sends its first satellite, Sputnik, into orbit. The two superpowers would go on to send more satellites into space, creating a Cold War space race to build ever more sophisticated orbital communications devices and to achieve spaceflight capabilities and generally space superiority.

1959: Castro takes over Cuba

• Date: Jan. 1

• Location: Havana

U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista flees Havana as Fidel Castro’s forces advance on the Cuban capital. Days later, rebels led by Che Guevara and Camilo Cienfuegos enter the city, followed two days later by Castro’s forces. Castro quickly consolidates power in Cuba, establishing a communist government in the Caribbean’s largest country.

1960: Lunch counter sit-in

• Date: Feb. 1

• Location: Greensboro, North Carolina

When four African American college students – Ezell A. Blair, Franklin E. McCain, Joseph A. McNeil, and David L. Richmond – sit down at a Woolworth’s lunch counter and ask for service, they are denied. The young men refuse to give up their seats, their sit-in leading to a larger six-month protest that results in the desegregation of the lunch counter by that summer and many other restaurants across the south.

1961: Berlin Wall built

• Date: Aug. 13

• Location: Berlin, East and West Germany

By the late summer of 1961, the loss of skilled workers such as teachers, engineers, and doctors to the West reaches crisis levels in East Germany. On Aug. 12, 2,400 East Germans cross into West Berlin, the most in a single day. The next day, with the approval of Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, East Germany begins building a wall that would extend 27 miles through Berlin, dividing families and friends for the next 28 years. The wall would serve as an enduring symbol of the Cold War, used by presidents John Kennedy and Ronald Reagan to inspire a divided city.

1962: Cuban missile crisis

• Date: Oct.16-28

• Location: Multiple

When the United States learns that the Soviet Union is building nuclear missile installations 90 miles south of Miami in communist Cuba, the Kennedy administration enacts a naval blockade around the island, which is at times tested, to demand the removal of the missiles. The standoff is widely considered to be the closest the two nuclear superpowers come to direct military confrontation. Cooler heads prevail. The Soviet Union offers to remove the missiles in exchange for a guarantee that the United States will not invade Cuba. In secret, the administration also agrees to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey.

1963: JFK assassinated

• Date: Nov. 22

• Location: Dallas

As John F. Kennedy prepares for his re-election bid, the 34th president of the United States embarks on a multi-state tour in September 1963. He is murdered by a sharpshooter’s bullet fired by Lee Harvey Oswald at about 12:30 p.m. as his motorcade passed through Dealey Plaza in Dallas. Oswald himself is murdered two days later by nightclub owner Jack Ruby.

1964: LBJ's "War on Poverty"

• Date: Jan. 8

• Location: Washington D.C.

President Lyndon B. Johnson struggles to shift focus away from the Vietnam War and on his stated goals of reducing poverty, ending segregation, and establishing the social programs that many Americans rely on to this day, including the immensely popular Medicare program. During his “War on Poverty” State of the Union Address of Jan. 8, 1964, LBJ outlines the need for the country to reduce poverty, end racial discrimination, attend to the health needs of the elderly, and other progressive goals. LBJ later ushers in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Social Security Amendments of 1965.

1965: Selma to Montgomery march

• Date: March 7

• Location: Selma, Alabama

The fatal shooting of protester Jimmy Lee Jackson by an Alabama state trooper sparks a march in the state from Selma to Montgomery. Hundreds of civil rights activists march in what becomes known as “Bloody Sunday.” Police confront the marchers, led by John Lewis (who is a House Democrat from Georgia) and others. As the activists cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge, police attack the protesters with tear gas and billy clubs, hospitalizing 50.

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1966: Mao purges rivals

• Date: Aug. 13

• Location: Beijing

At the end of a weeklong session of the Communist Party Central Committee of the People’s Republic of China, Chairman Mao Zedong condemns the political elites, calling on China’s youth to rebel against the entrenched political hierarchy. It is the beginning of the decade-long Cultural Revolution that fundamentally transforms Chinese society. Intellectuals, members of the former Nationalist government, and people with ties to Western powers are persecuted, sent to re-education labor camps, or killed by factions of the Red Guards formed in the wake of Mao’s call to action.

