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tv   Newsline  LINKTV  March 26, 2020 5:00pm-5:31pm PDT

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welcomome to nhk "newsline." i'm ross mihara in tokokyo with the stories at this hour. we start with the latest on the coronavirus. leaders from the group of 20 countries have agreed to pump more than $5 trillion into the global economy to counteract the effects of the pandemic. the leaders made the announcement in a statement issued after an extraordinary summit held via videolink on thursday japan time. they said they would continue to
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conduct large-scale fiscal support anand work togetheher oe rapid development of antiviral medicines and vaccines. during the meeting japanese prime minister shinzo abe called on his counterparts to offer the kind of comprehensive support to the global economy that they did during the 2008 financial crisis. abe added that organizations like the world health organization and private sector companies need to work together to speed up the development of medicines to treat the virus. he also told the other leaders that he e and international l olympic committee president thomas bach had agreed to postpone the tokyo olympic and paralympic games until summer of next year by the latest. abe said he is committed to holding the games as a way of showing how humanity has overcome the pandemic. the number of people infected globally with the coronavirus has topped 460,000. the surge of infections in the united states and some european
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countries is creating a serious shortage of beds to treat patients. the italian government said on thursday that it had confirmed 6,153 new cases, for a total of 80,539. italy is the second country after china to exceed the 80,000 mark. the government added that the death toll grew by 662, to 8,165, the highest in the world. atillio fontana, president of italy's hardest-hit region of lombardy, appealed for international supporort. >> translator: we need doctors and nurses. please s support us. we would like to ask for support from all countries. >> spain's death toll rose to 4,089, surpassing that of china. a large exhibition complex in madrid has been converted into a makeshift hospital.
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france operated a specially adapted train to evacuate patients from the northeastern region of alsace to hospitals in another region. the united states has reported 13,987 new cases for a total of 68,440. its death toll increased by 257 to 994. at a news conference, new york governor andrew cuomo pledged to work aggressively to increase the state's hospital capacity. the number of people filing claims for unemployment benefits in the united states last week jumped to a record of more than 3 million due to the effects of the coronavirus pandemic. the department of labor says the advanced figure for seasonally adjusted initial claims was 3.28 million for the week ending march 21st. that's over ten times the revised number logged in the
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previous week. the labor department says the economic impact of the coronavirus has caused the surge. states continue to cite service industries broadly, particularly accommodation and food services, the department said in a statement. additional industries heavily cited for the increases included healthcare and social assistance, arts, entertainment and recreation, transportation and warehousing, and manufacturing sectors. the administration of president donald trump plans to implement a $2 trillion stimulus package to ease the economic effects of the pandemic. the legislation would provide expanded unemployment benefits and financial support for r sma and medium-sized businesses to maintain employment. japan's government has launched a new task force to fight a growing coronavirus outbreak. the move paves the way for the
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prime minister to declare a state of emergency based on a newly enacted law. >> translator: in order to overcome the challenge our country is now facing, the state, local governments, medical workrkers, business operatorors, and all residentst need to be united anand push ahd with measures to tackle the illnesess caused by the new coronavirus. i want the minister in charge of the special law, the health minister, and other relevantnt ministers to swiftly come up with basic guidelines. >> the task force will create those guidelines using expert opinions on how to prevent the spread of infection and step up medical care. if the government finds there is a serious threat to public health and the economy, he can begin steps to declare an emergency for r a designated ar and time. if that happens, governors will be able to urge schools to close and limit the use of facilities where many people gather. for example, department stores
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and movie theaters. governors could also urge residents to stay at home, but the health ministry says there would be no punishment for those who ignore the request. early indications suggest that any restriction on businesses and people's movements would last for three weeks. an emergency declaration would also enable governors to seize land and buildings for emergency medical facilities without the owner's consent. they would also be able to compel companies to sell necessary medicine and healthcare equipment to the state. also on thursday, the governor of tokyo met the prime minister to ask for help fighting the virus. >> translator: w we will do o whatever we can to prevent an explosive spread o of infection working closely with the central government. i came to ask the prime minister for hehelp in that effort. >> koikeke says abe gave a a st response to her request.
