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.
An American scientist convicted of lying to US authorities about payments from China while he was at Harvard University has rebuilt his research lab in Shenzhen, China, to pursue technology the Chinese government has identified as a national priority: embedding electronics into the human brain. Charles Lieber, 67, is among the world’s leading researchers in brain-computer interfaces. The technology has shown promise in treating conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and restoring movement in paralyzed people. It also has potential military applications: Scientists at the Chinese People’s Liberation Army have investigated brain interfaces as a way to engineer super soldiers by boosting
Indonesian police have arrested 13 people after shocking images of alleged abuse against small children at a daycare center went viral, sparking outrage across the nation, officials said on Monday. Police on Friday last week raided Little Aresha, a daycare center in Yogyakarta on Java island, following a report from a former employee. CCTV footage circulating on social media showed children, most younger than two, lying on the floor wearing only diapers, their hands and feet bound with rags. The police have confirmed that the footage is authentic. Police said they also found 20 children crammed into a room just 3m by 3m. “So
A grieving mother has ended her life at a clinic in Switzerland four years after the death of her only child. Wendy Duffy, 56, a physically healthy woman, died at the Pegasos clinic in Basel after struggling to cope with the death of her 23-year-old son, Marcus. The former care worker, from the West Midlands, England, had previously attempted to take her own life. The case comes as assisted dying would not become law in England and Wales after proposed legislation, branded “hopelessly flawed” by opponents, ran out of time. Ruedi Habegger, the founder of Pegasos, described Duffy’s death as
From post offices and parks to stations and even the summit of Mount Fuji, Japan’s vending machines are ubiquitous, but with the rapid pace of inflation cooling demand for their drinks, operators are being forced to rethink the business. Last month beverage giant DyDo Group Holdings announced it would remove about 20,000 vending machines — about 7 percent of their stock nationwide — by January next year, to “reconstruct a profitable network.” Pokka Sapporo Food & Beverage, based in Nagoya, also said last month it would sell its 40,000-machine operation to Osaka-based Lifedrink Co. “The strength of the vending machine
RSS