On Abelian Branched Coverings of the Sphere

 We obtain an enumeration formula for the number of weak equivalence classes of the branched (?×ℬ)-covering of the sphere with m-branch points, when ? and ℬ are finite abelian groups with (|?|,|ℬ|)=1. From this, we can deduce an explicit formula for enumerating the weak equivalence classes of pseudofree spherical (ℤ _p ×ℤ _q )-actions on a given surface, when p and q are distinct primes. Received: August 10, 1999 Final version received: June 19, 2000