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she asked him to promptly provide information on how t th cecentral government can help p prefecture. meananwhile, japan is stepping travel restrictions. starting on friday, the country will deny entry to foreign travelers who have recently been in iran, italy, spain, germany, or 18 other european countries. japan has now confirmed about 1,400 coronavirus infections. that does not include more than 700 cases from the "diamond princess" cruise ship. 47 people have died along with 10 from the cruise ship. more than 900 people have recovered and left hospital. tokyo confirmed at least 47 new infections on thursday. that's a record high for the fourth straight day. it prompted the governor to urge residents to stay home this weekend if they can. some residents and businesses scrambled to get ready. within two hours of opening,
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stressed shoppers had nearly emptied shelves of instant food at this tokyo supermarket. people concerned about a potential lockdown faced long lines. but businesses say there is no need for panic buying. >> the country's agriculture minister says he's been assured there will be not be any food shortages. meanwhile, tokyo businesses are shifting how they work to make room for telecommuting. >> about 100 employees at this energy company will work
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remotely from now on. but workers in other fields aren't sure if they will be able to adjust. >> other businesses are simply shutting down this weekend including shibuya's 109 department store. the building caters s to a younr clientele. people around the world are canceling their travel plans and hunkering down at home to try to avoid getting the coronavirus, and that's dealing a crushing
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blow to many businesses, especially those in the world of hospitality. >> reporter: this hotel in niigata prefecture is just one business in japan that has been hit hard by the fallout of the coronavirus pandemic. >> translator: yes, i will cancel your reservation. >> translator: we were expecting to bring in about $180,000 this season. but because of the coronavirus, we'll be lucky to make half that. >> translator: it's unbelievable. we'r're taking a big hit. >> reporter: the hotel was already having a bad season before the outbreak hit. there hadn't been much snow, and as of january, nearly 400 skiers and snowboarders had canceled their reservations. so the hotel started to promote its banquet services to local companies and also planned to host a music camp for university
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students, which would have brought in more than 60 guests. but in late february, prime minister shinzo abe urged people not to h hold large events. >> translator: please take measures to cancel, postpone, or reduce the size of all public gatherings. >> reporter: and the cancelations started to pour in again. the management team held an emergency meeting to discuss what the hotel should do. >> translator: i think it's important to show on our website how we've been sterilizing our guest rooms. >> translator: all we can do is guarantee to our guests that it's safe to stay here. >> reporter: but these steps had little effect. including bookings up to the end of march, the hotel had lost more than 2,000 guests this season. management took the painful decision to close for 11 weekdays, asking 40 employees to take time off work in rotation.
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>> translator: we're in a real crisis. we have to remind ourselves not to get discouraged and to keep our spirits up, even though it's a tough situation. >> reporter: revenue is drying up, and the problem is serious enough for the hotel to consider taking out a bank loan to pay salaries and bills. many businesses like this are rerealizing the virus is not ju a threat to health, but also poses a danger to their very livelihoods. a source familiar with japanese professional baseball says a pitcher has become the country's first player in the sport to test positive for the new coronavirus. the source says shintaro fujinami of the hanshin tigers underwent the test at the advice of a doctor on thursday after complaining of being unable to smell the aroma of coffee for several days.
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but he has not developed any other symptoms such as a fever, coughing, or fatigue. two other hanshin players who had a meal with fujinami on march 14th also had tests for the virus. they are complaining of being unable to taste food properly as well. the team had its home and farm team stadiums disinfected. it has also told its players and staff to stay home for at least one week from thursday. the tokyo olympics and paralympics organizing committee has launched a new task force to handle preparations for the holding the games next year. the one-year delay was prompted by the coronavirus pandemic. >> traranslator: w we are facin unprecedented challelenge. >> organizing committee president yoshiro mori addressed members of t the task force e dd "a new start tokyo 2 2020 games" hehe urged t them to act quickl noting they hahave about six months to rework preparations that were seven years in the making. the leader of the task force,
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secretary-general toshiro muto, added that it's the commmmittee duty to see to it that the olympic torch is lit next year. the task force has a host of issues to tackle. new transportation and travel plans have to be made. accommodations and security must be arranged. and an army of volunteers secured. what's more, ways must be found to cover what are likely to be huge additional costs. here's a quick look at the world weather.