1967: Six-Day War

• Date: June 5

• Location: Middle East

Amid escalating tensions with its neighbors, Israel launches a pre-emptive strike that destroys most of Egypt’s air force. Syria, Jordan, and Iraq also attack Israel. As the war continues, Israel takes the Gaza Strip and the Sinai Peninsula from Egypt, captures East Jerusalem and the West Bank from Jordan, and in heavy fighting seizes the Golan Heights from Syria. A ceasefire goes into effect on June 10.

1968: Dream denied

• Date: April 4

• Location: Memphis, Tennessee

Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., is fatally shot by James Earl Ray as the civil rights icon stands on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, a tragedy that sparks race riots nationwide. King’s influence in words and actions touch and move not only the nation, but the world, and resonate to this day. Two months later, on June 4, Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy and brother of John F. Kennedy, is fatally shot by Sirhan Sirhan, an Arab Christian from Jerusalem, who believes Kennedy is “instrumental” in oppressing Palestinians.

1969: Landing on the moon

• Date: July 20

• Location: Moon

President Kennedy’s goal of a manned lunar landing before 1970 is realized six years after his assassination. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins blast off from the Kennedy Space Center at 9:32 a.m. aboard the Saturn V rocket. After three days of travel, Armstrong and Aldrin land the Eagle module on the lunar surface as Collins remains in lunar orbit to pilot the module. Upon their return to Earth, the three astronauts are put in 21-day quarantine to ensure they did not bring back any lunar contagions.

1970: Vietnam War turns to Cambodia

• Date: April 29

• Location: Eastern Cambodia

Although the United States should be scaling back U.S. troop presence in Vietnam, President Richard Nixon approves an operation with the South Vietnamese to invade Cambodia to oust Northern Vietnamese forces there. The Cambodian incursion inflames anti-war protests in the United States as it is perceived to be an escalation of U.S. military involvement in Southeast Asia.

1971: Pentagon Papers

• Date: Feb. 8

• Location: Laos

The Pentagon Papers, a study by the U.S. Department of Defense about the country's involvement in the Vietnam war, are released and published first in The New York Times, then other newspapers. The documents expose several missteps and how several administrations have misled the American public about how involved the military was and about plans to escalate the war in 1964. They also reveal an expanded campaign in Cambodia and Laos, especially clandestine bombing in Laos, which today is considered the heaviest bombardment in history.

1972: Nixon goes to China

• Date: Feb. 21

• Location: Beijing

Nixon, a virulent anti-communist earlier in his political career, surprises the American public by traveling to Beijing for a week of talks in a historic first step towards normalizing relations between the United States and the People’s Republic of China. Until this trip, the United States and communist China were de facto enemies, fighting proxy wars in the Korean Peninsula in the 1950s and South Vietnam at the time of Nixon’s visit.

1973: Roe v. Wade

• Date: Jan. 22

• Location: Washington D.C.

In a landmark 7-2 decision that will be known as Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court rules that under the Due Process Clause of the 14th Amendment, abortion is a fundamental right protected by the Constitution. The court adds that as the pregnancy develops the state can balance a woman’s right to privacy with its interest in preserving the “potentiality of human life.” As a result, states can ban abortion in the third trimester except in cases where a pregnancy affects a woman’s health.

1974: Nixon resigns

• Date: Aug. 8

• Location: Washington D.C.

President Richard Nixon announces his resignation amid impeachment proceedings stemming from the Watergate scandal and the administration’s attempt resist a congressional investigation. The scandal exposes abuses of power by the White House after five burglars were caught breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. Nixon becomes the only president in U.S. history to resign.

1975: Saigon falls

• Date: April 30

• Location: South Vietnam

Two years after the last American troops left Vietnam, communist troops from North Vietnam capture Saigon, ending nearly two decades of relentless war in the rice paddies and jungles of that Southeast Asian nation. The total number of fatal casualties for the United States is 58,220.

1976: The Concorde changes air travel

• Date: Jan. 21

• Location: London and Paris

Two supersonic Concorde jets take off simultaneously – one from London to Bahrain, operated by British Airways, and the other from Paris to Rio de Janeiro via Dakar in Senegal, operated by Air France – marking the first time paying passengers enjoy commercial travel at faster than the speed of sound. Though travel by one of the 16 Concordes ever put into service could slash travel time from New York to London in half, the high cost of maintenance, soaring ticket prices, as well as a fatal accident in 2000, would seal the fate of the narrow, slope-nosed aircraft.

