♪ welcome to "nhk newsline." i'm raja pradhan. we start in thailand where a man has opened fire at a child care center in the country's northeast. police say at least 32 people are dead, including children. they say the shooting happened at a facility for 3 to 5-year-olds in nong bua lamphu at around 12:30 on thursday. the gunman is among the dead. local media report he was a former police officer whose job had been terminated. now, in major league baseball, two-way sensation

ohtani took the mound for the more missiles were fired from north korea just days after a launch triggered alarms across northern japan. japan's defenseinistry says they launched two more ballistic missiles. but they believe to have landed in the sea of japan. officials think both projectiles fell outside japan's exclusive economic zone. they estimated that one flew for about 800 kilometers and it may have flown in an irregular trajectory. no damage was reported. this is the sixth north korean launch in 12 days. analysts believe the firings have allowed them to improve their capabilities. on tuesday, pyongyang raised alarm after it fired a missile over japan for the first time in five years. the ballistic missile flew a distance of 4,600 kilometers, the furthest ever for a north korean projectile.

japan's prime minister condemned the repeated launches. >> translator: i have instructed the relevant ministries to provide information to the public and ensure people's safety. this is the sixth time pyongyang has launched missiles in just a short period of time since the end of september. it is absolutely unacceptable. >> the defense minister says japan launched a protest against the north through its embassy in beijing. the launch threatens peace and stability. south korean military sources say pyongyang appears to have fired two different types of short range ballistic missiles. the news agency says military officials are looking into the possibility the first launch was a ballistic missile that north korea calls a super large rocket.

the news agency said the second missile may have been modeled after russia's iskander missile which travels at low altitude in a regular trajectory. the missiles were fired eastward outside of pyongyang. the first missile threw about 350 kilometers and the second traveled roughly 800 kilometers. south korean president yoon suk-yeol vowed to defend his country. >> translator: we will protect our people's safety based on the strong alliance with the united states and the trilateral security cooperation with the u.s. and japan. >> the launches come as a u.s. aircraft carrier was deployed to waters east of the korean peninsula. the north issued a statement before the launch condemning south korea and the u.s. it blamed the u.s. for posing what it called a serious threat to the stability of the korean peninsula. they spoke to reporters

afterward. >> translator: in just during the short time starting from the end of september, a total of six ballistic missiles were fired. this poses a grave challenge to japan and this region and to the international community's peace and security. with this recognition, we agree that japan and south korea strongly condemn such acts together. also, along with the deterence and response capable of the japan-u.s. alliance and japan-south korean alliance, we confirmed the importance of try lateral security cooperation among japan, the united states, and south

>> russia's government asked to take control of the power plant. the facility is located in the moscow claims to have annexed. putin signed a decree on wednesday. they will establish a new state run company to manage safety and operations. the move comes after he signed final papers to annex four regions of ukraine. he talked about the legitimacy of what he called referendums in the region. he ka called the results convincing and transparent. ukraine dismissed it as illegitimate and stepped up to take more aas back from russian control. the governor of luhan says they're making gains in this

region. >> translator: several settlements have already been liberated fromhe russian army. they're raising their flags >> ukraine's president said the country's forces have already retain settlements in regions moscow claims to have annexed. ukraine is locked in a ument crisis and the invasion's economic impact have rocked the financial world. but the united nations says the fighting is also an environmental disaster in the making. >> russian attacks are escalating. this is what is left behind. apartment blocks completely

destroyed. there is so much more left abandoned. anderson has been tracking the destruction knowing that on the day that they go lent, a massive cleanup will begin. >> they knees to be disposed of, factories will be smashed. they will be going into the groundwater and into the soils. so there are ukraine itself significant impacts from this catastrophic situation. >> i think japan has a lot of technical skills, very, very fine scientists, engineers, and technical people can support with that post conflict humanitarian cleanup.

that concludes providing europe breadbasket. vast time lines have already been destroyed and anderson says these issues will soon multiply. they could make it impossible to -- and ammunition may linger for a lifetime. >> we know that from other wars that it takes decades to clean up what was indeed a terrible, terrible catastrophe. and so this war has to end and has to end as soon as possible. >> they have drawn attention from environmental disaster and elsewhere. she hopes the world will take notice to do more and faster. >> more on financing, warn faster on resilience and

adaptation. otherwise, what we'll see is more flooding, more droughts, more fires. and that's not a future he want. >> anderson says she hopes nations will work together on solutions with the need for the u.n. climate conference next month. >> in major league baseball japanese two-way sensation has taken to the mound for the final game of the 2022 the pitching and batting titles in the ysame year. the angels lost to the athletics by a score of 3-2.

