A bear that rampaged through a Japanese supermarket for two days was lured out with food coated in honey, trapped and due to be killed yesterday, local officials said.
Japan has a growing problem with bears, with a record six human fatalities from attacks and more than 9,000 of the animals killed in the past year.
In the latest incident, police received an emergency call early on Saturday that a bear had wounded a 47-year-old man in a supermarket in Akita, on Japan’s main island of Honshu.
Photo: AFP / Picchio Wildlife Research Center
A gash on the man’s head “will take at least a week to heal once his stitches get removed, according to a doctor,” a police spokesman said.
The supermarket was evacuated with the animal left inside, where it laid waste to the meat department, the Asahi Shimbun reported.
Finally early yesterday, the bear walked into a trap containing “rice bran, bananas, apples and bread, all coated with honey,” an Akita official said. “We prepared two traps, and one of them captured the bear on the backyard side of the supermarket.”
The animal was due to be killed later yesterday, the police spokesman said.
Human fatalities from bears in the year to March 31 included an elderly woman attacked in her garden and a fisherman whose severed head was found by a lake.
The period had the highest number of deaths since the Japanese government started collecting data from 2006 to 2007. More than 200 other people were involved in incidents with bears.
Three other people have been killed since March 31.
Experts say the dwindling human population in rural areas of Japan is causing hungry bears to come closer to villages and towns.
Other factors include climate change affecting the omnivores’ food supply and their hibernation times. This summer tied for Japan’s warmest on record.
Japanese media have reported that authorities are having problems finding enough hunters to shoot the animals, citing Japan’s declining and aging population.
VAGUE: The criteria of the amnesty remain unclear, but it would cover political violence from 1999 to today, and those convicted of murder or drug trafficking would not qualify Venezuelan Acting President Delcy Rodriguez on Friday announced an amnesty bill that could lead to the release of hundreds of prisoners, including opposition leaders, journalists and human rights activists detained for political reasons. The measure had long been sought by the US-backed opposition. It is the latest concession Rodriguez has made since taking the reins of the country on Jan. 3 after the brazen seizure of then-Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro. Rodriguez told a gathering of justices, magistrates, ministers, military brass and other government leaders that the ruling party-controlled Venezuelan National Assembly would take up the bill with urgency. Rodriguez also announced the shutdown
Civil society leaders and members of a left-wing coalition yesterday filed impeachment complaints against Philippine Vice President Sara Duterte, restarting a process sidelined by the Supreme Court last year. Both cases accuse Duterte of misusing public funds during her term as education secretary, while one revives allegations that she threatened to assassinate former ally Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. The filings come on the same day that a committee in the House of Representatives was to begin hearings into impeachment complaints against Marcos, accused of corruption tied to a spiraling scandal over bogus flood control projects. Under the constitution, an impeachment by the
Exiled Tibetans began a unique global election yesterday for a government representing a homeland many have never seen, as part of a democratic exercise voters say carries great weight. From red-robed Buddhist monks in the snowy Himalayas, to political exiles in megacities across South Asia, to refugees in Australia, Europe and North America, voting takes place in 27 countries — but not China. “Elections ... show that the struggle for Tibet’s freedom and independence continues from generation to generation,” said candidate Gyaltsen Chokye, 33, who is based in the Indian hill-town of Dharamsala, headquarters of the government-in-exile, the Central Tibetan Administration (CTA). It
A Virginia man having an affair with the family’s Brazilian au pair on Monday was found guilty of murdering his wife and another man that prosecutors say was lured to the house as a fall guy. Brendan Banfield, a former Internal Revenue Service law enforcement officer, told police he came across Joseph Ryan attacking his wife, Christine Banfield, with a knife on the morning of Feb. 24, 2023. He shot Ryan and then Juliana Magalhaes, the au pair, shot him, too, but officials argued in court that the story was too good to be true, telling jurors that Brendan Banfield set
RSS