2024年12月24日火曜日

at 18:00 (JST), December 24 (Ai-CC by Clipchamp)

 

20241224180000_english_1.mp3

Welcome to NHK Newsline. I'm Ramin Mellegard in Tokyo.
Japan's leaders are tightening regulations on tap water. They've decided to set legal limits for a group of potentially hazardous substances and implement mandatory tests.
The Environment Ministry says the new measures will cover organic fluorine compounds known as PFAS. Officials say a survey showed higher concentrations of two such chemicals, PFOS and PFOA, in dozens of locations nationwide. A panel of experts later approved a plan to establish new legal standards. The limit for PFOS and PFOA will remain the same as the current provisional threshold of 50 nanogramsper liter.
Local governments and utilities will be required to regularly test their tap water and ensure it meets safety standards. Now, the measures are expected to take effect from April 2026. Officials also tested a Self-Defense Forces facility in the western prefecture of Fukuoka. They say PFAS levels were more than 30 times higher than the provisional threshold.

Japanese police say a group of northern North Korean hackers likely used a message offering a job to steal assets from cryptocurrency exchange DMM Bitcoin in May. The Japanese company lost Bitcoin valued at about 308 million U.S. dollars at the time of the security breach. The firm said earlier this month it is closing its business and handing over its customers accounts and assets to another exchange. The police announced on Tuesday that the theft was carried out by the Lazarus hacking group, which is believed to be controlled by the North Korean authorities. The police said an employee of a company that manages cryptocurrency for DMM Bitcoin received a job offer by social media in March. The message is believed to have planted a computer virus when it was clicked on. That allowed the group to steal information about access authority, and to rewrite amounts of transactions and beneficiaries. The police say the account that sent the message and the server it was connected with were related to North Korea. Authorities in Japan and the United States have condemned the hackers and North Korea for being behind them. They're urging people to beware of suspicious text messages or emails.

Japan's Nippon Steel says the U.S. government panel has decided to let President Joe Biden decide whether it can buy U.S. steel. Biden has repeatedly expressed his opposition to the deal.
The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States has been examining the security risks of an acquisition by the Japanese company. The two major steelmakers agreed on the deal in December 2023. The Japanese steelmaker has been notified by the committee that it was unable to reach a consensus by Monday's deadline.
Biden is expected to announce his decision within 15 days after receiving the committee's report. US media say some committee members suggested domestic output could fall if US Steel were purchased, but other members reportedly said Nippon Steel had proposed measures, including appointing US citizens.
To the majority of executive posts of US Steel. However, the committee was apparently divided over whether such moves would be sufficient. Nippon Steel says it strongly wants the president to weigh the merits of the deal. It says both firms strongly believe that if the benefits are evaluated fairly, the deal will be approved.

And Toyota Motor is planning a new factory in China to build electric vehicles with a focus on its upscale Lexus line.
Sources close to the matter say the automaker is working to acquire land in Shanghai. The new factory is expected to become operational as early as 2027. Toyota plans to update all Lexus models worldwide to electric vehicles by 2035. Japanese automakers have largely stuck with traditional combustion engine vehicles and are struggling amid the fierce EV price war in the Chinese market. Mitsubishi Motors decided in October last year to withdraw from China, and this year Nissan Motor and Honda Motor closed some factories in the country. Toyota saw sales in China fall 9.3% from January to October from the same period last year, down to about 1.41 million units. Experts say Toyota wants to make up lost ground in China's expanding EV market.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says more than 3,000 North Korean soldiers have been killed or wounded in fighting in the western Russian region of Kursk.
Zelenskyy said in a social media post on Monday that the figure was reported by the commander-in-chief of Ukraine's military. The president also criticized the international community for doing almost nothing to counter the collaboration between Moscow and Pyongyang. Ukraine is waging a cross-border offensive in the Kursk region. About 11,000 North Korean soldiers are set to be deployed alongside Russian troops in the area. The number of North Korean casualties cited by Zelenskyy far exceeds the figure given by South Korea's intelligence agency last week. It estimated that at least 100 North Korean soldiers have been killed in Kursk. It said around 1,000 more have been wounded.

