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PARIS — People who are obese in middle age run a lower risk of developing dementia later, said a large and long-term study recently whose findings challenge the prevailing wisdom.

On the other end of the scale, however, being underweight in the 40-55 age bracket was associated with a higher risk, the researchers found.

While admitting they were “surprised” by the potential protective effect of obesity, the team cautioned against jumping to conclusions.

The reasons for the observed association were not known, they wrote in the journal The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology.

“The message that people shouldn’t take away is that it’s OK to be overweight or obese,” study co-author Nawab Qizilbash of the OXON Epidemiology research company told AFP by telephone from Madrid.

“We do know... that if you are overweight or obese you have a high risk of [early] death, so it is not clear that the net benefit on dementia would be positive.

“In other words, even if there were to be protective effects on dementia from being overweight or obese, you may not live long enough to get the benefit of it.”

But the widely held belief that reducing obesity in middle age could help prevent dementia may also be ill-founded, said the team, and required a rethink of how we identify high-risk individuals.

The researchers combed a British database of patient information recorded from 1992 to 2007, representing some 9 per cent of the UK population.

In what they claimed was the largest-ever study of any link between bodyweight and dementia risk, the team analysed the medical records of nearly 2 million 40-plussers.

They compared the patients’ BMI (body weight index, a ratio of weight to height) to how many developed dementia later on.

A BMI of 25 and higher is classified overweight, and 30 and over obese. Anything less than 18.5 is generally considered underweight, though for this study the researchers set the bar at 20.

Over two decades, the researchers found, “the incidence of dementia continued to fall for every increasing BMI category with very obese people (a BMI over 40) having a 29 per cent lower dementia risk than people of a healthy weight.”

Just over 45,500 of the total study group developed dementia.

“Compared with people of a healthy weight, underweight people (BMI under 20) had a 34 per cent higher risk of dementia,” added the authors.

The underweight category is a wide one, ranging from lean to skeletal, said Qizilbash, who described the increased risk as “significant”.

‘We were surprised’

Numerous other studies, including one carried by The Lancet Neurology in July 2014, have linked obesity to a higher risk for Alzheimer’s Disease and other forms of dementia.

But Qizilbash said most were “fairly small and statistically unreliable”.

“We were surprised about the findings. Because most of them, not unanimously but the majority of previous studies, have tended to indicate that people who are overweight or obese in middle age have an increased risk of dementia in older age.”

Further research was needed to confirm the link and find an explanation for it, the researcher added.

“There are some potential contenders, particularly in terms of the role that nutrients may play,” he said.

The team hoped their results would aid in the search for “protective factors” with a view to new treatments.

Alzheimer’s Disease International (ADI) projects the number of people with dementia will rise from 35.6 million in 2010 to 65.7 million by 2030 and 115.4 million by 2050.

Obesity, too, is soaring, having more than doubled worldwide since 1980. By 2014, more than 1.9 billion adults were overweight, of whom 600 million were obese, according to the World Health Organisation.

In a comment also carried by The Lancet, neurology professor Deborah Gustafson said the findings should be interpreted “with care”.

“The report by Qizilbash and colleagues is not the final word on this controversial topic,” she wrote.

GEORGE TOWN, Cayman Islands — In a reef just off the popular USS Kittiwake dive site in Grand Cayman, hunters armed with spears seek out lionfish — an invasive species so destructive that authorities want them caught and served up as a tasty dish.

With their striking pectoral fins and venomous dorsal spikes that fan out like a lion’s mane, the rampant lionfish have few natural predators and eat up smaller fish, shrimp and crab that protect the reef.

The Cayman Islands are fighting back with a campaign that encourages local divers to hunt lionfish, that are numbered in the tens of thousands, so that restaurants can serve them up to tourists.

Call it the “if you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em” approach.

Lionfish has begun to match grouper, snapper and mahi-mahi as a delicacy in Cayman, where more than a dozen restaurants now have them on the menu.

“Boy, are they good to eat,” said celebrity Spanish chef José Andrés, who went hunting during a Cayman Cookout event. “Their sweet, white meat is unbelievable as a ceviche or sautéed with fresh herbs,” he said.

After a diver speared one on a recent trip, a teenage girl on vacation from Texas inspected the foot-long catch approvingly.

“I had lionfish tacos at Tukka,” she said of a restaurant on the island.

Thomas Tennant, a chef for the upscale Michael’s Genuine Food & Drink, now buys 54kg of lionfish a week from local divers at $12.10 a kilo, serving diners a variety of dishes from raw, to a sandwich and a main course.

