Around the world
STEPPING DOWN: Japanese Prime Minister Kiichi Miyazawa will formally announce his resignation Thursday after a humiliating election setback, party leaders and officials said Wednesday. The bitter struggle over the succession intensified, with a rift between hard-liners and reformists threatening to break the ruling Liberal Democratic Party apart.
CALCUTTA: Nearly 100,000 people marched Wednesday in Calcutta, India, to denounce a pro-Communist state government, clashing with security forces in a series of battles. At least five people were reported killed by police gunfire.
KILLED: Armenia's former Soviet KGB chief was shot and killed early Wednesday while walking his dog, according to Armenian police reports in the capital Yerevan. Marius Yuzbashyan, 69, was shot in Komitas Park.
Across the nation
EXECUTED: Missouri's longest-serving death row inmate was executed by injection early Wednesday for a 1979 contract murder he blamed on a man now dead. Walter Junior Blair, 32, went to his death after the U.S. Supreme Court lifted a stay issued by a federal appeals court earlier in the day. It was the fourth stay he received during his 121/2 years on death row. Prosecutors alleged Blair was paid $6,000 to kill art student Katherine Jo Allen to keep her from testifying at the rape trial of Larry Jackson. The 21-year-old woman was shot to death in Kansas City.
AWARD: A Virginia trucking company and Budget Rent-A-Car of Delaware have been ordered to pay $195 million to five victims of a car accident in New Jersey. The award, ordered Tuesday by a New York Supreme Court jury, was the largest in New York state history in a personal injury case. One man was killed and four people injured when their rented station wagon hit a broken-down tractor-trailer on the New Jersey Turnpike in 1987. The jury found that T.N.T. Pilot of Virginia, the truck's owner, and the truck driver were negligent in leaving the stalled vehicle in the express lane for more than three hours without properly warning motorists, Weitz said. The jury found Budget negligent for renting the large group a vehicle that was too small and lacked seat belts.