1977: Rise of the personal computer

• Date: January

• Location: Chicago

Personal home computers began to emerge in the 1970s, but many of the earliest versions resembled calculators that would plug into televisions sets. By 1977, however, the desktop home computer begins to resemble the more modern versions – with an accompanying, attached or separate, computer screen and a magnetic tape or floppy disk storage device. The Commodore PET is unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Chicago that year, while the first Apple II and Radio Shack’s TRS-80 also go on sale.

1978: Cult's mass suicide

• Date: Nov. 18

• Location: Jonestown, Guyana

More than 900 people die in one of worst recorded acts of cult-related mass murder-suicide as nearly all the victims and perpetrators drink a powdered drink mix laced with cyanide. Most of the victims are Americans, devotees of Peoples Temple cult leader Jim Jones, a former Methodist-trained preacher who built a following and led the flock to Guyana. Among the dead are 276 children. A small number of cult defectors are killed by Peoples Temple gunmen who also slay Leo Ryan, California Congressman who had gone to Guyana to investigate Jonestown.

1979: Islamic Republic born in Iran

• Date: Feb. 11

• Location: Tehran

Worsening economic conditions, increasing discontent with the government, and wide support for religious leader in exile Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini end the reign of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi. The shah and his family flee Iran in January 1979. On Feb. 11, the monarchy is dissolved, and on April 1, Khomeini declares Iran an Islamic republic. With support among the nation’s clergy and their many followers, he begins rebuilding Iranian society based on conservative Shiite religious principles. In November, a mob raids the U.S. embassy, taking more than 60 Americans hostage. The crisis would be influential in the following year's presidential election and would not fully resolve until January 1981.

1980: Reagan elected

• Date: Nov. 4

• Location: Washington, D.C.

With the United States in an economic malaise and the Iranian hostage crisis hobbling the presidency of Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan is elected the 40th president in a landslide. Reagan, who would serve two terms, was the oldest man elected president at the time. Reagan’s election changes the trajectory of American politics, ushering in an era of conservative leadership. During his tenure, he takes a more aggressive approach to the Soviet Union and increases defense spending. Reagan convinces Congress to cut taxes, a move that many economists credit with triggering an economic boom in the 1980s.

1981: AIDS impacts America

• Date: June 5

• Location: Los Angeles

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention publishes a report about five gay men who had been diagnosed by local physicians with a rare form of pneumonia – the first reported U.S. cases of what would later become known as HIV/AIDS. The infectious autoimmune disease spreads so fast that by the end of the 1982, 500 Americans would die from what the CDC later calls acquired immune deficiency syndrome, or AIDS. The death toll would rise to 5,000 by 1985.

1982: Mexico triggers regional debt crisis

• Date: Aug 12

• Location: Mexico City

Global economic stagnation in the 1970s and early 1980s as well as excessive borrowing among Latin America’s biggest economies boils over when Mexico’s Finance Minister Jesús Silva-Herzog tells the U.S. Federal Reserve his country can no longer service its debt of $80 billion. After the announcement, lenders realize virtually every country in Latin America, led by Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico, is not able to pay back loans. The crisis would lead to years of eroding wages, weak to negative economic growth, sky-high unemployment, severe austerity measures, and political instability – known as the “lost decade” in Latin America.

1983: The internet is born

• Date: Jan. 1

• Location: Multiple

The internet as we know it today – a seemingly endless collection of websites hosted on servers scattered across the globe – is still more than a decade away. At the beginning of 1983, however, the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) – a small network for academics and researchers – transitions to the standard TCP/IP protocol of the World Wide Web. The protocol would become the internet's cornerstone and technical foundation as it allows expanded available address space. The protocol also decentralizes the network, thus also expanding accessibility.

1984: Chemicals kill thousands in India

• Date: Dec. 2

• Location: Bhopal, India

The chemical disaster in Bhopal is still considered history’s worst industrial disaster. About 30 tons of methyl isocyanate, an industrial gas used to make pesticide, are released at a Union Carbide Corp. plant. About 600,000 poor residents of nearby shanty towns are exposed to a highly toxic compound that kills about 15,000 people and countless farm animals, according to Indian government estimates. The calamity leads to a generation of birth defects. To this day, locals claim the now-abandoned site is riddled with toxic materials left behind by Union Carbide, which was acquired by Dow Chemical in 2001.