Native to the Indo-Pacific, lionfish are believed to have spread after some escaped from a private aquarium in south Florida during Hurricane Andrew in 1992.

They have since migrated throughout the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean, and even the eastern US seaboard as far as Rhode Island, where they die in winter.

The fish are small and only 40 per cent of the body is edible meat after removing the head, spines, and bones, meaning time-consuming work for chefs.

The concept of eating them has caught on elsewhere too. A Lionfish Festival, dubbed ‘Feast on the Beast’ was held last month in southwest Florida with local chefs in Fort Myers cooking up 200 pounds of lionfish fillets to benefit a local charity.

There is no way to calculate the size of the invasion.

“The number would be astounding,” said Lad Akins, director of special projects at REEF, an ocean conservation nonprofit based in the Florida Keys.

Site densities of 3,000 lionfish in an area roughly the size of a US football field have been found in the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico, he said. A commercial lionfish export company, Spinion Ltd., created in the Cayman Islands in 2012, sells an average of 90 to 115 kilos a week to five local restaurants.

With rising demand, some restaurants, including Guy Harvey’s, are now importing lionfish from Honduras.

“We didn’t have enough lionfish here to satisfy the customer,” Bruno Deluche, Guy Harvey’s manager, said.

LOS ANGELES — “Furious 7” roared away from its rivals once more to claim top spot in the North American box office for a second straight week, with nearly $60 million in ticket sales, industry figures showed Monday.

The seventh film in the stunt-filled “Fast and Furious” street-racing franchise that has raked in more than $2 billion worldwide since 2001, “Furious 7” pulled in more than $251 million in its first two weekends, according to box office tracker Exhibitor Relations.

The film features the late Paul Walker, who was killed in an unrelated car crash in November 2013 while the film was still in production.

“People feel like they’re living through the summer movie season right now even though it’s not summer,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Rentrak. “It’s the essence of a popcorn movie.”

It’s also the essence of perfect timing. By debuting in April, “Furious 7” avoided being cannibalised by other major summer tentpole films. The next heavyweight to enter the multiplexes is “Avengers: Age of Ultron”, which doesn’t hit screens until May 1.

“Studios are not afraid to place a strong movie in unconventional times and it’s paying off quite well,” said Phil Contrino, vice president and chief analyst at BoxOffice.com. “There’s no need to open everything in June, July or May when you’ll get creamed by whatever opens the next week.” 

In second place was animated children’s film “Home”, about an unpopular space alien forced to flee his own kind. It earned $18.5 million in its third week of release.

“The Longest Ride”, an onscreen rendering of Nicholas Sparks’ romantic novel of the same name, debuted in third place, earning $13 million. The movie stars Scott Eastwood, the son of actor-director Clint Eastwood.

Fourth place went to buddy comedy “Get Hard”, about a prison-bound white investment banker (Will Ferrell) who hires a black car washer (Kevin Hart) for lessons on surviving the slammer. It earned $8.2 million.

Disney’s live action “Cinderella” was in fifth place, earning $7.1 million, with “Downton Abbey” star Lily James as the enchanted scullery maid-turned-princess and Cate Blanchett as her wicked stepmother.

Dystopian action thriller “Insurgent”, the second big-screen instalment based on Veronica Roth’s best-selling “Divergent” book series, came in sixth place with $6.7 million.

“Woman in Gold”, which tells the true story of an elderly Holocaust survivor trying to get her Nazi-looted artwork back from the Austrian government, held onto seventh place with a $5.5 million haul.

Indie horror flick “It Follows”, took eighth place, grossing $1.9 million.

Ninth place went to dramedy “Danny Collins”, starring Al Pacino as a washed-up rock star and Annette Bening as the hotel manager charmed by him. It earned $1.5 million.

Rounding out the top 10, was espionage action film “Kingsman: The Secret Service” with $1.3 million.

Launched as a 1998 model, Volkswagen’s first New Beetle was a pioneer of the “retro” car design trend, fashionable in the 2000s, and was followed by re-incarnations of the original’s Mini and Fiat 500 contemporaries.

Ironically, when the “retro” New Beetle arrived 60 years after the original, the iconic “people’s car” that inspired it was still produced in Mexico and remained so until 2003. A second twist that speaks of the Beetle’s appeal, the revived modern version was based on a Volkswagen Golf, which when first launched in 1974, was meant to replace the original Beetle.

Though well short of the original Beetle’s 21.5 million unit six decade production run, the first modern Beetle enjoyed an extended 13-year lifecycle, and was replaced by the current and second all-new modern Beetle, which debuted as a 2012 model.

