hello, and thank you for joining us on this edition of "newsline." representatives from hamas have reportedly agreed to extend a cease-fire in the gaza strip. they have been holding indirect talks with negotiators in israel to try to end a month of fighting and the latest three-day truce was running out. palestinians negotiators say the hamas delegates agreed to extend the cease-fire for another five days. israeli officials have not responded. the two sides were meeting in cairo, though not face-to-face. egyptian mediators have been acting as a go-between. they are demanding the economic blockade on gaza. israeli forces started their

offensive in early july. they wanted to stop rocket attacks on israel. a car bombing has struck near the home of a relative of iraq's prime minister designate. one person died in the blast in baghdad. security authorities say the attack is politically motivated. the president has appointed haider al-abadi as prime minister. authorities believe people opposed to a new administration under abad did i are responsible for the bombing. another car bomb happened on the same day, killing two people. the attacks took place as abadi and maliki are in a standoff. maliki has been called on to resign by people who say he allowed sunni militants to wield

influence. abadi was named to replace him on monday. and the following day, the largest sunni faction started forming a cabinet. fighting continues between kurdish troops and the militants. the militants continue to besiege mountainous areas around sinjar. more than 20,000 people from a religious minority group remain stranded there without food or water. and u.s. officials have sent in more help. an additional 130 military advisers have joined in the

relief effort. >> u.s. defense officials say they have reached a milestone in their work to destroy syria's chemical weapons. they say specialists have neutralized 100% of the agent used to make sarin gas. pentagon officials say experts aboard a containership have disposed of 581 tons of the agent. they will now turn their attention to the material for mustard gas. they expect to destroy all of

that by next month. last sawing, the sarin attack in a suburb in damascus left hundreds of people dead. syrian leaders agreed to join the chemical weapons convention and give up their stockpile. >> forces have been trying for months to put down an uprising by prorussian acceaccept ratist. people are running shoort of food, waterer and medicine.

election scheduled in october. recent polls showed him third among the three main candidates. the president called her rival a great political leader and announced three days of national mourning. police in thailand are

russian forces have launched exercises electric that have provoked japanese officials. they are being held on russian held islands. more than 1,000 personnel are taking part. they running through drills using 100 military vehicles and five attack helicopters. they are staging them in an area they call the islands. japanese call them the northern materials. officials at the foreign minute is stri say they have received information that they are taking place on two islands. russia controls the four islands. the japanese government maintains they are an inherent part of japanese territory. the islands were illegally occupied after world war ii. >> translator: we cannot accept

russian military drills on the northern territories. >> foreign ministry owe fishlz have launched a formal protest with russia. russia's acting ambassador to japan said the islands belong to his country and the military drills don't cause a problem. japan's foreign minister has discussed a contentious issue with his counterpart. they spoke over the weekend about a recent series of missile tests. they say the launches are not meant to provoke japan. they talked on the sidelines of a foreign ministers forum. he said repeated provocations including missile launches would have a negative impact on relations. he called or north korean leaders to exercise self-restraint. he said they do not target

japan. officials suggest north korean leaders do not want to confront japan directly and may want to create a rift among japan, the u.s. and south korea. last month japanese leaders eased sanctions on north korea. they acted after authorities launched another investigation into the fate of missing japanese, including those abducted by north korean agents.

world famous film director and brilliant comedian. he keeps his finger on the pulse of art by having fun. takeshi, art beat. takeshi is flipping through a catalog of the artist he will be >> won awards at international film festivals for his unflinching view of china. this time, again, his camera never blinks. >> from the doctor's perspective, ideally, they would interact with patients in ways that are as normal as possible. hospitals, are involved with supervision. they believe patients should be locked up and kept ape way from the general population.

