MetLife has released a real tearjerker of an advert highlighting the lengths that a parent will go to raise a happy, healthy, and well educated child. The touching video, which has racked up more than 5 million views on YouTube, shows a daughter who is proud of her father’s accomplishments but is aware that he struggles to ensure her happiness and future. The version below was shot in Thailand and produced for the Hong Kong market with five more iterations released throughout Asia.
Living in poverty is an all too familiar experience for Hong Kong’s residents with the government reporting the poor population at nearly 1 million and 380,000 households living below the poverty line.
Facebook is giving users more control over their social networking afterlives with a “legacy contact” setting.
With this setting enabled, a designated heir can change the deceased user’s profile picture, pin a memorial letter to the top of the profile, and respond to friend requests. The legacy contact can also download an archive of photos and posts.
However, Facebook is making clear that this is not the same as handing over your password. Legacy contacts won’t be able to edit old posts, access private messages or delete the entire account. Facebook told the Wall Street Journal that it ruled out further access “for this first version,” and noted that adding more responsibilities could just hinder the grieving process.
Facebook users can set up a legacy contact through the Security section of the settings menu.
In the past, Facebook would freeze the account when it learned of the user’s death, while also adding the word “Remembering” next to the person’s name and removing any ads from the profile page. This option for “Memorialized Accounts” is still the default. Users who want to add a legacy contact can do so through Settings > Security > Legacy Contact. Friends and loved ones can also still set up a group memorial page for the deceased.
Legacy contacts are only available to U.S. users for now, with support in other countries to follow.
Why this matters: While some states have tried to come up with “digital will” laws, and the U.S. government recommends creating your own will, the best solutions will come from the online services themselves, as they can provide granular controls over account access. Facebook is hardly the first to do so—Google has offered an “Inactive Account Manager” since 2013—but having these controls on the world’s largest social network goes a long way toward helping people figure out their digital legacies.
Yahoo Finance Canada/Weibo - Before a bank of more than 100 iPhones, a Chinese worker allegedly manupulates App Store results
A disturbing image allegedly showing a worker manipulating App Store rankings has gone viral, giving us a rare glimpse into the world of fake app ratings and downloads.
The photo, which was originally uploaded to social media site Weibo with the caption " Hardworking App Store ranking manipulation employee," depicts a Chinese woman sitting in front of a panel of close to a hundred iPhones.
The woman is wearing a heavy coat and hiding a hand inside of a blanket while she works on the dozens of iPhones in front of her, suggesting cold working conditions.
If the woman in the photo is, as the caption suggests, manipulating the rankings of app on Apple's App Store, she is likely uninstalling and re-installing apps on each of the devices to bolster their download rank. While only Apple knows exactly what factors into an app's ranking on the App Store, the higher the number of overall downloads, the higher the app's ranking.
The photo offers a rare glimpse into the clandestine world of App Store manipulation, an issue which Apple has struggled to eradicate in the past. App developers looking to give their app a boost in ratings or ranking can turn to the internet to find services claiming to offer a guaranteed five-star ratings or even a week in the App Store's Top 10 for around $65,000 per week, according to Cult of Mac.
> app store manipulation prices Cult of Mac Image reportedly showing the prices for a Top 10 spot in Apple's App Store.
App developers looking to legally boost their rankings in the App Store have expressed frustration with rigged rankings in the past, and if the above images are indeed real, it looks like Apple will need to continue its preventative efforts.
While it's typical for Chinese companies to offer prizes in the form of cash and cars to employees as a bonus ahead of the Chinese New Year, one tech firm in Beijing is steering wildly off-course from tradition with a year-end gift that one lucky winner will probably not be bringing home to show the missus: a Japanese porn star.
This is according to a list that was leaked online allegedly showing an array of year-end bonus options for employees at Qihoo360, a Beijing-based tech company known for its anti-spyware programs.
