Monk Bidness

Five Thai Buddhist monks have been defrocked and fined after a brawl with monks from a nearby temple...

"When an ordinary person is given a middle-finger sign, he will be mad. So am I," the paper quoted one of the defrocked monks, Boonlert Boonpan, as saying after the brawl in the north-eastern state of Nong Khai yesterday.

Boonlert said he usually carried a knuckle-duster in his shoulder bag during the morning collection of alms on which Buddhist monks depend...