Today is the 253rd day of 2016. There are 113 days left in the year.

TODAY’S HIGHLIGHT

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.

OTHER EVENTS

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

1835: “September Laws” in France severely censor press and suppress radical movement.

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 heavily criticised in Congress over his pardoning of former President Richard Nixon.

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.

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

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.

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.

2013: President Barack Obama calls a Russian-backed plan for Syria to turn over all of its chemical weapons for destruction a “potentially positive development” that could head off threatened US air strikes.

TODAY’S BIRTHDAYS

Otis Redding, US soul singer/songwriter (1941-1967); Hugh Grant, British actor (1960- ); Adam Sandler, US actor (1966- ); Michelle Williams, US actress (1980- )

—AP