at 18:00 (JST), January 28

20250128180000_english_1.mp3

Welcome back to NHK Newsline. Here's the latest we have for you at this hour.

It's been a busy week back in the White House. President Donald Trump capped it off by pledging more of his trademark measures.

In particular, in the very near future, we're going to be placing tariffs on farm production of computer chips, semiconductors, and pharmaceuticals to return production of these essential goods to the United States of America.

He argued in a speech that semiconductor producers have gone to Taiwan. He bashed a subsidy program adopted by his predecessor to boost domestic chip manufacturing. Trump says he doesn't want to give the producers billions of dollars as a way to lure them back. He also had his own return on the mind.

A single week, I've taken over 350 executive actions. The golden age of America has officially begun.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Besant is reportedly pushing for new universal tariffs on imports. They would start at 2.5% and rise gradually. Besant, the founder of a hedge fund, was confirmed by a majority of votes in the US Senate as the Treasury Secretary on Monday. The Financial Times ran an article that same day quoting sources about Besant's view on President Trump's plan to impose universal tariffs. The British newspaper said that the levy would increase by the same amount each month. This would give countries the chance to negotiate with the U.S. It said the levies could be pushed up to 20%. But the report also quoted another person familiar with Trump's thinking as saying there's not a single plan the president is ready to decide on yet. Discussions are believed to be ongoing in the administration. Much attention has been on Trump's plan to introduce sweeping tariffs, which could affect the entire world.

Israel lifted restrictions on northern Gaza Monday,... allowing many Palestinians to go home for the first time in months.

We're not going to be the Israeli people.
We're not going to be the Nazi people.
We're going to be the Israeli people.

Israel's move comes after Hamas announced they would release three more hostages by the end of the month. Since the six-week ceasefire began mid-January, Hamas has released seven female hostages. In exchange, Israel freed 290 Palestinian prisoners.

Meanwhile, U.S. President Trump is stirring up controversy in the region. He suggested Saturday that Jordan and Egypt should take in residence from the Gaza Strip. Both Jordan and Egypt rejected the idea.
Jordanian Foreign Minister Ayman Safari said Sunday his country belongs to Jordanians, just as Palestine belongs to Palestinians. In a statement, Egypt said the region's instability stems from not restoring Palestinian rights. The Palestinian Authority said the idea was a blatant violation that crosses what they call their red line.

The hope now for the people of Gaza is that the ceasefire will hold long enough so they can start to rebuild their lives.
For more on this NHK World's Sakurai Reiko spoke to Noguchi Chitose. She is the Deputy Special Representative of the UNDP's program of assistance to the Palestinian people. She's been closely examining the situation in Gaza for the last five years.

The latest report by the United Nations Development Program paints a grim picture. with millions of Gazans now living in tents, fueling concerns around health and sanitation.

The situation on the ground is that over 90% of the people are still displaced. They have nowhere to go. The services have been decimated. However, because of the ceasefire, we are feeling some relief and some hope.

Noguchi says the priority is restoring access to clean water, collecting waste, and bringing in more large-scale equipment to clear out the destruction.
It's estimated that about 51 metric tons of debris has been generated over the last 15 months.

The roads are are covered with rubble.
The emergency ambulances cannot pass. They can't transport people to health facilities. The humanitarian actors cannot deliver the services to the people. So debris removal is really critical in this humanitarian phase.

But beyond the more urgent concerns, she says the war will have a lasting impact. It's estimated that Gaza has regressed by almost 70 years in development.

The poverty rate has increased and now throughout Palestine it's over 74%. And because people have lost their jobs and also the businesses have been decimated, they're not able to function.
The war has had a devastating impact, particularly on children, and also the education sector has been hard hit. In that sense, it's not just the infrastructure in terms of the schools and universities, but also the teachers, the university leadership has been has been killed.

Finally, Noguchi says that the world needs to continue to pay attention to the crisis and invest in Gaza's future.

It's essential for us to be able to invest in the future of Palestine so that the support is not temporary, that it's not just emergency relief, but it's combined with the early recovery and reconstruction and development activities so that we can support the resilience of the Palestinian people. I think the important thing is that the international community recognizes the importance of holding the ceasefire. and implementing the conditions so that the Palestinian people and the Gazan people can start rebuilding their lives and continue forward.

Holocaust survivors gathered in southern Poland to mark 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. Over a million people, mostly Jews, were murdered at the Nazi concentration camp.
Survivors, dignitaries, and representatives from around the world attended the ceremony. Among them were Britain's King Charles, German President Frank Walter Steinmeier, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

We were victims in a moral vacuum.
But today, however, we have an obligation not only to remember which is very, very important, but also to warn and to teach that hatred only begets more hatred.

