Today is the 256th day of 2022. There are 109 days left in the year.

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT

2005: US President George W Bush says, "I take responsibility" for failures in dealing with Hurricane Katrina, and says the disaster raised broader questions about the Government's ability to respond to natural disasters as well as terror attacks.

OTHER EVENTS

1586: Anthony Babington and fellow conspirators go on trial for attempting to seize the throne of England for Mary Queen of Scots by plotting to murder Queen Elizabeth I.

1759: After a two-month siege of Quebec, British forces scale the Heights of Abraham to engage and defeat the French.

1788: Denmark invades Sweden. The first US national election is authorised.

1962: Mississippi Governor Ross Barnett rejects the US Supreme Court's order for the University of Mississippi to admit James Meredith, a black student, declaring in a televised address, "We will not drink from the cup of genocide."

1964: Egypt and Saudi Arabia announce agreement of a peaceful settlement to the two-year-old Yemeni civil war.

1982: At least 700 persons are killed and 17 million left homeless by floods across the north and east of India during the monsoon season that began in June.

1986: Iraqi warplanes bomb five airfields in Iran as demonstrators seek revenge for Iran's missile attack on Baghdad.

1990: Law enforcement series Law & Order debuts on the NBC television network; the show became one of the longest-running prime time TV dramas in the United States.

1991: The US and the Soviet Union agree to discontinue their military aid to government and rebel forces in Afghanistan after more than a year of US-Soviet negotiations aimed at bringing a settlement in the 12-year-old Afghan civil war.

1993: Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization leader Yasser Arafat shake hands on the lawn of the White House at the signing of a peace accord providing for mutual recognition and Palestinian control over Gaza and the West Bank.

1994: At the UN International Conference on Population and Development, 180 nations adopt a 20-year blueprint to slow world population growth.

1995: A military transport aircraft crashes into the sea off the coast of western Sri Lanka, killing all 75 people on-board.

1997: Funeral services are held in Calcutta, India, for Nobel Peace laureate Mother Teresa.

1998: The Yugoslav republic of Montenegro deports thousands of Kosovo refugees to Albania.

1999: The fourth major blast in Russia in two weeks destroys an apartment building in Moscow and kills 118 people.

2001: An international arrest warrant is issued for Peru's exiled former President Alberto Fujimori for his alleged role in massacres by the Grupo Colina paramilitary death squad in the early 1990s.

2002: Two US pilots are charged with involuntary manslaughter and assault for mistakenly bombing Canadian forces near Kandahar in southern Afghanistan in April.

2004: North Korea says a huge cloud caused by an explosion is the planned demolition of a mountain for a hydroelectric project, and invites a British diplomat to visit the site.

2006: A gunman opens fire at a Montreal college and wounds at least 20 people — six critically — before shooting himself dead.

2007: Three powerful earthquakes jolt Indonesia in less than 24 hours, sending a 10-foot tsunami crashing to shore, damaging hundreds of houses, and terrifying residents. At least 10 people are killed.

2008: Rescue crews venture out to pluck people from their homes in an all-out search for thousands of Texans who had stubbornly stayed behind overnight to face Hurricane Ike. Russian soldiers and armoured vehicles pull back from positions deep in western Georgia, meeting a closely watched withdrawal deadline a month after the war between the former Soviet republics.

2009: President Hugo Chavez says Russia has opened a US$2.2-billion line of credit for Venezuela to purchase weapons, including armoured vehicles and surface-to-air missiles.

2010: Cuba announces it will cast off at least half a million State workers early in the following year and reduce restrictions on private enterprise to help them find new jobs — the most dramatic step yet in President Raul Castro's push to radically remake employment on the communist-run island.

2011: German Chancellor Angela Merkel seeks to calm market fears that Greece is heading for a chaotic default as Europe struggles to contain a crippling financial crisis.

2013: By truck and helicopter, thousands of people stranded by flood waters are brought down from the Colorado Rockies. A pre-dawn fire sweeps through a Russian psychiatric hospital, killing 37 people.

2015: American basketball player Moses Malone — a dominating centre and the NBA's premier offensive rebounder during the 1980s, leading the Philadelphia 76ers to a championship in 1983 — dies at age 60.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

Walter Reed, US bacteriologist (1851-1901); Milton Snavely Hershey, Hershey Company founder (1857-1945); Arnold Schoenberg, Austrian-born composer (1874-1951); Alain Locke, African American educator, writer, and philosopher (1886-1954 ); Claudette Colbert, US actress (1903-1996); Roald Dahl, British writer (1916-1990); Oscar Arias Sanchez, president of Costa Rica and Nobel Peace Prize laureate (1941- ); Jacqueline Bisset, British actress (1944- ); Michael Johnson, US athlete (1967- )

— AP