The ambassador was set to give a speech on the unification of the Korean Peninsula. Doctors say lippert suffered nonlife threatening injuries including a 3centimeterdeep gash on his cheek. They say he received 80 stitches. Witnesses say the attacker was at sitting at a table near the ambassador. He reportedly shouted at lippert. They say people attending the event took the man down but Police Officers didnt immediately respond to the incident. Authorities say he had received a suspended prison term in 2010 for throwing pieces of concrete at the japanese ambassador. They say he was angry about japans claims over islands between the two nations. The news made headlines around the globe. Joining us in the studio is our senior commentator kengo okamoto. Hes been covering the Korean Peninsula for years. Most people view south korea as a relative safe place. Can you tell us more about the security situation for ambassadors in the country . Yes. Ambassadors are usual lyly ambassadors are not usually for the public to access. But they are mainly in secure locations like embassies where they have security personnel protecting them. Ive been many times to the u. S. Embassy in seoul and i can tell you the security is tight. I must hand over my press i. D. For inspection when arriving. And then go through a metal detector and have my belongings carefully examined. Lippert has a busy job attending meetings. Hes famous for having casual talks with his neighbors while working from his residence to the embassy. Police say in this case there were about 30 Police Officers around the home. But they say they didnt check peoples belongings before going into the breakfast meeting. Witnesses say the suspect was screaming he was against the military drills between the u. S. And south korea. What effect do you think that played . Most people in south korea believe the u. S. Is the most important ally. They know the nation has been kept safe from the north in large part because of american forces. But some people who sympathize with north korea are against the existence of u. S. Forces in the region. A News Agency Reports the man brought in papers calling for the military drills to end. As a disturbing relation in the peninsula. So i dont think the close ties between south korea and the u. S. Will change greatly as this is seen as an isolated incident. But i do think ambassador security will be increased and there theyll be much harder to reach. Kengo, thanks as always. Communities around japans crippled Nuclear Plant are complaining about being kept in the dark. Theyre criticizing the operators for knowing radioactive water was leaking into the ocean and not telling them. Matsumoto is the mayor of one of the towns near the Fukushima DaiichiNuclear Plant. The community had a visit from the president of Tokyo Electric Power company and hand over a protest letter. Theyre demanding executives disclose information swiftly and get workers to change their way of thinking. Translator making sure the Nuclear Plant is safe is essential for recovery from the accident. Our communities are protesting about actions that have severely undermined our trust. Tokyo electrics present hirosa said hes sorry his company has repeatedly caused concern. He promised to take thorough steps to make sure it never does that again. About 3,000 delegates from across china have assembled in beijing for the National Peoples congress to discuss ways to move the country forward. President xi jinping will be working to consolidate his control. But in his third year in office he faces major challenges beginning with the countrys slowing economy. Xi calls this the new normal and says china must focus less on speedy growth and more on improving the quality of life. Well be bringing you extensive coverage this week in our series china xis new normal. Chinese leaders have set a target for Economic Growth. At around 7 for 2015 down. 5 Percentage Points from last year. The annual congress began at 9 00 a. M. On thursday. About 3,000 delegates around the country are attending. Premier li keqiang laid out the government plans for the year. Transtornado our Economic Development has entered a new normal. Our country is in a crucial period. Challenges need to be overcome and problems solved. Without deepening reform and making structural adjustments, we will have a hard time sustaining steady development. On the countrys Anticorruption Campaign li said the government will maintain its zero tolerance policy. He said the government will thoroughly investigate and punish anyone found guilty. Government leaders are still stressing the importance of the military. Defense expenditures in 2015 will come to 886 billion yuan 140 billion, up 10. 1 from last year. Military spending has posted doubledigit increases every year since 1989 with the exception of 2010. Li said building a solid National Defense and strong armed forces is fundamental to safeguarding chinas sovereignty, security, and developmental interests. Translator we need to push forward to become a strong power at sea. Protecting our maritime interests, dealing with seaborne conflicts, and proactively enhancing bilateral or multilateral cooperation. After the session, some attendees spoke to us about this years government work report. 