Three survivors shared their experiences and delivered their messages. A 99-year-old man expressed worries about the intolerance he's seeing in Europe's today and urged people to stay vigilant.
Soviet troops liberated the camp in 1945, and the average age of Holocaust survivors is now 86.

On the same day, a full-scale replica of the secret annex where Jewish teenager Anne Frank, hid from Nazi persecution, has gone on display in New York City, which has a large Jewish population.
The exhibit is a faithful reproduction of the one preserved at the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam in the Netherlands. Behind the hinged bookcase concealing the entrance, the annex is furnished with replica furniture and daily items.
Anne Frank wrote her famous diary in the annex, where her family hid for about two years. They were eventually found, and Anne was sent to a concentration camp where she died at the age of 15.

In this world and the challenging times that we go through right now, we very much hope that all those visitors, and especially young visitors, we very much hope that they will become part of the solution in order to combat all those forms of hatred that we see around us today.

I just think it's really, really important for people to see it and that the history is not lost.

The exhibition's scheduled to run through April 30.

50,000 doses of a vaccine provided by Japan have arrived in the Democratic Republic of the Congo to help combat a spike in Mpox cases. Mpox is an infectious viral illness previously known as monkeypox. A variant that is more likely to cause severe symptoms has been spreading in the DRC and other nations. That prompted the World Health Organization to declare a public health emergency of international concern last August. The Japanese government says the DRC has requested 3.05 million doses and Tokyo decided to provide a vaccine developed by a Japanese company. The Japanese government sent doctors and officials to the DRC in December to train local medical workers to administer the vaccine. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the number of people infected with Mpox in the DRC is believed to exceed 50,000. It also says about 30% of them are children under 15. The Japanese vaccine can be administered to people under the age of 18.

Setsubun is the last day of winter on Japan's traditional calendar, and it falls this year on Sunday. Rituals for the day include bean throwing to scare away demons, and in central Japan's Yamanashi Prefecture, enjoying a good luck cake called Kirisansho.
Kirisansho has a plain, sweet taste with hints of the unique flavor of sansho, Japanese pepper. To make it, a dough made of rice flour and hot water is first steamed. Then, the pepper and seaweed flakes are folded into it. The dough is then dusted with starch, left overnight at room temperature, and cut into strips the next morning.
This shop in Yamanashi Prefecture was established more than 130 years ago. It's been busy making this year's Kirisansho.

It is traditionally said that the sansho Japanese pepper's strong aroma wards off evil.

The shop says it plans to make about 1,000 packages until around mid-February.

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It's time for us to check the world weather with our meteorologist, Jonathan Oh. So frigid, cold and snowy weather has swept through the Korean Peninsula. Jonathan, how are things looking for Wednesday?

Hello, we have been seeing a low pressure system moving across northern areas of China into portions of North and South Korea, bringing some snow into the area with bitter cold. Let's take a look at some video coming out of North Korea, where a strong cold snap brought heavy snow Monday. State media broadcast footage of several regions blanketed in white and also reported about 54 centimeters of snow in South Hamgyong Province. The cold temperatures are expected to continue for days. Now the snow is going to try to tap her down a little bit because it's going to be pushing toward the east and heading toward the northern portions of Japan. So we'll be seeing snow picking up, but the cold air being driven down from the north will still be a big part of the story into eastern portions of China and North and South Korea. Now this low is going to have a lot of moisture and cold air with it, and we may be seeing the possibility of snow as far West as Kyushu in Fukuoka as we head through the on Wednesday, so we are looking at a bit of a wintry pattern extending from Sapporo into Niigata, also Fukuoka and temperatures staying below freezing into Pyongyang and Seoul as we go throughout the day on Wednesday. Tokyo, you're still above average for now, but we head toward the weekend and we're going to be seeing a big drop in temperatures, so it's going to be a lot colder as we head toward the latter part of this week, brightening out the view as we head toward that Lunar New Year festivities as cold air is also the part of the story into Beijing, with a high of 1 under kati skies and snow up toward the north in Mongolia. Meanwhile, we are looking at, well, relatively compounding across a good portion of North America, though we do have a system moving across the Great Lakes, a front swinging on through. So the northeastern portion of the United States will be seeing some of the white stuff falling and another low behind it crossing across the Great Lakes as we head toward the latter part of this week.
Showers into Winnipeg, snow into Toronto, New York, elsewhere relatively dry down to the South as we go through Tuesday.
Hope you have a good day wherever you are.

♫～

That brings us to the end of this edition of NHK Newsline.

We'll have more for you at the top of the hour. Thanks for watching.