1985: Reagan, Gorbachev meet

• Date: Nov. 19

• Location: Geneva

Despite his often bellicose criticisms of the Soviet Union, Reagan agrees to meet with his counterpart, Mikhail Gorbachev, in Geneva in the first meeting between leaders of the two Cold War foes in nearly a decade. Though the meeting yields little of substance, it initiates a closer relationship between the two men, who both seem committed to scaling back the nuclear arms race between the two nuclear superpowers.

1986: Chernobyl disaster

• Date: Apr. 26

• Location: Prypyat, Soviet Union

A combination of poor design and human error leads to a power surge in a reactor in the Chernobyl nuclear power plant. This leads to a massive explosion that puts highly radioactive material into the air. Soviet officials try to cover up the incident, but Swedish scientists notice the increased levels of radioactivity. It takes a little over a week for the radioactive emissions to be contained, but by then radioactive particles had already spread thousands of miles by wind currents to countries as far away as France. A 1,600 square mile area around the plant known as the “exclusion zone” is deemed unsafe, and more than 220,000 people have to be resettled. The radiation causes deformities in nearby livestock and cancer in many people near the blast. Though exact figures are hard to come by, the UN reports years later there were over 20,000 cases of thyroid cancer in children who were in the affected areas. The Chernobyl disaster is still considered the worst nuclear power failure in history.

1987: Stock market tanks

• Date: Oct. 19

• Location: Worldwide

The Dow Jones Industrial Average plunges 508 points, or more than 22%, on Oct. 19, 1987, later referred to as Black Monday. The drop, in percentage terms, is worse than the crash in 1929. It is also worse than the market plunge after the 9-11 terrorist attacks and the 2008 financial crisis. Among the reasons cited for the drop are rising tensions in the Persian Gulf, concern over higher interest rates, and the belief that the bull market is ending. Computerized trading, relatively new at the time, accelerates trade orders, which speeds up the market drop. As a result of the collapse, exchanges put in place so-called circuit breakers intended to halt trading when stocks fall too fast. This measure is designed to provide investors a cooling off period and avoid a panic.

1988: End of fighting in Iran-Iraq war

• Date: July 20

• Location: Iraq-Iran border

From 1980 to 1988, neighboring Middle East countries Iran and Iraq are engaged in a protracted war. It begins when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein launches an attack on Iran in 1980, sensing an opportunity in the wake of the 1979 Iranian Revolution. Iraqi forces initially make incursions into Iranian land, but they lose the area gained in 1982 after Iran is able to mobilize its military and repel the Iraqi forces. Hussein seeks a peace deal that year, but Iranian leader Ruhollah Khomeini refuses. From 1982 to 1988, the fighting is characterized by sporadic missile launches, attacks on each others’ oil tankers, and the use of chemical weapons, mostly by the Iraqis. By 1988, Iran’s economy is in dire straits, forcing Iran to agree to a UN-brokered ceasefire. The two countries signed an official peace treaty in 1990. Anywhere from 500,000 to 1 million troops were killed in the war and up to 100,000 Kurds.

1989: The Berlin Wall falls

• Date: Nov. 9

• Location: Berlin, East and West Germany

Cracks in the monolithic Soviet bloc are starting to appear in the 1980s, and the very symbol of communist repression comes crashing down in November, when the Berlin Wall is breached, ending a 28-year division of the city. During the day on Nov. 9, a spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party says that starting at midnight that day, citizens of East Germany would be free to cross the country’s borders. Almost immediately Berliners start slamming the wall with axes and sledgehammers. By nightfall, the celebration turns into what one observer calls “the greatest street party in the history of the world,” and the city is reunited. East and West Germany would reunite one year later.

1990: Democracy in Poland

• Date: Jan. 28

• Location: Poland

With the hold of the Soviet Union and communism on East Europe loosening, Poland's ruling communist party votes to dissolve and become more moderate. In the following elections, Lech Wałęsa, leader of the Solidarity Movement and the 1983 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, wins the election and becomes president.