While the standard luxury vehicles and all-expenses-paid holidays appear on the list, one particular prize has raised eyebrows of many an envious netizen. Qihoo360 is supposedly offering a night with Japanese adult film star Julia Kyoka, famous across China for her J-cup breasts and, um, pretty much everything else.
The gift list circulating online hasn't been verified, and it's speculated that it's just a fake—another list was published excluding Julia as the top prize.
A collection of items planned to be left behind by the Apollo 11 mission have been found by Neil Armstrong's widow while clearing out an old closet. Among them is the camera that recorded some of the mission's most crucial moments, including the famous moon landing. The items have now been donated to the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, who unsurprisingly are rather pleased to have received them.
According to transcripts of the Apollo mission, Armstrong—upon rejoining Michael Collins in lunar orbit—referred to a stowage bag known as a McDivitt purse saying, “You know, that – that one's just a bunch of trash that we want to take back – LM [lunar module] parts, odds and ends, and it won't stay closed by itself. We'll have to figure something out for it.” The purse was named after Apollo 9 Commander James McDivitt, who proposed the need for a place to temporarily stow items that would be too time consuming to fix in place, but couldn't be safely left to float around the spacecraft in zero gravity.
In the end, the “something” seems to have been stashing the purse in the back of a closet and forgetting about it. Carol Armstrong found the bag—including the various items inside—while clearing out part of the family home after Neil Armstrong's death in 2012.
Credit: Carol Armstrong. The photograph Carol Armstrong sent to the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, which reveals the content of the bag she found.
Under the mission's plans, items such as these were to be left on the Eagle module, and would have been destroyed when the Eagle crashed into the moon after having carried Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to their rendezvous with Collins.
"Needless to say, for a curator of a collection of space artifacts, it is hard to imagine anything more exciting," said Allan Needell on the museum's blog. Needell has since confirmed that the items were almost certainly those Armstrong took to the moon and back.
Probably the most significant of the items was the 16mm Data Acquisition Camera that had been mounted on the Eagle lunar module to record the Eagle's touchdown, Armstrong's descent to the surface and the famous “one small step.”
Credit: Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum. The camera that recorded the "one small step."
A waist tether, intended for use if the lunar module and command module failed to reconnect correctly and the astronauts were forced to spacewalk between them, was included in the bag. Armstrong also used the tether to support his legs while he rested on the ascent engine cover during his only break on the moon.
Nine smaller items including a mirror, emergency wrench and lens shade were also found.
Want to see what a 10K time-lapse video looks like? Look no further than the video above. Titled “10328×7760: A 10K Timelapse Demo,” it was created by Los Angeles-based photographer Joe Capra, a guy who specializes in ultra-high-definition time-lapse photography.
If you don’t have a 10K display handy, don’t worry: the video zooms in to show you the level of quality the video has.
Capra shot a total of 5 different scenes in Rio De Janeiro, Brazil using a PhaseOne IQ180 digital camera back to capture 80 megapixel photos. Each of the individual RAW photos was 10328×7760 pixels in resolution.
The PhaseOne IQ180 digital back attached to a camera.
“I tried to keep the shots as close to raw as possible so you may see some dust spots, noise, and manual exposure changes I made while shooting,” Capra says. “Each shot was very minimally processed and included curves, input sharpening, saturation adjustments.”
Each of the 5 shot sequences starts off with a full resolution view of the entire scene, scaled down to fit 1080p (a 14% scale). The next shot is a 50% scale to show more detail. Finally, we’re treated to a number of 100% zooms showing the full extend of the detail captured in the time-lapse.
As an example, here is the first shot seen in the time-lapse, zoomed out all the way to show the whole scene:
…and here’s the 100% zoomed-in view that shows a small little section at the top of the hill:
“As you can see, the quality and detail holds up extremely well, it’s pretty amazing,” writes Capra. “You can literally get about 8-10 solid 1920×1080 shots out of a single shot. You can also get about 5-6 solid 4K shots out of a single shot.”
