When monks go bad

Sex, drugs and money laundering: behind Thai Buddhism’s fall from grace

 

If an ordinary image is worth a thousand words, then this one deserves a tome: a Thai Buddhist monk, fully decked out in saffron robes, reclining on the plush leather seats of a luxury jet, gold-tinted aviator glasses framing the familiar shaved head, and a Louis Vuitton handbag in the seat next to him.

That image, pulled from a viral YouTube video last month, is no irreverent hip-hop artist pandering to Buddhist pop culture (and yes, there is such a thing). It is a real Buddhist monk acting really badly.

But the story of Luang Pu Nenkham, the 33-year-old monk in that Hobbesian frame, gets even more sordid. Over the past month, Thai authorities have uncovered a vast network of his disciples allegedly involved in everything from drug trafficking to money laundering. Under the cover of Buddhist simplicity, Nenkham has amassed nothing less than an empire.

The luxury cars—including a Ferarri and a Rolls-Royce—are only the tip of this golden pagoda. Nenkham’s alleged excesses read like a Silvio Berlusconi charge sheet: as much as US$1-billion in ill-gotten assets, including hundreds of millions of dollars stashed in 41 bank accounts, money in constant circulation (raising suspicions of money laundering), a fleet of Mercedes cars and villas scattered throughout Thailand. For years, he has been city-hopping around the world on luxury helicopters and jets with, according to one pilot, designer handbags stuffed with American dollars.

 
For the rest of the story: http://www2.macleans.ca/2013/07/31/when-monks-go-bad/

US issues worldwide travel alert over al Qaeda threat

The U.S. State Department has announced officials will close down all U.S. embassies across the Middle East on Sunday after Al-Qaeda-related intelligence suggested a threat. NBC's Andrea Mitchell reports.

The United States on Friday issued a worldwide travel alert to all Americans through Aug. 31 due to an unspecified al-Qaeda threat that led to embassy closures.

“The Department of State alerts U.S. citizens to the continued potential for terrorist attacks, particularly in the Middle East and North Africa, and possibly occurring in or emanating from the Arabian Peninsula,” it said.

“Current information suggests that al-Qaida and affiliated organizations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August.  This Travel Alert expires on August 31, 2013.”

For the rest of the story: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/08/01/19820594-us-issues-worldwide-travel-alert-over-al-qaeda-threat?lite

Mystery object falls from sky, area sealed off by military: 'Weather balloon', say officials

Even if it was, nobody's going to believe THAT.

 

Simply nobody will be giving any credence to officials in America who have stated that a mystery object which fell from the sky this week - after which the surrounding area was evacuated and sealed off for some time by police and military personnel - was just a "weather balloon".

Reportedly, large numbers of government operatives from various agencies converged urgently on a residential neighbourhood in Norfolk, Virginia, on Tuesday night after an unidentified object fell from the sky there. News reports describe the object as "something odd", with some eyewitness accounts saying it resembled a balloon and others suggesting that the crashlanded artifact had a structure similar to "styrofoam". According to local TV news:

One person told authorities it was making a strange noise.

People living and working in the immediate area were rapidly evacuated and the district was sealed off by a combination of police and military personnel. The presence of operatives from shadowy federal agencies in overall charge of the incident was - of course - not mentioned by spokesmen briefing the media.

 
For the rest of the story: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/08/02/mystery_object_falls_from_sky_area_sealed_off_by_military_weather_balloon_say_officials/

Please Ignore the Man in the White Coat Who Is Reading Your Mind

 

The rat is pinned down. It’s laying prostrate on what looks like a hospital bed with its head in some sort of vice. The rat is white and huge and has a black ribbon tied around the middle of its tail. Now and again, the tail flicks. Unremarkable, right?

Well, yes, except that the rat is having its mind controlled by human thought—and there’s evidence all around that our minds might soon come under control, too.

In April, when researchers from Harvard Medical School published the rat video on YouTube, they were demonstrating the creation of a brain-to-brain interface formed between human and vermin. Basically, the human could concentrate on a specific idea and—via something called transcranial focused ultrasound, or FUS—an impulse would be sent to excite the part of the rat’s brain that controls tail movement. The experiment worked 94 percent of the time, with a thought taking about 1.5 seconds to travel from human to rat.