1991: American goes to war in Middle East

• Date: Jan. 17

• Location: Saudi Arabia and Kuwait

After Saddam Hussein’s Iraq invades and occupies Kuwait on Aug. 2, 1990, the United States sends forces to defend neighboring Saudi Arabia from being overrun and to protect its vital oil assets there, calling it Operation Desert Shield. With Saudi Arabia secured, the United States implements Operation Desert Storm to push Iraqi forces back across the border with Kuwait in a military operation that lasts until a ceasefire takes effect in April.

1992: Cold War ends

• Date: Feb. 1

• Location: Camp David, Maryland

Just weeks after the dissolution of the Soviet Union on Dec. 26, 1991, U.S. President George H.W. Bush and his Russian counterpart, Boris Yeltsin, meet at Camp David to formally declare the end of the Cold War that began shortly after the end of World War II. The meeting comes days after both countries announce they would stop aiming nuclear missiles at each other. Russia declares its 11 former communist satellite republics – from Armenia to Uzbekistan – independent.

1993: The EU becomes reality

• Date: Nov. 1

• Location: Brussels

The Treaty of the European Union, also known as the Maastricht Treaty, goes into effect in November, after a rough series of political wrangling. Among other concessions, the treaty allows the U.K. and Denmark to opt out of the common euro currency. The treaty opens the way to removing border controls among member states and invites new members to join the union.

1994: Rwandan genocide

• Date: April-July

• Location: Rwanda

For decades, Rwanda has been embroiled in a conflict between the country's two major ethnic groups – the Hutu and the Tutsi. Over 100 days, an estimated 800,000 people are killed, mostly Tutsis, but some moderate Hutus as well. When Tutsi militant group eventually gains control of the country, some two million Rwandans flee to nearby African nations. In 2008, three former Rwandan officials are convicted by an international court of organizing the genocide.

1995: Domestic terror strikes Oklahoma

• Date: April 19

• Location: Oklahoma City

In the deadliest domestic terrorist attack in U.S. history, anti-government radicals Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols bomb the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City. They time the truck-bomb attack for a weekday morning in order to maximize casualties. For the murder of at least 168 people, including 19 children who were in a child-care center in the building, and the injury of hundreds of others, an unremorseful McVeigh is executed by lethal injection on June 11, 2001. Nichols is serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole.

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1996: The dawn of cloning

• Date: July 5

• Location: Midlothian, Scotland, U.K.

Dolly the Sheep enters the annals of bioengineering when scientists at Scotland’s Roslin Institute become the first to not only successfully clone a mammal, but also the first to do so using an adult cell rather than an embryonic one. After 277 cell fusions that developed 29 embryos, the team manages to turn an udder cell into a virtually identical biological carbon copy of the sheep from which it came.

1997: Machine tops chess champ

• Date: May 11

• Location: New York City

Artificial intelligence and machine learning notch a significant victory in 1997, when IBM’s Deep Blue machine defeats a world chess champion. The refrigerator-sized computer loses to grandmaster Garry Kasparov in the first match but proceeds to beat him twice and tie him three times in the next five games.

1998: The age of Google begins

• Date: Sept. 4

• Location: Menlo Park, California

With seed money from Sun Microsystems co-founder Andy Bechtolsheim and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos among others, Stanford University Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin launch the search engine Google. The digital advertising behemoth Google Inc., now Alphabet Inc., is an $863 billion company with several subsidiaries, including YouTube, autonomous-car development company Waymo, and X, the company’s research and development division.

1999: NATO's first independent strike

• Date: March 24

• Location: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia

In order to get Yugoslav forces out of Kosovo during the Kosovo War, NATO forces initiate their first-ever military campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (now Montenegro and Serbia) without U.N. Security Council authorization as Russia and China oppose the attack. The NATO air strikes are aimed at stopping an onslaught against ethnic Albanians by the government of Slobodan Milošević. The NATO attacks last nearly three months, culminating in the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.

2000: International Space Station opens

• Date: Nov. 2

• Location: Low earth orbit

Commanders Bill Shepherd from the United States and Yuri Gidzenko of Russia, along with Russian flight engineer Sergei Krikalev, become the first temporary residents of the International Space Station two years after the first component of the research center was put into low-Earth orbit about 250 miles above sea level. Since that first crew, there have been 229 other visitors to the ISS, some of them multiple times, led by 146 from the United States and 47 from Russia.

