KITA-AKITA: The sense of fear is palpable in parts of northern Japan, where some locals have fastened bells to their bags hoping the noise will keep bears away, while signs warn people to be on guard.

The animals have killed a record 13 people across the country since April, with a steady flow of reports of bears entering homes, roaming near schools and rampaging in supermarkets.

“We hear news almost every day about people being attacked or injured,” said 28-year-old Kakeru Matsuhashi, a traditional “Matagi” hunter, as he walked through a forest clutching a knife.

“It’s becoming something that feels personal, and it’s simply frightening,” he added in the northern prefecture of Akita, an area hit by a series of attacks.

This year, the number of fatalities is double the previous record of 2023-24, with five months of the fiscal year still to go.

Data is patchy from certain regions, but in recent years, Japan has seen among the highest number of fatal attacks globally.

Keiji Minatoya, also from Akita, knows this too well — a bear leapt from his garage, pinned him to the ground and sank its teeth into his face in 2023.

“I was thinking: ‘This is how I die’,” said 68-year-old Minatoya, who managed to escape and take refuge inside his home.

The government is now scrambling to deal with the surge in attacks, which scientists say is being driven by a fast-growing bear population combined with this year’s bad acorn harvest, leaving some mountains “overcrowded” with hungry bears.

Troops have been deployed to provide logistical help for trapping and hunting bears, while riot police will be allowed to use rifles to shoot the animals, which can weigh half a tonne and outrun a human.

The victims include a 67-year-old man in Iwate, a region next to Akita, whose body was found outside his home, with animal bite marks and scars.

Hunters were called to the scene and shot a bear near the house.

Also in Iwate, a 60-year-old man is thought to have been attacked while cleaning an outdoor bath at a remote hot spring resort. His body was discovered in nearby woods.

Official data show the number of wounded is also on course to be a record, tallying over 100 people in the six months to September.

‘Overcrowded’ with bears

A major issue is the expanding bear population, which is growing fast due to an abundance of food — including acorns, deer and boars — under the influence of a warming climate, experts say.

Japan’s brown bear population has doubled in three decades, and now stands at around 12,000, while the number of Asian black bears has climbed on the country’s main Honshu island, reaching 42,000, according to a recent government report.

Some mountains have become “overcrowded”, according to Naoki Ohnishi, researcher at the Forestry and Forest Products Research Institute.

“Put simply, the size of the bear population has gone beyond the capacity of the mountains to hold them,” he said.

Although rising temperatures have led to more frequent bumper crops of acorns, the nuts still produce good and bad harvests every two to five years as part of their normal crop cycle.

This year, as well as in 2023 — the year Minatoya was attacked —there is a poor supply.

While most bears still stay in the mountains, recent bad harvests have led some — together with their cubs — to wander into towns to look for food, said Shinsuke Koike, professor at the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology.

With exposure to humans, cubs in particular become less fearful and develop a taste for farmed produce and common fruits such as persimmon, Koike added.

Steady rural depopulation due to a chronically low birthrate and young people moving to cities has also reduced the human presence at the edges of forests and mountains, blurring the traditional boundaries between people and bears.

“Bear habitats inched closer to human habitats in 2023,” Ohnishi said. “This year, they are coming a step further because they are starting from where they left off.”

A disaster

Hajime Nakae, professor of emergency and critical medicine at the Akita University Hospital, said the frequent bear sightings made him feel like he was “living inside […] a safari park for bears”.

The doctor, who has treated bear injuries for three decades, said the nature of wounds was changing as bears became less afraid of humans.

In encounters years ago, a startled bear may have struck a human in the face before fleeing, but now “they charge at you from about 10 metres and then leap at you”.

He said that without meaningful intervention, he expected bear injuries to increase and spread to other parts of the nation, adding: “We are witnessing a disaster.”

“Thorough culling” to reduce the number of bears is the only effective way to reduce the risk for local people, researcher Ohnishi said.

The government last year added bears to the list of animals subject to population control, reversing protection that had helped bears thrive.

But rural resources are stretched thin and the number of hunters is less than half of what it was in 1980.

As of 2020, the latest statistics available, there were around 220,000, mostly in their 60s or older.

Japan culled more than 9,000 bears in 2023-2024, and over 4,200 between April and September this year. Akita has alone culled over 1,000 so far.

In the immediate future, Japan’s worries should ease, if only temporarily.

Experts Koike and Ohnishi said hibernation patterns had not shifted and the bears would soon go to sleep for the winter.

• US housing official says agency working on 50-year mortgage.
• FHFA weighing “relief” for 5, 10 and 15-year mortgages.
• Right-wing conservatives blast “lifetime” mortgages.
  

US President Donald Trump downplayed possible 50-year mortgages as a way to make houses more affordable than typical 30-year loans, as some supporters balked at a plan that would have homeowners paying more in interest and taking longer to build equity.

“All it means is you pay less per month. You pay it over a longer period of time. It’s not like a big factor. It might help a little bit,” Trump told Fox News‘ “The Ingraham Angle” programme on Monday, blaming his Democratic predecessor Joe Biden and the Federal Reserve’s interest rate policies for home affordability concerns.

Conservative lawmakers, influencers in Trump’s Make America Great Again movement, and economists were among those to dismiss the idea, noting that it would take people longer to actually own their homes. Some analysts, however, said it could boost some investors.

Over the weekend on X, Republican US Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene wrote “In debt forever, in debt for life!” while right-wing activist Mike Cernovich reacted with “Lifetime mortgages.”