A bigger car than the one it replaces, the contemporary Beetle is a noticeably longer, more refined and sportier looking reinterpretation that still closely resembles the original’s beloved bug-like silhouette and aesthetic. And like its’ immediate predecessor, the latest Beetle is based on a Golf platform, in this case being the 6th generation rather than the 4th generation Golf.

Sportier style

Built on a contemporary Volkswagen platform, the current Beetle’s design may be homage to the original, but features a conventionally modern front in-line transverse water-cooled front-drive engine, rather than a rear-mounted, rear-drive air-cooled “boxer” engine under its rakishly sloped rear. And whereas the original Beetle designed for affordable, simple, durable and utilitarian mass mobility, the contemporary Beetle primarily trades on its nostalgically fashionable design. 

A mass-market niche car, the Beetle has undeniably huge appeal, and is a comfortable, practical and fun alternative hatchback coupe option to Volkswagen’s yet more accomplished Golf and Scirocco models.

A maturing take on the modern Beetle, the current second generation incarnation is noticeably sportier looking, with longer bonnet, frame-less windows, lower roofline, stretched out but distinctively familiar roof arc and elongated, somewhat oval, rather than circular lights for more assertive road presence. 

Courting broader appeal beyond its’ predecessor’s “retro-trendy” focus, the current 3-door Beetle is offered in overtly “retro” spec versions and sportier, swifter hot hatch versions like the 2.0 TSI tested. With huge 19-inch alloy wheels more purposely filling out its bulbously curved wings, the 2.0 TSI also features a pronounced waistline-level rear spoiler.

Brisk bug

Introduced one year before the new and superbly well-rounded more advanced and aluminium-intensive MQB platform 7th generation Volkswagen Golf, the current Beetle is build on its immediate PQ35 platform instead.

In 2.0 TSI guise, as tested, it features the previous generation Golf GTI’s 2-litre turbocharged direct injection engine, developing 208BHP over a 5300-6200rpm range and 207lb/ft torque throughout a broad 1700-5200rpm mid-range band.

Propelling its 1.4-tonne mass, the Beetle’s engine allows for brisk 7.3-second 0-100km/h acceleration and a 227km/h top speed, while returning 7.6-lire/100km combined cycle fuel efficiency, as driven with 6-speed dual-clutch automated gearbox.

With quick-spooling turbo, the Beetle is responsive off-the-line and delivers a steady, rich and muscular mid-range for flexible in-town and highway driving, which seamlessly underwrites and transitions to a punchy and wide top-end power peak.

It may fall slightly short of the current Golf GTI’s breadth of ability, performance, efficiency and refinement, but the Beetle 2.0 TSI is nevertheless impressively versatile, capable, confident, quick, fun and fuel efficient.

With odd and even gears pre-emptively lining up on separate clutches, the Beetle’s DSG gearbox executes seamlessly swift and smooth sequential shifts in auto or manual modes.

Comfortable cruising

Sporty yet comfortable with MacPherson strut front and multi-link rear suspension in top iterations, the Beetle is familiar to but slightly different in character to its’ Golf sister. Longer, taller and wider, the Beetle, however, feels narrower than the Golf when driving owing to upright windscreen, driving position and steering.

Precise as it is, the Beetle’s steering seems comfortably lighter compared to the new Golf’s direct and meaty steering. Confident, reassured and stable at speed, the Beetle’s shape and suspension rates are however more comfortably relaxed and slightly less road-hugging or ultimately refined as the Golf.

Quick, light and intuitive, the Beetle’s steering provides good in town manoeuvrability and a tidy turn-in, while a XDS torque vectoring system selectively brakes the inside front wheel through eagerly driven corners to prevent wheel-spin and promote tidier, more agile and stable handling. 

Fun and agile with slightly shorter wheelbase than the current Golf, the Beetle eagerly zips through twisting roads, and is poised, tidy and well-controls weight shifts through fast and tight corners. Despite riding on grippy and firm low profile 235/40R19 tyres, it feels supple, comfortable and refined over imperfections, and settled on rebound.

Arced and airy

A well-integrated combination of contemporary design and safety and convenience equipment with retro-inspired themes and styling cues, one can specify the Beetle’s cabin ambiance with more modern-looking dark business-like colours or, with body-colour dash and door panels, to highlight its classic retro charms.

The driven car’s yellow exterior and interior colours served to give it a lively feel and accentuated the cabin’s airy front ambiance and good driving and parking visibility. Upright, user-friendly and uncomplicatedly user-friendly the Beetle’s dash and console feature circular motifs including and chrome-rings segmentation, while fit, finish and materials are of high almost Golf-like levels.

