♪ hello, a very warm welcome to nhk "newsline." i'm yamamoto miki in tokyo. we begin in the u.s. where a number of deaths in a single day from the coronavirus has reached a record high of over 3,100. data compiled by johns hopkins university show that covid-19 claimed the lives of 3,124 people in the country on wednesday.

the daily death toll has passed 2,000 on most days so far this month, contributing to a total of over 290,000. a private sector research group says more than 106,000 people are currently hospitalized with the virus, with over 20,000 in intensive care. those tallies are also record highs. medical institutions across the country are reporting shortages of both staff and beds. experts say the number are high, as many people traveled across state borders for thanksgiving last month. they warned that the year-end holidays may lead to a further spread of the virus. anthony fauci, a key member of the coronavirus task force in the trump administration, called on people to refrain from dining in large groups and traveling. >> we don't listen to the public health measures that we need to follow, then we could start to see things really get bad in the middle of january. so i think not only for new york

state, but for any state or city that is facing similar problems, without substantial mitigation, the middle of january can be a really dark time for us. >> according to johns hopkins university, horworldwide infects have surpassed 69 million with a death toll of over 1.5 million. in japan, a government panel of coronavirus experts is meeting to discuss ways to reduce the impact of the upcoming holiday season. it comes as daily infections reach record numbers with serious cases particularly among the elderly on the rise. the panel will look at a number of proposed efforts to staunch the spread of infections and ea the growing burden on health care systems.

the experts are expected to ask people in particularly hard-hit areas to hold only online year-end parties. they also hope people there will reconsider traveling to their hometowns for new years. for people in the rest of the country, experts urge new precautions, including holding smaller parties with fewer guests. they also hope those who do travel will choose to leave at times when transportation hubs are less crowded. the go-to subsidy program is also on the agenda, aimed at supporting a pandemic-battered economy. it has seen locals travel across the country to take advantage of cheap deals on flights, restaurants, and lodging. the government says it has no plans to scrap the program. some worry it could be contributing to the virus' spread. japan confirmed more than 2,900 cases on thursday, bringing the overall total to over 173,000. the western prefecture of osaka is set to receive help to deal in a spike of cases that have pu the health care system under

serious strain. it plans to have several medical personnel, including nurses. they will head to a local hospital in a facility said to treat patients with severe covid-19 symptoms. japan has also come up with a proposal to ensure foreign arrivals can safely and cheaply travel from narita airport to central tokyo. those that test negative at the airport can now use designated cars and express trains. the arrivals had previously been told to avoid public transit. but that proved difficult and costly. many business owners in japan would agree that 2020 has been one of the most painful years in recent memory. but executives at big japanese firms are increasingly upbeat about the way the companies are riding out the coronavirus pandemic. a government survey shows that sentiment has improved for the second-straight quarter.

officials from the finance ministry and cabinet office regularly canvas companies to come up with a gauge known as the business sentiment index. the latest poll of big firms found the index for the october through december period was plus 11.6. that is the third-highest result since comparable data became available in fiscal 2004. it means that more companies feel business has improved, compared with a previous three months. the survey take in roughly 11,000 companies. the index for large manufacturers was particularly high at 21.6. that result was driven largely by strong confidence in the auto and chemical sectors. ♪ in other news, the world food program has been awarded the nobel piece prize in an

online ceremony. the u.n. organization is fighting harder than ever to combat global hunger. due to the pandemic, thursday's ceremony was held at the wsp's headquarters in rome, not in oslo. the event was broadcast by the nobel foundation's website. the executive director david beasley said 270 million people are facing starvation because of war, climate change, the pandemic, and other reasons. he added the prize is a call to action. >> when we don't have enough money, nor the access we need, we have to decide which children eat and which children do not eat, which children live, which children die. how would you like that job? please, don't ask us to choose who lives and who dies. >> the norwegian nobel committee said it was chosen for its

efforts to combat hunger and to up prove the conditions for peace in conflict ars. the committee stressed it hopes to focus world attention on the u.n. organization so it can receive the financial support it needs to prevent a hunger crisis. an important mission of the olympics is to lead positive legacies that serve the host country. one such outcome of the 1964 tokyo games was a rise of junior sport clubs. more than 30,000 are still active in japan today. but as you will see in our next story, the clubs are facing challenges that something can be remedied by tokyo's next olympics. >> reporter: kindergarten and elementary school students play soccer every weekend at this junior sport club.

the club's roots reach back to just before the 1964 tokyo olympics. its members hoisted the flags of competing nations at the olympic village every morning. >> translator: through the olympics, japan hoped to nurture children's health, by promoting sports. >> reporter: the games gave rise to junr clubaroundhe couny, estabshing sports a impornt part children's lis. in the 1980s, the number of club members peaked at more than 1.1 million. but the following four decades saw that number fall by 40%. the trend is attributed to declining birthrates, a growing number of private clubs and fewer kids interested in sports. the covid-19 pandemic has made matters worse.

the club had to cancel its activities and staff worry that membership may continue to shrink. >> translator: i think other institutions might eventually fill the role of our club, to nurture the local children. >> reporter: some clubs are trying new ideas to preserve the legacy of the 1964 games. one junior sport club began a program for children and parents so they can enjoy training together. many clubs offer only one sport. but this one is now offering up to 30, including trampolining and skiing. and their efforts are paying off. the head of the club says, he wants to cultivate children's passion for sports.

