Japan economy weak but improved

Japan economy weak but improved

TOKYO

Japan’s factory output fell 3.5 percent in April from the same month a year earlier, while consumer spending also edged lower, though both showed improvement from the month before, the government said Tuesday.

Earlier, the government reported that the consumer price index fell 0.3 percent in April for the second-straight month of deflation. However, excluding both energy and volatile fresh foods, it rose 0.7 percent.

The world’s third-largest economy has been stuck in the doldrums despite massive monetary easing aimed at vanquishing deflation, which tends to discourage corporate investment and consumer spending.

Officers find two alligators eating human body

SOUTHWEST RANCHES, Fla.

Police in South Florida were called to a gruesome scene: a pair of alligators eating a human body.

The Sun Sentinel reports that Davie Police Capt. Dale Engle says the body found Sunday in Southwest Ranches, about 20 miles west of Fort Lauderdale, appears to have been at the location for a long time.

Engle says officers were able to scare the alligators away from the body but the two lingered as officers tried to recover the body.

He says the cause of death and whether the body is a man or woman are both unknown.

Engle says a dive team would attempt to recover the body.

FBI agent’s gun stolen from car

SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco police say an FBI agent’s gun and badge were stolen after his car was broken into in the city’s popular Alamo Square.

San Francisco Police Officer Carlos Manfredi says the FBI agent reported to police that his vehicle was broken into Sunday afternoon.

Manfredi says the agent’s .40-caliber Glock handgun was stolen, along with his I.D. badge and credentials. He says no other information was available Monday.

The theft follows a series of break-in and burglaries where guns have been stolen and used in homicides in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Prosecutors say a trio of homeless drifters in October stole a gun from a civilian’s parked car in San Francisco and used it to kill a backpacker and a tantric-yoga instructor.

Three months earlier, a gun stolen from the vehicle of an agent with the federal Bureau of Land Management was used to kill 32-year-old Kate Steinle.

Police raid drug market in Colombia

BOGOTA, Colombia

The streets of Colombia’s largest open-air drug market look like a war zone after a police sweep through one of Bogota’s most dangerous neighborhoods.

More than 2,500 heavily armed officers have participated in an operation that began Saturday in the so-called Bronx neighborhood, for its comparison to the troubled New York neighborhood.

Mayor Enrique Penalosa decided to clamp down on the neighborhood in response to complaints of brazen drug consumption and crime just blocks from the presidential palace.

More than 1,000 people, many of them homeless crack addicts, were removed and offered treatment. Authorities also rescued 136 minors.

Not everyone is welcoming the intervention. Many of those removed have relocated to a nearby plaza and armed with molotov cocktails and rocks have been clashing with police.

Associated Press