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i'm ross mihara in tokyo, and that's all we have for now on nhk "newsline." welcome to "direct talk," interviews with leaders, visionaries, and p pioneers who are shaping asia and the rest of the world. catherine ma is the ceo and executive director of the wiki media foundation that hosts the popular website wikipedia. it was started in 2001 by internet entrepreneurs. it now includes more than 50 million articles in roughly 300
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languages and has 1.5 billion hits e every month.. we talked to maher about the mission she says is building the sum of all human knowledge, and how she says we can share the mission today and in the future. >> our mission is to bring the world's knowledge to the planet, in however many languages, on whatever topics that people are interested in. i think it is increasingly important today, not just because it is an encyclopedia, it's a basic reference for people who are seeking information, but because around the globe we're seeing conversations about what information that we can trust and where we can turn for sources of informatition andnd we really think about our history and our understanding of the world today. and wikipedia provides a place that doesn't just offer that information, it's also a place where people come together to write that information, really reflecting a broad perspective from the planet, from all sorts
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of different people who contribute. >> the wick media foundation is based in san francisco, the global capital of digital technology. the nonprofit organization supports the operation of wikipedia worldwide, which lets users write and edit content. catherine maher's main responsibility is to build contributor communities and protect every individual's right to access knowledge. on wikipedia, anyone can edit an article by simply clicking the edit tab. you're free t to make changeses long as you folollow the guidelines. >> wikipedia relies on three core principles. the first is neutrality of information. so the idea is that when you write a wikipedia article, you should consider how you present it in the most neutral way possible, without bias. the second is verifiability.
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you need to be able to cite, cite the information that you are referencing back to a reliable source. then the third aspect of our policies are, no original research. and so if you have a new theory about history or about science, that is wonderful, but you probably need to go and publish that through an appropriate channel, through peer review and the like, before it ends up on wikipedia. those three policies i think have been really important in trying to establish accuracy as a baseline for information on wikipedia. it doesn't mean that we're always accurate, however. oftentimes, as information changes, you'll find mistakes in wikipedia. the value of the open model is that when those mistakes are found, they'y're correctcted qu quickly. i think the thing that people often ask about these days is about misinformation on wi wikipedia or what happens when people are trying to insert political bias into wikipedia. the answer for us is that we
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actually believe that it's really important to have a large number of people edit wikipedia from a variety of different backgrounds and perspectives, because what we have found and what research outside of wikipedia foundation has found is the more diversity of perspectives you have contributing to pick pedia articles, the higher quality it is and the more neutral it becomes. this is particularly true of political articles. our experience is that tends to be a very good way of mitigating against bias. because when you and i disagree on a subject, we're going to have to work really hard to find a way to agree on what shows up in a wikipedia artiticle. >> all previvious edits made ton article remain in the history page, where anyone can see what kind of revisions were made and by whom. in addition to this open transparency, wikipedia is unique in s several ys. there are no advertisements. it is funded by user donations. and it does not use an algorithm
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to select information. mauer believes that these features are especially important in the current age of fake news and alternative facts. >> we deliberately don't have a political position. we don't seek to make money. we're not trying to get you to click on articles so that we can sell more ads. we don't track any of your information. we have a very strong privacy policy. we don't want to know what you're learning, we just want you to be able to learn. i think this is part of the reason people trust wikipedia today is because we don't really have an interest in doing anything other than making knowledge available and being a platform where people can debate the news, they can debate facts, they can argue about history, there's the ability to do all of that. but they do it in the open so that people can see how those processes work and we can see how there are tensions in the way we view our world, and that's okay.