7 is already a very good growth rate. And it would provide the foundation for the Sustainable Growth in china for many years to come. Translator historically china has not given priority to maritime strategy. As premier lis report stated we have to become a strong power at sea. Nhk world naoki in our beijing studio what were the highlights of the government work report . The main highlight was the lowering of the Economic Growth target to 7 . Last year chinas gdp grew by 7. 4 . The government stressed that it has achieved its target but it was the lowest level of growth in 24 years. And it is clear that the economy is slowing. Behind this are strong Real Estate Investment and exports which have been driving the economy. In addition, investing searchly in Property Development and attracting factories in order to achieve high growth. As a result, the Housing Market is saturated and heavy industry has too much capacity. The administration of xi jinping has been using the new normal as a catch phrase. Its stance is that it is aiming for Sustainable Development rather than rapid growth with an emphasis on quality and efficiency. Premier li keqiang said in the report the leaders arrived at this years growth target by looking at what is needed and what is possible. He stressed that the country can maintain a sufficient number of jobs at this pace of growth. An Economist Says that Chinese Government hopes to counter the possible negative impression that the worlds secondlargest economy is losing steam. If you tell the people chinese economics are going to slow down it seems they must take responsibility. So they just make a new word a new normal. The problem is not a 7 or 8 the problem is how can china and Chinese Government change the economic structure . Naoki, which specific area is the government focusing on . The government wants to nurture the Service Sector and startup companies. A boom in technology has completely changed the lives of people across china. Many people are becoming more prosperous with each click of the mouse. I went to both cities and rural areas to witness the changes. Many young people are going to classrooms in beijing to learn i. T. Schools. Many of them are learning how to sell goods on taobao, chinas Largest Online shopping sites. They get struck how to advertise goods and devise sale strategies. Translator i want to launch an online shop that sells specialty goods for my local area. Translator i make 80 of my purchases online. I think this field will expand a lot. The school puts videos of the Classes Online so students in schools around the country can participate in realtime. With this approach the school has about 1,000 students taking the course together. At 1,100 for 12 days it isnt cheap. But the number of participants has shot up. Translator anyone who has a computer can be an entrepreneur. With the boom in internet shopping, theres a big demand for schools teaching i. T. Skills. But actually its chinas rural areas that are enjoying the benefits of the i. T. Economy the most. This village is no exception. It has a population of 7,000. This village looks like any chinese farming community. But more and more of the residents here are becoming online entrepreneurs. Selling their products through the internet. 20yearold du worked parttime as a carpenter after graduating from junior high school. Later, he taught himself computer skills and opened an online shop on taobao three years ago. Du focused on the furniture made in his community. He started selling cabinets that are easy to assemble and convenient to ship. They gained a reputation as local highquality products and du started getting 2,000 orders a month from all around the country. He now employs ten people to process the orders. Translator without the internet id probably still be working pardon time. Theres definitely no way my business would have grown so fast. Liu says he makes about 3,000 a monththrough his online shop, five times more than hed get working as a car pep tear. He designs furniture himself and manufactures it in his own factory. Translator my goal is to create my own brand of furniture under which i can sell my designs. I want to expand my Business Online so people anywhere in the country can buy my furniture. Lius success inspires the villagers. They now own and operate 100 online shops. This type ofville an is called a taobao village and they are popping up all over china. The popularity of online sales has also created Business Opportunities for courier and delivery companies. This major Courier Company set up a distribution hub near this village last june. It used to operate mainly in cities. But it sees a Business Opportunity in widening its services into rural areas. Efficiency provides locals speedy transportation and have contributed to a further increase in online sales. Translator because were handle more goods sold online as a Courier Company we can serve those villages and reduce costs at the same time. Its a true winwin situation. Chinas rural areas had been left behind when the countrys economy grew. Now the burgeoning online sales industry is giving them a chance to catch up. Naoki, will chinas online sector continue to grow at this explosive pace . Yes, gene. We can expect rapid expansion we can expect rapid expansion of the online industry in china. Ecommerce companies are especially targeting rural regions. Where about 600 Million People live. The group which operates taobao says it will invest about 1. 