World Digest
Prime minister of Myanmar ousted

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"We can confirm that Khin Nyunt has been removed from the position of prime minister and is being detained under house arrest," government spokesman Jakrapob Penkair told The Associated Press.

Myanmar's secretive military government was at the center of rumors that the long-powerful Khin Nyunt had been removed from office, according to diplomats and senior Thai officials.

There was no sign of tanks or increased military presence in the streets.

Addis Ababa, Ethiopia

Ethiopia on brink of disaster, U.N. says

Ethiopia remains on the brink of disaster because it is failing to deal with spiraling population growth, slow economic growth and environmental degradation fueling its near perpetual crises, said a United Nations report issued yesterday.

The study, which examined a food crisis that took place in 2002-2003 in Ethiopia, said the country's population grows by 2 million a year, while its economy expands by just 3 percent. Agriculture accounts for nearly 40 percent of the gross domestic product, but unsustainable land policies are fueling ever-larger emergencies in the country.

A senior U.N. official said as many as 200,000 people, mainly children, died during the crisis. The Ethiopian government has not published any figures.

The report rejected arguments that the food crisis resulted from drought.

"This was not an unprecedented drought," the report said.
 
Minsk, Belarus

Violations cited in term-limit vote

Foreign election observers and opposition figures charged yesterday that a referendum on presidential term limits that overwhelmingly authorized Belarus' authoritarian leader, Alexander Lukashenko, to run for another term was riddled with violations.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Sunday's election "fell significantly short" of democratic norms.

Lukashenko's opponents protested the airing of a government-endorsed exit poll showing the measure passing. State television broadcast the survey while polls were still open, which is against Belarusian law.

Paktika province, Afghanistan

Election worker killed in explosion

An Afghan doctor helping organize Afghan elections was killed yesterday, along with four other civilians, when an explosion tore through their vehicle, police said. He was the first election worker to die in violence since the landmark vote Oct. 9.

The explosion destroyed a vehicle of the joint U.N.-Afghan electoral commission in Paktika, on the Pakistani border, election spokesman Sultan Baheen said.

Election officials said it was unclear whether the vehicle was deliberately targeted or had struck a mine left over from Afghanistan's many years of war. But the local police chief said the car hit a land mine laid on a main road by "the enemies of Afghanistan," shorthand here for Taliban militants, who threatened to disrupt the elections.

Meanwhile, interim leader Hamid Karzai consolidated his healthy ballot lead, commanding 61.3 percent with one-fifth of the votes counted.