Tobey Maguire, who starred in last decade’s Spider-Man movies. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Spider-Man will appear in a Marvel superhero movie for the first time after the Disney-owned studio signed a deal with rival Sony to integrate the comic-book crimefighter into the same big screen universe as Iron Man, The Hulk, Thor and Captain America.
The landmark move, widely rumoured after Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2 received only middling reviews and picked up a franchise-worst box-office haul last year, also looks likely to mean the instalment of a new actor as the masked wall crawler. The Hollywood Reporter signals that Britain’s Andrew Garfield will be replaced as Spider-Man, while Marvel and Sony referenced a “new” iteration of the character.
“Under the deal, the new Spider-Man will first appear in a Marvel film from Marvel’s Cinematic Universe (MCU),” said the studios in a statement. “Sony Pictures will thereafter release the next instalment of its $4bn Spider-Man franchise, on July 28, 2017, in a film that will be co-produced by Kevin Feige and his expert team at Marvel and Amy Pascal, who oversaw the franchise launch for the studio 13 years ago. Together, they will collaborate on a new creative direction for the web slinger. Sony Pictures will continue to finance, distribute, own and have final creative control of the Spider-Man films.”
The statement continued: “Marvel and Sony Pictures are also exploring opportunities to integrate characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) into future Spider-Man films. The new relationship follows a decade of speculation among fans about whether Spider-Man – who has always been an integral and important part of the larger Marvel Universe in the comic books – could become part of the Marvel Universe on the big screen. Spider-Man has more than 50 years of history in Marvel’s world, and with this deal, fans will be able to experience Spider-Man taking his rightful place among other Super Heroes in the MCU.”
Marvel has had spectacular success in recent years with its policy of integrating multiple superheroes into the same movie. The 2012 comic-book ensemble The Avengers took more than $1.5bn around the world, the third-highest-grossing film of all time. Upcoming sequel The Avengers: Age of Ultron is being tipped to exceed even those gargantuan figures.
Meanwhile, Sony has seen Spider-Man’s box office slide from a peak of $890m for 2007’s Spider-Man 3 to The Amazing Spider-Man 2’s $708m last year.
The Hollywood Reporter suggests Spider-Man could now appear in the upcoming Captain America film Civil War, which is due in 2016. Peter Parker’s alter-ego plays a prominent part in the comic-book story arc that inspired the movie.
“Marvel’s involvement will hopefully deliver the creative continuity and authenticity that fans demand from the MCU,” said Marvel supreme Kevin Feige. “I am equally excited for the opportunity to have Spider-Man appear in the MCU, something which both we at Marvel, and fans alike, have been looking forward to for years.”
Added Sony chairman and CEO Michael Lynton: “This is the right decision for the franchise, for our business, for Marvel, and for the fans.”
Delta Airlines Facebook page was apparently hacked Tuesday.
Instead of the normal stream of post about travel destinations, an obscene link was published on the page under the title, "10 Reasons Why Girls Dont Give Bl--j--s."
About an hour after the initial post, a second obscene link was posted.
Shortly after the second post, Delta removed the objectionable links.
The Airlines has since apologized on Twitter saying its Facebook page has been compromised.
In a statement to Business Insider, Delta said:
Within an hour, Delta was able to work with Facebook to remove objectionable and offensive content posted to the airline’s page, Tuesday afternoon. Delta apologizes for the unauthorized content that appeared on the site. We are investigating the source of the hack and will incorporate any key lessons to strengthen our social media security measures. No other Delta social media platforms were compromised.
The @Delta Facebook page was compromised. We sincerely apologize for the unauthorized, objectionable content that was posted. — Delta (@Delta) February 10, 2015
Donation could be biggest amount given by an individual to a public hospital
Never one to do things by halves, Mark Zuckerberg and his wife Priscilla Chan are reportedly donating $75 million to a San Francisco hospital – believed to be the largest sum given to a public hospital by an individual.
