Today is the 161st day of 2014. There are 204 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2006: Three Guantanamo Bay detainees hang themselves, the first reported deaths among the hundreds of men held at the US Navy base in Cuba on suspicion of links to al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

OTHER EVENTS

1794: In France, revolutionary tribunals are changed to give the jury only the choice between acquittal and death, heightening the Reign of Terror.

1848: Austrian forces are victorious at Vicenza in Italy against Sardinians.

1868: Michael III, king of Serbia, is murdered, and is succeeded by Milan IV.

1898: US Marines invade Cuba in Spanish-American War.

1924: Italian opposition politician Giacomo Matteoti is murdered by Fascists, prompting worldwide condemnation of Benito Mussolini’s government that leads him to declare a dictatorship.

1940: After Germany defeats France, Italy enters World War II against France and Britain.

1942: German SS kills the 172 male residents of Lidice, Czechoslovakia, and deports the women to concentration camps in retaliation for the assassination of the deputy SS leader Reinhard Heydrich.

1944: Germans kill 642 inhabitants of Oradour-sur-Glane, France, in retaliation for a resistance attack. Only 10 villagers survive. In 1953, 21 of the 200 SS perpetrators are brought to trial.

1967: The future Danish monarch, Crown Princess Margrethe, marries French diplomat Henrik de Laborde de Monpezat in Copenhagen.

1971: United States lifts 21-year-old embargo on trade with China.

1973: Fighting in South Vietnam gains momentum as each side jockeys for more territory under ceasefire agreement.

1989: China and Taiwan open direct telephone links.

1989: Police arrest 1,000 people in Seoul, South Korea, as radical students battle riot police in protest demanding the overthrow of President Roh Tae-woo.

1990: Former US National Security Adviser John Poindexter is sentenced to six months in prison for his role in the Iran-Contra affair.

1991: Iraqi troops begin attacking Shiite Muslims in southern Iraq who rebelled after Gulf War.

1994: In one incident of the Rwandan genocide, Hutu militiamen massacre 170 people hiding in a Roman Catholic church.

1997: Top Khmer Rouge lieutenant Son Sen and his family are executed on the orders of leader Pol Pot. This later leads to a coup against Pol Pot.

1999: Yugoslav troops begin pulling out of Kosovo and NATO suspends its punishing 78-day air war.

2000: Hours after Eritrea accepts a regional peace plan and agrees to a cease-fire, Ethiopian troops storm three Eritrean military positions on the disputed border.

2001: Media baron Silvio Berlusconi becomes Italy’s premier for the second time after his party wins 30 percent of the vote, more than any other party. His government is Italy’s 59th since World War II.

2002: India reopens its airspace to Pakistani commercial flights, showing the first signs that it is ready to ease the stand-off over the border shared by the two nations in Kashmir.

2003: Former Lebanon hostage Terry Waite, 64, who was chained to the wall of a Beirut cell for nearly five years, agrees to spend a day in a British prison to raise money for charity.

2004: Gunmen kill 12 in a nighttime raid on a camp of Chinese road workers in Afghanistan, the worst attack on foreign relief workers and contractors since the fall of the Taliban.

2005: Torrential rains in northwestern Colombia unleash mudslides on an impoverished mountainside neighborhood in the South American country’s coffee-growing region, killing at least six people.

2007: Taliban militants launch a barrage of rockets on President Hamid Karzai as he speaks with elders in central Afghanistan, narrowly missing him. It is the third attempt on Karzai’s life since he became president.

2008: The chief of Saddam Hussein’s tribal clan is killed by a bomb glued to the undercarriage of his car. Sheik Ali al-Nida, 65, was the leader of the al-Bu Nasir tribe, a large Sunni Arab clan of about 20,000 members, including Saddam’s family.

2009: Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi hails a new era in relations with Italy on arrival in Rome, saying a history of hatred and destruction during 30-year colonial rule had been replaced by a future of friendship and cooperation.

2010: Pope Benedict XVI strongly defends celibacy for priests as a sign of faith in an increasingly secular world during a rally that draws some 15,000 priests from around the world to Rome.

2011: In a stern rebuke, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates warns that the future of the historic NATO military alliance is at risk because of European penny-pinching and distaste for front-line combat and says the United States won’t carry the alliance as a charity case.

2012: Opposition leader Henri Capriles marches through the Venezuelan capital of Caracas accompanied by hundreds of thousands of supporters as he formerly launches his campaign to run against President Hugo Chavez.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Gustave Courbet, French artist (1819-1877); Nikolaus August Otto, German developer of internal combustion engine (1832-1891); Henry Stanley, British-American journalist and explorer (1840-1904); Saul Bellow, US novelist and Nobel laureate (1915-2005); Judy Garland, US actress (1922-1969); Britain’s Prince Philip (1921- ); Jeff Greenfield, US TV commentator (1943- ); Maxi Priest, British reggae/dancehall singer (1961- ); Elizabeth Hurley, British model/actress (1965- ); Faith Evans, US singer (1973- ); Jeanne Tripplehorn, US actress (1963- )

–AP