$re = '/\s*\[\d+]/m';
$str = '1 Afghanistan 6.4
2 Albania 22.9
3 Algeria 7.7
4 Angola 5.7
5 Argentina 37.2
6 Armenia 22.0
7 Australia 34.3 [2]
8 Austria 43.4';
$subst = "";
$result = preg_replace($re, $subst, $str);
echo "The result of the substitution is ".$result;
Please keep in mind that these code samples are automatically generated and are not guaranteed to work. If you find any syntax errors, feel free to submit a bug report. For a full regex reference for PHP, please visit: http://php.net/manual/en/ref.pcre.php