Today in History: Russians vote in their first-ever presidential election

Today is Thursday, June 12, the 163rd day of 2025. There are 202 days left in the year.
Today in history:
On June 12, 1991, Russians went to the polls for their first-ever presidential election, which resulted in victory for Boris Yeltsin.
Also on this date:
In 1939, the Baseball Hall of Fame was dedicated in Cooperstown, New York.
In 1942, Anne Frank, a German-born Jewish girl living in Amsterdam, received a diary for her 13th birthday, less than a month before she and her family went into hiding from the Nazis.
In 1963, civil rights leader Medgar Evers, 37, was shot and killed outside his home in Jackson, Mississippi. (In 1994, Byron De La Beckwith was convicted of murdering Evers and sentenced to life in prison, where he died in 2001.)
In 1964, eight South African anti-apartheid activists, including Nelson Mandela, were sentenced to life in prison for committing acts of sabotage against South Africa' apartheid government.
In 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court, in Loving v. Virginia, unanimously struck down state laws prohibiting interracial marriages, ruling that such laws violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
In 1978, David Berkowitz was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for each of the six 'Son of Sam' killings committed in New York City over the previous two years.
In 1987, President Ronald Reagan, during a visit to the divided German city of Berlin, exhorted Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to 'tear down this wall.'
In 1994, Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman were killed outside Simpson's Los Angeles home. (O.J. Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson's ex-husband, was later acquitted of the killings in a criminal trial but was eventually held liable in a civil action.)
In 2016, a gunman opened fire at Pulse, a gay nightclub in Orlando, Florida, leaving 49 people dead and 53 wounded in what was then the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history; the gunman, Omar Mateen, pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group during a three-hour standoff before being killed in a shootout with police.
Today's Birthdays: Actor Sonia Manzano is 75. Actor-director Timothy Busfield is 68. Olympic track gold medalist Gwen Torrence is 60. Actor Rick Hoffman is 55. Actor-comedian Finesse Mitchell is 53. Actor Jason Mewes is 51. Blues musician Kenny Wayne Shepherd is 48. Actor Timothy Simons is 47. Singer-songwriter Robyn is 46. Model Adriana Lima is 44. Actor Dave Franco is 40. Country musician Chris Young is 40.

Try Our AI Features

Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:

Learn with AIFact CheckingText to SpeechAI Summary

Related Articles

The Hill

an hour ago

• The Hill

Iran unsure it can trust US after Israeli strikes: top official

Iran's foreign minister told NBC News Friday that Tehran was not sure it could trust the United States in the wake of numerous Israeli attacks on Iran. The airstrikes from Israel, which have targeted Iranian military and nuclear facilities, came just days before American officials were scheduled to hold nuclear talks mediated by Oman. The U.S. has said it was not involved in the operation, although Trump was notified of the strike beforehand by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the interview, Araghchi suggested that the United States was not legitimately interested in diplomacy and was only using the talks as a 'cover' for future attacks. 'They had perhaps this plan in their mind, and they just needed negotiations perhaps to cover it up,' Araghchi said. 'We don't know how we can trust them anymore. What they did was in fact a betrayal to diplomacy.' 'We're not prepared to negotiate with them anymore, as long as the aggression continues,' he added. The State Department did not immediately return a request for comment. Araghchi's comments mark another deterioration in the chances for diplomacy between the United States and Iran, and come as President Trump is weighing a strike on the country that could damage one of its most significant nuclear facilities that is still standing after Israel's attacks. Trump has repeatedly said that he hopes for a diplomatic solution and does not want to involve the United States in another war in the Middle East. But he also approved of an airstrike in private, the Wall Street Journal reported, although he held off on giving a final order. Now, Trump has attempted to give himself more room for negotiations, saying that he will make a decision within two weeks. Nuclear talks between Iranian, German, French, and British diplomats are now occurring in Geneva, although they did not produce any breakthroughs on their first day. During the interview, which occurred after the end of the talks on Friday, Aragchi said that Israel had to halt its attacks in order to continue negotiations, and that he was unwilling to give up uranium enrichment entirely. 'This is an achievement of our own scientists. It is a question of national pride,' he said.

