Today is the 269th day of 2012. There are 97 days left in the year.

Today's Highlight

2011: Prime Minister Bruce Golding signals his intention to resign as head of the Jamaican Government at a quarterly meeting of the Jamaica Labour Party's central executive at the party's Belmot Road headquarters.

Other Events

1789: The first US Congress adopts 12 amendments to the Constitution, sending them to the states for ratification. Ten of the amendments become the Bill of Rights.

1894: British annex Pondoland, connecting Cape Colony and Natal, in Africa.

1963: The military of the Dominican Republic overthrows the government of President Juan D Bosch seven months after the country's first democratic elections.

1970: Jordan's King Hussein and Palestinian guerrilla leaders agree on cease fire to end weeklong "Black September" civil war in Jordan that left between 1,000 and 5,000 dead.

1976: Prime Minister Ian Smith accepts a proposal for eventual black rule in Rhodesia in a broadcast to the nation.

1984: Jordan and Egypt resume diplomatic relations after seven-year break.

1999: Students pay tribute to six protesters who died during two days of fighting with police in Jakarta, Indonesia. They were protesting a security law giving the military emergency powers.

2000: Stunned by an apparent electoral defeat, Slobodan Milosevic's allies urge the opposition to allow a run-off election in Serbia.

2001: Sefer Halilovic, a former commander of Bosnia and Herzegovina's Muslim-led army, surrenders to the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague. The tribunal charges Halilovic in connection with the September 1993 massacre of more than 60 Bosnian Croat civilians.

2003: Experts from the UN International Atomic Energy Agency say they found traces of highly enriched uranium in Iran at the Kalaye Electric Co on the outskirts of Teheran.

2006: Gunmen kill the southern provincial head of Afghanistan's Ministry of Women's Affairs, Safia Ama Jan, outside her home in apparent retribution for her efforts to help educate women.

2007: Myanmar's military government bans assemblies of more than five people and imposes curfews in the country's two largest cities after thousands of Buddhist monks and sympathisers defied orders to stay out of politics and protested once again.

2008: Kgalema Motlanthe, an anti-apartheid activist, becomes the third president of South Africa since the end of white rule.

2009: President Barack Obama asserts that he and other leaders of the world's 20 largest economies took actions that "brought the global economy back from the brink" and saved or created millions of jobs.

2010: Israeli settlers have hauled construction equipment into a Jewish settlement deep inside the West Bank, preparing to break ground on a new housing project even as the US races to prevent peace talks from collapsing with the end of an Israeli moratorium on settlement building.

Today’s Birthdays

William Faulkner, US writer and Nobel laureate (1897-1962); Dmitri Shostakovich, Soviet composer (1906-1975); Robert

Bresson, French film director (1901-1999); Glenn Gould, Canadian pianist (1932-1982); Christopher Reeve, US actor (1952-

2004); Barbara Walters, US news anchor (1931-); Michael Douglas, US actor (1944--); Will Smith, actor/rapper (1968-);

Catherine Zeta-Jones, Welsh actress (1969-).

—Jamaica Observer and AP