2001: 9/11

• Date: Sept. 11

• Location: Multiple

In the worst attack on U.S. soil since the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in 1941, 19 hijackers inspired by Islamist extremism kill nearly 3,000 people after crashing three passenger-laden commercial aircraft into the World Trade Center towers in lower Manhattan and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. A fourth plane, United Airlines 93, crashes in Somerset County, Pennsylvania, after passengers and crew attempt to regain control of the plane headed to Washington D.C.

2002: Homeland Security Act

• Date: Nov. 25

• Location: Washington D.C.

Following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the U.S. Congress and President George W. Bush enact the Homeland Security Act, the biggest government reorganization of national security efforts since the Department of Defense was created in 1947. The sweeping legislation creates the massive Department of Homeland Security, which is responsible for everything from protecting infrastructure from cyber attacks to managing the new U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency.

2003: US invades Iraq

• Date: March 19

• Location: Iraq

With the help of British and other allied forces, the United States begins its invasion of Iraq with a rapid bombing called Shock and Awe with the intention of destroying Iraq’s alleged weapons of mass destruction; the weapons are never found. Coalition forces manage to quickly topple the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein but have to fight insurgent forces for years afterward.

2004: Facebook founded

• Date: Feb. 4

• Location: Cambridge, Massachusetts

Mark Zuckerberg, a 23-year-old Harvard University student, creates The Facebook, a local social networking site named after the orientation materials that profiles students and faculty and given to incoming college freshmen. Within 15 years, Facebook would become a $512 billion digital advertising behemoth so integral to many people’s lives that it is criticized for helping foreign powers and propagandists influence the U.S. political system.

2005: Katrina overwhelms New Orleans

• Date: Aug. 29

• Location: U.S. Gulf Coast

After spending four days in the Gulf of Mexico bulking up to a category 5 hurricane, Katrina slams into New Orleans, inundating the city and creating a humanitarian crisis that lasts for weeks. The catastrophe underscores the precarious situation not only in the Big Easy, but also the surrounding area of the Gulf Coast. At least 1,833 people in the storm’s path are killed, and the storm inflicts $161 billion in damages to the region, the costliest storm in U.S. history.

2006: Hussein executed

• Date: Dec. 30

• Location: Baghdad

Three years after U.S. soldiers pulled him from a hole in the ground where he had been hiding, Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein is hanged. Hussein had been convicted for crimes against humanity, specifically for ordering the massacre of 148 Shiites in 1982 following a failed assassination attempt against him.

2007: The iPhone

• Date: Jan. 9

• Location: San Francisco

Apple CEO Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011, reveals to the world one of the most popular branded consumer electronic devices in history, the iPhone. Since the first generation phone that Jobs introduced at the Consumer Electronics Show that year, there have been 24 versions of the mobile device, and more than 2.2 billion units have been sold globally through 2018, when Apple stopped reporting iPhone sales. Only Samsung’s Galaxy smartphone comes close to that volume.

2008: Dow plunges

• Date: Sept. 29

• Location: New York City

The Dow Jones Industrial Average records the largest-ever intraday drop in points, 777.68, after Congress rejects a massive $700 billion bailout of U.S. banks. The bill would pass days later. The market reacts also to months of global market turmoil amid the 2008 global financial crisis spurred by the U.S. subprime mortgage market crash. The Dow falls by more than half during the 2007-2009 Great Recession, tumbling from 14,164 on Oct. 9, 2007 to 6,594 on March 5, 2009.

2009: America's first African-American president

• Date: Jan. 20

• Location: Washington D.C.

After winning in a landslide against Republican Sen. John McCain of Arizona, amassing 365 electoral votes and 53% of the popular vote, Barack Obama is sworn in as the first African American president of the United States. Obama inherits the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, but with his party holding majorities in both houses of Congress at the time, the president is able to pass a stimulus package and his signature Affordable Care Act in March 2010.

2010: Catastrophic oil spill

• Date: April 20

• Location: Gulf of Mexico, Louisiana

Eleven workers die and 17 are injured after an explosion and fire erupts on the Deepwater Horizon offshore drilling rig 40 miles from the Louisiana coast. The explosion causes the largest environmental disaster in U.S. history, spewing 3 million barrels of crude oil over the three months it takes to stop the leak. British oil company BP says costs from the clean-up, legal fees, and settlements reached $65 billion.