he pitched no-hit ball into the fifth inning, but he gave up a double in the fifth, and later allowed a run on a sacrifice fly. ohtani left the game after pitching five innings, allowing one run on one hit while striking out six batters. ohtani's total of 166 innings pitched allows him to become the first player to qualify for both the pitching and batting titles in the ysame year. the angels lost to the athletics by a score of 3-2. ohtani took the loss, but finished the 2022 season with an impressive 15 wins, 9 losses, and 219 strikeouts. as a batter, he posted a .273 batting average, 34 home runs, and 95 runs batted in. >> translator: i think it was good that i was able to pitch every game stably. i think that's the best. i think if i can improve more, i will be able to achieve better results. >> he added he was disappointed that the season was already over for the angels and hopes to go to the postseason next year. earlier, i spoke with nhk world's senior sports

correspondent nakajima takeo. he covered maj league baseball for more than a decade and spent six years in the united states. ohtani put up remarkable, historic numbers in 2022. can you elaborate on his historic season? >> last season ohtani proved he could be one of the best mlb players in both pitching and hitting. he became the first player in 104 years to reach double-digit wins as a pitcher and double-digit home runs since babe ruth in 1918. he finished within the top five of the leagues in most of the pitching and hitting categories such as wins, strikeouts, and home runs. >> we reported he qualified for both batting average and earned run average in the same year. how significant is this? >> yes, in mlb, a player needs a certain number of appearances to qualify for the pitching and batting titles. ohtani met that requirement in 2022. in modern baseball with the designated hitter system in both leagues in mlb, pitchers concentrate on pitching. also, a starting pitcher like ohtani will pitch every five or six days during the season, so it is difficult to maintain that routine and perform as a batter at the same time. ohtani not only pitched and hit for the entire season, but also maintained high numbers which surprised baseball fans. >> now that his record-breaking

season is over, we're all curious if he will get the mvp. of course, he got it last year. are there any chances for the consecutive award? yes, the two top american league mvp candidates are ohtani and aaron judge of new york yankees. ohtani's numbers in pitching and hitting are exceptional. on the other hand, judge not only passed babe ruth's single

season home run record, but broke the american league's home run record with 62 and came close to winning the triple crown. his numbers are sure to be highly evaluated. the mvp award will be decided in a vote by the baseball writers association of america, so we will see how it turns out next month. next in weather, residents are heading home from work thursday wearing extra layers as unseasonable cool temperatures continue.

our meteorologist jonathan oh has the outlook for here and elsewhere in our world weather report. >> hello, if you did not have a jacket with you as you went out the door, you were cold because it was a lot colder as we went through this thursday, and for those of us across the eastern areas of japan, we also had this persistent band of rain constantly rolling through the area and that's kept things dreary and cold and wet. it's not very pleasant to be outside. low temperature in tokyo on thursday was 11.6 degrees which was the lowest for the season so far. and 92.5 millimeters of rainfall in a 24 hour period. we have a stationary front along with a low pressure system lingering in the area really contributing to the pattern and what's going to add on the rainfall is more rainfall out of the west, over the korean peninsnsula.

the low is going to move to the east helping to spread the wet weather as we go into the holiday weekend in japan. have the umbrellas nearby. the temperatures should recover just a little bit comparatively speaking. tokyo 17 for friday, mid-20s by the time we go into the weekend. monday, from sapporo to fukuoka, a chance for rain on monday. be on the lookout for that. meanwhile in a europe, a very sad story unfolding as we're taing abt really strong winds causing a major situation in greece. here's a look at video to give you an idea of the situation.

at least 15 migrants died when their vessel sank off a greek island early thursday morning. coast guard video shows rescuers pulling a migrant from strong seas. the boat was carrying 40 people. five people have been rescued but about 20 are still missing. in terms of the strong winds, that focal point will be shifting eastward. tokyo will see strong winds there, and strong winds impacting areas like the scandinavian peninsula. windy weather continuing as we go through the day on thursday. that's a look at your forecast. hope you have a good day wherever you are. ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪

that wraps up this edition of nhk "newsline." i'm raja pradhan. thank you for joining us. coming up is "newsline biz." don't go away.

