Boy blesses the internet by hopping on stage with Pope

China said yesterday it has assembled a standby force of thousands of United Nations peacekeepers, furthering its leading role in the global body’s efforts to tamp down conflicts worldwide.

Defence Ministry spokesman Ren Guoqiang told reporters at a monthly briefing that the 8000-member force had passed an assessment last month approved by UN Undersecretary-General for Peacekeeping Operations JeanPierre Lacroix.

That fulfils a pledge made at the UN three years ago by Chinese President Xi Jinping.

China provides the most peacekeepers of any permanent UN Security Council member and is the second-largest contributor to the operations’ multibillion-dollar budget, at slightly over 10 per cent. The United States is the largest contributor to peacekeeping, but deploys only 50 officers to UN missions.

China has also trained more than 1500 peacekeepers from more than a dozen countries, Ren said.

‘‘The Chinese military is fulfilling its responsibility to safeguard world peace and building a community of shared future for mankind with concrete actions,’’ Ren said. China was ready to both increase the number of peacekeepers it contributes as well as their particular skill sets, Ren said.

The UN currently runs 15 peacekeeping missions, the bulk of them in Africa.

With around 2 million members, China’s People’s Liberation Army is the world’s largest standing military force and the country’s defence budget is the second highest after the United States. –AP A little boy upstaged Pope Francis during his weekly speech to the general audience, and also managed to charm the internet.

The video shows the six-year-old boy climb on to the stage while the pope addressed the crowd, walking over to shake the hand of a nearby guard before running towards the back of the stage.

At one point, the boy’s mother jumps on stage to retrieve him, but Pope Francis said ‘‘leave him to play here.’’ The Associated Press reports six-year-old Wenzel Wirth is unable to speak according to his mother, which the pope then told the crowd.

‘‘And he has something that made me think: He’s free. Undisciplined-ly free, but he’s free,’’ said the pope, according to AP.

Ariel Wirth, the boy’s father, told the AP the family allows their son to express himself in other ways because of his inability to speak.

‘‘We try to let him be free. He has to express himself, and we live without hiding his problems,’’ he said. TNS

AP Wenzel Wirth, 6, stands by a Swiss guard after getting up to the area where Pope Francis and Archbishop George Gaenswein are sitting, during the pontiff’s weekly general audience in the Paul VI Hall at the Vatican, on Thursday.