Chicago Tribune

an hour ago

• Chicago Tribune

Alexander Polikoff, public-interest lawyer behind landmark CHA segregation case, dies

Public-interest lawyer Alexander Polikoff spent decades fighting powerful interests, most notably in a case he filed on behalf of Black public housing residents against the city of Chicago that spanned most of his career. The U.S. Supreme Court in 1976 agreed with Polikoff and his clients' contention that the city had discriminated against Black public housing residents and had selected housing for them based on race. Polikoff spent the next 43 years holding the city accountable until federal oversight over Chicago public housing was lifted in 2019. 'Alex was not motivated by money, fame or life's comforts,' said Hoy McConnell, who succeeded Polikoff as the executive director of Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest, the small public-interest law firm that Polikoff joined in 1970. 'Rather, he dedicated his life to making change to improve the lives of those burdened by poverty and discrimination.' Polikoff, 98, died of natural causes May 27 at his home in Keene, New Hampshire, said his son, author Daniel Joseph Polikoff. A longtime Highland Park resident, Polikoff moved to New Hampshire in 2022 to be near his daughter. Born and raised in Chicago, Polikoff was the son of attorney Julius Polikoff. After graduating from Senn High School in 1944, he briefly attended Purdue University before joining the Navy. After his discharge, he earned a bachelor's degree and a master's degree in English from the University of Chicago. He then received his law degree from the Hyde Park school in 1953, and worked for the next 17 years at the firm that became Schiff Hardin. Polikoff performed extensive pro bono legal work, representing clients alongside the American Civil Liberties Union. 'I don't remember a time when my dad wasn't doing some pro bono work with the ACLU, taking on various causes,' Polikoff's son said. 'That pro bono work was very compelling to him — it was part of his character.' In 1965, he filed a lawsuit in Lake County on behalf of four pupils to force Waukegan's elementary school board to reorganize school boundaries in order to meet integration standards. The Illinois Supreme Court in 1968 ruled favorably on Polikoff's contention that race could be taken into account to redraw school district boundary lines to achieve integration. The longest battle of Polikoff's career started in 1966, when he represented a group of Black Chicago Housing Authority residents in a federal class-action lawsuit. The case is known by the name of one of those residents, tenant activist Dorothy Gautreaux. Polikoff alleged that the CHA had practiced racial segregation by building most of its public housing complexes in Black neighborhoods and had deliberately placed Black residents in those complexes. In 1969, Judge Richard Austin concluded that the CHA had discriminated against Blacks in violation of the U.S. Constitution's equal-protection clause and Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which barred racial discrimination in any program receiving federal aid. Austin also ruled that three public housing units must be built in white areas for every similar unit built in a Black neighborhood. White aldermen refused to approve sites for new construction. The CHA also dragged its feet by simply stopping building instead of following Austin's directives. In 1976, the U.S. Supreme Court, ruling on an appeal from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, unanimously concluded that the CHA had practiced segregation. Justices found that the CHA's problems were regional in nature, and that solutions could occur both in the city and the suburbs. Austin then expanded his order to include the entire metro area as an option for scattered-site housing. However, suburbs resisted new construction of lower-income scattered-site housing. A 1981 consent decree in the case placed CHA tenants in existing area housing and gave them federal Section 8 rent subsidies. 'The whole idea was to take the thinking beyond the Supreme Court's 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education ruling that ended school segregation and transfer it to the area of housing,' Polikoff told the Tribune in 1994. '(The) CHA's policy since the early 1950s worked to make each of its 168 high-rise buildings virtually 100% Black. It was illegal, immoral and socially disastrous to pile poor people on top of poor people.' The CHA eventually altered its operations and demolished numerous high-rises such as Cabrini-Green, the Henry Horner Homes and the Robert Taylor Homes in favor of scattered-site housing. The federal government ended its oversight of the CHA in 2019. At 92 years old, Polikoff was still involved in the case. 'It is well-known that the work Alex led changed public housing practices both in Chicago and nationally, and positively impacted tens of thousands of public housing residents,' said attorney Julie Brown, who worked for decades with Polikoff on the Gautreaux case. 'He was brilliant, of course, but always questioning. He had an uncanny ability to put aside extraneous issues and get to the heart of any matter he addressed. He had an innate sense that justice should prevail and insisted on doing everything he could to try to make it so.' Alex Kotlowitz, whose award-winning 1992 book, 'There Are No Children Here,' covered hardscrabble life in the Henry Horner Homes, praised Polikoff for challenging the CHA, 'which had become a kind of warehousing for the city's poor. He challenged the nation's conscience.' 'Alex was one of the first to recognize the profound effects of concentrated poverty,' Kotlowitz said. 'The Gautreaux litigation changed more than just housing policy. It forced us to reconsider how we treat the marginalized. It prodded us to consider our collective responsibilities to those who are struggling economically.' 'Gautreaux laid the foundation for the present-day national conversation about mixed-income housing, a reconsideration of how we think about community,' Kotlowitz said. Polikoff left private law practice in 1970 to join the staff of the public-interest law firm Businessmen for the Public Interest, later named Business People and Professionals for the Public Interest and now known as Impact for Equity. He became the executive director of the group, which provided a full-time platform for continued social justice advocacy, and held that post until 1999. He continued to work as the group's housing director until fully retiring in 2022. Under Polikoff, the group succesffully fought City Hall's proposal in the early 1970s to build a new airport on landfill in Lake Michigan. It also successfully fought plans for a nuclear power plant near Chesterton, Indiana, on the border of the 12,500-acre Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore, winning a key court fight in 1974 when a three-judge panel of federal judges halted construction. The utility Northern Indiana Public Service Co. formally abandoned plans for a nuclear plant on the site in 1981. And pressure from Polikoff and his colleagues at BPI and from the Citizens Utility Board spurred utility Commonwealth Edison Co. to announce the settlement of 10 years of rate-case litigation in October 1993 with a record $1.34 billion refund to rate-payers. Polikoff's 'vision and passion inspired many of us,' recalled Environmental Law & Policy Center CEO Howard Learner, BPI's former general counsel and the lead consumer lawyer in ComEd settlement negotiations. 'Alex was always proud that part of his legacy in leading BPI was the multiplier impact from the number of talented public interest attorneys and vital new organizations that were developed at and grew from BPI to make a difference for the public good.' Bob Vollen, who worked alongside Polikoff at BPI from 1972 until 1982, said Polikoff had a 'way of posing a question that it allowed no possible answer other than the one he was seeking.' Polikoff authored five books, including 'Waiting for Gautreaux: A Story of Segregation, Housing and the Black Ghetto,' which was published in 2006. His most recent book, 'Cry My Beloved America,' an examination of anger and frustration in America, was published in 2024. Polikoff's wife of 71 years, author Barbara Garland Polikoff, died in 2022. A daughter, Joan, died in 2016. In addition to his son, Polikoff is survived by another daughter, Eve Kodiak; and five grandchildren. Services will be private.