2011: Bin Laden killed

• Date: May 2

• Location: Abbottabad, Pakistan

In an intense 40-minute nighttime firefight, 25 U.S. Navy SEALs hunt down and kill al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, in a compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. Within hours, bin Laden’s body is identified using DNA and then buried at sea in the Arabian Sea.

2012: The 'God Particle' is (Probably) Discovered

• Date: July 4

• Location: Near Geneva

Nearly 600 feet below the France-Switzerland border at CERN’s Large Hadron Collider Facility, an international team of scientists discovers a new particle widely believed to be the elusive Higgs boson, known as the “God Particle," which is thought to be a fundamental component of the universe. The Higgs boson has been an important element of particle physics theory for decades, but until 2012 there had been no physical evidence to support its existence.

2013: Snowden reveals secrets

• Date: June 6

• Location: Hong Kong

After surreptitiously leaving his job at U.S. National Security Agency contractor Booz Allen Hamilton, computer security consultant Edward Snowden meets secretly in Hong Kong with journalists Glenn Greenwald and Laura Poitras. Snowden reveals the first of a series of secrets about numerous U.S. and European government surveillance operations. Hailed as a courageous whistleblower and privacy champion by some and a traitor that compromised counterterrorism efforts by others, the American now resides in exile in Moscow.

2014: Russia invades Ukraine

• Date: March 16

• Location: Crimea

Exploiting political unrest in Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin orchestrates the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula. The action incites peals of condemnation from world leaders and a raft of economic sanctions against Moscow. This strategically important and predominantly Russian-speaking region on the Black Sea has been coveted by the Russians as part of their strategic efforts to check NATO expansion along Russia’s western border.

2015: NASA flies by Pluto

• Date: July 14

• Location: 3 billion miles from Earth

NASA spacecraft New Horizons becomes the first human-made object to fly past and observe the dwarf planet Pluto. New Horizons sends back stunning photographs of this enigmatic and distant member of the solar system, including images of a mountain range and massive icebergs floating in frozen nitrogen. New Horizons is now en route to the Kuiper Belt, a massive asteroid belt at the far reaches of the solar system.

2016: Trump elected

• Date: Nov. 8

• Location: U.S.

Running on a populist agenda, Donald Trump is elected the 45th president of the United States and the fifth president in U.S. history (the second since the 2000) to win despite losing the popular vote. The real estate developer and television personality ran on a platform of putting “America First” in global trade and foreign policy negotiations and cracking down on undocumented immigrants.

2017: Hurricane triple whammy

• Date: August-September

• Location: Multiple

Within just four weeks, three massive hurricanes – Harvey, Irma, and Maria – strike Texas, Florida, and the Caribbean, killing 228 people, inflicting a combined $265 billion in damages, and displacing millions of homeowners. Hurricane Maria inflicts immense damage to the U.S. commonwealth of Puerto Rico, which was already struggling due to economic insolvency.

2018: Wildfires

• Date: November

• Location: Northern California

The deadliest wildfires in the state’s history engulf northern California in November. The catastrophe costs the lives of 88 people, and the fire consumes 18,500 homes and businesses. State and federal officials estimate that it would cost $3 billion to clean up debris. Climate change activists say the conflagrations are evidence that global warming is no longer a distant concern and that it is occurring now.

2019: Trump impeached

• Date: Dec. 18

• Location: Washington, D.C.

On Dec. 18, 2019, Donald Trump becomes just the third U.S. president to be impeached. A whistleblower reveals that in July Trump had asked Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to investigate the business dealings of Hunter Biden, son of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, as well as cybersecurity company Crowdstrike. These requests were made just after Zelensky said Ukraine wanted to buy weapons from the United States. After the call comes to light, Democratic leaders file two articles of impeachment – for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress. They say Trump abused his power by using the office of the president to target a political opponent. The obstruction of Congress charge stems from accusations that Trump Administration officials tried to cover up the whistleblower’s report. Trump calls the investigation a “witch hunt” and denies any wrongdoing. The House passes both articles in a vote that goes almost entirely along party lines, moving the impeachment proceedings along to the Senate.

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