The world in brief

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“It’s a very big risk for our soldiers. ... It leads me to believe that Francois Hollande

doesn’t understand defense matters and world geopolitics.”

French lawmaker Guy Teissier,

on his president’s plan to pull all combat troops out of Afghanistan while leaving about 1,400 French advisers and trainers in the country Article, this page

Thai king travels for 1st time in years

BANGKOK - Thousands upon thousands of devoted Thais feted their 84-year-old monarch Friday on his first trip outside the capital in almost three years, a period marked by his poor health and national political turmoil.

King Bhumibol Adulyadej, the world’s longest-reigning monarch, actively worked for decades on behalf of the country’s poor but has almost disappeared from public life since he was hospitalized in September 2009 for what the palace called a lung inflammation.

Since then, he has had a variety of ailments and has lived in a royal wing of Bangkok’s Siriraj Hospital, leaving only on rare occasions and always in a wheelchair.

Friday’s highlight was to be a visit to a rice paddy that the king also toured in 1996, which was part of a royal project to mitigate flooding in Ayutthaya.

Mexican boy eyeless after drug ritual

MEXICO CITY - A 5-year-old Mexican boy whose eyes were purportedly gouged out by his mother as part of a drug-fueled ritual “to save the world” is expected to live but has been left blind, health authorities said Friday.

The boy, identified by authorities only as Fernando, was taken to a hospital in Mexico City after police discovered the mother clutching her eyeless son at a home in the suburb of Nezahualcoyotl early Thursday.

The chief prosecutor for Mexico state, where Nezahualcoyotl is located, said the boy’s mother had apparently urged others to help her mutilate her son “to prevent an earthquake and save the world.”

Several adults were at the home reciting a prayer and had been fasting because “the world was going to end,” said Nezahualcoyotl Assistant Police Chief Samuel Cuevas Monroy, quoting the boy’s grandmother. The mother, identified as Maria del Carmen Rios, 28, reportedly told the boy to close his eyes and when he refused, she decided to gouge them out “to clean them.”

Most of the others present were relatives, and authorities said the adults appeared to have been consuming unspecified drugs. The mother and seven others were being held pending charges.

U.N. advice: Lift Zimbabwe sanctions

HARARE, Zimbabwe - The United Nations human rights chief said Friday that Western sanctions against Zimbabwe’s president and his loyalists should be suspended, at least until elections, saying the measures have hurt the country’s poorest and most vulnerable people.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Navi Pillay said the sanctions act as a disincentive to foreign banks and investors and appear to have cut down certain imports and exports. These unintended side effects affect the overall economy and, in turn, the country’s poorest and most vulnerable populations, which also face political instability and violence, she said.

President Robert Mugabe’s party blames sanctions imposed by the European Union and the United States for a decade of economic turmoil. Critics have blamed Mugabe for the problems, pointing to the often-violent seizures of thousands of white-owned commercial farms that began in 2000 and that disrupted the agriculture-based economy.

Israelis find 3,000-year-old jewelry

TEL AVIV, Israel - Israeli archaeologists have discovered a rare trove of 3,000-year-old jewelry, including a ring and earrings, hidden in a ceramic jug near the ancient city of Megiddo, where the New Testament predicts the final battle of Armageddon.

Archaeologists who unearthed the jug during excavations at the site in 2010 left it in a laboratory while they waited for a molecular analysis of what was inside. When they were finally able to clean it, pieces of gold jewelry - a ring, earrings, and beads - dating to around 1100 B.C. poured out.

Israel Finkelstein of Tel Aviv University, who co-directed the dig, said the find offers a rare glimpse into ancient Canaanite high society.

Front Section, Pages 6 on 05/26/2012

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