Now, health authorities in the Gaza Strip said on Monday Israeli attacks had killed 58 people in the past 24 hours. They said the death toll in Gaza now exceeds 45,300 since October 7 of last year.
A ceasefire between Israel and Hamas still looks distant. Israeli media outlets reported progress has been made on a ceasefire and hostage release deal in Gaza, but sticking points remain. These include how many hostages Hamas will release. Meanwhile, Israel has come under repeated attacks by Yemen's Houthi rebels who claimed solidarity with Hamas. The rebels launched A ballistic missile toward Israel's largest business city, Tel Aviv, on Saturday.
Local media say 16 people were wounded. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has hinted at retaliation.
He said on Sunday. Just as we acted forcefully against the terrorist arms of Iran's axis of evil, so we will act against the Houthis.

And freed anti-whaling activist Paul Watson is vowed to continue his campaign.
He also warned Japanese whalers against returning to the Antarctic Ocean.
The former head of the Sea Shepherd group is back in France, where his family lives. Following his attention in the Danish autonomous territory of Greenland since July, Danish authorities decided last week not to extradite Watson to Japan to face a charge of organizing forcible obstruction of the country's research whaling. Watson made his comments at an event in Paris on Saturday.

We will continue our campaigns. We'll close Iceland next year to stop whaling there. And if Japan intends to return to the southern ocean.

Watson also pledged to try to end whaling worldwide. He said humans need to learn to live in harmony with other species and share this world.

And those were the top stories for this hour.

And that is a wrap for this edition of NHK Newsline. I'm Ramin Mellegard. Thank you very much for joining us.

Japan has various kinds of landmarks that fascinate visitors. They range from cultural and historic locations to modern buildings created with cutting-edge technologies. What led to their creation and what were the challenges involved?
The Backstory of Japanese Landmarks brings you the stories behind these amazing places. 
In this episode of The Backstory of Japanese Landmarks, we featurethe world's tallest broadcast tower, Tokyo Skytree.
Tokyo Skytree is 634 meters tall. Other landmarks, such as the Tokyo Tower and Paris's Eiffel Tower, have wide bases. But Tokyo Skytree is slim and more like a spire. Its color, named Skytree White,is based on the lightest shade of Japanese indigo blue. The tower can be seen from a great distance, but when people first see it, some think its form is rather simple.
Tokyo Skytree was built using state-of-the-art Japanese technology.
But that's not all. Traditional skills, respected and handed down over generations of craftspeople,also played a vital role in its construction.
The base of Tokyo Skytree is triangular in shape when seen from above. This was designed to let people enter from the three sides of the surrounding areas.
Meanwhile, the two observation decks at the heights of 350 meters and 450 meters are round and offer a 360-degree panoramic view.
This means the cross-section of the tower's base is a triangle,but becomes round toward the top.
Looking more carefully, Tokyo Skytree's outline is not made of straight lines.
The lines are actually slightly curved.
Depending where the tower is viewed from, some parts of the tower warp inwards, while other parts bulge outwards.
This comes from traditional Japanese architecture. The inward warp is called sori, or the outward curve is called mukuri. Tokyo Skytree's towering outline is a combination of sori and mukuri. A particularly important feature of Tokyo Skytree is its earthquake resistance.
The tower's construction began in 2008. Three years later, in 2011, a massive earthquake struck eastern Japan. After overcoming a number of challenges posed by the disaster, the tower was completed in 2012 Tokyo Skytree has an outer frame and an inner column. The two are structurally detached. During an earthquake, the column acts as a weight and moves in the opposite direction as the outer frame.
This reduces the impact of tremors.
This anti-seismic structure was inspired by a traditional Japanese structure, the five-story pagoda.
Five-story pagodas of Buddhist temples have a column at the center,similar to Tokyo Skytree. Due to their excellent quake resistance, there are no records of any wooden pagodas collapsing in an earthquake in Japan's history.
Japan's oldest five-story pagoda is in Horyuji Temple in Nara, built more than 1,400 years ago. The wisdom of ancient people lives on in today's advanced technologies.
Thank you for tuning in to the backstory of Japanese landmarks. We hope you have a chance to visit these landmarks and see for yourself what makes them so special.

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