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.
‘EYE FOR AN EYE’: Two of the men were shot by a male relative of the victims, whose families turned down the opportunity to offer them amnesty, the Supreme Court said Four men were yesterday publicly executed in Afghanistan, the Supreme Court said, the highest number of executions to be carried out in one day since the Taliban’s return to power. The executions in three separate provinces brought to 10 the number of men publicly put to death since 2021, according to an Agence France-Presse tally. Public executions were common during the Taliban’s first rule from 1996 to 2001, with most of them carried out publicly in sports stadiums. Two men were shot around six or seven times by a male relative of the victims in front of spectators in Qala-i-Naw, the center
Incumbent Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa on Sunday claimed a runaway victory in the nation’s presidential election, after voters endorsed the young leader’s “iron fist” approach to rampant cartel violence. With more than 90 percent of the votes counted, the National Election Council said Noboa had an unassailable 12-point lead over his leftist rival Luisa Gonzalez. Official results showed Noboa with 56 percent of the vote, against Gonzalez’s 44 percent — a far bigger winning margin than expected after a virtual tie in the first round. Speaking to jubilant supporters in his hometown of Olon, the 37-year-old president claimed a “historic victory.” “A huge hug
Two Belgian teenagers on Tuesday were charged with wildlife piracy after they were found with thousands of ants packed in test tubes in what Kenyan authorities said was part of a trend in trafficking smaller and lesser-known species. Lornoy David and Seppe Lodewijckx, two 19-year-olds who were arrested on April 5 with 5,000 ants at a guest house, appeared distraught during their appearance before a magistrate in Nairobi and were comforted in the courtroom by relatives. They told the magistrate that they were collecting the ants for fun and did not know that it was illegal. In a separate criminal case, Kenyan Dennis
The US will help bolster the Philippines’ arsenal and step up joint military exercises, Manila’s defense chief said, as tensions between Washington and China escalate. The longtime US ally is expecting a sustained US$500 million in annual defense funding from Washington through 2029 to boost its military capabilities and deter China’s “aggression” in the region, Philippine Secretary of Defense Gilberto Teodoro said in an interview in Manila on Thursday. “It is a no-brainer for anybody, because of the aggressive behavior of China,” Teodoro said on close military ties with the US under President Donald Trump. “The efforts for deterrence, for joint resilience
RSS