Today is the 262nd day of 2023. There are 103 days left in the year.

TODAY'S HIGHLIGHT

1961: Jamaica holds a referendum on its continued membership in the West Indies Federation; the majority vote to with draw.

OTHER EVENTS

1893: New Zealand becomes the first country to grant all women the right to vote.

1972: An Israeli diplomat is killed and another injured when a letter bomb explodes at the Embassy of Israel in London.

1983: St Kitts and Nevis in the Caribbean become independent of Britain.

1984: China and Great Britain announce their agreement to transfer Hong Kong to Chinese rule in 1997.

1985: A magnitude-8.1 earthquake in Mexico City kills an estimated 10,000 and leaves 250,000 homeless.

1991: In the Ötztal Alps on the Italian-Austrian border, German tourists discover a mummified human body (later known as the Iceman) that was subsequently determined to date from 3300 bce.

1994: US troops peacefully enter Haiti to enforce the return of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

2001: Islamic clerics urge terrorist suspect Osama bin Laden to leave Afghanistan voluntarily, but set no deadline for him.

2003: Venezuela suspends oil shipments to the Dominican Republic (DR) — which was previously sold about 110,000 barrels of Venezuelan oil a day, or nearly 70 per cent of DR's supply) — because of a plot being hatched there to overthrow Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

2004: Hu Jintao becomes the undisputed leader of China as the country completes its first orderly transfer of power in the communist era with the departure of former President Jiang Zemin.

2005: A parliamentary commission announces that Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski and six other politicians should face a special court over allegations of abuse in dealing with a partly State-owned oil company.

2006: Thailand's army commander stages a coup, ousting Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra while he is in New York, circling his offices with tanks, declaring martial law, and revoking the constitution.

2008: China's food safety crisis widens after the industrial chemical melamine is found in milk produced by three of the country's leading dairy companies.

2010: Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad says "the future belongs to Iran" and challenges the United States to accept that his country has a major role in the world, on the first day of his visit to the US to attend the annual General Assembly of the United Nations.

2011: Panamanian baseball pitcher Mariano Rivera registers his record-setting 602nd career save; on retirement he had an unprecedented 652 saves and was considered the sport's greatest relief pitcher.

2013: Pope Francis warns the Catholic Church's structure might "fall like a house of cards" if it does not balance its divisive rules about abortion, gays, and contraception with the greater need to make it a merciful, more welcoming place for all.

2014: Sierra Leone begins a three-day lockdown to allow volunteers to go house to house seeking Ebola victims and disseminating information.

2017: USA President Donald Trump addresses the United Nations, vowing to "totally destroy North Korea" if it threatens America.

2019: According to an analysis published in the journal Science, North America has lost three billion birds (29 per cent) since 1970.

2022: Banks in Lebanon close for three days after a series of hold-ups by people trying to obtain their own money. Scientists discover the site of the Amazon's tallest tree — an angelim vermelho at 88.5 metres (290 feet) tall and 9.9 metres (32 feet) wide — at Iratapuru River Nature Reserve, northern Brazil.

TODAY'S BIRTHDAYS

George Cadbury, British chocolate manufacturer of Cadbury chocolate (1839-1922); Brian Epstein, English music entrepreneur and Beatles manager (1934-1967); Twiggy Lawson, British actress-former model (1949- ); Sunita Williams, American astronaut (1965- )

– AP/ Jamaica Observer