The world in brief

LITTLE ROCK — QUOTE OF THE DAY

“This marks a really important milestone in the transition in Libya.”

Britain’s U.N. Ambassador Mark Lyall Grant,

as the Security Council voted unanimously to lift the no-fly zone over Libya next week and end military action to protect civilians Article, 1ARina fades after Cancun tourists flee

PLAYA DEL CARMEN, Mexico - Hurricane Rina weakened to a tropical storm Thursday after many tourists had already abandoned Cancun and other Caribbean resorts ahead of what once threatened to be a Category 3 storm.

Rina was forecast to be near or over Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations of Cancun, Cozumel and the Riviera Maya later Thursday or early today before curving back out to sea. Additional weakening was forecast in the next 48 hours, and Rina was forecast to become a tropical depression Saturday.

Mexico’s government discontinued its tropical-storm warning for the Yucatan Peninsula south of Punta Gruesa, but a warning remained in effect to the north.

In Playa del Carmen, the closest spot where Rina will sweep through, tourists and residents strolled along the promenade and the beach Thursday under cloudy but not-yet-rainy weather.

Twin Baghdad blasts kill 18, hurt 36

BAGHDAD - A twin bombing killed 18 people Thursday in a Shiite neighborhood in Baghdad in the deadliest attack to rock Iraq since President Barack Obama declared the full withdrawal of U.S. forces at the end of the year.

Two police officials said the first explosion, at a music store shortly after 7 p.m., killed two people. The second bomb struck four minutes later as rescue workers and others rushed to the scene, the officials said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

Thirty-six people were wounded in the attack, according to a medic at Imam Hussein hospital.

All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk to reporters.

Violence has dropped dramatically across Iraq since just a few years ago. But deadly bombings and attacks still happen nearly every day although death tolls are usually relatively low.

There are 39,000 U.S. troops in Iraq. The Dec. 31 deadline is part of a 2008 security agreement between Baghdad and Washington that was negotiated by the administration of then-President George W. Bush.

London cleric quits over protest camp

LONDON - The senior St. Paul’s Cathedral priest who welcomed anti-capitalist demonstrators to camp outside the London landmark resigned Thursday, saying he feared moves to evict the protesters could end in violence.

Other senior clergy and politicians urged the demonstrators to leave peacefully as the cathedral announced it would reopen to the public today after a week-long closure triggered by the demonstrators’ tents.

“In the name of God and mammon, go,” London Mayor Boris Johnson said, using a Biblical turn of phrase to evoke the conflict between the spiritual and the material.

Resigning Canon Chancellor Giles Fraser said on Twitter that he had handed in his notice “with great regret and sadness.”

He told The Guardian newspaper that he had quit because he believed that cathedral officials had “set on a course of action that could mean there will be violence in the name of the church.”

“I cannot support using violence to ask people to clear off the land,” said Fraser, adding that he would have preferred to have “negotiated down the size of the camp” with the protesters.

Pope hosts multifaith call for peace

ASSISI, Italy - Pope Benedict XVI joined Buddhist monks, Islamic scholars, Hindus and a handful of agnostics in making a communal call for peace Thursday, insisting that religion must never be used as a pretext for war or terrorism.

Benedict welcomed some 300 leaders representing a rainbow of faiths to the hilltop Italian town of Assisi to commemorate the 25th anniversary of a day-long prayer for peace called by Pope John Paul II in 1986 amid Cold War conflicts.

While the event lacked the urgency and star power of 1986, when the Dalai Lama, Mother Teresa and others came together to pray, Thursday’s peace meeting included some novelties. Buddhist monks from mainland China were on hand as were four participants who profess no faith at all - part of Benedict’s efforts to reach out to agnostics and atheists who are searching for truth.