hello and welcome to nhk "newsline." shinzo abe arrived in cuba to meet president castro. abe is the first japanese leader to visit the caribbean nation. abe i arrived in the cuban capital ha vanna.

cube what has a diplomatic relationship with the north while japan has not. before the meeting-- castro led the cuban revolution in 1979. palestinian president mahmoud abbas addressed the general assembly on thursday. he asked -- abbas brought up the ball four declaration which marks 100 years this year. >> translator: we asked britain as we approached 100 years an apology to the palestinian people for the controversy, misery and that it created. >> benjamin net tanya hoo hired

back criticizing his take. >> president abbas just attacked from this podium the balfour declaration, he's preparing a lawsuit against britain for that declaration from 1917. that's almost 100 years ago. talk about being stuck in the past. >> middle east peace process says there's -- one top challenge for the u.n. general assembly is who to solve the refugee crisis, but there's a long way to go to extend to refugee conflict zones.

>> reporter: among the host country leaders--we cannot address the issue unless we resolve the root causes of migration. >> reporter: he added no end to the conflict. in syria a cease fire is breaking down. a u.n. humanitarian convoy was hit. syrian planes were blamed for the bombing. u.n. secretary council met on wednesday. the u.s. special envoy for syria addressed the council. he talked about the cease fire.

>> i hope that if peace is to be made, if they are to be saving the old country, there is a need for a transition, and it will require general readiness to negotiate and compromise. >> reporter: additional forces are responsible. >> translator: the government forces are withdrawing in accordance with the agreement, but only to see that the position forces started shelling. u.s. secretary of state john kerry responded angrily. he says that we are reached now lows. >> this attack has dealt a very heavy blow to our efforts to maintain peace in syria.

>> reporter: the u.n. secretary of defense has divided the roles. now or to business news, investors in japan are playing a bit of catchup, markets were closed on thursday due to a national holiday. we have more from our business desk. what are investors taking in? >> it was a big day in terms of monetary policy announcement. the bank of japan announced a set of changes to its policy. then the yen weakened against the dollar, japanese stocks did rise before the close. then the federal reserve kept its interest rate unchanged, following that wall street showed gains, the nasdaq closed at an all-time record high.

but the dollar weakened, which means the yen is stronger again. so let's see when investors are making of all this on this friday morning. ramine, tell us what you're seeing over there. >> reporter: playing a little bit of catchup as you just mentioned there, quite a lot for investors to take in, we left off at the boj's policy meeting and we're kicking off now a day after the federal reserve's policy meeting, let's have a look at how we're kicking off here, september 23rd, a friday, both indexes a little bit low here, just a remindser, tokyo stocks actually surged after the boj's decision on thursday, financials rose after the boj held off after making a deeper rate cut. and the broader topix gained 2.7% on wednesday as the ratio of exchanged traded funds linked

to the stock index. that's a big focus today as well. the boj governor and other policymakers made a number of changes, they also set what they called yield curve control. now that decision was pretty much in line with what most people expected, the u.s. central bank held off raising rates at its september meeting. after the changes announced by the boj, we may see a volatile session here today. the banking sector, the auto sector and some very heavily weighted retail sector stocks may see some increased activity, i'll monitor all of those during the morning session. >> and tell us more about currencies because we really saw a drop in the dollar after the fed announcement, what's going on this morning. >> exactly, we did see an increased volatile any currency market. dollar-yen, 1.0 as the dollar

retreated down 1% against the yen, investors are expecting further volatility. the rate's divergence between japanese and government bonds is growing, wednesday the yield on the ten-year benchmark, briefly rose above 0%, but u.s. treasury yields fell on thursday, with benchmark lows hitting near -- year lows, crude oil prices, another big focus, they gained overnight on speculation that leading producers may agree to a production freeze later this month, and of course a weaker dollar, boosted dollar demom natured commodities. let's look at asian markets that are open so far this friday morning, kospi is up, australia's sidney index is in the positive as well. china markets open in an hour and a half, i'll have more for you then. >> thanks a lot for that update. well a deal to create the world's second largest steel producer is set to go ahead.