UPI

2 hours ago

• UPI

Supreme Court allows terrorism victims to sue Palestinian groups

The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a federal law that allows victims of terrorism to sue Palestinian entities in U.S. courts. File Photo by Bonnie Cash/UPI | License Photo June 20 (UPI) -- The U.S. Supreme Court on Friday unanimously upheld a federal law that allows victims of terrorism to sue two Palestinian entities in U.S. courts. The decision reversed the U.S. Court of Appeals in the New York-based 2nd Circuit that found the law denied the Palestine Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority fair legal process. All nine justices ruled that the bipartisan 2019 law, called the Promoting Security and Justice for Victims of Terrorism Act, does not violate due process rights of the PLO and PA. The lawsuit and appeal involve cases from the early 2000s and not the Israel-Hamas war and airstrikes between Israel and Iran. It was based on the Antiterrorism Act of 1990, which creates a federal civil damages action for U.S. nationals injured or killed "by reason of an act of international terrorism." Founded in 1964, the PLO is internationally recognized as the official representative of the Palestinian people in the occupied territories. The PA, founded in 1994, is the Fatah-controlled government body that exercises partial civil control over the Palestinian enclaves in the West Bank. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the 46-page opinion that included a concurrence by Justice Clarence Thomas and backed by Justice Neil Gorsuch, who wanted to define the boundaries of the Fifth Amendment's Due Process Clause. Lawsuits by U.S. victims of terrorist attacks in Israel can move forward in American courts. "It is permissible for the Federal Government to craft a narrow jurisdictional provision that ensures, as part of a broader foreign policy agenda, that Americans injured or killed by acts of terror have an adequate forum in which to vindicate their right to ATA compensation," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court. In April, the high court consolidated two cases for arguments: a Justice Department appeal and an appeal by the family of Israeli-American Ari Fuld, who was fatally stabbed at a shopping mall in the West Bank in 2018. The Biden administration initially intervened in Fuld's case and another one brought by 11 American families who sued the Palestinian leadership groups and were awarded $650 million in a 2025 trial for several attacks in Israel.