show how local communities tackled it with explanations in english, chinese, russia, and several langua languages. museum volunteers will tell visitors around the personal experiences of patients, their families, and local residents. the people of toyama have battled environmental pollution for generations. they hope to convey the tragedy and its lesson to the world and future generations. >> nhk world there. >>> it's time now to go to rachel ferguson for the world weather forecast. rachel, another beautiful day today. what's in store for us? >> certainly is a beautiful day here in tokyo. we're looking for 19 degrees and lots of sunshine. that is something to look forward to. however, wednesday will be a bit different. we already see showers starting to move into western japan this afternoon and then it will spread across much of the southern half of japan into wednesday. bringing strong winds along with that heavy rain. so storm conditions, high waves at either coast as well, and where that heavy snow is piled up, particularly along the northeastern coast, there is the potential for fl

the >> [speaking foreign langua] >> this plan is that syrians have to take the first step. we support this initiative. if those who fight against the syrian government do not follow this example, i don't think we will achieve any results. >> hoping for better times, the international red cross president, jakob kellenberger was in syria. he wanted two-hour daily truce. he also wants access to detainees. activists say that in the meantime, the authorities are punishing known opponents by demolishing or setting fire to their houses in many areas, including this one. there are fears that there may be more of this sort of thing as next week's deadline approaches. jim muir, bbc news. >> in the last few minutes, a spokesman for the u.n., kofi annan, has said an advanced team is due in damascus in the next 48 hours to discuss the deployment of international monitors. james robins has joined me here. you kind of get the feeling you have been here before. nevertheless, what do we know about this advanced team? what is going to try to do exactly? >> it is very interesting. clearly, ko

lots of different languas, lots of different skills and they're waiting to get in and we need funding and we're good to go? >> believe it or not, we're not allowed to look. i have no idea what is. -- it is. when we bring them in buying groups, i get to find out when we have brought them in. sometimes a group will come in and i will say, we will mix it up better than that and another group will come in and it will be a better mix. i am hopeful that when it shakes out in the end that we have a really good snapshot of san francisco, but i do not get to know ahead of time. >> that is interesting to know. thank you. president mazzucco: how many applications do we have? we can have that number. >> we advertised the test and it crashed the city system. somewhere between 3004 thousand applications within two weeks. after it shipped out, they tested 25 to 2800 and it went down from there. i think we are still in the ballpark of 2000 people on the list and it passed the application process, the written process. the oral process and the physical and now we're into the background. commissioner te