Today is the 252nd day of 2012. There are 113 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

1998: Independent prosecutor Kenneth Starr submits to the US Congress a report on possible impeachable offences by US President Bill Clinton.

OTHER EVENTS

1776: Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia changes the name “United Colonies” to “United States”.

1893: Frances Cleveland, wife of US President Grover Cleveland, gives birth to daughter, Esther, in the White House. It is the first time a president’s child is born in the executive mansion.

1894: Sun Yat-sen heads his first attempt at revolution in China. The revolt does not succeed until 1911.

1944: While the Soviet army advances in Bulgaria, the government is overthrown in a Communist-led coup.

1948: Korean People’s Democratic Republic is formed in North Korea, claiming authority over entire country.

1957: US President Dwight D Eisenhower signs into law the first civil rights bill to pass the US Congress since the Civil War.

1971: Prisoners seize control of the maximum-security Attica Correctional Facility near Buffalo, New York, beginning a siege that claims 43 lives.

1974: US President Gerald Ford is criticised heavily in Congress over his pardoning of former President Richard Nixon.

1987: Iraq launches series of coordinated air raids on Iranian power plants, factories and oil centres.

1988: Burma’s former Prime Minister U Nu, toppled in a 1962 military coup, announces formation of a rival government. Burma is now known as Myanmar.

1991: Saudi Arabia releases 400 Iraqi citizens held in the kingdom in exchange for a Saudi prisoner of war and a Saudi woman held in Iraq.

1992: In a bid to defuse tensions with UN forces, the Khmer Rouge, Cambodia’s radical communist movement that ruled the country from 1975 to 1979, invites the peacekeeping chief to its secluded base.

1994: The United States agrees to accept at least 20,000 Cuban immigrants a year in return for Cuba’s promise to halt people from boarding rafts and trying to sail to America.

1995: NATO warplanes return to the skies over Bosnia to attack repaired Serb air defences, and acknowledge that the attacks probably killed some civilians.

1996: Typhoon Sally hits coastal areas of Guangdong, China’s most developed province, killing more than 130 people and injuring thousands.

1997: Sinn Fein, political ally of the Irish Republican Army, formally renounces violence and enters talks on the future of Northern Ireland.

1999: Israel begins releasing Palestinian prisoners as part of new peace deal.

2000: Gunmen wound three people in a beauty salon in Kashmir, 24 hours after warning women to wear veils in public or be shot. The group said to be behind the warning denies it had issued any such threat.

2001: Afghanistan’s military opposition leader Ahmed Shah Massood is fatally wounded and later dies after a suicide attack by assassins posing as journalists.

2002: The US releases $42 million in military aid to Colombia after certifying that its armed forces’ human rights record met US congressional requirements. The US had released the first $62 million instalment of a $104-million military aid package in April.

2003: The Roman Catholic archdiocese of Boston, Massachusetts, and lawyers representing 552 alleged victims of sexual abuse by priests announce a legal settlement worth up to $85 million.

2005: President Hosni Mubarak is officially declared the victor of Egypt’s first contested presidential elections — but the vote is marred by a lower than expected turnout of 23 per cent.

2006: Tens of thousands of red-clad protesters throng Taiwan’s capital, demanding that President Chen Shui-bian resign over a series of alleged corruption scandals involving his family and inner circle.

2007: Liberia ships its first consignment of diamonds since the lifting of UN sanctions imposed in 2001 that blocked the export of so-called “blood diamonds” used to fuel years of war.

2008: Asif Ali Zardari, the widower of assassinated former Pakistani leader Benazir Bhutto, takes office as Pakistan’s president.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Cardinal Richelieu, French churchman-statesman (1585-1642); Cornelius van Tromp, Dutch admiral (1629-1691); Luigi Galvani, Italian physiologist (1737-1798); Max Reinhardt, Austrian stage/screen director (1873-1943); Otis Redding, US soul singer/songwriter (1941-1967); Hugh Grant, British actor (1960-); Adam Sandler, US actor (1966-); Michelle Williams, US actress (1980-).

— AP