EVENTS

ETHNIC CRISIS EASES IN BURUNDI Burundi deployed more troops in its capital, Bujumbura, yesterday in a bid to restore calm following ethnic clashes that threatened to take it down the path of war-ravaged neighboring Rwanda. The central African state's chief of Army staff, Lt. Col. Jean Bikomagu, issued a stern warning to Tutsi youths blamed for the clashes Monday and Tuesday, saying he would deal firmly with any incidents. He increased the number of troops patrolling the streets of Bujumbura and commerce returned to normal after a two-day shutdown. He also threatened to cut off power and water supplies to northern suburbs Bujumbura's hotbed unless the Tutsi youths stopped what he called ``acts of lawlessness.'' More troops near Sarajevo

Serbs and Muslims were pouring troops into a battle zone near Sarajevo where the United Nations has already threatened both sides with airstrikes in an attempt to stop the fighting, the UN said yesterday. Shelling in the UN-declared heavy-weapons exclusion zone had reportedly died down since Tuesday's threat by the UN commander to call in NATO airstrikes. Huge soybean, corn crops

American farmers will harvest a record soybean crop and their second-largest corn crop in a hearty rebound from 1993's disappointing crops, the US Agriculture Department said yesterday. In its first estimate of the fall crops, the department pegged corn output at 9.2 billion bushels and soybeans at 2.28 billion bushels, vast increases from last year's weather-scarred 6.3 billion bushels of corn and 1.8 billion bushels of soybeans. It also forecast a wheat crop of 2.39 billion bushels, about the same as last year. Russian breakaway threat

The defiant president of Chechnya vowed yesterday to wage a ``jihad'' against Russia if Moscow tries to invade the breakaway region in southern Russia's Caucasus Mountains.

The ITAR-Tass news agency, quoting officials in Chechnya's capital, Grozny, said President Dzhokhar Dudayev planned to announce overall mobilization in the tiny, mainly Muslim region of 1.2 million people. Nuclear talks resume

Nuclear experts from the United States and North Korea met yesterday in Geneva to discuss how to slow the corrosion of 8,000 spent fuel rods kept in a cooling pond near Pyonyang. Unless the corrosion can be slowed, North Korea says it must reprocess the rods into plutonium - a key ingredient in nuclear weapons - to stop them from giving off harmful radiation. Talks were thrown into uncertainty on Wednesday, apparently over disagreements over the ultimate fate of the rods. US wholesale prices

Wholesale prices rose more rapidly in July than they have in 15 months, led by advances in energy and coffee costs, the government said yesterday. The Labor Department reported that its Producer Price Index, which measures inflation pressures before they reach the consumer, rose 0.5 percent last month - matching the gain of April 1993.

Meanwhile, retail sales in the US fell slightly in July, the Commerce Department said, mostly because lean auto inventories slowed down car dealers.