Today is the 161th day of 2019. 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

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

1935: Alcoholics Anonymous is founded in Akron, Ohio, by Dr Robert Holbrook Smith and William Griffith Wilson.

1940: Jamaican-born pan-African nationalist Marcus Garvey dies in London at 52.

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.

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

1991: Eleven-year-old Jaycee Dugard of South Lake Tahoe, California, is abducted by Phillip and Nancy Garrido; Jaycee was held by the couple for 18 years before she was found by authorities.

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 ceasefire, 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 per cent of the vote, more than any other party. His government is Italy’s 59th since World War II.

2004: Singer-musician Ray Charles dies in Beverly Hills, California, at age 73.

2005: Torrential rains in north-western Colombia unleash mudslides on an impoverished mountainside neighbourhood 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.

2015: President Barack Obama orders the deployment of up to 450 more American troops to Iraq in an effort to reverse major battlefield losses to the Islamic State. Pope Francis takes the biggest step yet in cracking down on bishops who covered up for priests who raped and molested children, creating a new tribunal inside the Vatican to hear cases of bishops accused of failing to protect their flocks.

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