The Facebook founder and CEO is donating the money to the San Francisco General Hospital Foundation to help fund critical equipment and technology for the public hospital’s new emergency room.
In an announcement made on Facebook (of course), Zuckerberg said: “We believe everyone deserves access to high quality health care. The General is the main public hospital in San Francisco, and it is an important safety net for our community.
"More than 70 per cent of the families it serves are uninsured or underinsured. It is open to anyone who lives, works in or visits the city.”
He said Chan had completed her medical residency at the facility as a paediatrician, an experience that had "deepened our commitment to help these families".
Zuckerberg even managed to reference Facebook in his message, adding: “We are so fortunate that our work in connecting the world through Facebook has given us the ability to give back to our local community, our country and the world -- and to work to improve education, health care and internet access for everyone.”
San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee described the donation as “incredibly gracious”.
“They have made sure, in the future, there will be enough money to maintain and modernise it,” he told SF Gate. ”They want a public hospital as important as this to be at world-class standards every year.”
“This precedent-setting grant is a key piece necessary to the completion and opening of the new building in December,” Amanda Heier, the foundation’s chief executive officer added.
Filipino team Rave — made up of mostly Pinoys based in South Korea — took home $100,000 or P6.6 MILLION as they landed fifth place in the DoTA 2 Asian Championships in China. That is awesome!
According to Rappler, the members of the team are composed of Ryo “ryOyr” Hasegawa, Jio “Jeyo” Madayag, Djardel “Chrissy” Mampusti, Mark “Cast” Pilar, and Michael “nb” Ross.
Team Rave landed a fifth place finish when they lost to Chinese team Big God (BG) in their final match, in a best-of-3 series, pitting them at two matches to one.
Dota 2 Philippines congratulated the team on Twitter after their stint:
Get to know more about these awesome pro gamers here:
WARNING: VERY GRAPHIC VIDEO. DO NOT PROCEED IF YOU FIND THIS DISTURBING.
This is a video of the actual encounter between MILF/BIFF forces and SAF operatives in Mamasapano, Maguindanao.
SANTIAGO, Chile (AP) — Chilean mountaineers say they have found the wreckage of a plane that crashed in the Andes 54 years ago, killing 24 people, including eight members of a professional soccer team.
The group said they came across the wreckage at an altitude of about 10,500 feet about 215 miles south of Santiago, the capital. Expedition member Leonardo Albornoz told Chile's Channel 7 they're keeping the exact site secret to prevent looting.
The disappearance of the Douglas DC-3 carrying members of the top-division Chilean team Green Cross on April 3, 1961 was one of the great unsolved mysteries in the South American country and at the time stunned the sporting world.
The club had played an away match in Osorno in the Copa de Chile and was returning to Santiago. The team and staff were spread over two flights. One of the planes reached the Chilean capital and the other apparently vanished.
Rescuers spent fruitless weeks searching for the missing plane and symbolic funerals for the missing players drew huge crowds in Chile.
"It was a breathtaking moment and we felt all kinds of sensations. One could feel the energy of the place and breathe the pain," Albornoz said of apparent discovering the wreckage.
The mountaineers said they could see a good part of the fuselage without needing to dig it out and found scattered debris and bones. The location of the wreckage was not where official publications indicated it should be.
Green Cross played in Chile's first division until it was dissolved in 1965.
Scene of the Crime Operatives (SOCO) carry the body of one of the five members of a Taiwanese family who were found dead inside their house in San Juan City yesterday morning. (Michael Varcas)
Business losses could have driven a family of five to commit mass suicide in their condominium unit in San Juan, a police official said yesterday.
A suicide note allegedly written by one of the victims mentioned financial difficulties, according to city police chief Senior Superintendent Ariel Arcinas.
The bodies of Luis Hsieh, 53, a native of Taiwan; his Filipina wife Roxanne and their children Amanda, 18; Jeffrey 13; and John, 12; were found in their unit at Midland Park Manor Condominium at around 9 a.m. Saturday.
