Over the weekend an i. T. Firm said foot traffic in tokyo remained unchanged from a week earlier. Thats based on mobile phone data gathered with users consent. But there are far fewer visitors in Tourist Spots outside the capital compared to the november 23rd long weekend. The number of people was down 38 in china town south of to tokyo. People are also getting prepared for the new year holiday season. A shrine is selling new years lu lucky charms earlier than usual. I thought it would be better to visit now than over new ye s years. It will be so crowded and we need to be mindful of others. We cant aany infections from shrine, so i want people to visit between december and february so we dont see crowds over new years. Officials reported 1,425 new cases across the countrien on monday. More than 149,000 people in japan have been infected since the pandemic began. Over 2,100 people have died. The price tag of the tokyo listens and paralympics continues to rise after the games were postponed by a year over the pandemic. Organizers are now looking at ways to host those events safely next summer, and sources say antivirus measures alone are expected to add about 1 billion or more to the overall total. They say the organizing committee anticipates the postponement will lead to other expenses of about 2 billion to renew contracts for venues and cover labor costs, among other things. All told, these additional expenses add up to about 3 billion. The committee will hold talks with the central and tokyo metropolitan governments to decide how those expenses will be shared. The top spokesperson for the Central Government says taxpayers need more information. Translator its the governments responsibility to explain the expenses in detail to the public as the games will be funded partly by the national budget. The games were originally expected to cost about 13 billion. Now, the coronavirus is also adding further strain on Home Care Services for the elderly. Companies say even before the pandemic there werent enough workers to meet demand, but now fear of getting infected is causing many of the industrys aging workers to leave the profession for good. Reporter its been a difficult year for this company that specializes in athome care for the elderly. More than 10 of its workforce has quit since the pandemic began. All of them were in their 60s and 70s. A demographic medical experts say could develop serious symptoms if they get infected. Translator its an invisible disease, so its really worrisome. Our job requires being in Constant Contact with people. I have no idea where i would get infected or if i will transmit the virus. Translator i wanted to continue working, but i was told it would be hard if i get infected by the virus. So i stopped. Reporter manager kadowaki megumi says shes tried hiring more people but so far no one has appld. As a temporary stopgap measure, shes now taking on some of the workload herself. Translator right now we are doing our best, given the circumstances, but i am worried that it may not be enough if no one wants to work as a caregiver anymore. Reporter its a problem being felt across japan. A recent sury of home care workers found nearly 40 say they know someone who has either quit or taking leave of absence due to the coronavirus. This 87yearold husband has come to rely on home care visits to ensure his wife gets the support she needs. As of now, this service hasnt been disrupted, but he worries about what might happen if the situation worsens. Translator its okay as long as im healthy, but i have a lot of chronic diseases. Once they develop, how can me and my wife live together . Reporter hes considered relocating her to a nursing care home, but its a choice hed rather not have to make. Translator when shes at home, she can do what she likes. But if my wife goes to a facility, shell be confined to a small area. Reporter this expert says the coronavirus has exacerbated an already dire situation. And thinks the government needs to take drastic measures to increase the number of home care workers. Translator there are concerns that if things continue as they are, there will be no services available, even if nursing Care Insurance premiums are paid. Reporter kadowaki agrees, and says the situation will worsen if things dont change soon. Translator if there is a disaster or the spread of infection, the responsibility of healthcare workers will be even heavier than they are now. Reporter until then, she says care workers will forge on and do their best to ensure people get the help they need, especially during these difficult times. Business travel between japan and china resumed on monday with both short and longterm stays allowed. This year some of the experts and government officials taking part are doing so remotely due to the pandemic. A representative from japans Foreign Ministry was in attendance in tokyo. He delivered a message from foreign minister. Chinas wang yi sent a video message saying he has high hopes for restart of business travel. Translator i believe resumption will accelerate Economic Cooperation and serve as important base for economic recovery. Also referred to talks with wang in tokyo last week, raised the issue of warships navigating the islands in okinawa prefecture, expressed concerns and asked that china refrain from the action. The japanese government maintains the islands are an inherent part of japanese territory. China and taiwan claim them. Japans crown prince says he approved to his eldest dur marriage to her classmate. The marriage was postponed two years ago. The crown prince spoke to reporters ahead of his 55th birthday on monday. He was asked to elaborate on a statement earlier this month which said the crown prince and his wife are respecting the young couples feelings. Crown prince akishino added he feels not many people understood or were happy about the situation. In 2018, the media reported on financial problems related to the classmates mother. In september 2017, the imperial house hold agency announced that princess