the chinese government has approved a merger of two state owned steel makers. bosteel group is based in shanghai. company executives say the new will be about 60 million tons a year overtaking japan's two companies among others. china accounts for arrange half of all global steel output. analysts say the country's exports from excess production are hurting competitors overseas. the chinese government is pushing the industry to consolidate. the two companies say they're going to streamline reduce inefficiencies once the merger is complete. experts are calling it the biggest cyber breach ever. yahoo says hackers stole information for at least 500 million user accounts from its

networks in 2014, officials at the american it giants say a recent investigation uncovered the hack, they say the stolen data likely includes names, telephone numbers and dates of birth of people around the world. yahoo is asking affected users to immediately change their pass words and they want all customers to do so if they haven't made the change since 2014. the company blames what they call a state spocnsored actor. first came the billion dollar accounting fraud, then the house cleaning operation that removed the people responsible. now new managers at toshiba are trying to haul the company back from the brink with a very different approach.

>> reporter: this man took the helm of to be sheeba in june as part of a management shake-up, he was the first person to come from the management division which wasn't imp indicated in the accounting scandal. he has been making his way around chinese factories to meet employees face to face. >> translator: i want to talk to the staff to cultivate a closer relationship. it might be time consuming, but i think the ability to communicate directly with them will help in the long-term. >> reporter: toshiba first admitted that something was wrong in 2016, an investigation conducted by a third party had uncovered irregularitities in its bookkeeping. the firm admitted it had

overstated operating profits by more than $2 billion. the blame lay largely with three former presidents who put intense pressure on staff to hit unrealistic targets no matter what. the only way for the people below them to comply was to report fake earnings. in the wake of the scandal, toshiba has set up training sessions for managers. the aim is to show them how the problem arose and what they can do to assure it doesn't happen again. one of the topics discussed is the pressure cookerwork place culture that's spread under former management. >> translator: can we talk about the challenges set by the past three presidents? >> translator: there are times i thought the budget was completely unrealistic, way higher than we could achieve. the company would demand profits

of $1 billion when we projected half that. >> reporter: to be sheesh what's culture was said to be open. but the profit driven management machine gradually changed that. one manager has to factories and officers asking employees for their input. some of them didn't hold back. >> translator: i think it's a bad idea to set unrealistic goals. >> reporter: i think the people who set the goals don't understand the realties of the workplace. >> translator: i realize now that we don't really understand anything at all about our organization. it's capabilities, and it's workplace environments. i was sure that if we gave people a platform, then young

people would come forward and speak their minds. >> reporter: experts say the culture at japan's big corporations favors opinions that re-enforce already established views, toshiba is determined to be different. it's seeking out a workplace where everyone can speak out openly and honestly. >> and that is the latest in business news for this hour. i'll leave you with a check on the markets.

>> a small city in northwestern china is home to a treasure trove of buddhist cave paintings. a local artist has spent his career emulating these ancient masterpieces. >> reporter: for many years the caves and the murals they

contained have been something of a mystery. some of the techniques used to build and decorate them have been lost over time. but about 150 kilometers to the west, an artist is leading a project to revive thiss. he has made re-creating the cave his live work. he began 20 years ago, using his own money. his >> translator: in ancient times, buddhist war paintings were a means to pass over their observations and knowledge. i want to pass on our thoughts and hopes teople living 1,000 years from now.

>> chen has drawn on all his talents to emulate the ain't shept methods. he lays four types of clay on to the walls. but he says his still mystified by many things about the originals. for instance, producing suggest shades of color has been a challenge. matching the pigment hasn't work. he found a mineral that he believes is more of the same than we have a while ago. on the right is a pigment commercially produced today. on the

h. >> he learning techniques used by people in olden times is priceless. not all of the new works feature the same. artists from hungary decorated this cave. and this mural is by an australian painter.

