Reminds me of this Rolling Stones song.
[Regnum] A 35-year-old woman suspected of seducing Buddhist monks and extorting money has been arrested in Thailand. This was reported on July 16 by AP News.
Investigators believe that Vilawan Emsawat deliberately entered into close relationships with Buddhist monks, violating their monastic vows, and then blackmailed the clergy by threatening to make these stories public.
It was established that at least nine high-ranking monks were defrocked because of the scandal. The investigation was prompted by the confession of the abbot of one of the temples: he left the monastic order after Vilavan threatened to reveal the fact of their affair and demanded 7.2 million baht (about 17.3 million rubles) under the pretext of pregnancy.
According to police, the woman received transfers from the monasteries totaling about 385 million baht (about 924 million rubles) over three years. These funds were allegedly spent on gambling.
The woman has been charged with extortion, money laundering and possession of stolen goods. The country's authorities have announced their intention to strengthen financial control over temples and create a mechanism to monitor the behavior of monks.
Earlier, Sindonews reported that a well-known Buddhist monk, former chairman of the Buddhist Association of the People's Republic of China Shi Xuecheng, was removed from office in China. The reason was accusations of sexual and financial violations. According to investigators, the accused sexually abused nuns, explaining this as a supposed religious practice. Shi Xuecheng denied his guilt, calling the accusations falsified.
[DAILYMAIL.CO.UK] Los Angeles is now so rough tech companies are buying dummies to use as fake homeless people while testing their new delivery robots.
The wheeled devices have been filmed maneuvering past mannequins sprawled on the City of Angels' grimy sidewalks while being tested by food delivery firm Serve Robotics.
In the latest footage, a stunned witness shared a clip of the device after catching Serve Robotics engineers testing their device on the sidewalk.
But the witness quickly realized the dummies were a good idea - because in real life the little robots will regularly have to maneuver LA's thousands of vagrants.
'My mind went straight to, yeah they better learn how to dodge all that,' he said.
'It's more important to be safe and go around and dodge lawsuits.'
The footage circulated across social media as people were left in awe at what passes for normal in LA in 2025.
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[BBC] Eight babies have been born in the UK using genetic material from three people to prevent devastating and often fatal conditions, doctors say.
The method, pioneered by UK scientists, combines the egg and sperm from a mum and dad with a second egg from a donor woman.
The technique has been legal here for a decade but we now have the first proof it is leading to children born free of incurable mitochondrial disease.
These conditions are normally passed from mother to child, starving the body of energy.
This can cause severe disability and some babies die within days of being born. Couples know they are at risk if previous children, family members or the mother has been affected.
Children born through the three-person technique inherit most of their DNA, their genetic blueprint, from their parents, but also get a tiny amount, about 0.1%, from the second woman. This is a change that is passed down the generations.
None of the families who have been through the process are speaking publicly to protect their privacy, but have issued anonymous statements through the Newcastle Fertility Centre where the procedures took place.
Mitochondria are tiny structures inside nearly every one of our cells. They are the reason we breathe as they use oxygen to convert food into the form of energy our bodies use as fuel.
Defective mitochondria can leave the body with insufficient energy to keep the heart beating as well as causing brain damage, seizures, blindness, muscle weakness and organ failure.
About one in 5,000 babies are born with mitochondrial disease. The team in Newcastle anticipate there is demand for 20 to 30 babies born through the three-person method each year.
Some parents have faced the agony of having multiple children die from these diseases.
Mitochondria are passed down only from mother to child. So this pioneering fertility technique uses both parents and a woman who donates her healthy mitochondria.
The science was developed more than a decade ago at Newcastle University and the Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust and a specialist service opened within the NHS in 2017.
The eggs from both the mother and the donor are fertilised in the lab with the dad's sperm.
The embryos develop until the DNA from the sperm and egg form a pair of structures called the pro-nuclei. These contain the blueprints for building the human body, such as hair colour and height.
The pro-nuclei are removed from both embryos and the parents' DNA is put inside the embryo packed with healthy mitochondria.
The resulting child is genetically related to their parents, but should be free from mitochondrial disease.
A pair of reports, in the New England Journal of Medicine, showed 22 families have gone through the process at the Newcastle Fertility Centre.
It led to four boys and four girls, including one pair of twins, and one ongoing pregnancy.
All of the babies were born free of mitochondrial disease and met their expected developmental milestones.
There was a case of epilepsy, which cleared up by itself and one child has an abnormal heart rhythm which is being successfully treated.
These are not thought to be connected to defective mitochondria. It is not known whether this is part of the known risks of IVF, something specific to the three-person method or something that has been detected only because the health of all babies born through this technique is monitored intensely.
Another key question hanging over the approach has been whether defective mitochondria would be transferred into the healthy embryo and what the consequences could be.
The results show that in five cases the diseased mitochondria were undetectable. In the other three, between 5% and 20% of mitochondria were defective in blood and urine samples.
This is below the 80% level thought to cause disease. It will take further work to understand why this occurred and if it can be prevented.
'ONLY THE UK COULD DO THIS'
The UK not only developed the science of three-person babies, but it also became the first country in the world to introduce laws to allow their creation after a vote in Parliament in 2015.
There was controversy as mitochondria have DNA of their own, which controls how they function.
It means the children have inherited DNA from their parents and around 0.1% from the donor woman.
Any girls born through this technique would pass this onto their own children, so it is a permanent alteration of human genetic inheritance.
This was a step too far for some when the technology was debated, raising fears it would open the doors to genetically-modified "designer" babies.
#2
Under Inslee, WA state passed something similar pre-covid, leglalizing paternity (ownership) from 3 dna sources. pretty sure it was so they could move their offshore initial Auschwitz testing "legally" onshore to the State universities. If I find an article I'll post it.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