Manoeuvrable and easy to park in town and comfortably relaxed on highways, the Beetle features supportive well-adjustable seats and flat-bottom steering, intuitive infotainment screen, large clear primary instrumentation and sporty dash-mounted secondary dials — including turbo boost gauge. 

Spaciously comfortable in all directions in front, the Beetle’s rear two seats are easily accessible but the heavily sloped and stylised roofline does limit headroom for tall passengers. 

Storage spaces include twin gloveboxes, while 310-litre boot space — more than its’ predecessor and less than a Golf — is suitably useful and expands to 905 litres with the rear seats down.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Engine: 2-litre, turbocharged transverse 4 cylinders

Bore x stroke: 82.5 x 92.8mm

Valve-train: 16-valve, DOHC, variable timing, direct injection

Gearbox: 6-speed dual clutch automated, front-wheel drive

Power, BHP (PS) [kW]: 208 (210) [155] @5300-6200rpm

Specific power: 104.8BHP/litre

Torque, lb/ft (Nm): 207 (280) @1700-5200rpm

Specific torque: 141.1Nm/litre

0-100km/h: 7.3 seconds

Maximum speed: 227km/h

Fuel consumption, combined: 7.6l/100km

CO2 emissions, combined: 176g/km

Fuel capacity: 55 litres

Length: 4278mm

Width: 1808mm

Height: 1486mm

Wheelbase: 2537mm

Track, F/R: 1578/1544mm

Aerodynamic drag co-efficiency: 0.37 (estimate)

Unladen weight: 1420kg (approximately)

Headroom, F/R: 1005/942mm (w/sunroof)

Elbow room, F/R: 1459/1308mm

Luggage capacity, min/max: 310/905 litres

Steering: Variable electric-assisted rack and pinion

Turning circle: 10.8 metres

Brakes, F/R: Ventilated disc/disc

Suspension, F/R: MacPherson strut/multi-link

Tyres: 235/40R19

Los Angeles Times (TNS)

Your smartphone is a camera, a calculator, a flashlight and a pedometer. Scientists believe it could be part of an earthquake early warning system too.

It turns out that the GPS sensors built into most smartphones are sensitive enough to detect the earliest signs of quakes that are magnitude 7 and stronger, new research shows. The data they collect could be used to give nearby communities a few seconds’ notice that seismic waves are headed their way.

“The GPS on a smartphone is shockingly good,” said study leader Sarah Minson, a geophysicist at the US Geological Survey in Pasadena, California. “If you take your phone and move it 15cm to the right, it knows with surprising accuracy that it moved 15cm to the right — and that is exactly what we want to know when studying earthquakes.”

In the past, scientists have examined whether the accelerometers that come standard in smartphones are good enough to detect early signs of earthquakes. (One of the jobs of these accelerometers is to let the phone know whether the user is holding it vertically or horizontally so that the orientation of the screen is correct.)

In this study, the researchers were interested in whether the GPS data our phones collect could be useful in earthquake detection as well.

Minson and her co-authors created a hypothetical data set of cell phone readings that would have been captured during a magnitude 7 earthquake on the Hayward fault in Northern California.

They also looked at data recorded by state-of-the-art GPS-based earthquake sensors in Japan during the magnitude 9 Tohoku quake in 2011. This information was much more detailed than what a typical smartphone could get, so the researchers used only what a phone would record and disregarded the rest.

With both sets of data in hand, the researchers tested whether the phones would be able to detect an earthquake if it occurred, pin down its location and determine its magnitude.

The obvious challenge to using mobile phones to register an earthquake is that they are often in motion — bumping around when we drive over a pothole, trip on a curb or bound up the stairs.

Douglas Given, coordinator of the ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system at the USGS, described the conundrum: “You have a lot of cell phones bouncing around all over the place, and you are trying to measure what the ground is doing. So how do you tell the difference?”

To solve this problem, the researchers came up with something called a trigger — a set of criteria that would distinguish between an actual earthquake and a bunch of cell phones on a bus getting jostled as it went over a big bump.

With the hypothetical Hayward fault earthquake, the trigger they decided on was if a phone and its four closest neighbours recorded the same amount of displacement at the same time and the same could be said for 100 phones in the same area. Then, and only then, the researchers’ early warning system would register that a quake had occurred and send an alert to other communities.

The researchers used the Tohoku quake data to see whether it would be possible to keep the rate of false alarms below one of every 2 million apparent detections. It was — as long as 103 phones met the trigger criteria.