The legs of Hsieh and Roxanne were bound together, with the other end of the rope in Hsieh’s left hand. Below the couple’s bed were the bodies of Jeffrey and John while Amanda was found in her bedroom.
The victims all had their heads covered with plastic sheets.
According to Arcinas, the victims were found to have been frothing at the mouth but the crime laboratory of the Philippine National Police (PNP) has yet to determine what caused their deaths.
Arcinas said Amanda was a student at Ateneo de Manila University while Jeffrey and John studied in Xavier School.
Policemen recovered two suicide notes, one addressed to the homeowners’ association and another to a close friend and neighbor, Dr. Grace Tan Chua.
Chua was asked to cremate their bodies immediately.
Arcinas said the Hsieh family was involved in the export and import of handicrafts to Taiwan. The main office of their business is in Guadalupe, Makati City and they have several shops in Metro Manila.
Relatives of the victims told Arcinas that the family business is down but did not mention how much the business had been losing.
According to Arcinas, there are indicators that family had indeed committed mass suicide.
“The door of the master’s bedroom was not locked,” Arcinas said. This could mean that the family members wanted their bodies to be immediately found, he said.
Despite the mass suicide theory, however, Arcinas said there would be a deeper investigation of the deaths.
Apparently, a Filipino named Edgar Navarro is one of five lucky winners from all over the world who will go on a date AND be in a movie scene with Japanese sexy film star, Sora Aoi!
Must be just his luck, because their names were drawn from an electronic raffle, which he just joined over the internet. The other winners come from India, Bangladesh, Thailand, and Brazil.
Who is Sora Aoi??
Well, she’s a popular Japanese adult film actress and nude model who has a huge international fanbase. No wonder she’s got guys all over the world jumping through hoops to be in a movie with her!
Edgar and the other winners will be entitled to a free trip to Tokyo, 200,000 yen or 75,000 pesos, and will join Sora Aoi in two scenes. For his part, Edgar will be playing a janitor and Aoi’s secret follower in two separate scenes, at a college film setting! Sounds… exciting!
This contest was part of S1 No.1 Style Studio’s tenth anniversary, a popular Japanese adult film site.
For what it’s worth, he seems to be happy… and we’re kinda, sorta interested in seeing how this is going to go!
What do you think of this? If you were to star in a scene with a celebrity, who would it be?
TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Maxxzandra Ford said she realized during delivery that she was giving birth to an unusually large baby, but had no idea her son was 14.1 pounds. It was a double surprise for the Florida mom who didn't even realize she was pregnant until her third trimester.
Ford said her "feet never swelled, never was really that tired, my back didn't hurt so obviously I didn't think anything of it," Ford told TV station WFLA.
But Ford said she was rapidly gaining weight last fall. That's when doctors confirmed she was more than eight months along. Ford, who also has a 1-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter, initially thought she was having twins.
After 18 hours of labor, Ford naturally delivered Avery at St. Joseph's Women's Hospital in Tampa on Jan. 29. Hospital officials say Avery is the heaviest born at the hospital, and one of the largest-ever born in the state.
"I was cussing up a storm," during delivery, Ford said.
"I was like, 'Oh my goodness,' and they were like 'Stop pushing. Stop pushing," she told WFTS.
"When I felt his head come out I knew he was bigger than 10 pounds," said Ford, whose other children weighed nine and 10 pounds at birth.
His father said he's a linebacker in the making.
"When I finally did get to hold him, I loved it," Ford said. "I just melted."
Avery, who has a full head of hair, remains in neonatal intensive care but is expected to go home soon.
"They can have some difficulties getting out of the birth canal and there can be some residual effects from that," said Dr. Jenelle Ferry, a neonatologist who is taking care of him. "They can initially have some problems with breathing, regulating their blood sugars and then problems with eating."
More than 60 decomposing bodies have been found in an abandoned Mexican crematorium after neighbours complained to authorities about a foul smell coming from the building.
