Japan Police Investigate Another Suspected Fatal Bear Attackhttps://english.aawsat.com/varieties/5290312-japan-police-investigate-another-suspected-fatal-bear-attack
Japan Police Investigate Another Suspected Fatal Bear Attack
Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
Japan Police Investigate Another Suspected Fatal Bear Attack
Brown bears at Hexentanzplatz Zoo are given fruit in ice to cool off during a heatwave, in Thale, Germany, Wednesday, June 24, 2026. (Matthias Bein/dpa via AP)
Japanese police are investigating another suspected fatal bear attack, a local official told AFP on Tuesday, as the number of such deaths remains unusually high.
Bear attacks have been on the rise in Japan in recent years, something scientists attribute to a spike in the animals' population and a declining number of people in rural areas.
Authorities in northern Aomori prefecture said on Monday that a man found dead on a mountain that day may have been attacked by a bear.
"Police are still investigating the cause" of the man's death, but bear bite marks had been found on his body, a local official told AFP on Tuesday, not giving his name in line with common practice in Japan.
Fatal maulings in the last three months have jumped fivefold compared to last year, according to government data.
Five people have died due to bear attacks since April, according to separate statistics from the environment ministry.
Publicly available ministry data, dating back to the fiscal year ending March 2018, shows that this year is the first to see more than two deaths in the period from April to June.
A record 13 people were killed by bears in Japan last year, and there has been a jump in encounters as the animals emerge hungry from hibernation.
In the year to March, bear sightings nationwide topped 50,000 -- more than double the previous record set two years earlier, according to official data.
Earlier this month, dozens of police officers, hunters and city officials were deployed in the city of Utsunomiya, north of Tokyo, to catch a bear that roamed the streets for four days, forcing mass school closures.
In the Fukushima region this month, a bear attacked four people at two factories and in a residential area, before escaping hunters.
Carabinieri officers pose with three paintings by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Pierre-Auguste Renoir recovered after they were stolen from the Magnani Rocca Foundation in Mamiano, Italy, in this handout image released on August 14, 2026. Carabinieri/Handout via REUTERS
Italian Police Recover Stolen Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse Worth 9 mn Euros
Carabinieri officers pose with three paintings by Paul Cezanne, Henri Matisse and Pierre-Auguste Renoir recovered after they were stolen from the Magnani Rocca Foundation in Mamiano, Italy, in this handout image released on August 14, 2026. Carabinieri/Handout via REUTERS
Paintings by Renoir, Cezanne and Matisse worth over nine million euros which were stolen from a museum in Italy in March have been recovered, Italian police said Friday.
The paintings were taken by masked thieves from the villa of the Magnani Rocca Foundation, near Parma in northern Italy, in a heist that lasted under three minutes.
Video footage released by the police showed two thieves wearing headlamps and with their faces covered entering the villa by breaking through a window, Reuters reported.
They headed straight into the room where the three paintings hung and took them off the wall, before heading back to the window and passing them through to an accomplice waiting outside.
They made off with "Fish" by Auguste Renoir, "Still Life with Cherries" by Paul Cezanne, and "Odalisque on the Terrace" by Henri Matisse.
The Renoir is worth six million euros, the Cezanne three million and the Matisse some 20,000 euros, police said.
The Magnani Rocca Foundation -- 20 kilometres (12 miles) from Parma -- houses the collection of art historian Luigi Magnani, which also includes works by Durer, Rubens, Van Dyck, Goya and Monet.
The theft is the latest in a series of robberies targeting major museums in Europe.
Last October, thieves broke into the Louvre in Paris -- the most visited museum in the world -- in broad daylight, escaping in less than eight minutes with jewellery worth $102 million.
France and England Battle Multiple Wildfires as Record Heat Grips Europehttps://english.aawsat.com/varieties/5306835-france-and-england-battle-multiple-wildfires-record-heat-grips-europe
An aerial view shows smoke rising from fire-damaged houses, south of Stourbridge town center in central England on August 14, 2026. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP)
France and England Battle Multiple Wildfires as Record Heat Grips Europe
An aerial view shows smoke rising from fire-damaged houses, south of Stourbridge town center in central England on August 14, 2026. (Photo by Darren Staples / AFP)
Firefighters across France and in central England struggled against multiple fires Friday as a new wave of record-breaking heat baked a swath of Europe, their task further complicated by exceptionally parched landscapes.
With France experiencing its driest year ever, a new fire raced through woodlands overnight in the Landes region on the southwest coast. The blaze forced more than 500 people to evacuate their homes in the town of Luglon as hundreds of firefighters deployed to the area, the regional administration said Friday.
It’s one of several fires scorching forests around France this week, including in normally cooler and wetter regions in the north and Brittany. A historic fire devoured forests near Bordeaux last month and pushed a quarter of a million people from their homes.
Meanwhile, efforts to contain a wildfire in Germany were complicated by unexploded World War II munitions, and shifting winds in Croatia spread flames deeper into a coastal suburb and forced more than 1,000 people to flee.