The results were published Friday in the journal Science Advances.

Yehuda Bock, a University of California, San Diego geodesist who studies ways of using GPS to detect quakes and other natural hazards, said that although the paper is technically sound, he is not sure that the cell phone network would be very practical.

“I’m a little sceptical it will work in a real-world situation,” said Bock, who was not involved in the research. “I think a system like that would false-alarm more than they claim in the paper.”

Minson acknowledges that the system may not be quite as accurate in the real world as it appears to be on paper. Real-world tests will help her find out. Those will come next year, when she and her colleagues will test their early warning system in Chile with a few hundred smartphones.

“Hopefully,” she said, “this is going to be a good learning experience for us.”

Minson said the main benefit of crowd-sourcing earthquake detection is that it’s inexpensive, because the phones have already been paid for. All the experts would have to do is write an app to connect them, and then find a central computer somewhere to collect the data.

“The cost is essentially zero, especially since people buy new phones every two years or so to have the latest-and-greatest model,” she said.

But don’t expect to join your cell phone to an earthquake early-warning system anytime soon.

“The point of this paper is that the type of measurements that are being made by smartphones have the potential to be useful in earthquakes,” said Thomas Heaton, a professor of geophysics at California Institute of Technology and a co-author of the study. “That’s quite a big step from actually making it useful in earthquakes.”

In California, there is little incentive to deploy a system of earthquake-sensing smartphones. Scientists are already building an earthquake early warning system that could go public within two years if enough funding comes through. That system relies on hundreds of science-grade sensors, some of which are so sensitive that they can detect the gravitational pull of the moon.

A prototype system gave San Francisco 8 seconds of warning that shaking from the 2014 Napa Earthquake was on its way. That may not sound like a lot of time, but when it comes to quakes, even a few seconds can matter.

“If you are a driver you can pull over, if you are at work you can get under your desk, and if you are a surgeon you can retract your scalpel,” Minson said.

A smartphone network here could augment the official one, the researchers said. And in places where there is no alternative, the crowd-sourced solution might make more sense.

“If we could make it work well,” Heaton said, “then the next thing to think about is exporting that technology to other parts of the world.”

CZOCHA, Poland — Clad in robes and pointed hats, would-be sorcerers wave their wands and cast spells as they hone their magic skills at their very own College of Wizardry.

In scenes inspired by Hogwarts from the Harry Potter fantasy series, the students mix potions, tame magical creatures roaming the nearby forest, explore hidden basements and visit local taverns.

Poland’s Czocha Castle on Thursday opened its doors to 130 would-be witches and wizards for a four-day live-action role play (LARP) inspired by the hugely successful books by J. K. Rowling.

Some 130 participants from 17 countries, ranging in age from 18 to 60, have travelled to the fairy-tale-like castle in western Poland for the $375 event, where they take on the role of students and teachers — and ghosts.

In a set-up diverging from Rowling’s fictional world, where the young Potter learns about wizardry at Hogwarts while fighting off the dark arts, students are sorted into houses, such as Durentius, Faust, Libussa, Molin and Sendivogius.

They are given wizardry schoolbooks and follow a curriculum made up of classes such as “Physical Defence”, “Magical Theory” and “Geomancy”.

“When doing a game like this, we try to simulate a pretend magical college. So it means some people play professors, some play students,” Claus Raasted, organiser and game master at the College, told Reuters during preparations ahead of the event, adding there were rules in place to simulate magic.

“It’s very simple. You point your wand at somebody, and say, “Silencio!”. And then if you think that’s cool then you become silent, and if you think that’s boring, then you think, “Oh, that spell didn’t work”. “Or maybe you don’t understand what’s going on and you do something completely different.”

The event’s organisers, Poland’s Liveform and Denmark’s Rollespilfabrikken, stress the LARP does not include the use of the Harry Potter stories and is based “in a universe of our own making”, with different characters which participants develop.

“I am very much dead. My character died 150 years ago... My role is more of a guide and I guess it’s mainly a support role for the other players,” one participant, his face painted white for the role of ghost Kalle Frolund, told Reuters.

The first such LARP was organised at Czocha in November and quickly grabbed the attention of Harry Potter fans worldwide. Two are taking place in April and another is planned for later this year. For many, the four-day event is a dream come true, Raasted said.

“I think we can safely say that pretending to be a witch or wizard is something that appeals to everybody,” he said.