The 61 bodies, most of them male, were discovered in a funeral home near the popular resort of Acapulco. It had been closed for about a year, according to a government official.
Guerrero state prosecutor Miguel Angel Godinez confirmed the number of bodies in comments to local media.
Many of the bodies were covered with sheets and had been doused with quicklime, apparently to reduce the odour of rotting flesh.
Some of the bodies appeared to have been there for as long as a year, but others could have been placed at the site more recently, the official said.
The state of Guerrero has been shaken by drug-related violence, including the disappearance of 43 students who were allegedly rounded up on September 26 and handed over to a drug gang.
Federal investigators say the students, who were last seen in Iguala, about 170km north of Acapulco, were killed and their remains burned at a rubbish dump.
There were no immediate signs that the bodies found at the funeral home were connected to the case of the missing students or any other crime.
Yahoo Finance UK/AP Photo/Seth Wenig - Nick Woodman holds a GoPro camera in his mouth as he celebrates his company's IPO at the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, June 26, 2014
From catching waves in Hawaii, base jumping in Utah or skiing the Austrian Alps, the must-have gadget for today’s adrenaline junkies is a GoPro.
Billed as the world's most versatile camera, a GoPro allows extreme sports enthusiast to capture their every move while social media users live vicariously through the daredevil stuntmen.
The tiny camera has made its founder Nicholas Woodman a billionaire – and he’s yet to turn 40. An adrenaline junkie himself, Woodman is worth around $2.9bn (£1.9bn) according to Forbes.
For the uninitiated, a GoPro is a small but high quality video camera that can be worn by the user in several different ways or attached to sporting equipment such as mountain bikes, skis and surfboards. The camera can shoot high quality video footage or still photographs at predefined intervals.
October 2012 saw skydiver Felix Baumgartner use a GoPro to record the world’s highest sky-dive, and the cameras are routinely used by nature channels such as National Geographic and The Discovery Channel.
But it’s the fact that GoPro has a price point that makes the cameras accessible to the mainstream which is largely responsible for the gadget’s success – you can pick up a GoPro Hero for under £100, although more complex models cost more.
GoPro wasn’t Woodman’s first business venture. He set up Funbug in 1999 as a gaming and marketing platform that gave users the chance to win cash prizes. Investors piled $3.9m (£2.56m) into the venture during the dot-com frenzy. The subsequent bubble bursting saw the company fail and was one of the era’s biggest disaster stories.
To rejuvenate, 2001 saw Woodman take a five-month trip to Indonesia and Australia and this is when the idea for the GoPro took hold. A keen surfer, Woodman longed for a camera which he could strap to his wrist to record barrels, backhands and hang-tens.
GoPro started life as a strap to attach existing cameras to surfers’ wrists with the first model made out of surfboard leashes and rubber bands. Woodman later honed his idea and decided to build the wrist strap, camera and device casing all in one package.
The first prototype was built using his mum’s sewing machine and a drill, with the first 35mm still camera debuting at San Diego's Action Sports Retailer trade show in 2004. Initially sold in surf shops and shopping channel QVC, the GoPro soon caught on among extreme sport enthusiasts.
Some of the company’s starting capital came from selling belts made of shells and beads, which Woodman and his then girlfriend Jill (now his wife) bought in Indonesia. The couple brought 600 belts back to the US and sold them at a $10,000 (£6,575) profit. Woodman invested a total of $30,000 (£19,725) in the project under the company name of Woodman Labs.
But Woodman’s story isn’t one of rags to riches – he had significant financial support from his family too; his mother invested $35,000 (£23,000) at start-up stage while his father was a prominent Silicon Valley investment banker who later invested $200,000 (£131,500) in the company.
By the end of its first year, GoPro had sold $150,000 (£98,613) worth of cameras with Woodman hiring an old college friend to help him market the product to surf shops and other retailers. Soon it was clear that the video camera would be just as useful on land as well as water and GoPro’s sales increased as it was sold to mountain bikers and skiers.