♪ this is "newsline biz." the world trade organization says global trade growth will slow sharply in 2023 due to high energy prices and rising interest rates. >> today the global economy faces a multipronged crisis. it's weighing on growth across much of the world including in the united states.

in europe, high energy prices are squeezing households and businesses. >> the wto says global merchandise trade volumes grow by 3.5% in 2022 from the previous year. they slash the forecast for 2023 to a 1 periods increase down from 3.4% they predicted in april. now the economists expect higher energy and food prices caused by the war in ukraine to depress household spending and raise manufacturing costs in europe. they say monary policy tightening affect purchases of homes and cars as well as fix investment in the united states. and they warn that escalation of the ukrainian conflict could destabilize the globalcomy further. the wto director general also warned that higher cost for fuel, food, and fertilizer could resu i food insecurity and death distress in developing countries. she said there was a high degree

of uncertainty about the wto's forecast but the picture for 2023 has darkened considerably. now financial group is planning to take stake in rakuten securities. it is the latest move by a financial group to tie up with an on line brokerage. informed sources say they have decided that one of the subsidiaries will acquire 20% of the shares as early as next month. the group holds all of the shares in the securities. the deal expected to be worth $550 million. officials reportedly hope that the investment will give it access to younger customers. most of the roughly eight million accounts are held by that demographic. they have already obtained a 49% stake in pay securities. another online brokerage and a

subsidiary of mizuho. they focus on person to person services for we wialthy clients. they hope to use the huge customer base to expand its business. there is sbi holdings. the japanese supermarkets have seen demand fall after surging during the coronavirus i said it was $29 million. that is a 61% decline from the same period last year. food supermarkets slumped 39% for the march to august period. sluggish food sales were major

factor behind the decrease. the profit also shrank due to increased energy costs. it's a different story if you look at consolidated earnings for the whole group. both companies posted record high half year sales and profits. operating profit for the group came to almost $235 billion yen or about $1.6 billion. sales at the overseas convenience stores drove up earnings. an expansion of the drugstore business paid off. the group logged profit of nearly $96 billion yen or more than $660 million. now visitors who come to japan from western countries are often surprised these days by the low prices of shops, restaurants, and hotels. a professor of colombia university has explained the reasons why japan's costs remain low while many other countries are dealing with serious price pressures.

>> many of you have experienced a very expensive run in new york. kbard compared to tokyo. >> major factors are japan's currency. the yen lost 20% of the value against the u.s. dollar this year. that's due to the country's diverging interest rate policies. the rates have remained low while the u.s. federal reserve has been steeply hiking rates in recent months. he also mentioned deflation. consumer prices hardly budged since the burst of the bubble in the early 190s. western economies are battling strong >> in order to correct this, it's necessary to boost japan's economic strength. it's not about fixing the difference in interest rates. they should raise the

productivity and wages to pull itself out of deflation. >> the metaverse is where they stay in a computer generated environment. first popularized by the gaming world, they caught the attenon of everyone from i.t. giants to popular restaurant chains. but how to grow a business in the virtual world. we have the story. >> hello. hi. welcome to our store. >> i.t. giant facebook has rebranded itself as meta as it repositions itself to focus on the metaverse. in may, the company opened a store to sell head sets and other metaverse products.

it is estimates the meta verse market size will reach $5 trillion by 2030. but a youtuber says a lot of companies are still not using the metaverse to the full pontial. this is the vtualestauran of a major ham burlier trn. it attract aot of aention whenirst unched. bu thais no longer the case. this is the virtual space of a large nk. let's click on the face of the ceo. >> okay. this doesn't lead us to any link. >> the big challenge moving forward is obviously figuring out a way to tie this virtual platform into the physical space and have it make sense. it is a little disappointing. >> but there are success stories. this mexican food chain has some

3,000 restaurants across the u.s. the customers have grown thanks to the metaverse. the company's meta verse restaurant looks like the real thing. assuming that people will start spending more time in the virtual world in the future, the company designed the site to make visitors feel as if they are in a real in this game, players make their own burritos. the goal is to address a burrito within a given time. they also receive requests that customers are likely to make in a real restaurant such as adding extra ingredients. the winners get coupons which can be exchanged from menu tombs tumdz from one of the restaurants. >> it can't be a copy pace to other ideas.

an experts say from companies to kuk seed in the meta verse, they must make sure the virtual spaces look authentic and entertaining. >> the more people would want to go even use them or purchase them in the real world. in addition to the meta verse. companies will have to figure out how to successfully march the world with the real world to realize the meta verse's full potential. >> okay. let's get a check on the markets.

>> that's it from tokyo. thank you very much for watching. ■ñ■ñ■ñ■ññó■c■■■■■■■■■■ ♪

>> this is al jazeera and these are the top stories now. russian president vladimir putin is finalizing his lands to annex four ukrainian regions. the upper house of parliament has approved legislation which now heads to him for his final signature. ukraine's president says troops are making rapid and powerful progress against russian forces in the south and east. vladimir zelenskyy says dozens of villages have been liberated in the past week. south korea and the u.s. have carried out bombing