You could see it coming, a computer not bigger than a common USB flash drive. Is it a real computer? It is, except that upon seeing it you may want to go back to basics and ask the device maker: “please define computer”. Intel, Google and a couple of other, less known manufacturers have them ready for you right now, for about $120 a-piece. Intel calls it Compute Stick and Google Chromebit. And yes, you can have Microsoft’s Windows pre-installed on it!

Engineers will tell you that a digital device with some input-output capability, a processing unit, memory and a storage area constitutes a computer. In theory this is the essential definition of the bare minimum components that are required, and therefore it excludes peripherals screen, keyboard, mouse (or touch screen) and so forth. Practically speaking however, how do you work without all the latter elements?

The computer-stick concept is interesting but has serious limitations. Moreover it is very new and we still have to see what market penetration it may or may not claim in the coming few months. For now even the adventurous are looking at the device as it were a mere gadget, until proven otherwise.

Chromebit, Compute Stick and the like heavily rely on the Internet. By heavily it is understood that without a reliable and fast Internet connection all the time you cannot do much. “Fast” here means 8Mb connectivity to the web and preferably higher. Even in Western Europe the average speed available to the population today, estimated at 6Mb, would, therefore, not be enough.

So even if you accept the hassle to connect a real keyboard, a screen and a mouse, something that really defeats the purpose, the “stick” would virtually still be useless without a powerful connection.

To start with the device will “count on” the Internet to store data in the cloud, for its own storage is limited to 16GB for Chromebit and 64GB for Compute Stick. In both cases it is much less than what even the cheapest computer will give you. Memory also is restricted to 2GB and the processing of graphics will make you feel like it is crawling. Here again, heavy processing is made in the cloud and the result then returned to you via the same way. Hello Internet consumption!

The computer-on-a-stick is better seen as just a connecting node to the Internet, a window on the web, with most everything being stored and processed up there; that is if you accept it this way. Calling it a real computer is a bit too ambitious given all you have to add to it, not to mention its almost absolute dependence on the web.

A smartphone, though larger than a USB stick of course, makes much more sense these days. It already has a screen — superb ones actually, for high-end models — reasonably good processing power, a touch surface and tremendous functionality. It is perfectly usable without any addition. Even if smartphones today do count on the Internet in a certain way, they still function as pocket computers on their own, definitely better than Chromebit or Compute Stick anyway.

To consider the computer-on-a-stick as a gadget makes sense today. However, it may well evolve into something more substantial and independent. After all smartphones also were mere gadgets only a few years ago.

I was in Aqaba last week. I went back after three years, but I was not looking forward to the trip. I’m not inadvertently paranoid about flying; it was the early morning departure timing that got me irritated. What was the point in the crack of dawn flying takeoffs? 

I mean, six forty five in the morning meant reaching the airport at five forty five, which meant getting out of my warm bed at four thirty in the night. Insane, I tell you! Why did the airlines insist on this punishing schedule? 

That grievance aside, the flight was exceptional. Dozing next to a prime window seat, I went deeper into slumber when the pilot’s message filtered through the aircraft’s sound system. There was something rather reassuring about the tone and timbre of the flight-captain’s voice. It lulled me into instant sleep.

But subconsciously it began to register that he was talking about Wadi Rum. I continued to keep my eyes wide shut, so to speak. Suddenly, there was an abrupt scramble as one flight purser pushed against my shoulder to get to the window with his camera. I looked out and an unbelievable vision greeted my stunned gaze. And there it was, the ethereal rock formation in all its majestic glory. The plane went by it slowly, as if flying past an artistic exhibit, and then it turned to give us another view of its grand splendour. The captain was enjoying himself, and was entertaining us with a running commentary, while all of us nearly toppled the right side of the aircraft with our over crowded enthusiasm. 

The touch down at Aqaba was smooth and getting out of the airport was smoother. Flat and even tarmac lanes greeted my arrival this time around. Driving from one part of town to another was a pleasure, and one saw the city in a whole new light. 

The hotel I stayed in was on the edge of the Red Sea and remains one of the best-located properties in Aqaba. The sight of the immense body of water from there was simply amazing. The rooms were recently refurbished, and the showers and so on, upgraded, but the hospitality in the hotel had to be the slowest one has ever encountered. Whether it was the housekeeping, food orders, room service or baggage collection, I had to give myself at least two-hour’s start-up, for each instruction to be followed through to its leisurely conclusion. 

Evenings in Aqaba were warmer than Amman. Another thing worth mentioning was the positive attitude of the people there. Anything and everything was manageable and one rarely got a negative response. We had half a day to organise a formal dinner party, and from the string-lights to flower arrangements, to seating plan to background music, to starters to main-course selection, everything got done efficiently. 

