RUSSIA
MOSCOW -- President Boris Yeltsin is expected to remain hospitalized through the end of the week but may return to the Kremlin next Monday, a top aide said Wednesday.
AUSTRALIA
CANBERRA -- Police warned all 17,000 Australian tax workers to beware of letter bombs after one exploded in a post office, slightly injuring a clerk, and 21 others were found by postal workers.
MEXICO
MEXICO CITY -- Regulators announced Tuesday that they would cancel a surcharge that Telefonos de Mexico SA collected from other long-distance companies to complete calls into Mexico. The surcharge had drawn complaints from U.S. companies.
INDONESIA
JAKARTA -- Two senior aides of Indonesian President B.J. Habibie met with a group of student protesters on Wednesday as thousands more demonstrated outside the presidential palace and around the capital.
ENGLAND
LONDON -- More than 500 police officers stormed a site suspected of supplying millions of dollars worth of cocaine. Thirty-nine people were arrested after the Tuesday night raid on a building on Charing Cross Road.
LONDON -- British Prime Minister Tony Blair made his second visit to Belfast in eight days in a fresh attempt to get the stalled Northern Ireland peace process moving again.
LEBANON
BEIRUT -- Lebanese President Emile Lahoud has chosen veteran politician and economist Selim al-Hoss to become the country's new prime minister.
RWANDA
KIGALI -- Seventy-six genocide suspects have been released from prison, the first of 10,000 suspects the government plans to free for lack of evidence or incomplete files.
PAKISTAN
ISLAMABAD -- Pakistani scientists have built the subcontinent's most modern surface-to-surface missile and are awaiting a government signal to launch it, the head of a missile project said on Wednesday.
CHINA
BEIJING -- China will radically revamp its legal system next year by opening more courtrooms to the public and taking a cautious step toward establishing jury-based rule of law, the country's top judge said on Wednesday.
BEIJING -- A strong earthquake toppled more than 8,000 buildings in the impoverished hills of China's rural southwest, leaving 20,000 people homeless. Few injuries and no deaths have been reported from the magnitude-5.1 quake.
COLOMBIA
BOGOTA -- Marxist rebels stormed two towns and attacked key highways in western Colombia, killing at least 11 people and wounding 30 others.
POLAND
WARSAW -- Seventy-one people have frozen to death in Poland since the country was gripped by a record-low cold snap in mid-November, police said on Wednesday.
SPAIN
MADRID -- Police seized 880 pounds of cocaine hidden in plastic lemons and limes and transported across Europe in a fruit lorry.
EGYPT
CAIRO -- Aisha Abdul-Rahman, Egypt's leading female Islamic writer, philosopher and literary critic, died Tuesday after a heart attack. She was 85.