1SRI LANKA
Rebels, troops fight

Tamil rebels and Sri Lankan troops fought one of their fiercest battles in years Wednesday, battering each other with small arms and mortars in a confrontation that the military said killed 52 guerrillas and 38 soldiers. The rebels claimed they killed more than 100 soldiers and lost only 16 of their fighters in a 10-hour firefight they characterized as a rout of the heavily armed government forces. Either way, the battle was a serious blow to the government's promise to capture the Tamil Tigers' de facto state in the north, crush the rebel group and end the 25-year-old civil war in this Indian Ocean island nation by the end of the year.

2VENEZUELA
Fighting food costs

President Hugo Chavez joined with his leftist allies on Wednesday to create a $100 million program to fight the rising cost of food for the region's poor. Chavez and leaders from Cuba, Bolivia and Nicaragua also promised joint programs for agricultural development in addition to the new Food Security Fund, though they provided no details on how the programs and fund would work.

3CAMBODIA
Hearing interrupted

Cambodia's genocide tribunal abruptly adjourned a pretrial hearing for a Khmer Rouge leader Wednesday after his French attorney erupted at judges because thousands of pages of documents had not been translated into French. The judges later said they would issue a warning to lawyer Jacques Verges for courtroom conduct causing the hearing's postponement. Verges, 83, who is representing Khieu Samphan in his appeal against pretrial detention, has earned notoriety with a client list that includes Nazi Gestapo officer Klaus Barbie, Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal and former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

4INDIA
Advice not wanted

India tartly dismissed American advice that it press Iran to give up its nuclear program, saying it does not need ''any guidance'' on foreign relations. Negotiations over a proposed $7 billion gas pipeline with Iran are expected to top discussions when Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad makes his first visit to energy-starved India next week. The United States strongly opposes the pipeline and accuses Tehran of running a clandestine nuclear-weapons program and arming Iraqi militants.

5BRAZIL
Dengue toll at 92

The death toll from a dengue outbreak in Rio de Janeiro state has reached 92, topping what was previously the state's deadliest bout with the disease, Brazil's government news agency said Wednesday. The earlier outbreak, in 2002, killed 91 people, Agencia Brasil reported. Another 96 possible dengue fatalities have been reported in the current outbreak but have yet to be confirmed, Agencia Brasil said. It cited figures from the Rio de Janeiro state Health Department.