Azerbaijan
BAKU — President Ilham Aliev fired two regional governors for interfering with the count from last weekend's parliamentary elections, his office said Wednesday after thousands of angry demonstrators crammed a square in Baku to protest alleged vote fraud. The governors of the Surakhani and Sabirabad regions were ousted amid international criticism of the balloting.
Germany
DARMSTADT — A European spacecraft left Earth orbit Wednesday on a five-month, 220 million-mile journey to Venus, an exploratory mission that could help spur a new space race. The European Space Agency said the unmanned Venus Express lifted off from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, and mission control in Darmstadt activated the probe's instruments and immediately picked up a signal to hearty applause in the observation room. The $260 million spacecraft will take 163 days to get to Earth's nearest planetary neighbor, where it will drop into orbit and explore the hot, dense atmosphere of Venus.
India
NEW DELHI — Former President K.R. Narayanan, the first "untouchable" from India's pernicious caste system to occupy the office, died Wednesday. He was 85.
Indonesia
MALANG — One of Southeast Asia's most wanted terrorists apparently blew himself up Wednesday to escape capture when an elite security unit attacked his hideout, the national police chief said. Two other suspected militants were thought killed in the blast. Known as the "Demolition Man" for his expertise with explosives, Azahari bin Husin was a key figure in Jemaah Islamiyah, a terror network with links to al-Qaida that has been blamed for a series of deadly bombings as well as failed plots in Indonesia, the Philippines and Singapore.
Israel
JERUSALEM — A fiery union leader won a stunning victory over Shimon Peres in the leadership contest for Israel's Labor Party, officials said Thursday, dealing a blow to the elder statesman that could endanger the country's shaky governing coalition. Amir Peretz has promised to pull Labor out of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's government, raising the likelihood of early elections. The defeat also could spell the end of Peres' distinguished, six-decade political career. Peres had been heavily favored to win. Peres, a former prime minister who is now vice premier, wanted to keep Labor in the government until elections scheduled in November 2006. He led the party into the governing coalition this year to shore up support for Sharon's plans to withdraw from the Gaza Strip.
North Korea
A fresh round of six-nation talks on North Korea's nuclear disarmament began Wednesday in Beijing with Washington and Pyongyang struggling to agree on when the North will disarm and how it will be rewarded. Delegates from the two Koreas, the United States, Japan, Russia and host China met throughout the day to decide how to proceed with actions proposed in a joint statement issued during the last round in September. Little progress was made.
Syria
DAMASCUS — A Syrian judicial committee probing the assassination of a former Lebanese leader has imposed a travel ban on six officials a U.N. commission wants to interview, a spokesman said Wednesday. The newly formed committee also has started quizzing the officials, panel spokesman Ibrahim Daraji told The Associated Press. Daraji did not name the six, but they reportedly include Gen. Assef Shawkat, the Syrian president's brother-in-law and chief of Syria's military intelligence service.
Venezuela
SIERRA DE PERIJA — Soldiers blew up two cocaine-processing labs and yanked coca plants from the ground, tossing them into burning piles in the mountains near Venezuela's border with Colombia. The operation came as Venezuela's military steps up a campaign to seek and destroy drug crops along a remote stretch of the border with Colombia.
Vietnam
HANOI — Vietnam has reached an agreement with the Swiss manufacturer of the antiviral drug Tamiflu to allow the country to produce a generic version starting early next year in an effort to protect its population against bird flu, a Health Ministry official said Wednesday. The deadly and virulent H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus has killed at least 63 people in Southeast Asia — most of them in Vietnam — since late 2003. On Tuesday, Vietnam reported its first human death from the illness in three months.