ma coe was engaged. The engagement ceremonies were initially planned for 2018, but that year the agency announced it was postponed. Shortly after, he moved to the United States to study law. Princess mako released a statement this month saying they are irreplaceable to each other. Her father, the crown prince, says the marriage schedule will be considered in the future. Moving to the United States, where joe biden has injured his foot while playing with one of his dogs. Bidens Office Issued a statement saying the incident on saturday left him with hairline fractures. His personal physician says biden will likely need to wear a protective boot on his right foot for several weeks. However, the 78yearold was seen walking without assistance on his way to get a ct scan. Biden is set to become the oldest president in u. S. History when he is sworn in on january 20th. Meanwhile, his administration continues to take shape. Biden says hes forming the first Senior Communications team for the white house thats made up entirely of women. Its Seven Members include former obama state partment spokesperson, jen psaki, who will be press secretary. Symone sanders will be Senior Adviser and chief spokesperson for Vice President elect kamala harris. Biden says the team members will bring a diversity of perspectives to their work. He is also expected to unveil his cabinet picks for economic and fiscal policy later this week. U. S. President donald trump pledged to continue his legal fight to overturn the election. Can you imagine . Donald trump, president of the United States, files a case, and i probably cant get a case. We have a tremendous group. We have hundreds and hundreds of affidavits, sworn affidavits and its very hard to get a case to the supreme court. Trump was speaking to the Program Sunday morning futures. He said he wouldnt give up and his opinion would not change. Last week trump said he would leave the white house if the Electoral College formalizes president elect pooidens victory on december 14th. But trump still has not conceded. Next to thailand and the ongoing antigovernment protests. Reuters reports that on monday, twitter suspended a proroyalist account linked to the palace for violating the social media platforms rules. The tweets were meant to counter the monthslong protest movement, which has built a strong online presence. The account was created in september and had more than 48,000 followers before its suspension. Analysis by reuters found the account was connected to thousands of others created in recent weeks, all spreading posts in favor of the king. A sample of some of the new accounts shared bot characteristics, according to reuters, only retweeting promoting royals hash tags. On sunday, about 2,000 protesters marched to the base of a military unit that takes its orders directly from the king. Protest leaders have argued that the armed forces should report to a government chosen by the people. The parliament rejected a proposed constitutional amendment to reform the monarchy, ramping up the tension in the country. A giant statue of a robot from the popular animated tv series mobile suit gundam has been unveiled to media in yokohama near tokyo. 34 moving parts in the 18meter statue allow it to walk or move its fingers and arms. Visitors can also try their hand at operating gundam while looking at images from a camera in the robot. It will be on public display from december 19th to march 21st, 2022. Its part of a project launched last year to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the first broadcast of the anime program. Now its time to check on World Weather with our meteorologist, jonathan oh. Were seeing air quality issues continuing across india. How is the situation for the region . Hello. We are continuing to monitor the stagnant air pattern that typically happens as we go into the colder months. What happens is the pollution that tends to rise to the air gets trapped and that usually lowers the air quality. Not much in the clouds, but a lot more in terms of pollution. Heres a look at video to give you an idea of how things unfolded through monday. Poor air quality plagued india, including new delawarely on monday. The embassy shows the air quality index reach iing a very unhealthy level. The pollution is so problematic that many people are facing breathing issues. Dry weather along with pollution from cars and vehicles is worsening the air quality. As we continue on, not just the next few days, but well see little air movement. Looking a the forecast, you see no lines that indicate when in the northern portion. The longest the air remains stagnant and not moving, its dpoing to continue to prolong those issues. Down here, theres a lot of wind movement. This is a tropical system that moves towards the west. Sri lanka and southern portions of india will be looking at impacts throughout the next few days. Thunderstorms and the high of 32. Up to the north, calm in terms of weather. Sunny skies, mid to upper 20s as we go through tuesday. Meanwhile across japan, seeing a cool pattern. Tokyo saw a high of 5. 2 degrees which is a season low. And we are continuing to see the cold er air trying to move its way through. Were seeing a pattern for the Northern Areas of japan. Were looking all the heavier snow through tuesday. So well see also some precipitation along the sea of japan coastline. The mountainous areas may see snow. Thats where the west filled. Its going to continue in china into north and south korea. Were talking about highs into the Single Digits for tuesday. A lot colder here for beijing. Be on the lookout and bandaid the up. Down to the south, a different story. Australia looking at really hot temperatures with some concerns wildfir wildfires. Hope you have a good day. Before we wrap up, people in japan central prefecture have moved tom local residents s ts comfortable aaccommodation before the winter chill sets in. Some 30 people in the city participated in an annual event in about 1,000 ornamental carp were moved from a water channel to