After the UK recorded its hottest day of the year on Thursday, wildfires raced across the West Midlands and saw several houses burned to the ground. They have been “one of the most significant” incidents the region’s fire service has ever dealt with, chief fire officer Simon Tuhill said.
Some 1,017 wildfires have been recorded in England and Wales this year, according to data from the National Fire Chiefs Council.
The fires came on the hottest day of the year, when temperatures reached 38.1 degrees Celsius (100.6 degrees Fahrenheit) in west London.
In France, temperatures Thursday approached 41 C (106 F) in several areas, from Aquitaine in the southwest to the Rhone River valley in the east, according to the national weather service. They were forecast to reach similar levels Friday before dropping over the weekend.
Flames engulf trees as a wildfire burns in Luglon, France, August 14, 2026. REUTERS/Stephanie Lecocq
The historic temperatures are linked to human-caused climate change, and are hitting countries more designed for long cold seasons and ill-equipped for this sort of heat, with limited air conditioning.
Firefighters battle forest fire in Germany All 1,800 residents of the village of Gey in Germany’s North Rhine-Westphalia state were evacuated after a wildfire in the nearby Hürtgen forest threatened to reach their homes. Nearly 300 hectares (1.16 square miles) of forest were ablaze on Friday morning, The Associated Press quoted local authorities as saying.
Unexploded ordnance from World War II in the forest hampered firefighting efforts, German news agency dpa reported. Explosions could be heard as the munitions detonated during the fire, forcing firefighters to stay out of the area for safety.
The fire advanced to within 300 meters (1,000 feet) of Gey, which sits on the edge of the forest near the Belgian border. Overnight a shift in wind direction raised the risk that the flames could reach Gey by morning, prompting officials to order the initial evacuation.
The cause of the blaze remains unknown, and authorities have not ruled out further evacuations in the area.
Hundreds of personnel have been deployed to battle the fire, with the German army sending tanks and firefighting helicopters providing air support.
In Croatia, 14 people were hospitalized, of whom seven remained in life-threatening condition early Friday from a fire that raged overnight by the coastal town of Omis and forced more than 1,000 people to evacuate their homes.
The fire erupted late Thursday in an Omis suburb and quickly spread because of strong wind. Public broadcaster HRT said the blaze came close to the town’s center, and parts of Omis were left without electricity while many cars were burned.
Croatian media published photos from a crowded sports hall in Omis where people crammed on beds and on the floor. Witnesses told HRT that people were jumping into the sea after boats also caught fire.
Firefighters put out the blaze by Friday morning as other crews in planes headed further south toward the Peljesac peninsula where another wildfire broke out overnight.
Meanwhile, in northern Greece, more than 300 vacationers and residents were evacuated by sea Thursday after a wildfire swept through a pine forest and threatened seaside homes, authorities said.
Report: Engine Fragments Caused Ryanair Flight to Lose Pressurehttps://english.aawsat.com/varieties/5306823-report-engine-fragments-caused-ryanair-flight-lose-pressure
This undated photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, shows the shattered window on a Ryanair plane that was broken by a stray engine part shortly after takeoff, causing a man's head to be sucked into the hole. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP)
Report: Engine Fragments Caused Ryanair Flight to Lose Pressure
This undated photo provided by the National Transportation Safety Board on Thursday, Aug. 13, 2026, shows the shattered window on a Ryanair plane that was broken by a stray engine part shortly after takeoff, causing a man's head to be sucked into the hole. (National Transportation Safety Board via AP)
Engine fragments struck a window of a Ryanair plane last month resulting in a man nearly being sucked out of the aircraft mid-flight, according to a preliminary report published Thursday by the US National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB).
A tourist on a flight from Thessaloniki in Greece to Memmingen in Germany on July 16 had his head lodged in a cabin window that had broken off as a result of the breach, and had to be pulled back inside by other passengers.
NTSB said in a preliminary investigation report that the jet's right engine experienced a "fan-blade-out failure" during ascent, meaning a blade in the engine fan broke off.
"Engine fragments breached the fuselage and the cabin depressurized," the report said.
A flight attendant saw that a passenger "was partially lodged in a damaged cabin window, and that the entire window was missing," it continued.
The passenger sustained serious injuries, according to the report.
FILE - The Ryanair desk is seen, Aug. 10, 2018, at the Barajas airport in Madrid, Spain. (AP Photo/Paul White, File)
Investigators said they found bird remains inside the engine, but did not draw any conclusions on why the fan blade broke.
Recounting the incident, a passenger told Radio Thessaloniki that "there was a noise, like a tire bursting."
"We immediately realized there had been a decompression. There were screams... for a moment I thought someone had accidentally opened the emergency door," AFP quoted the woman as saying.
Engine fragments also damaged other parts of the fuselage and the right horizontal stabilizer, the NTSB said.
The full NTSB investigation, which can take up to two years, is under way and a final report remains pending.
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