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U.S. — In the days after disturbing footage surfaced of the Dalai Lama engaging in grossly inappropriate conduct with a child, the Buddhist leader has been inundated with requests from public libraries across the U.S., Canada, and Europe to read to kids in special "Dalai Lama Story Hours." "As soon as we saw the clip, we knew we needed to have this guy reading stories to vulnerable kids at one of our library locations," said Jason Kucsma, the Director of the Toledo Public Library. "Our passion is to get as many innocent kids in a room with creepy grown single...

The 33-year-old freelance cameraman who contracted Ebola in Liberia is fighting for his life at the University of Nebraska Medical Center this week. He’s also racking up hundreds of thousands of dollars in medical bills. According to a GoFundMe campaign launched Monday by his friends, Ashoka Mukpo’s medical bills could run in excess of $500,000.

The parents of Ebola patient Ashoka Mukpo discuss the presumption that their son contracted Ebola from washing a car.

Report and pictures of the Dalai Lama robed and in choir.

Buddhist leader believes Chinese agents may have trained fake female followers to kill him when seeking blessingsThe Dalai Lama has revealed he fears Chinese agents have trained bogus female devotees to kill him with poison while seeking blessings. The Tibetan Buddhist leader told the Sunday Telegraph that he had been passed reports from inside Tibet warning of the plot, using Tibetan women. The 76-year-old Nobel laureate said he now lives in a high security cordon in his temple palace grounds in Dharamsala, in the Himalayan foothills, on the advice of Indian security officials. His aides had not been able to...

A 28-year-old man from Gävle in eastern Sweden, previously in trouble for his “llama-like” spitting in strangers’ faces, went amok while in hospital last summer, injuring staff in an alleged nutmeg induced rage. The man was behind a series of incidents in central Gävle in January, where he spat unknown people in the face “like a llama”, according to local paper Gefle Dagblad (GD). A month later, police arrested him on suspicion of harassing two sisters by sending them death threats and rude comments via text messages. The man was then held in custody by police until his verdict on...

There is no better way to proclaim your lack of spiritual and philosophical depth than by, two decades after the fall of communism, disclosing that you're a Marxist. Yet this is precisely what Buddhist spiritual leader the Dalai Lama did during a speech before 150 Chinese students at the University of Minnesota this month. Journalist Tsering Namgyal reports on the story at Religion Dispatches, writing, "'as far as socio-political beliefs are concerned, I consider myself a Marxist.' 'But not a Leninist,' he [the Lama] clarified." Well, that's a relief. Those Leninists can really kill ya'. Marxists will just murder you....

The Dalai Lama has sent a message of support for Armed Forces Day, which is next Saturday. In it, he writes of his admiration for the military. That is perhaps not so surprising. As he explains, there are many parallels between being a monk and being a soldier – the need for discipline, companionship, and inner strength. But his support will take some of his western admirers by surprise, not least when it comes to his thoughts on non-violence. Attitudes towards violence in Buddhism are enormously complex. There are some traditions that argue aggression, and killing in particular, is always...

TIBETAN spiritual leader the Dalai Lama says he's a Marxist, yet credits capitalism for bringing new freedoms to China, the communist country that exiled him. "Still I am a Marxist," the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader said in New York, where he arrived today with an entourage of robed monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures. "(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits," the Dalai Lama, 74, said.

Communist China and Nepal have settled a 150-year-old dispute over the height of Mount Everest, agreeing that the "snow height" of the world's highest peak is 29,029 feet. The great mountain lies on the border between the two countries and they have disagreed for years over its exact height, which Nepal had put at 29,029 feet (8,848 metres) - nearly 13 feet more than the measurement used by China. However, officials revealed in talks in Kathmandu this week that the two measurements referred to different things - one to the height of Everest's rock and the other to the height...

WASHINGTON: US President Barack Obama personally welcomed the Dalai Lama to the White House and lauded his goals for the Tibetan people, but he kept their get-together off-camera and low-key in an attempt to avoid inflaming tensions with China. At the risk of angering Beijing, Obama did tell the exiled spiritual leader on Thursday that he backs the preservation of Tibet's culture and supports human rights for its people. He also gave encouragement to the Dalai Lama's request for talks with the Chinese government After the 70-minute meeting, the White House said Obama "commended the Dalai Lama's ... commitment to...