6 billion in the next three to five years in capturing the rural market. The Company Wants to does that 1,000 ecommerce support centers outside of major cities. The kind of investment is very significant. An expert points out that in addition to encouraged consumption, it will lift implement in rated sectors. Translator the online industry is taking over traditional ways of business. This means more opportunities for employment such as Delivery Services and call center stats. This is what china calls the new normal. The structural economic changes that the government seeks. Aside from the growth of the online industry the chinese economy faces challenges. The Consumer Price index which reflects domestic demand is growing at a rate of less than 1 . And this is raising concern about deflation. People are closely watching the government. Last year the Xi Administration had some success in rooting out corruption. This year people want to see whether it can guide the economy from the rapid expansion weve seen previously to a stable path of what it calls medium highlevel growth. Thank you naoki. Congress will continue until march 15th. Well keep you up to date on this Major Chinese political event. Recall madison is here with the latest on the much talked about multinational trade deal. Trade officials from japan and the u. S. Are sitting down for talks on the Transpacific Partnership ahead of a meeting next week. Chief negotiators from all 12 countries involved in the free trade talks. Deputy chief negotiator oe is representing the japanese side. Hes meeting with u. S. Trade representative wendy cutler. Talks are expected to wrap up on friday. A major Sticking Point has been tariffs on Farm Products like rice, beef and pork. Trade barriers on auto parts are another issue. January news negotiators are hoping to pave the way for ministeriallevel meetings between the two countries. Some officials though are concerned that they may not be able to make major progress. The u. S. Congress may delay debate on a key piece of legislation that would grant Greater Authority to the president to negotiate trade deals. Investors across the world keeping a pretty close eye on the European Central bank policy meeting later on today. They are expecting to hear more details about the banks massive bondbuying program. Main indexes in europe are looking like this. Were seeing gains across the board right now. Both paris and frankfurt are pulling ahead from even earlier gains. London is up by. 3 . Weve got robust earnings reports really helping european shares extend their rally ahead of the ecb talks. Here in tokyo the benchmark nikkei closed up about utah 25 , 18,751. Investors did refrain from placing big bets though. That kept Trading Volume at its lowest level for the year. And ching that the shanghai composite closed down nearly 1 3248, after officials lowered the growth target for this year to around 7 from about 7. 5 last year. The announcement added to fears the worlds secondbiggest economy is slowing down. Taking a look at other asian markets, hong kong lost more than 1 on worries about the economic slowdown in mainland china. South korea was flat. Australia ended up just a touch. Taking a look at currencies. The euro is moving at a pretty narrow range against the dollar. The pair is at 1. 1051. Meanwhile, dollar yen is at 120. 14. Traders are looking out for the u. S. Jobs data due out on friday. Market players may be seeing a new type of stock fraud in japan. Sources say an Investment Firm may have manipulated tokyo share prices last year using an offhour trading system. The sources say a Company Called select vantage repeatedly issued false buy orders. This was during the lunch break of the tokyo stock exchange. The firm is registered in the caribbean island of an quill la. Orders led investors to believe the stock would rise in the session and placed orders through a system that allowed the stock to be traded in off hours. The system sold the stocks. The company may have conducted fraudulent trades involving more than 40 firms shares and earned several hundred thousand dollars in illegal profits. Officials at the securities and Exchange Surveillance commission are expected to recommend a fine on the company. Frances Nuclear Engineering giant has reported a record loss for 2014. Areva saw nearly ten times red ink than the year before. Executives say the net loss exceeded 4. 8 billion euros, roughly 5. 