The GoPro Hero 3+ camera [Joe Giddens/PA Archive/Press Association Images]
By 2006 the camera had moved on from just taking still photographs. Additional video capabilities, and later audio capabilities, saw its popularity grow. 2006 brought $800,000 (£525,934) in revenue, while the following year saw sales quadruple to $3.4 m (£2.24m).
Rounds of venture capitalist funding between 2010 and 2012 followed, the most notable being $200m (£132m) from Foxconn in December 2012. The Chinese electronics manufacturer’s investment boosted the company’s worth to about $2.25bn (£1.48bn) and propelled Woodman, who still owns a large chunk of the company, into Forbes’ billionaires list.
In 2012 the company sold 2.3 million cameras and grossed $521m (£343m). By now it had become the highest-grossing digital imaging brand at US retailer Best Buy, overtaking Sony for the first time.
GoPro was valued at almost $3bn (£1.97bn) when it floated in June 2014. Shares were initially sold at $24 (£16) with double-digit percentage gains each day for several days after the initial public offering (IPO).
Despite considerable venture capitalist investment, a large part of GoPro is still owned by Woodman and his family. Both his sisters and both his parents are multi-millionaires due to their respective shareholdings in the company.
Today users can take professional quality HD video and save their exploits to a memory card or wirelessly transfer them to a GoPro app on a smartphone or tablet. GoPro maintains an impressive 94% share of the action-camera market, although this could come under threat from competitors such as Garmin’s Virb.
But for now GoPro’s riding high – on waves, mountains and in the stock market where shares are worth around $48 (£32), twice its IPO price.
A mummified monk thought to be more than 200 years old is "not dead," but actually in a state of "very deep meditation," according to Buddhist monk and doctor to the Dalai Lama, Dr. Barry Kerzin.
Kerzin claims that the monk is in a spiritual state called "tukdam," and is just one step from becoming a real-life Buddha, the Siberian Times reported.
The mummified remains were discovered in Mongolia's Songino Khairkhan province on Jan. 27, and delivered to the National Centre of Forensic Expertise in Ulan Bator.
Covered in cattle skin, the monk was found still sitting with his legs folded in lotus position. Initial speculation suggests he may have been a teacher to the late Lama Dashi-Dorzho Itigilov, a spiritual leader of Russia's Buddhists whose preserved body serves as a cultural artifact.
Since the monk's discovery, Mongolian police have revealed that the body had been stolen from a cave in the Kobdsk region, and was set to be sold on the black market. Police have since arrested the man who stole the body, and hid it in his Ulan Bator home.
Indonesian rescue workers unload bodies taken from the wreckage of AirAsia flight QZ8501
Reuters/Beawiharta
Divers have recovered a body they believe to be that of the French co-pilot of the AirAsia flight QZ8501, which crashed into the sea off Indonesia last December with 162 people on board.
The body that is believed to be that of Remi Plesel was found in the front part of the fuselage during a search operation on Friday.
It is in poor condition due to its time in the water but is wearing a uniform with a co-pilot’s insignia.
"It is likely the body of the French co-pilot, wearing uniform with three stripes on [the] shoulder," search and rescue coordinator SB Supriyadi told the AFP news agency.
A formal confirmation will be given after the Disaster Victims Identification (DVI) team finishes identifying the body, he explained.
The AirAsia A320-200 crashed into the sea when flying between the Indonesian city of Surabaya and Singapore on 28 December.
It was later found 30 metres under water.
Indonesian investigators last month said that Plesel was flying the plane at the time of the crash, rather than Captain Iriyanto, an experienced former fighter pilot.
His family insist he was an "excellent" flyer.
Divers also found three bodies in the main body of the plane on Friday, bringing the total number retrieved to 101, Supriyadi said.
Rescuers are still trying to raise the fuselage from the seabed using giant inflatable bags, although previous attempts have failed.
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