As Barack Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, the Dalai Lama told Sky News he believed the award was "a little early". He also cautioned the US president against relying too much on his advisers. The Dalai Lama told Sky News: "I think if you are realistic, it may have been a little early but it doesn't matter, I know Obama is a very able person. "Sometimes these individual persons rely on different advice from different people so like former President Bush junior, as a human being I really love him, really wonderful person, very honest, very truthful....

Marking the 20th birthday of His Serenity the 11th Panchen Lama in a solemn ceremony, Tibetans in Dharamshala yesterday offered prayers for his long life, while they remember the legacy of his predecessor in the preservation and promotion of Tibet's cultural heritage and his indomitable courage to speak out against the Chinese leaders for the wellbeing of Tibetans. Gedhun Choekyi Nyima and his parents disappeared a day after His Holiness the Dalai Lama recognised him as the 11th Panchen Lama on 14 May 1995. Despite repeated appeals, no international agency or human rights organisation has been granted access to the...

As French president Nicolas Sarkozy prepares to meet the Dalai Lama on Saturday, it appears that many here in China are not willing to learn from the mistakes of the past. This week, my university campus is buzzing with talk of once again boycotting Carrefour in response to this highly controversial meeting that has already drawn strong condemnation from Beijing. Considering the embarrassment that the Carrefour boycott brought upon China in April, I can hardly believe that people are seriously talking about doing it again...

ANN ARBOR, Mich. (AP) - The Dalai Lama on Sunday offered his trademark humor and humility in answering questions submitted from a crowd of more than 7,000 at the University of Michigan that gathered for a teaching session. "We have to deal with the causes and conditions of that anger," he said in response to a question about living with someone who is angry and argumentative. He elicited large laughs for his long, contemplative pause before answering. "The best thing - try to remain a bit (of) distance. If it's a husband and wife, then I don't know. Worst case?...

US President George W. Bush will risk angering China by attending a ceremony next week to award a Congress medal to the exiled Tibetan leader, the Dalai Lama, at the bastion of American democracy. Barely a month after China strongly protested German Chancellor Angela Merkel's meeting with the Dalai Lama, the White House said Wednesday that Bush and his wife will participate in the landmark event for the 72-year-old Buddhist spiritual leader at the Capitol building next Wednesday. "The president and Mrs Laura Bush will attend the ceremony," ... A bill to award the medal won the support of more...

Dung-eating mites throw light on Inca civilisation Mark Henderson, Science Editor Mites that eat llama dung are providing scientists with critical new clues to the rise and fall of the Inca empire and the civilisations that preceded it. The soil invertebrates are allowing researchers to trace the growth and decline of the peoples of the Andes several centuries before the Spanish conquest in 1532 brought written records to the region for the first time. The evidence gleaned from fossilised mites, preserved in sediments at a lake about 50km (30 miles) from the Inca capital of Cuzco, has shown how the...

Ladakhis are not used to this: religious tension, clamping of curfew and the army marching through the place better known for its Buddhist chants, prayer flags fluttering between mountains and the arid, pristine moonscape. Old timers say Ladakh has not seen communal tension since the 1970s when Buddhists and Muslims went for each other's throat over minor incidents. This time, as the world burns in the Prophet cartoon row, the division between the two communities happened over the reported desecration of the Holy Koran in Bodh Kharbu. The picturesque village, which is mainly populated by Buddhists, is located in the...

BOISE, Idaho - Sun Valley is used to hosting hundreds of thousands of visitors annually, but a planned Sept. 11 visit by the Dalai Lama could draw 100,000 for one event - and that has law enforcement and tourism officials scrambling. Details such as visitor housing and security loom large. The Nobel Peace Prize-winning spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists will visit the famous mountain resort community on the fourth anniversary of the terrorist attacks that rocked America. Walt Femling, the sheriff of rural Blaine County, met visit organizers Wednesday, accompanied by officials including his disaster services coordinator. He said he...

Tibetan lama dodges Chinese bullet By Julian Gearing A controversial Tibetan lama - to China he's a subversive and a terrorist and to many Tibetans a saint and patriot - has been spared execution, a bullet to the back of the head. A Chinese court on Wednesday commuted the death sentence of Lama Tenzin Delek to life imprisonment, according to the official Xinhua news agency. China, not wanting a martyr on its hands, already had suspended the lama's death sentence for two years; that period expired this week, and the persisting prospect of martyrdom and the unrest it might generate...