a pond on sunday. Locals usually dump snow from rooftops and roads into the Central River as the channel is called. This means the fish have to be transferred to more suitable quarters before snow begins to fall. Some of the older carp are 80 centimeters long and weigh over 10 kilograms. The fish are released into a nearby pond where they will spend the colder months in relative comfort. I was surprised that the carp were so big. It was nice to see the seasonal event. Translator after seeing this, i feel like winter is on its way. Come april, the carp will be moved back to the channel to add color to the townscape. And that wraps up this hour of nhk newsline. Coming up next is newsline biz, so stay right there. This is newsline biz, im ramin mellegard. Head of the Tokyo Stock Exchange stepped down to take responsible for a trading halt two months ago. Follows a Technical Glitch that stopped trading for a full day on october 1st. Resignation was announced by the ceo of parent firm to the Japan Exchange group. The departure takes effect immediately and kiyota will assume the post for time being, and take a pay cut for four months to take responsibility for the outage. Other executives will also take a reduction. Issued order to the Group Earlier today. Told them to take action. Agency inspection found defects in the exchanges internal management. The tse says the october 1st outage was caused by a hardware probm and a backup system failure. The exchange had no rules in place for quickly restarting trading in such a situation. It was the first daylong stoppage since the tse fully computerized in 1999. They have been criticized for failing to prevent the incident amid a government push to make tokyo a more International Financial hub. Japans manufacturing is continuing to recover. Thats the fifth consecutive month of gains. Industry Ministry Officials say the increase reflects recovering demand as Economic Activity picks up pace globally. Officials remain cautious about the outlook given resurgence of infections. They predict a 2. 7 rise in output for november but sorry, before a 2. 4 drop in december. The japanese government is asking businesses to extend or stagger days off for employees during the yearend holiday period. Its part of an effort to avoid overcrowding amid the pandemic, but a new survey shows that only 15 of smaller firms are going along. Credit Research Firm Tokyo Shoko Research conducted a survey this month covering about 8,600 small and midsized firms. 9 of the Companies Plan to increase the number of days off. 6 will have employees stagger their holidays. But 84 of firms have no changes planned. The Research Firm believes Smaller Companies with manpower shortages cant afford to be flexible with their schedules. Translator managers face the challenge of avoiding a sense of unfairness for workers when they try to give staggered holiday schedules. Chinas factories have been it needs more time for maintenance at night since the number of nighttime incidents was up 40 higher than the last fiscal year than eight years ago. The company also said it needs to adjust its timetable so the last trains connect with those of other operators. The rail wway announced it woul bring forward 17 lines in and around tokyo from spring. It also said it needs more time for maintenance. Plus there has been a drop in late night passengers due to the coronavirus pandemic. Demand for flowers in japan has plummeted since the start of the pandemic. Prices have dropped sharply and many florists and growers have been forced to throw out their plants and their livelihoods. In our next report, we look at an initiative to help the industry blossom. Reporter the statues and hallways of this venerable buddhist temple have been filled with flowers. 200 different varieties, around 15,000 of them in all, bringing color and visitors to this national treasure. This event was organized by matsumura yoshiaki, who runs a chain of florists in the area along with flower shop owners around the country. Translator this event was held to draw attention to the problem that many flower shops are having throwing away their stock and the fact that many Flower Growers need our help. Reporter in japan, flowers are an essential component of weddings and funerals, but many ceremonies have been scaled back or canceled, which has had a huge impact on the flower industry. In april, when the Central Government declared a nationwide state of emergency, the amount of flowers sold dropped by about 40 here in toyama. Matsumura came up with a plan to organize displays at World Heritage sites and other important venues. Ahead of the event, matsumura visited local Flower Growers. At this farm, sales dropped by 50 during the spring season, and times are tough financially. Translator talking with other farmers, we all wish the pandemic hadnt happened. Flowers are living things too. Its been really sad to see them fade unsold. Reporter in all, matsumura bought 58 pallets of flowers, including 13 different varieties from ishimuras farm. The colorful display brightening the temple seemed to ease the anxiety caused by the pandemic. Over the two days, more than 1,600 people came to enjoy it. Visitors were encouraged to pick out their favorite flowers to take home with them. Translator all we can do to support the farmers is to carry on buying their flowers and to keep decorating our homes. Translator we hope more people will understand the challenges faced by Flower Growers. Were doing further events like this around the country to encourage people to buy more flowers. Lets get a check of the markets. Thats it for newsline biz. Thank you for watching. The headlines. A prominent scientist at the center of Irans Nuclear program has been assassinated. The vehicle carrying fakhrizadeh was in tehran. At first, the car carrying him was shot at. 15 seconds later, a nissan pickup truck loaded with explosives blasted 15 meters away from his car, inflicting wounds on him that led to his death
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