UNITED NATIONS -- The United Nations chief told rights advocates Friday that his choice to be the next U.N. human rights commissioner is a South African judge who was the first black woman to serve on her country's High Court, the director of Human Rights Watch said.

"Ban described her as the presumptive nominee," Roth said.

Ban's office is expected to announce her appointment early next week, said U.N. and diplomatic officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the appointment had not yet been announced.

Pillay, who is now an appeals chamber judge with the International Criminal Court in the Hague, Netherlands, must be approved by U.N. General Assembly.

CAMP VICTORY, Iraq -- With al-Qaida falling away, U.S. forces in Iraq are turning their attention to another front: the Iranian border. They aim to crack down on weapon smuggling from Iran by tightening the frontier with Iraq's neighbor to the east, a U.S. commander told The Associated Press on Friday.

The effort is aimed at smugglers who supply Shiite extremist groups with rockets, missiles, mortars and assembled explosive devices that have killed many U.S. troops.

"We're going to start squeezing this network pretty hard," said Maj. Gen. Michael Oates, who leads a contingent of 19,000 U.S. troops in regions south of the capital as commander of the Army's 10th Mountain Division.

U.S. troops will establish small outposts in the vicinity of two or three official border crossings and seek to build relations with local tribes whose cooperation is critical, the general said. One such outpost already is set up.

KABUL, Afghanistan -- Two French humanitarian workers were kidnapped at gunpoint Friday in Afghanistan and spirited out of the house they were sleeping in, the aid group Action Against Hunger and the French Foreign Ministry said.

The two are believed to be alive, the Paris-based group said in a statement.

Also Friday, explosions were reported in Helmand Province and in Kabul.

A Friday morning blast in Helmand province's Nava district killed three guards and wounded four, said provincial police chief Mohammad Hussein Andiwal.

Later Friday, Mohammad Nasim, a police official in Kabul, reported that an explosion in the western part of the capital had damaged property, including a mosque, in a residential neighborhood. There were no reports of casualties.

BAAN TOOM, Thailand -- While movie fans the world over rave about the new Batman film, the only stir bats are causing in this poor farming village is in a cooking pot.

They've been scarfing bats down in Baan Toom for as long as anyone can remember, roasting the little, flying beasts on spits over charcoal fires or mincing them up into a traditional Thai dish.

The farmers say the meat is delicious, and, with a big smile, they claim it also gives them sexual powers.

While their hamlet appears idyllic, it sits in the northeastern province of Kalasin, the poorest region in Thailand, where local officials say incomes average barely $70 a month. The lack of money means few comforts, and the work in the paddy fields is backbreaking and hot.

But there are compensations, the villagers say -- the abundance of free food.

When the farmers fancy something different for dinner, they leave their rice seedlings, wade out of the bath-warm paddies, grab a net and long poles and go bat hunting.

DUJIANGYAN, China -- Two months after an earthquake ravaged much of Sichuan province, workers are diligently salvaging bricks to restore a 6th century Taoist temple damaged in the disaster.

As China begins to look beyond emergency response toward long-term reconstruction, experts on post-disaster planning warn that expectations should be realistic since rebuilding will take years.

"I saw them cleaning the bricks one by one," said Robert Olshansky, an urban planner at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign who has studied post-disaster reconstruction.

"You keep doing that, in a couple of years, you'll be done," he said, before cautioning, "Be patient. It takes a long time."