>> translator: i think there are many ways to make sports fun for them. in my opinion, junior sport clubs still have the potential to grow by trying out new ideas. >> reporter: some experts think the forthcoming tokyo olympics could help revitalize the clubs. there's also hope the games will re-ignite the joy of sports among children. a mongolian who came to japan and fought his way to the top in sumo has taken a step towards his next goal. kakuryu wants to become a stable master and train the next generation of wrestlers. so, he's become a japanese citizen. >> translator: i've been able to come thifar, thanks to sumo. i need to repay that debt. i made my decision so i can

nurture good wrestlers and show my gratitude to the sumo association. >> the japan sumo association requires any foreign wrestler who wants to be a stable master after he retires to become a japanese citizen. kakuryu is 35 years old. he made his sumo debut in 2001 and reached the top rank of yokozuna in 2014. he has six titles under his belt. 12 tournaments have been held since november 2018. kakuryu has missed eight because of injury. last month, the council issued an unprecedented warning over his absences. he is following in the footsteps of another mongolian-born sumo. hk -- hakuho. he became a japanese citizen in september last year. let's check out the world weather with our meteorologist, yoko komagata.

so, people in the europe alpine regions continue to deal with heavy snow there. what's the situation and what do people watch out for? >> back-to-back storms will continue to affect central europever the weekend, bringing more heavy snowfall. so, avalanches will be the biggest concern. let's look at this photo. more than one meter of snow has been recorded in austria for three days or so. road closures were recorded and people were busy clearing roads. avalanches have already occurred in parts of the alpine regions. as the winter storm moves east, snowshowers and showers will spread into the balkans as we go into the weekend. snow may reach up to 40 centimeters. and heavy rainfall will increase on the western side of the country, as much as 100 millimeters. another low pressure storm system will also produce widespread showers and snow in western europe.

gusts may exceed 100 kilometers per hour. windy conditions in london, paris and down to madrid on friday. rome and athens will continue to see unstable conditions on friday. people in the southwestern u.s. have been dealing with drought conditions for the last few months. they finally had some rainfall on thursday and more rainfall is expected on friday, as the next storm system moves in. the storm system will also produce widespread snowshowers across the rocky mountains. a high pressure system will go to the western side of the country on friday. but the conditions will change to wet and windy as we go into the weekend. some showers will spread into new york and washington, d.c. on saturday. then, we'll see some heavy mountain snow as we go into friday morning. the high will drop to minus 3 degrees. snowshowers are still lingering over the northwestern side of japan on friday.

in the meantime, rather mild temperatures and dry conditions will continue for the central and western portions of the country throughout the weekend. as we are going to the next week, we will get much cooler temperatures. the highs for tuesday, many parts of japan may have a few degrees cooler than normal temperatures. southwestern japan may see snow on tuesday. that's it for now. have a nice weekend.

and that's "nhk newsline" for this hour. i'm yamamoto miki in tokyo. thanks for staying with us. ♪ welcome to "newsline in depth." i'm yanaka marie. in today's stories, we pick up two books that have become hot topics. first, an award-winning japanese novel that looks into homelessness and inequality on the dark side of japan's economic growth. tokyo reno station is a novel.

in november, it won the u.s. national book award for translated legislature. one of the country's most prestigious literary prizes. reno station is a bustling commuter hub. it's where people get off for world-class museums, ice cream and walk around winter park. but the park side of the station is home to some of tokyo's homeless population. and it is these often forgotten people that is the focus of this book. >> this year's national book award for translated literature goes to yu miri. >> reporter: yu, who is korea d was born in japan, was inspired to write a novel by her

personal exchanges with people in fukushima, which was devastated by a powerful earthquake and tsunami in 2011. in her acceptance speech, she said she wanted to capture a sense of having nowhere to call home. >> the main character of the books a man from manisoma. i would like to share this joy with the people of that city, who are part of hardship after the earthquake. >>he trackthe livethe year fore tyo hosd the olpic fami.s to wo to suppt his he drift as a mrant wker and becomes homeless. the story depicts in haunting

proes his hardships in japanese society. a lot of the book was influenced by the events of 2011. yu says the pandemic touches on the readers and makes the novel even more relevant. >> translator: the moment i heard the expression, stay at home, i thought about the homeless people i met. the spread of the coronavirus drove people who had nowhere to go even further into the corners of society. >> yu won many literary prizes in her 20s for works that came from her ethnicity and personal experiences. the trauma of the tumultuous upbringing and bullying at school, once led yu to attempt suicide. but she says the painful experiences have motivated her

to write about people who are marginalized by society. we talked to her about her recent honor. congratulations on winning the national book award. is that your trophy? >> when you write, do you have foreign readers in mind? >> translator: i did write with foreign readers in mind. i believe that i am destined to write for the displaced people. some feel like outsiders because they lost everything in a major disaster or feel displaced because they have been separated from their family, their home, or mother country, due to war. >> "tokyo ueno station" has very intricate settings. did you have that planned when you started writing it?

