WORLD
* Venezuela has decided to expel a US military attaché accusing him of conspiracy, Venezuelan Vice President Nicolas Maduro said
* The recent murder of Syrian nationals in Iraq means that the Syrian conflict is spreading beyond the country’s borders, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said in a statement
* A late-season winter storm hit the Midwestern United States, forcing schools to close, canceling more than 2,000 flights and offering much of the East Coast a cautious glimpse of what was headed their way
* Russia will support a draft UN Security Council resolution submitted by the United States on Tuesday, which expands sanctions against North Korea in response to its nuclear test, Russia’s UN Ambassador Vitaly Churkin said
* Russian investigators said Tuesday they were planning to bring fresh criminal charges against UK-based businessman William Browder, the ex-boss of a Russian lawyer whose 2009 death in a Moscow jail triggered a furious diplomatic row between Moscow and Washington
* Opposition factions in the Ukrainian parliament blocked the speaker’s rostrum on Tuesday in protest against plans to oust lawyer MP Serhiy Vlasenko, who heads a group in defense of jailed former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko
* A medical report describing the death in Texas of a 3-year-old adopted Russian boy as “accidental” raises valid questions about just how Max Shatto died and how authorities reached their conclusions, US child health experts said
RUSSIA
* Russian President Vladimir Putin on Tuesday called on the Prosecutor General’s Office to look into each case of unjustified businesses inspections on the part of law enforcement agencies, adding that anti-corruption efforts should be stepped up
CRIME
* Police in Moscow have detained a suspect over a horrific acid attack on the Bolshoi Theater’s artistic director, a police spokesperson
BUSINESS
* Russian steelmaker Severstal’s 2012 IFRS net profit fell 62.6 percent year-on-year to $762 million, the company said on Wednesday, citing weaker demand and falling prices for the result
DEFENSE
* Russia’s armed forces should expand to at least a million men in order for the country’s defenses to be effective, Kremlin chief of staff Sergei Ivanov said in an interview