Thai authorities want to deport Phra Yantra from monastery north of Escondido

Thai authorities say they aren't giving up on trying to deport Phra Yantra, the controversial Buddhist monk who now lives in his own monastery north of Escondido. Two weeks ago, a U.S. judge granted Yantra asylum here. Now a Bangkok newspaper reports that Thai authorities are preparing to indict the monk on charges of passport falsification, in hopes of extraditing him back to Thailand. Yantra claims he's the victim of Thai politicians who want to destroy him because he's attempted to expose that country's political corruption ... A high-powered mathematics professor has been snatched away from UCSD by Seattle computer giant Microsoft. Mike Freedman will join Microsoft Research, Microsoft's six-year-old basic research arm, studying such arcane mathematical concepts as four-dimensional topology. Freedman is a recipient of the Fields Medal, the National Medal of Science, and the American Mathematical Society's Veblen prize ... If it weren't bad enough Dennis Conner lost the America's Cup, now comes word that his old boat, Stars and Stripes, has been attacked by vandals at dockside in St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. The hull of the yacht, being used to train a Virgin Islands team for the next America's Cup challenge against New Zealand, was punctured and ropes were cut. Motive for the attack remains a mystery.