For the rest of the story: http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-08-02/please-ignore-the-man-in-the-white-coat-who-is-reading-your-mind

Guess What Kills One Person Every 19 Minutes?

When it comes “how you’re going to die,” many people fear things like airplane crashes or shark attacks, even though statistics show that deaths from these events are very rare. Conversely, far too many people mistakenly believe that certain common aspects of everyday life are extremely safe — when, in reality, this is often far from the truth.

Once such daily ritual that is far more dangerous than many people believe is taking properly prescribed pharmaceutical drugs. Popping pills on a daily basis to “improve health” has become far too common for many Americans. In fact, according to the CDC, approximately 50% of all Americans take a pharmaceutical drug daily. When you isolate senior citizens, the number shoots up to an astonishing 90%. And perhaps even more troubling, 20% of children take a pharmaceutical drug.

At the same time, statistics are showing that deaths from pharmaceutical drugs are rising at an alarming rate. But don’t take my word for it. Just google the term “pharmaceutical drugs kill” and you’ll see headlines from major news organizations such as Fox and CNN that read:

“Prescription drugs 62,000 times more likely to kill …

For the rest of the story: http://www.realfarmacy.com/guess-what-kills-one-person-every-19-minutes/#KJta6IZDhe7tXBrO.01

Dozens of CIA operatives on the ground during Benghazi attack

  

CNN has uncovered exclusive new information about what is allegedly happening at the CIA, in the wake of the deadly Benghazi terror attack.

Four Americans, including Ambassador Christopher Stevens, were killed in the assault by armed militants last September 11 in eastern Libya.

Programming note: Was there a political cover up surrounding the Benghazi attack that killed four Americans? Watch a CNN special investigation — The Truth About Benghazi, Tuesday at 10 p.m. ET.

Sources now tell CNN dozens of people working for the CIA were on the ground that night, and that the agency is going to great lengths to make sure whatever it was doing, remains a secret.

CNN has learned the CIA is involved in what one source calls an unprecedented attempt to keep the spy agency's Benghazi secrets from ever leaking out.

Read: Analysis: CIA role in Benghazi underreported

Since January, some CIA operatives involved in the agency's missions in Libya, have been subjected to frequent, even monthly polygraph examinations, according to a source with deep inside knowledge of the agency's workings.

The goal of the questioning, according to sources, is to find out if anyone is talking to the media or Congress.

 
For the rest of the story: http://thelead.blogs.cnn.com/2013/08/01/exclusive-dozens-of-cia-operatives-on-the-ground-during-benghazi-attack/

How Much Is a Life Worth?

Ken Feinberg, the man tasked with compensating victims after a devastating tragedy, knows the answer—and it’s rarely the same.  

To Ken Feinberg, if you lose both your legs, you’re as good as dead.

Here, in the world of the living, inspirational media stories after the Boston Marathon bombings featured survivors who persevered, grittily relearning to walk atop state-of-the-art prosthetic limbs, fighting for normalcy with each new step. But in Feinberg’s world, it made no difference whether a person could still live a rewarding life or never left the race’s finish line. That didn’t enter the equation—his equation. His choice. 

His rules. Whether you died at the scene or you lost both your legs, you received the same amount of money—$2.2 million—from the victim fund established in the wake of the attack. If you lost one limb, you received considerably less. If you were hospitalized but kept your limbs, then still less.

Feinberg is the nearly ubiquitous expert who has been called in to divvy up funds for the fallen and the injured in a stomach-churning sequence of tragedies, from the Sept. 11 attacks to the Gulf of Mexico oil spill, from the Virginia Tech shootings to the Boston bombings. He’s Death’s accountant. When the stands collapsed at the Indiana State Fair in 2011, killing seven, they called Ken Feinberg. When a gunman murdered 27 children at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, they called Ken Feinberg. His is the grimmest of specialties.

For the rest of the story: http://www.nationaljournal.com/magazine/how-much-is-a-life-worth-20130801