Today is the 188th day of 2016. There are 178 days left in the year.TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

2005: New York Times reporter Judith Miller is jailed for refusing to divulge a confidential source to a grand jury investigating the Bush Administration’s leak of an undercover CIA operative’s name.

OTHER EVENTS

1535: Sir Thomas More is executed in England on the orders of Henry VIII for advocating separation of church and state.

1809: Pope Pius VII, having excommunicated Napoleon Bonaparte, is taken prisoner by the French.

1917: Arab horsemen led by British officer T E Lawrence — also known as Lawrence of Arabia — capture the heavily garrisoned Turkish fort at Aqaba.

1923: Union of Soviet Socialist Republics is formed.

1945: Nicaragua becomes first nation formally to accept United Nations charter.

1964: Nyasaland Protectorate, renamed Malawi, becomes independent within British Commonwealth.

1968: Solomon Islands become independent from Britain.

1971: Kamuzu Banda declares himself president for life in Malawi.

1986: Two Australians are hanged in Malaysia for drug trafficking, the first Westerners executed under Malaysia’s strict drug laws.

2000: A heat wave baking south-eastern Europe sends temperatures soaring to 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit), killing 25 people.

2004: China confirms a new outbreak of bird flu just four months after claiming to have wiped it out, while Thailand announces a suspected case of the disease that experts fear could jump to humans.

2014: Israel arrests six Jewish suspects in the grisly slaying of a Palestinian teenager who was abducted and burned alive last week — a crime that set off a wave of violent protests in Arab sections of the country.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Frida Kahlo, Mexican artist (1907-1954); Janet Leigh, US actress (1927-2004); Merv Griffin, entertainment mogul/former talk show host (1925-2007); Sylvester Stallone, US actor (1946- ); the Dalai Lama, exiled Tibetan leader (1935- )

— AP