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we all have different experiences, we all bring different truths to the table. i don't think wikipedia represents truth in any way. i think wikipedia represents what we knonow about the world what we can agree on about the world at any point in time. that's why it constantly changes. we're always in a process of evolution as we learn more about the world around us, whether that's in science or as we bring more people into editing wikipedia. so you havee differing historie telling different versions of the same story. that's a healthy thing for us to have, competing information. it allows us to engage in that critical thinking and form our own opinions. and i think people really appreciate and respect that. >> since early childhood, maher has been fascinated with different world cultures. when she was a freshman in college, the september 11th terror attack occurred in new york city. in the midst of increased anti-muslim sentiment, she decided she wanted to learn
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arabic to understand more about the region. she moved to cairo in january 2002 and enrolled in an arabic language program at a university. >> i'm from the area around new york. it was something that was part of the community that i grew up in. and i think that in part that was -- made me all the more interested in moving to learn arabic and try to understand a part of the world that i didn't know very much about and didn't really understand. it felt important to me to go spend time in a place that was close to the culture that in the united states was being very much viewed as something as the "other." and i wanted to understand more about it and not view it through what people were telling me on television, but try to understand it myself. i landed off the plane. it was in the middle of the
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night. i didn't speak the language. my first impression was of a city that's incredibly alive. cairo is a -- you know, they talk about new york as the city that never sleeps. cairo is the city that never sleeps. everyone is out on the streets. there's a very sort of public, warm, welcoming atmosphere. egyptians have an expression which means like "the best people." it's a very warm, welcoming culture full of people who are -- i mean, it's diverse in terms of their thoughts and experiences and beliefs as anywhere else you would find on the planet. and it just was a place that i felt very comfortable and really enjoyed and enjoyed learning about. i stayed much longer than i thought i would. i went for what was supposed to be four months and stayed nearly two years. >> during her stay in egypt, tensions between the united states and iraq mounted, escalating into a war.
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witnessing the rise of anti-war protests in cairo, maher was struck by the impact individuals can have when they are fully empowered. >> even in the lead-up to the u.s. invasion of iraq, there was quite a lot of street protests and activity in cairo. i saw students at the university i was at protesting. it was an interesting time to see a country in which people disagreed very strongly with their leadership, taking to the streets and protesting, and to also feel as though -- and be aware that, you know, these are activities that involved my own country. and to be an observer to that in a very different place. >> after her experience in the middle east, maher worked for very international nonprofit organizations where she employed emerging digital technology to empower individuals to create
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positive social change. >> the use of technology in bake rig -- basic rights has always been there. from the printing press to radio and broadcast information, broadcast media. the use of digital technology was just sort of the next evolution of that. and what we saw in the early days of the internet, and particularly in the middle east where i was living at the time, were people who had lived in societies in which there wasn't much freedom of expression were using the internet to communicate and to share their perspectives. where there wasn't necessarily freedom of the press, they were writing blogs. loggi blogging was a really big thing in the first decade of the 2000s. so i was fascinated by this idea that technology could provide people with an opportunity to express themselves and realize rights that had not previously existed for them. and at least early in my work
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was very much around how you use technology to enable access to those rights. so at unicef, the right to health care and education. then later on the right to participate as a citizen in your own society. the more that i did that work, though, the more obvious it was that technology also had potential negative implications for human rights. surveillance, the lack of privacy, censorship, as well the ability to track people, including activists and journalists, independent journalists. so i started working more on how we protect those rights and how we defend people's ability to express themselves and participate in the way that they're entitled to as humans. >> maher joined the wiki media foundation in 2014, being drawn to its mission and her belief in open-source technology. >> what makes the concept of an open internet really important is that it makes anybody able to participate. it makes no one of us more powerful than any of us.
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it means that there are not barriers to entry that would prohibit people from expressing themselves or starting a new idea. everyone has the opportunity to participate equally with the same meaning and the same value. we don't always live up to that in practice, but that is certainly i think the thing that makes it such a powerful idea. >> the wiki media foundation also hosts conferenc and eventsaround the wod. loing towardsdswikipedia's future, mer is now focused on eaking wh derreprented communits andncouragi more diverse rticipatn. there a pces where wikipedi is not as we known, there are places and languages in which wikipedia remains quite small. so we were talking about arabic. the arabic-speaking world has about 350 million people who speak arabic. less than 1% of the internet is
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in arabic. so you have one of the most widely spoken languages on the planet that has access to a tiny percentage of information that is online. i think of that as a huge discrepancy, almost an equity issue, when you think about this population of people. what does it mean for them to not have access to information in the way that an english
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>> the u.n. says the world is losing the war against the coronavirus as numbers of deaths jump in spain and italy. ♪ to -- one -- thec sent the u.s. highest number ever recorded. dayh afra goes into a 21 nationwiwide lockdkdown. in other news the u.s. charges venezuela's president with large-scale terrorism. ♪

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