Category: World

TOKYO: Hunters shot and killed a brown bear in northern Japan on Friday after it rampaged through a city, injuring four people including a soldier and lumbering across busy roads.

The city of Sapporo tweeted that the bear had been “exterminated,” with a local television station saying hunters had shot the bear. Earlier, dramatic news footage showed the bear bounding along a residential street, crossing a busy road and clawing at the gates of a military barracks, causing alarmed troops to scatter. One soldier was injured in the bear´s rampage in the city, which will host the Olympic marathon and racewalking events in August.

Another victim was mauled by the bear after it attacked him from behind, TV footage showed. The person was taken away on a stretcher. The rampage prompted local school closures and the cancellation of several flights at a small regional airport, NHK reported. Earlier, government spokesman Katsunobu Kato told people in the Hokkaido region to be on alert.

“A total of four people, including one Self-Defense Forces member, have been attacked and injured by the brown bear. We express our sincere sympathy to them,” he said. “Officials from Sapporo City, the Hokkaido police, a local hunting association and other concerned agencies have arrived at the scene. They are coordinating efforts to capture the brown bear, or if deemed necessary, exterminate it.”

TEHRAN: Iranians voted Friday in a presidential election in which cleric Ebrahim Raisi is seen as all but certain to coast to victory after all serious rivals were barred from running. After a lacklustre campaign, turnout was expected to plummet to a new low in a country exhausted by a punishing regime of US economic sanctions that has dashed hopes for a brighter future.

The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, cast the first vote in Tehran and then urged Iran´s nearly 60 million eligible voters to follow suit before the scheduled close of polls at midnight (1930 GMT). “The sooner you perform this task and duty, the better,”the 81-year-old Khamenei said, stressing that voting “serves to build the future” of the Iranian people.

But enthusiasm has been dampened by the disqualification of many hopefuls from the race and the deep economic malaise which has sparked spiralling inflation and job losses, the crisis deepened by the Covid pandemic.

“I´m not a politician, I don´t know anything about politics,” said Tehran car mechanic Nasrollah. “I have no money. All families are now facing economic problems. “How can we vote for these people who did this to us? It´s not right.”

Iranian opposition groups abroad and some dissidents at home have urged a boycott of the vote they see as an engineered victory for Raisi, the 60-year-old head of the judiciary, to cement conservative control.

Others queued to vote at schools, mosques and community centres, some carrying Iran´s green, white and red national flag. One conservative mother wearing the black full-body chador came with her two young sons dressed in the camouflage uniforms of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

A nurse named Sahebiyan said she supports Raisi for his pledge to fight corruption and because she hopes he will “move the country forward… and save the people from economic, cultural and social deprivation”

NUT Desk- BERLIN: Germany has purchased data from an anonymous source in Dubai on millions of taxpayers worldwide in a bid to crack down on tax evasion, the finance ministry said.

The data provides information on people who own land, property and other assets in the Gulf emirate, including several thousand Germans, the ministry said in a statement. The aim is to identify tax offences such as undeclared income, assets that have been hidden from the authorities and illegal cross-border transactions, it said.

The Federal Central Tax Office (BZSt) paid around two million euros ($2.4 million) for the data, according to Der Spiegel magazine. “With this new data, we are illuminating the dark corners in which tax offenders have been hiding until now,” said Finance Minister Olaf Scholz. “Now it is the turn of the tax investigators to track down the offenders and bring them to justice. In this way, we will ensure that everyone makes their fair contribution,” he said.

The data was handed over to the Germany´s federal states on Wednesday for examination so that they can decide whether to initiate criminal proceedings, the ministry said. Several German states have over the past decade bought CDs or USB memory sticks allegedly containing data on German taxpayers who had parked their fortunes in Swiss banks. Fearing prosecution, many of Germany´s rich and famous subsequently came forward to declare their hidden wealth, boosting the tax coffers of Europe´s biggest economy by billions of euros. But Switzerland reacted angrily, saying the data was stolen in violation of its banking secrecy laws.