World Digest
Indian leader reportedly plans to quit

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Vajpayee called a meeting of his Cabinet for tonight and intended to submit his resignation after that, said Doordarshan, the state-run television station.

Barely three hours after counting started, the opposition Congress party leaders claimed victory. "We will form the government. There is no doubt about it," senior Congress leader Salman Khursheed told NDTV.

By midmorning, the opposition Congress, its allies and leftist supporters led in 272 seats, the critical mark needed to form government in the 543-seat Parliament, NDTV television said.

Vajpayee's pro-reform Bharatiya Janata Party-led coalition led in 195 seats, NDTV television said.

Scholar Yang Jianli given 5-year sentence

BEIJING — China sentenced U.S.-based scholar Yang Jianli to five years in jail today for illegally entering the country and spying in a case that has triggered criticism abroad, his lawyer said.

Yang, a permanent U.S. resident, was arrested in April 2002 after entering China on a friend's passport and traveling for a week on a fake identity card to observe labor unrest. "He was sentenced to five years in jail," said lawyer Mo Shaoping.

Yang's case has drawn attention from rights groups and governments that complain he was detained without a hearing for too long and abused in jail. The U.S. State Department has repeatedly called for his release.

Vietnam's textile quotas trimmed by $80 million

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration announced yesterday it was trimming Vietnam's textile quotas by 4.5 percent this year because the country was found to be shipping clothing into the United States that had not been made in Vietnam.
 
The finding, announced by the Commerce Department's International Trade Administration, will result in Vietnam's current quota of $1.8 billion in textile and apparel products being reduced by about $80 million this year.

The reduction was aimed at helping the beleaguered U.S. textile industry.

Cypriot president briefly hospitalized

NICOSIA, Cyprus — Cypriot President Tassos Papadopoulos, who resisted massive international pressure for reunification with Turkish Cypriots last month, spent several hours in a hospital yesterday after collapsing.

Papadopoulos, 70, spent about six hours in a cardiac ward before doctors sent him home. He had fainted in a church earlier yesterday. Doctors said there was no cause for concern.

Brazil's free-press commitment questioned

BRASILIA, Brazil — Brazilians yesterday questioned a decision by the government of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva to expel a New York Times correspondent for reporting that the president drinks too much and recalled similar actions under a military dictatorship.

The government's announcement that it would cancel his visa and expel Larry Rohter, the chief of the New York Times bureau in Rio Janiero, was splashed across the front pages of local newspapers and many Brazilians questioned Lula's commitment to a free press.

Rohter would be the first foreign journalist to be expelled from Brazil since its 1964-85 military dictatorship.

Also...

A poisonous cocktail of industrial methanol, whiskey and sugar-cane liquor has killed 10 Colombian drinkers in the northern city of Barranquilla, and caused blindness in others, authorities said yesterday. ... Two Turkish soldiers were killed and three were wounded yesterday when their vehicle ran over a land mine planted by rebel Kurdish fighters near Hakkari in southeast Turkey, near the Iraqi border.