>> translator: i write from scratch. i start writing completely unplanned. during this project, i had serious depression. i was bed-ridden and getting to the bathroom was difficult. i created a private twitter account and wrote my novel 140 character post at a time from my bed. i was in an extreme state of mind between life and death. and maybe from that situation, i could write it. >> after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami, you relocated to a city whose residents were ordered to evacuate there their homes after

the accident at the fukushima daiichi power plant. she renovated her new home to accommodate a bookstore and has been based in fukushima while cultivating relationships with the local community. >> translator: i want to write about fukushima. people who have come back are elderly people, in their 70s to 90s. solitary death and increasing rate of suicide due to loneliness, are both problems. and demonstrate how the effects of the nuclear accident are ongoing. i want to write about how people recover.

i want to communicate a neglected aspect of japan to the rest of the world. i hope to make what you can't see clear, through my storytelling. our next story looks at a nonfiction book that shows us the world is a better place than we may think. "thoughtfulness" was originally published in 2018. but the uncertainty and misinformation about the covid-19 pandemic has given it a new lease on life around the world. >> the japanese version of "factfulness" was published in 2019. interest in the book surged this year, pushing sales to a total of 970,000. "factfulness" was authored by a team of three.

hans rosling, a swedish doctor, his son, ola, and his daughter, anna. >> we also, here in the book, tried to teach people to deal with their own way of handling the information. >> reporter: the book explains why so many of us are wrong about issues of global importance. the main reason, we are told, is our tendency to follow a set of instincts that makes the world look more dramatic than it is. one key aspect is called the gap instinct. it's a tendency to divide people or things into separate groups and to believe that the gap cannot be bridged. for example, most people are likely to divide nations into two categories -- advanced and developing.

here's a graph showing the relationship between child mortality and the average number of children per women in different countries. developing countries tend to have higher birthrates and child mortalities. the figures are much less in advanced countries. the clear gap between advanced and developing nations reinforces the impression of a world divided into two categories. but the graph dates back to 1965. here is similar data for 2019. most countries fit in or close to the category of advanced nations. child mortality has dropped in most nations. we can see that many countries are in between these two categories. the authors of "factfulness"

contend that, when we see a gap, more often than not, we fail to see that the majority lies somewhere between the two extremes. from this particular case, we learned that the gap is shrinking and that the global situation is therefore improving. now that the world faces the pandemic, the crisis triggers another factor, the fear instinct. the flood of data we're exposed to, exacerbates our tendency to see things dramatically. >> when we see the numbers of infections, in covid-19, it's a big number, which makes us very scared. when we are faced with a pandemic, a threat, of course our overdramatic thinking kicks in. we get this very, very dramatic world view because we're so afraid to engage.

and we try to find ways of fixing that, and getting people to think about it, in a more realistic and fact-based manner. >> reporr: many readers in japan credit "factfulness" wit changing the way they read the situation. >>factfulness" emphasizes the importance of lookg at graph correctly and doing one's own research. >> our fear of the coronavirus needs to be accurate. >> reporter: in the wake of "factfulness," anna rosling, and her husband, have set up a website have help people graph correctly various sets of data about the world. >> the way to look at it is, take t number of deaths during this week, and divide it by the previous week. if there are more deaths, the number will be above one and the

virus is winning. if the number is below one, we are winning. >> reporter: the roslings believe all of society needs to develop the ability see the world based on facts, in order to address the never-ending flow of constantly evolving global challenges. >> our brains are pretty bad at dealing with information. so, we also need to become humble and curious. we should rather realize that most of us are wrong most of the time. so, we should help each other to check for the facts. i think, it's about changing the way we deal with the information. >> "factfulness" says by overcoming our prejudices and looking at the world with data and facts, we can better recognize what is true and what's false, and find reasons

for hope. the books we looked at today, were written before the pandemic. but they're taking on new meaning as society changes in the covid era. and helping us to see the world in a new light. and that's all for today's "newsline in depth." thanks for tuning in.

anchor: health care experts in the u.s. evaluate the pfizer coronavirus vaccine and recommend its approval for a nationwide rollout. hello. this is the world news from al jazeera. in a deal brokered by the outgoing u.s. president, donald trump, morocco has become the fourth arab nation to normalize relationships with israel. >> now is the time for the public and businesses to get ready for january 1. anchor: talk at the eu at a stalemat a