Housing affordability is key issue 

US Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Bill Pulte on Saturday said FHFA was “working on” a five-decade-long mortgage after Trump, a Republican, posted an image of himself under the heading “50-year Mortgage” on social media.

“A complete game-changer,” Pulte wrote on X.

“We are also working on ways to give relief in the 5 year mortgage, the 10 year mortgage, and the 15 year mortgage,” he wrote separately on Sunday, offering no details and adding that the agency was examining “assumable or portable mortgages.”

FHFA did not respond to requests for comment.

“Everyone is working together to implement the president’s policies,” White House spokesman Davis Ingle said, adding that any policy changes would be announced by the White House.

US households are grappling with cost-of-living increases even as inflation has grown at a slower rate. Prices took centre stage in last week’s elections that saw Democrats sweep key races as Trump doubles down on his economic agenda.

“I don’t know that they are saying that. I think polls are fake. We have the greatest economy we’ve ever had,” Trump told Fox on Monday.

Affordability could remain a challenge for many prospective buyers as home prices remain high at nearly 60% above pre-COVID-19 levels on average.

While home sales rose in September, pending sales remained unexpectedly flat despite lower mortgage rates, which fell after the Fed cut benchmark interest rates last month.

Despite lower rates, the housing market remains stuck, with the median age of a first-time buyer at a record high of 38 last year – well above the late-20s reading that was typical in the 1980s.

‘Fix the supply side’ 

Trump has urged more drastic Fed rate cuts, with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent blaming current rates for what may already be a recession in the housing sector and White House economic adviser Kevin Hassett on Tuesday saying home prices remained a priority.

The US president may address housing and affordability issues in an upcoming executive order, according to people briefed on the matter.

The average rate on the popular 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is at a one-year low of 6.19% after surging to 7.04% in January, Freddie Mac data showed last month.

“It’s not clear how much this could lower the monthly payment because we don’t know what the interest rate would look like compared to a 30 year mortgage,” Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin,wrote on X. “A more effective, long-term solution is to fix the supply side.”

TD Securities analysts told investors on Monday the 50-year loan idea could take at least one year to materialize and “only works if there is a corresponding increase in housing supply,” which needs lower construction costs to happen.

By increasing the demand for houses, such mortgages also could increase home prices, putting them further out of reach for buyers.

Greene, who represents a district in Georgia, also said more could be done to get renters to qualify for home loans, among other steps.

As for the industry, BTIG analysts said 50-year mortgages could boost firms such as Ellington Financial EFC.N, United Wholesale UWMC.N and Rocket Companies RKT.N, which owns Redfin.

A US aircraft carrier strike group arrived in Latin America on Tuesday, escalating a military buildup that Venezuela has warned could trigger a full-blown conflict as it announced its own deployment.

The USS Gerald R Ford, the world’s largest aircraft carrier, entered the US Naval Forces Southern Command’s area of responsibility, which encompasses Latin America and the Caribbean, the command said in a statement.

The vessel’s deployment was ordered nearly three weeks ago to help counter drug trafficking in the region.

Its presence “will bolster US capacity to detect, monitor, and disrupt illicit actors and activities that compromise the safety and prosperity of the United States homeland and our security in the Western Hemisphere,” Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell said.

President Donald Trump’s administration is conducting a military campaign in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, deploying naval and air forces for an anti-drugs offensive.

Caracas fears the deployment, which also includes F-35 stealth warplanes deployed to Puerto Rico and six US Navy ships in the Caribbean, is a regime change plot in disguise.

President Nicolas Maduro, whose last two reelections were dismissed as fraudulent by Washington and dozens of other countries, has accused the Trump administration of “fabricating a war.”

On November 2, Trump played down the prospect of going to war with Venezuela but said Maduro’s days were numbered.

US forces have carried out strikes on at least 20 vessels in international waters in the region since early September, killing at least 76 people, according to US figures.

The Trump administration has said in a notice to Congress that the United States is engaged in “armed conflict” with Latin American drug cartels, describing them as terrorist groups.

Washington has not provided any evidence that the vessels were used to smuggle drugs, and human rights experts say the strikes amount to extrajudicial killings even if they target traffickers.

‘Unacceptable’

Venezuela announced on Tuesday what it called a major, nationwide military deployment to counter the US naval presence off its coast.

The defence ministry in Caracas spoke in a statement of a “massive deployment” of land, sea, air, river and missile forces as well as civilian militia to counter “imperial threats.”

VTV, the state TV channel, broadcast footage of military leaders giving speeches in several states.

Such announcements are common in Venezuela these days, but have not always led to visible military deployments.

Experts have told AFP that Venezuela would be at a serious disadvantage in a military standoff with the United States, with an ill-disciplined fighting force and outdated arsenal.

On Tuesday, Russia denounced US strikes on boats from Venezuela — an ally of Moscow — as illegal and “unacceptable”.

“This is how, in general, lawless countries act, as well as those who consider themselves above the law,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in televised remarks, questioning what he described as a “pretext of fighting drugs”.

Maduro relies heavily on the Kremlin for political and economic support.

US-Russia relations have soured in recent weeks as Trump has voiced frustration with Moscow over the lack of a resolution to the Ukraine war.

The United Kingdom, meanwhile, would not comment Tuesday on a CNN report that it had stopped sharing intelligence with the United States about suspected drug-smuggling vessels in the Caribbean as it did not want to be complicit in any strikes.

A spokesman for Prime Minister Keir Starmer told reporters in London: “We don’t comment on security or intelligence matters.”

He underlined that “the US is our closest partner on defence, security, intelligence,” and would not be drawn on UK concerns about the US strikes.

“Decisions on this are a matter for the US,” the spokesman said.