>> he says if anything, one has understated the complications. >> if you pay attention, the film holds people who don't seem to be mentally ill. i suppose this is people that have demonstrated against the government. i believe people seen as antisocial can end up in institutions like this one. he faced a difficult choice. make the film he wanted to.

he chose to be true to his own ideal at the cost of losing access to chinese theaters. sato, the critic, thinks that one has a chance of getting his film before the chinese public one way or another. >> translator: freedom of speech is improving in china. people do not yet enjoy full freedom of expression. this is a film that all chinese citizens should be able to watch so they can see the situation for themselves. technological advances are making censorship harder and harder to maintain. many films are banned in china. but determined people can find a way to watch them. . finally,the production for japanese sources as they left those in hong kong and france.

no money for mainland china, though. sato expects chinese directors will continue to look outside a home country for financing. >> translator: international acclaim is important for chinese directors who want to express their opinions. the authorities have a hard time suppressing film makers who are critical of the status quo. if their films get a lot of positive attention, that attention provides the directors with a cloak of protection. >> like many other aspects of china, cinema is adapting and evolving. sato believes the wider the audience outside the country, the greater the chance that film makers inside china will not have to part with their own

vision chlgt are violation. vision. police in thailand are trying to unravel a mystery. they are looking into a case that could involve 15 babies born to surrogate mothers and a japanese man. one of the women says she received $10,000. >> reporter: there's discovered nine babies last week in an apartment near bangkok. a japanese businessman owns it. he is 24 years old and claims to have fathered them. this woman says she was the surrogate mother of one of the

babies. she's 21 years old. she said two years ago a thai broker made her an offer. >> translator: the broker said i could make money if i delivered a baby. i wanted it because we were poor. >> reporter: she signed a contract which states the amount of money she would get and that she has no right to claim the baby. the woman said she under went in vitro fertilization. four days after they delivered, the broker took the baby. she says she received little explanation about the biological parents. but she says she met a japanese man three times during her pregnancy. >> translator: we never really spoke to each other. i didn't know how old he was or why he wanted to have babies.

i assumed that he was busy because he had other babies, too. >> reporter: police have found six other babies that may have been born to surrogate mothers at the man's request. they say those babies obtained japanese and thai passports that bare the man's family name. they say he has taken four of them out of the country. they said dna test shows that nine of the infants are likely from the same father. they are trying to find out whether it's the japanese man. but he has left. police are urging him through his lawyer to return to thailand.

people in australia are getting a glimpse at rare stones. it's believed that only 30 red diamonds have ever been discovered. officials from a mining company with the diamond wine in western australia unveiled the gems this week. the largest is 1.2 karats. pink diamonds are common in the country. red ones only surface once in a while. >> red diamonds are the top. it doesn't get rarer than a red diamond. there are so few red diamonds in the world. >> a company official says the red diamonds that sold last year fetched $1.6 million per karat.

>> the nonpolicymakers agree that they have more or less levelled off. they're likely to increase moderately on the back of economic recovery abroadment a few members hour, warn that structural factor ins japan could continue to hold back export growth. one such factor is a shift in production site frs japan to overseas. the boj's most recent policy meeting was last week. >> some communities are having trouble bringing out the welcome mat.

>> the 130,000 ton voyager of the seas entered naha. the gigantic cruise ship is over 300 meters long. large cruise liners like this one behind me are becoming a more common site here. city authorities are hoping the increasing number of tourists will help to boost the low dal economy. >> 88 large foreign cruise ships carrying some 130,000 passengers are scheduled to call naha this year. that's more than three times as many as a decade ago. naha is now the third busiest cruise destination in japan. >> it looks so beautiful on tv. i wanted to see it for myself. >> i'm going sightseeing with my frebds. and shopping. >> for many years, large cruise ships had to use a wharf

designed for cargo vessels. but that wharf is a long way from the city center. in 2006, the central government launched a $166 million project. the terminal opened in april this year. passengers can now walk to the center of town. welcoming foreign visitors is a community-wide effort. local authorities have even provided chinese-speaking guides.