3 billion. The company has been in the red for four straight years. Ceo echlt ochlteo phillippe. Still he pointed to growing demand for Nuclear Power generation in emerging economy and asia. He said areva will turn around after drawing up new strategies such as expanding in china. The people at one of japans biggest retailing groups are shifting their focus from bricks and mortar shopping to the internet. Executives have launched a distribution hub to handle online orders for their supermarkets. Managers at the retailer supermarkets already handle online requests. Executives say the center will manage an additional 2,000 orders each day. Economy Ministry Officials say in 2013 the Online Shopping market reached roughly 93 billion. That was up 17 from the previous year. Executives are aiming to double their groups online supermarket sales to about 830 million within two years. All right, that is going to wrap it up for biz tonight. Ill leave you with the markets. The prolonged Winter Weather in north america is leading to more than just white snow on the ground. Meteorologist jonathan no is here to explain how the extended cold conditions are impacting maple trees. Jonathan . Yes, gene yes. Were talking a lot about the ice and the snow. And certainly that has had a huge impact for a good portion of the United States. Especially for the eastern side of the United States during the past several weeks in terms of the Winter Weather. But it is also hampering some efforts when it comes to maple syrup. I want to give you an idea what that means by looking at video coming ive new york state. Because of the cold weather, it has delayed the start of the season for maple syrup. The producers in the United States begin tapping trees for the harvest wednesday. As warmer weather finally has arrived in the area the deep freeze though has actually had a good benefit in one aspect. It actually helped the trees produce more sugar so the farmers are expecting a better syrup harvest. Just to give you a comparison, the u. S. Makes 60 of the world maple syrup production. Canada rounding out the rest with 84 . So yes all the maple syrup gets produced in north america. In terms of timing back in 2012 the season ended in midmarch. Because it was so warm. But for 20132014, the peak actually extended into admitapril because of the those colder winters. Were also seeing a cold winter right now with the snowy weather pattern. And this extended eded stationary front is slowly dragging us up toward the east. Plenty of snowfall from the ohio river valley into new york city and down even into parts of louisiana where were seeing about a 10 to 15degree temperature difference just on the other side of the front. This will push toward the east as we go throughout thursday. As you go into friday we should start to see an end to the Winter Weather for this front. Look at this snow in new york d. C. , and also look at atlanta and houston. 15 to 20degree drop between wednesday and thursday for daytime highs. Were in the single digit as we go through the the day. Speaking of some wild weather, lets take a look at the forecast for europe. We have a cutoff low down toward italy thats producing a lot of the rainfall and some powerful gusts in the process. Were going to see some thunderstorms and some of this heavy rainfall continuing because it is a cutoff low. Its separated from the jet stream. It is picking up all this moisture from the mediterranean and dumping it on top of italy, meaning flooding concerns will continue as we go throughout the day. We have another system now, a cold front thats moving into the British Isles and ireland. Youre going to look at close to 150 millimeters of rainfall during the next two days. So look out for some heavy rainfall and some potential flooding problems. Forecasts for london cloudy skies. A few showers. Then the showers will increase throughout the day. High of 10 degrees. Rain in rome with a high of 12. Down toward athens i think youll see a little bit more sunshine with a high of 16 degrees. Now as you take a look at the forecast for east asia we are now seeing a little bit of a calming effect over japan as the low pressure system responsible for the snowy weather is moving away. But well still see a little bit of sea effect snow as a northerly flow comes from a High Pressure system. We have a disturbance down toward southern china. That will expand toward the east increasing the instability into western and central japan for friday. And then well see some rainfall going into the weekend. And then shanghai taipei, and hong kong, you will also see plenty of rainfall going throughout the day friday. Extending into the weekend. Still seeing some rain for shanghai saturday into sunday. Tokyo will see rain for saturday and sunday. Seoul will have a nice little dry spell but then cool down quickly on sunday with a high of 4. Hope you have a good day wherever you are. Heres your extended outlook. Thats newsline for this hour. Im gene otani in tokyo. From all of us here at nhk world, thanks very much for joining us. Until next time, goodbye. L wells in the town of to create tikrit. Theyve been held since june. China looks for ways to kickstart its economy. The u. S. Ambassador to south korea hurt in a knife attack in seoul. Also coming up, could