Jerusalem

Israel to lift some travel restrictions

Israel has agreed to lift travel restrictions in parts of the West Bank in coming weeks, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas said Wednesday, in what would be the strongest signal yet to Palestinians that a cease-fire with Israel is beginning to pay off.

Israel also said it would allow some Palestinian workers to enter Israel from Gaza and the West Bank to work.

Abbas made the announcement after returning to the West Bank from a Mideast summit in Egypt, where he and Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon declared an end to four years of bloodshed. Freedom of travel would greatly improve the lives of Palestinians, as the roadblocks have decimated their economy.

Venezuela

Floods kill at least 13; thousands stranded

Helicopters rescued stranded Venezuelans Wednesday after floodwaters struck the mountainous central coast, triggering landslides, destroying homes and washing out roads. Officials said at least 13 people were killed and thousands of others were forced from their homes.

The government declared a state of emergency in the capital of Caracas and six nearby states as torrential rains caused widespread flooding Tuesday and Wednesday.

Swollen rivers ran across roads along the Caribbean coast, stranding thousands in the same area where flooding and mudslides five years ago killed thousands.

Authorities ordered more than 4,300 people to evacuate their homes, and more than 500 people lost their homes entirely, said Col. Antonio Rivero, the country’s civil protection director. At least two people were reported missing after being carried away by floodwaters, Rivero said.

Russia

18 dead, 8 missing in Siberian coal mine blast

An explosion ripped through a mine Wednesday in a coal-rich region of Siberia, killing at least 18 workers and leaving eight missing in the latest accident in an industry plagued by dilapidated shafts, aging equipment and safety violations.

The blast occurred at the 20-year-old Yesaulskaya mine in the Kemerovo region, about 1,850 miles east of Moscow, as mine workers were trying to prevent a fire from spreading. Four miners were hospitalized with nonlife-threatening injuries, said Olga Raskova of the Kemerovo regional government press service.

Thirty miners were in the shaft when the explosion occurred, the press service said. Rescuers were searching for the missing miners.

The blast was caused by a methane build-up, according to a preliminary investigation.

Beijing

Premier spends holiday visiting AIDS patients

China’s premier spent Wednesday’s Lunar New Year holiday visiting AIDS patients and calling for better prevention measures for the virus that the United Nations warns could infect up to 10 million Chinese by 2010.

Chinese state television on Wednesday showed Wen Jiabao shaking hands with an AIDS patient lying in a hospital bed, visiting a family who had lost both a mother and father to the disease and eating pork dumplings with AIDS orphans.

In November, President Hu Jintao was for the first time photographed shaking hands with an AIDS patient in a Beijing hospital — part of a government campaign to show it cares.

In recent years, the Chinese government has launched efforts to control the virus after years of denying it was a problem.

Wednesday was the first day of the Year of the Rooster.

Sweden

Police release list of tsunami missing

The Swedish National Police released the names Wednesday of most of the 522 Swedes still missing and the 43 confirmed dead after the Indian Ocean tsunami struck popular beach resorts in December — reversing an earlier policy of keeping the names secret.

Initially, police had refused to release the names of the missing and dead, citing privacy concerns for the victims’ relatives and loved ones who could be subjected to unwanted media attention. However, Sweden’s Supreme Administrative Court on Tuesday ruled in favor of the news agency TT, which had requested that the names and other information on the list be made public. All four major Swedish newspapers posted the list on their Web sites.

Dozens of relatives called police Tuesday night after the court ruling, asking them to take someone’s name off the list.

Neighboring Denmark, Norway and Finland all saw the number of missing drop rapidly after they released their lists after the tsunami, as people who saw their names on the list were able to report to police that they were safe.