But at the event, the pop singer was the last to troop in. Within moments he settled on stage and started belting out entertaining numbers. Somewhere along the way, he noticed me, and switched to Golden Oldies from the era of Frank Sinatra. 

A little later, he figured out my nationality. 

“I have a special song for you, Madam,” he announced on the microphone. 

“Okay,” I said. 

“You have to sing along,” he instructed. 

“Okay,” I agreed. 

“Saw the world, from Japan to Russia,” he began. 

“Umm,” I was undecided.

“Ho ho ho! Made in India,” he sang.

“Made in India,” I joined in.

BANGKOK — In deeply religious Thailand, monks have long been revered. But badly behaved clergy, corruption scandals and the vast wealth amassed by some temples has many asking if something is rotten at the heart of Thai Buddhism.

From selfies on private jets to multimillion-dollar donations from allegedly crooked businessmen, Thailand’s monks are coming under increasing fire for their embrace of commercialism.

So much so that even the military junta is threatening to intervene.

In Wat Hua Lumphong, a temple in downtown Bangkok, garlands of banknotes flutter in the breeze as trader Sakorn Suker slips a 20 baht note ($1) into an urn.

“It makes me feel good, boosts my health and makes me do better business,” Suker told AFP.

His donation entitles him to take a “lucky” floating candle in the shape of a flower.

Nearby, coin-operated machines — similar to jukeboxes, but with a Buddha statue on top — churn out “lucky numbers” for the faithful as kneeling devotees hand over envelopes stuffed with cash, many picking up a tax reduction certificate on their way out.

In one corner of the temple complex sits a monk in an air-conditioned box.

“Donation means sacrifice. You sacrifice your things, sacrifice your time, sacrifice your money, sacrifice your heart,” the monk, Pra Maha Noppadom, explains.

The gift of giving

In contrast to the increasingly empty pews and coffers of many European churches, temples remain a boom business in Thailand.

The overwhelmingly Buddhist nation is one of the most generous countries in the world, according to the 2014 World Giving Index.

It came third globally, behind Myanmar and Malta, with 77 per cent of the population giving money to charity.

Temples are under no obligation to declare their assets, which makes guessing how deep this generosity runs difficult.

But last year the National Institute of Development Administration estimated the country’s 38,000-odd temples receive between 100 and 120 billion baht in donations ($3.07-3.62 billion) every year.

And that’s on top of their state funding. In 2015 the government has earmarked $113 million alone for renovating temples.

Donations have always formed the bedrock of Thai Buddhism. Every morning barefooted monks make their daily alms rounds in their local neighbourhoods.

But as the Southeast Asian nation has modernised, so have donation methods.

Thai supermarkets now offer an impressive array of pre-packaged hampers for monks including saffron robes, instant coffee and soap.

Few have mastered modern money collection techniques better than the Dhammakaya temple, one of the richest in the kingdom, with a dozens of outlets worldwide and an enormous headquarters north of Bangkok.

It is renowned for its roster of wealthy patrons and even boasts a slick TV channel where — much like evangelical mega churches — pleas for devotees to reach deep into their pockets are never far away.

Jetset monks

But with wealth comes controversy.

Earlier this month the temple authorities returned some $20 million given by a company executive who has since been accused of embezzling the cash.

It was just the latest in a list of scandals involving Thai clergy embracing excess — the most infamous of which involved celebrated monk Wiraphol Sukphol taking selfies while flying in a private jet.

Other embarrassing incidents in recent months include a monk arrested for multiple sexual assaults; clergy dressed in civilian clothes drinking alcohol and crashing a car; monks having girlfriends; and others brawling during the early morning alms collections.

Many monks feel some of their brethren, who number more than 300,000, have replaced merit making with making money.

“Buddhism is overwhelmed by capitalism. We have become too much obsessed with the idea of getting benefits and money,” Pra Maha Paiwan Warawunno, a charismatic 24-year-old monk who regularly criticises the state of Thai Buddhism on his Facebook page, told AFP.

“In this country now, greed is promoted. Amulets, Buddha images, all kinds of things,” said Sulak Sivaraksa, a Thai Buddhist expert and founder of the International Network of Engaged Buddhism, who is close to the Dalai Lama.

“A monk cannot even touch money. By touching money, it makes the monk impure,” said Sulak, denouncing greed that he says Thailand’s top Buddhist body — the Supreme Council of the Sangha — has failed to address.

‘Sangha rules Sangha’

One of the peculiarities of the Thai clergy is that — despite the major subsidies they receive from the state — they are also self-governing.