>> translator: culture is the lubricant -- understanding other co culture is the key to bidding trust and cooperation. >> chen and his co-workers are keeping one part of the silk road alive and creating a mod mpb day crossroads for cultural and artistic exchange. >> a group of japanese archit t architects has lunched an ambitious campaign. the plan to build the gymnasiums on saturday.

both feature a suspended roof which was rare at the time. the first building has a roof hanging from main cables linking two large pillars. the result is a beautiful structure that has no pillars inside. it's one of the masterpieces of the late world renowned japanese architect tanga. the facility hosted swimming events in the 1964 tokyo olympics. it's scheduled to be used in the next olympics for hand ball, wheelchair rugby and other sports. the group including, famous architects, held a news conference. kuma is the designer of the new stadium being built for the 2020 games. >> translator: when the 1964 tokyo games were held, i was 10 years old. i was impressed by the gyms when i entered them and made up my mind to become an architect. >> kuma added he wants people to support the group's world heritage drive. >> wrestlers are battling it out

in tokyo, hoping to come out on top and emperor's cup. here's the overview of the title contenders. >> reporter: going into day 12, we have a single with 11 wins, he's hoping to capture his first ever top division championship. he's always looking as sharp as ever this time, the 30-year-old totally focused on winning the emperor's cup. the grand champion has already suffered three losses. he goes for the inside, but he is blocked. the two go after each other hard. he keeps up the pressure and advances. he remains unbeaten after 12 days. >> now training him are three men with two losses each.

and here's how things played out for the three reikishi. hoping to win back to back titles in their ninth championship. around and down, and he wins in contention with two losses. he's looking very impressive. he's beaten 2-2. he stops the charge and marches forward. now he has two losses. and the eighth match winning streak was challenged on the -- the two exchange a few thrusts then endo gets him in a driving grip. and endo goes up to 10 and 2. finally here on the standings after 12 days.

guado is still the tournament's sole leader. and endo has two losses and keeping up the pressure on guado. >> that does it for our sumo. will guado run away with the championship? or will endo come in to hall his streak? i'll be here to tell you all about it, so join me then. let's get a checkup of the weather, it's another wet and cool morning, robert speda joins us with more. >> it actually does look like it's going to be getting a

little bit better out here, we have this area of low pressure, just dominating much of japan today that has been bringing heavy rain. we actually had one report of 167 millimeters of rain in just a 24-hour period. tokyo is going to have scattered rain showers through your friday. also back to the north, this low will be tracking through honchu and hokkaido on saturday. we have dry air kind of filtering in the the west, coastal areas of japan still might see some on and off rainfall, but conditions are going to vastly improve before we head into sunday and that's going to bring in a bout of precipitation. taipei 27 with rainfall, now this is from those autumn rains we have been talking about out

here, but if we look ahead into the tropics, i want to take your attention back towards guam, because guam right now, a special weather statement is in place, we have a tropical depression over there, this is expected to develop, could become our next named storm system, right now most guidance points it towards the west, maybe taiwan, maybe the western japanese islands or the philippines. similar track to that. something you want to keep a watch out for. for americans, we have a flood threat across parts of the western great lakes, precipitation has been coming down quite hard, some days have seen up to 200 millimeters of total precipitation. coming out of the swing city of minnesota, heavy rainfall being hit, the area received 250 millimeters of rain in one shot.

cars definitely struggling to get through this flooding. and unfortunately, more rain is in the forecast. our stationary front continues to codominate much of this regi, stretching to the east, and back to the west, we had another low developing across the rockies this could bring some snowfall for those of you in the higher elevations, we're going to be seeing a threat of strong thormtsz as it charges off toward # east. and a lot of rain. as we watch this front, ita minneapolis, we're actually getting a high of 19 by friday. buffalo new york, 27, dropping down to 19 by saturday, a little bit more autumn like for you, new york as well, cooling down pretty significantly by the end of the weekend, and same thing with washington, d.c.

actually the official start of the astronomical fall was here on thursday so that cool breeze coming in is definitely going to make it feel much more seasonal. i'll leave you with your outlook. and that wraps up this edition of nhk "newsline."

thank you for joining us.

>> on this edition of "native report"... we learn about the game of lacrosse at a summer camp in fond du lac. we see how an organic recycling facility benefits communities that use it. and we visit the beautiful land of frog bay tribal national park. we also learn something new about indian country and hear from our elders on this "native report." >> production of "native report" is made possible by grants from the shakopee mdewakanton sioux community and the blandin foundation.