WORLD BRIEFS

AFGHANISTAN: Withdrawal date criticized

A delegation of four U.S. senators, asserting that the U.S. counterinsurgency is making headway, heightened pressure on President Barack Obama on Wednesday to abandon his pledge that the United States would begin withdrawing troops in July 2011, a deadline that seems increasingly wobbly. Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) said any pullback of the 100,000 U.S. troops should be based on conditions in the country. Said Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.): "A better date to think about is 2014," when President Hamid Karzai has proposed that Afghanistan take control of its own security. The delegation includes Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.).

HAITI: Cholera cases crowd capital

The concrete passageway leading to a hospital in Port-au-Prince is filled with victims of the cholera epidemic that has entered the capital. Three weeks after it was confirmed for the first time ever in Haiti, the waterborne sickness has claimed at least 643 lives, mostly in the countryside. If Wednesday's traffic is any indication, cholera is growing fast in the seething slum of Cité Soleil and perhaps in all of Port-au-Prince.

CHINA: Prison sentence for activist

A court imposed a 2 1/2-year prison sentence yesterday on a man who became an activist after his son suffered kidney problems linked to contaminated baby formula. Zhao Lianhai was convicted of inciting public disorder by setting up a Web site to help other parents with sick children share information and by organizing protests. His attorneys said the sentence appeared to indicate that the Communist Party remains intolerant of critics and will be particularly tough on those who use the Internet to organize others around a cause. The baby formula scandal swept the country in 2008, the worst in a string of tainted-food cases in China, killing at least six infants and leaving 300,000 seriously ill. The formula had been contaminated with melamine, an industrial plastic, to make it bulkier.