The Sangha — a Sanskrit word used to describe a community of monks — is composed of a handful of the most influential monks in the country, and they alone decide when and whether clergy should be punished for transgressions and excesses.

Paiboon Nititawan, a member of the junta’s National Reform Council, has been asked to draft a new law to improve control over the temples, which has enraged many monks who see it unacceptable interference in spiritual affairs.

“The goal is to have measures handling the properties of the temples and to get them to make proper accounts. And also to reveal the accounts to the public. So that it can be checked and balanced with transparency,” he said.

“If there is no such law, monks will accumulate properties, which is against the monk disciplines,” he added.

But few expect the junta to make much headway against such an entrenched group.

As Somchai Surachatri, spokesman for National Office of Buddhism, put it: “Sangha rules Sangha.”

CHICAGO  — A Roche blood test to screen foetuses for Down syndrome worked far better than standard prenatal screening tests in younger, low-risk women, US researchers recently said, setting the stage for more widespread use.

The new study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, is the largest to show the tests are accurate in even low-risk women. But experts warned that women who test positive still need to confirm the result through more invasive diagnostic testing such as amniocentesis, especially if they would consider terminating a pregnancy.

“This is a great test for detecting Down syndrome but it doesn’t detect everything, it isn’t diagnostic, and it doesn’t always work to provide a result,” said Dr Mary Norton of the University of California, San Francisco.

Prior studies have shown such foetal DNA tests, which measure DNA fragments from the placenta circulating in the mother’s blood, are highly accurate at detecting Down syndrome and two other chromosomal abnormalities in high-risk women, typically those over the age of 35.

Several physicians’ organisations have supported use of the newer cell free foetal DNA tests over the standard screening in older, high-risk women.

Norton and colleagues tested nearly 16,000 women who had an average age of 30. The researchers compared Roche’s Harmony test to standard prenatal screening for Down syndrome — which relies on biomarkers in the blood and a foetal ultrasound — in the same group of women.

The Roche test identified all 38 cases of Down syndrome compared with 30 detected by standard screening. The false positive rate for the new foetal DNA test was 0.06 per cent of the study population versus 5.4 per cent for standard screening.

But there were still nine false positive results in the group that got cell free foetal DNA screening.

In addition, in nearly 500 women the foetal DNA test was not able to deliver any result because there was not enough foetal DNA in the pregnant women’s blood. Further testing, however, showed that some 2.7 per cent of foetuses had chromosomal defects, including those that could not have been detected by the new foetal DNA technique.

More than 1 million foetal DNA tests have been performed since 2011. One of their advantages is that if women test negative, they can avoid having an invasive diagnostic test, which can cause miscarriages in roughly 1 in 600 women.

But the newer tests are not regulated by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and companies are heavily promoting their performance in ways that may mislead patients, critics say.

In a letter published in the New England Journal of Medicine, Ankita Patel and colleagues from Baylor College of Medicine and the Chinese University of Hong Kong warn that women should not decide to terminate pregnancies based on such screenings alone.

They cited their own work that collected data on 307 women who screened positive on foetal DNA tests. The results included 56 false positives, meaning the child did not have Down syndrome or the two other common abnormalities (trisomy 13 and 18) captured by the tests.

In some cases, women had already scheduled an abortion pending amniocentesis results, a test given between 15 and 20 weeks of pregnancy. Even when that diagnostic proved the child did not have those abnormalities, some women questioned whether the screening result was more reliable.

“They think it is a diagnostic test because it’s genetic,” Patel said of the foetal DNA tests.

Confusion among doctors

Another reason for the confusion is the rapid introduction of this new technology. Many doctors are still just learning about it, said Dr Michael Greene, the chief of obstetrics, Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, who was not involved in the research.

He also points to companies’ aggressive marketing of their tests on the Internet. Ariosa Diagnostics, acquired by Roche in January, says its Harmony test for foetal chromosomal abnormalities offers “clear answers to questions that matter”, promising “accurate results from as early as 10 weeks of pregnancy”.

Rival Sequenom Inc. says on its website that it offers unambiguous results: “There’s no room for maybe.” Other companies offering such tests include Illumina and privately held Natera.

Greene said many women are not aware that these tests are not diagnostic and company disclaimers are not easy to find.

Both Sequenom and Ariosa said they recommend healthcare providers counsel their patients that the screening test is not a replacement for a diagnostic test.

The FDA is weighing whether to regulate such tests. Patel believes the oversight might help because the tests “would have more disclaimers so women understand what they are getting into”.