Dalai Lama: China Training Women to Poison Me

The Dalai Lama fears assassination by the Chinese—and being eaten by a shark after a plane crash. The revelations emerged in wide-ranging interview published yesterday in the Telegraph. Disciples have uncovered information that Chinese agents in Tibet are training Tibetan women to pose as devotees in a plot to poison him, he said. The women, carrying poison on their scarves or on their hair, would seek his blessing, and he would be poisoned when he touches them, he explained.

China has dismissed the Lama's poison story as "groundless," the BBC reports. "His sensational allegations are not even worth refuting," a foreign ministry rep said. But poison isn't the Lama's only fear. He's also terrified of falling into the sea in a plane crash, and being eaten by a shark. "Long flights, those I really feared, but now I’m used to them," he says. "The fear now is that I never learned to swim, so if the plane crashes on water, I would immediately go deep under the sea and be enjoyed by a shark. That I really fear." (More Tibet stories.)