THAILAND
Mass-massage record set
About 641 massage therapists mass-massaged 641 people simultaneously for 12 minutes to set a Guinness World Record yesterday at an indoor arena in the capital. The event was organized by the Ministry of Public Health to promote the nation’s massage and spa industry, which generates at least 13 billion baht (US$415 million) annually. The therapists more than doubled the previous record of 263 people being massaged for five minutes. Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra presided over the spectacle and Guinness Records representative Rob Molloy was on hand to certify the feat.
ISRAEL
Sudanese migrants must go
A senior official says the government will start rounding up thousands of unauthorized Sudanese migrants and put them in a detention center if they do not leave the country voluntarily. Interior Minister Eli Yishai says the detentions will begin in mid-October. Yishai told Army Radio yesterday that once migrants cannot work, “they will get sick of being here and will want to leave voluntarily.” Israel is grappling with an unanticipated influx of 60,000 migrants from Africa, including 15,000 from Sudan. The government insists most came to find better lives, not asylum. Most are from Sudan and Eritrea, states with repressive regimes. The government cannot expel them because it has signed an international treaty that bars it from forcibly returning migrants to countries considered liable to persecute them.
UNITED STATES
Visa granted to Thein Sein
President Barack Obama on Wednesday waived visa restrictions for leaders involved in human rights abuses to pave the way for Burmese President Thein Sein’s visit during next month’s UN summit in a show of support for reforms in the country. Without the waiver, Thein Sein would have been confined to a narrow area around the UN headquarters in New York. Obama made the decision “to signal our interest in engaging more closely with him and his government as they continue to undertake reforms,” White House national security spokesman Tommy Vietor said. Myanmar’s opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi is also set to visit the US next month, where she will receive the Congressional Gold Medal, at roughly the same time as Thein Sein.
MEXICO
Court to rule on election
The Federal Electoral Tribunal on Wednesday said it is ready to issue a ruling on legal challenges to the July 1 presidential election. Court officials said it would do so by today. The tribunal’s statement does not say whether it will uphold the results showing a victory for Enrique Pena Nieto of the ruling Institutional Revolutionary Party. The vote was challenged by second-place finisher Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. The leftist claimed Pena Nieto’s party engaged in vote-buying and campaign spending that exceeded legal limits. Pena Nieto has denied those accusations.
PHILIPPINES
Judge accused of tax fraud
The government asked state prosecutors yesterday to indict for tax evasion disgraced former top judge Renato Corona, who was fired in May on graft charges. In a complaint filed before the justice department, internal revenue commissioner Kim Henares said Corona defrauded the government of about 120.5 million pesos (US$2.8 million) in taxes between 2003 and 2010. Also charged were Corona’s daughter and her husband, whom the tax agency said also misdeclared their incomes, assets and net worth.
MEXICO
Man’s body found
A Mexico City man who abandoned his car and tried to walk to safety on a flooded street on Thursday last week has been found dead in a subterranean storm drain several blocks away. City civil defense spokeswoman Macarena Quiroz says the body of Gerardo Ortiz Gutierrez has been identified by relatives. He was apparently sucked into an open manhole cover last week. Quiroz on Wednesday said workers traced the drain route to the nearest grating meant to filter out refuse. They found the body there, but had to break open the drain pipes to recover the corpse.
UNITED STATES
Centenarian hits children
A 100-year-old man backed his car on to a sidewalk and hit 11 people, including nine children, across from an elementary school in South Los Angeles just after classes had ended on Wednesday, authorities said. Four of the children were in critical condition when firefighters arrived, but they were stabilized and were in serious condition at a hospital, city fire Captain Jaime Moore said. Everyone was expected to survive, he said. The powder blue Cadillac backed slowly into the group of parents and children buying snacks from a sidewalk vendor, and the crowd banged on his windows and screamed for him to stop, but not before some of the children were trapped under the car, witnesses said. Police identified the driver as Preston Carter and said he was being very cooperative. He said he has a driver’s license and will be 101 years old Sept. 5. “My brakes failed. It was out of control,” Carter told KCAL-TV. Carter was pulling out of the grocery store parking lot, but instead of backing into the street, he backed onto the sidewalk, police Captain George Rodriguez said.
UNITED STATES
Ileana now a hurricane
Ileana swirled into a hurricane off Mexico’s Pacific coast late on Wednesday, though it posed no threat to land, US forecasters said. As it blew over the open waters 540km southwest of the southern tip of the Baja California peninsula, Hurricane Ileana had top winds of 120kph, making it a category one hurricane on the five-point Saffir-Simpson scale. The National Hurricane Center said Ileana would weaken in a day or two.
UNITED STATES
Swarm of quakes continues
The southern California town of Brawley has taken the unusual step of declaring a state of emergency on Tuesday after a swarm of earthquakes rattled nearly 20 mobile homes off their blocks and forced a slaughterhouse to close, the mayor said on Wednesday. Brawley Mayor George Nava said the earthquake swarm is a unique case because it has lasted for days and caused millions of dollars in damage. The quakes began on Saturday evening, climaxed the next day with a 5.5 temblor, according to the US Geological Survey, and are still continuing. Geologists say there have been hundreds in total. Local businesses have suffered millions of dollars in losses from closures and from customers staying away, Nava said. Officials with surrounding Imperial County made a similar declaration on Wednesday.
UNITED KINGDOM
Cow stuck up a tree
A cow had to be rescued by fire services in northern England after it tumbled down a 30m river embankment and got stuck in a tree. Fire crews in Cumbria were surprised to receive a call to rescue the cow, which had toppled 10m down a slope of the River Leith before a tree broke its fall.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not