>> we're pinning high hopes on cruise ships to help reinvigorate local communities and the economy. >> japan has about 1,000 ports. last year, 50 of them welcomed cruise ships weighing 50,000 tons or more. local governments are actively encouraging cruise ships to call. >> tokyo is a promising cruise destination with many scenic spots. the problem is that everyone the biggest bridges in toerk owe are too low for cruise ships to sail under. >> the span of the rainbow bridge across tokyo bay is 52 meters above sea level. cruise ships have gotten bigger. so the bridge is now too low for giant vessels to pass beneath it. to address the problem, the tokyo government announced plans to build a wharf for large cruise ships close to the rainbow bridge. but it's taking a backseat to

building facilities for the 2020 tokyo olympics. an operator says officials should carefully consider the size of the facility. >> there's plenty of time until the o living roomics. so we should consider building a large port big enough for two ships to dock at the time. otherwise, we may have to go back later and rebuild the whole thing. >> the land an infrastructure ministry is also doing its part. in march, officials there launched a wib site that offers information on tourist foreign cruise ships have become a key pillar of japan's growth strategy.

>> to achieve that target, the country must do all it can to build a kind of infrastructure necessary to ensure that this opportunity doesn't just sail on by. >> it's time now for a check of the weather. >> yes. many reports out here across long island and the northeast, people being stuck at home because of this heavy rainfall. this comes on the heels of the

record breaking rain that we saw in detroit earlier this week. also record breaking around the baltimore region. you saw severe flooding. it's continuing to circulate. the rain bands are coming from the south to the north. that's when you start to see these rain totals start to pile up. this is one record on long island. 337 millimeters over a 24-hour period not just an amount that is record breaking for this particular location but all of new york state, breaking the previous number of 295 millimeters back in 2011. how much -- what causes all this rainfall? the storm system. what does it look like? right here. you have cars submerged out here. several highways on long island were closed during the early morning hours on wednesday. this was during rush hour there. a lot of people heading into work and being stuck on the roadways. some people leaving their homes

via boat. it's tracking off towards the northeast pushing across new england. eventually, that will work its way off towards the northeast as we look through the next 24 to 48 hours. towards the west, cooler temperatures setting in. toronto, temperatures in the high teens to low 20s. back into the southwest, flash flood watches around the four corners and into the northwest some severe thunderstorms could be possible into western portions of montana. let's move towards eastern asia and talk about what's going on out here. we have been talking about the monsoonal throw into southern china. a new low developing off that. that will bring showers across southern sth korea, western japan. if you are in tokyo, don't be surprised if you hear an afternoon thunderstorm start to

rumble up out there as we look through thursday evening. to the north, it's not going to happen there into northeastern china because it's still lingering down here towards the south across the hong kong area, 178 millimeters. this sh go -- this is going to move north but not much farther than the shanghai area. hong kong with a high of 31, thunderstorms on thursday. showers passing by on thursday into tokyo. temperatures climb up to 31 there. let's wrap things up here into europe. more on this later on. i want to talk about it. we have a low pressure area moving across centraeurope. switzerland, we saw a train derailment. many people were injured. it was caused by a mudslide

following over 100 millimeters of rain. the severe weather threat is still here. it's continuing to linger across italy, into the alps, the west into spain and france. cooler temperatures but fire up the severe weather. here is the extended outlook.

steves: the dramatic rock of cashel is one of ireland's most evocative sites. this was the seat of ancient irish kings for seven centuries. st. patrick baptized king aengus here in about 450 a.d. in around 1100, an irish king gave cashel to the church, and it grew to become the ecclesiastical capital

of all ireland. 800 years ago, this monastic community was just a chapel and a round tower standing high on this bluff. it looked out then, as it does today, over the plain of tipperary, called the golden vale because its rich soil makes it ireland's best farmland. on this historic rock, you stroll among these ruins in the footsteps of st. patrick, and wandering through my favorite celtic cross graveyard, i feel the soul of ireland.

today'sations voices comes to you from mumbai, india, to speak to a man who has workeded for many years to drive the country's economic growth. as one of the brics countries, india has had a major impact on the global economy, but in recent years, it has experienced a slowdown. the people elected economic reformer narendra modi by a landslide in the last general election and has vowed to turn things around. we spoke with ratan tata,