Archive November 6, 2025

Japan has deployed troops to help counter a surge of bear attacks that have terrified residents in a mountainous region in the northern prefecture of Akita.

In the last seven months, at least 12 people have been killed and more than 100 injured in bear attacks across Japan, according to Ministry of the Environment statistics at the end of October.

The military move on Wednesday comes as these reports of sometimes deadly encounters with brown bears and Asiatic black bears are being documented almost daily before hibernation season, as the bears forage for food. They have been seen near schools, train stations, supermarkets and at a hot springs resort.

The growing bear population’s encroachment into residential areas is happening in a region with a rapidly ageing and declining human population, with few people trained to hunt the animals. The government has estimated the overall bear population at more than 54,000.

Soldiers, however, will not open fire on the bears after the Ministry of Defense and Akita prefecture signed an agreement Wednesday that troops will set box traps with food, transport local hunters and help dispose of dead bears.

“Every day, bears intrude into residential areas in the region and their impact is expanding,” Deputy Chief Cabinet Secretary Fumitoshi Sato told reporters. “Responses to the bear problem are an urgent matter.”

The operation began in a forested area in Kazuno city, where a number of bear sightings and injuries have been reported. White-helmeted soldiers wearing bulletproof vests and carrying bear spray and net launchers set up a bear trap near an orchard.

Takahiro Ikeda, an orchard operator, said bears have eaten more than 200 of his apples that were ready for harvest. “My heart is broken,” he told NHK television.

Defense Minister Shinjiro Koizumi said Tuesday the bear mission aims to help secure people’s daily lives, but that service members’ primary mission is national defence and they cannot provide unlimited support for the bear response.

In Akita prefecture, which has a population of about 880,000, bears have attacked more than 50 people since May, killing at least four, according to the local government, with most attacks occurring in residential areas.

An older woman who went mushroom hunting in the forest was found dead in an apparent attack over the weekend in Yuzawa city. Another older woman in Akita city was killed after encountering a bear while working on a farm in late October. A newspaper deliveryman was attacked and injured in Akita city on Tuesday.

China’s carbon emissions are expected to peak later than previously forecast, a survey of climate experts finds.

Only one in five surveyed experts believe China’s emissions have already peaked or will peak this year, the fourth edition of Chinaʼs Climate Transition Outlook showed on Thursday.

Seven in 10 experts said they expected emissions to peak by the end of the decade with 2028 chosen as the likely peak year by the greatest number of respondents, according to the survey.

In 2024’s survey, 44 percent of respondents said they expected emissions to peak in 2025 or earlier.

The survey is conducted annually by the Centre for Research on Energy and Clean Air and the International Society for Energy Transition Studies, based in Helsinki, Finland, and Sydney, Australia, respectively.

This year’s edition surveyed 68 climate analysts spanning universities, government departments, and the energy and sustainable development sectors.

China’s climate policies are closely watched worldwide because the country is the biggest single emitter of greenhouse gases.

Beijing’s climate policies are viewed as especially critical in the context of the United States’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in January by President Donald Trump.

The accord, adopted by 194 countries and the European Union in 2015, calls for the rise in the average global temperature to be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels.

China in September announced it would lower its emissions by 7 to 10 percent from their peak by 2035, marking the first time it had set out a target for cutting them outright.

Climate experts said China’s target falls far short of the action needed to avert catastrophic climate change although many analysts believe the country is likely to exceed its goal.

The Philippines’ disaster agency has confirmed that at least 114 people have been killed by Typhoon Kalmaegi, with another 127 people still missing, as President Ferdinand Marcos Jr declared a state of emergency and warned of another incoming super typhoon.

The worst may also be yet to come with Kalmaegi, as meteorologists with the United States military’s Joint Typhoon Warning Center (JTWC) reported that the storm had regained strength as it now bears down on Vietnam’s central regions.

In its most recent alert on Thursday morning at 10am local time in Vietnam (03:00 GMT), the JTWC said that Kalmaegi is “barrelling towards the Vietnamese coast and reaching peak intensity”.

Upgrading the storm to Category 4, the JTWC said “Typhoon Kalmaegi will continue rapid progress … and slam into the Vietnamese coast” just north of the city of Quy Nhon in central Vietnam.

The typhoon, named Tino locally, devastated large areas of the Philippines as it made landfall in eight areas in the centre of the country on Tuesday, in what is officially the deadliest natural disaster to hit the Southeast Asian archipelago nation this year.

Scenes of widespread destruction have begun to emerge from the hardest-hit Philippine province of Cebu, from where the storm receded on Wednesday.

Many of the more than 200,000 people who were evacuated have returned to find their homes destroyed, vehicles overturned, and streets blocked with piles of debris.

The arduous cleanup effort has begun, with communities scraping mud from their homes and removing large pieces of debris from the streets.

“The challenge now is debris clearing,” Raffy Alejandro, a senior civil defence official, told local radio news outlet DZBB.

“These need to be cleared immediately, not only to account for the missing who may be among the debris or may have reached safe areas but also to allow relief operations to move forward,” he said.

Talking to news media following his meeting with disaster-response officials, President Marcos described the storm as a “national calamity”. He said declaring a national emergency will give the government “quicker access to some of the emergency funds” and prevent food hoarding and overpricing.

Marcos also warned of another storm approaching the northern Philippines – known internationally as Typhoon Fung-wong, and locally as Uwan – which he said “could be even stronger” than Kalmaegi.

The Philippine Atmospheric, Geophysical, and Astronomical Services Administration (PAGASA) said it expects Fung-wong to develop into a super typhoon by Saturday.

PAGASA said it could enter the Philippine Area of Responsibility late on Friday or early Saturday, and has “an increasing chance of landfall” in northern or central Luzon, the island on which the country’s capital Manila is located.

On Al Jazeera.

Typhoon Kalmaegi #TinoPH has moved away from the Philippines but left a trail of death and destruction. At least 85 people are confirmed dead but that toll is likely to rise. Search and rescue workers are clearing mud and debris to find those who remain missing…… pic.twitter.com/gdX7enp49l

As Kalmaegi moved over the South China Sea in advance of its landfall in Vietnam on Thursday, authorities there have begun mobilising thousands of Vietnamese soldiers to assist in the evacuation of some 350,000 people in the central highland province of Gia Lai.

Authorities have warned that heavy rains and damaging winds will impact several central provinces, potentially causing flooding in low-lying areas and disrupting agricultural activity, including in the key coffee harvest, which is currently under way.