them enacted this week. a volcano on the southwestern japanese island of kyushu erupted. people are urged to be on the alert. and rescue crews are searching for people who went missing in a flood in eastern japan as recovery efforts get under way. japanese prime minister shinzo abe has indicated he remains determined to enact security legislation during the current diet session. lawmakers from the largest opposition party are vowing to put up a fight. they are promising to do everything they can to keep the bills from becoming law. abe took part in intensive deliberations at a special upper house committee. the bills would expand the role of the self-defense forces and allow japan to exercise collecve self-defense. a lawmaker from the ruling liberal democratic party asked why it was necessary to change the interpretation of the constitution to allow that right at this time? >> translator: when it comes to national security the government should be prepared for every possibility. the legislation is essential to protecting people's lives and peace within the limits set by article 9 of the constitution. it needs to be enacted immediately. >> a lawmaker from the opposition democratic party pressed the prime minister about recent poll numbers. >> translator: 80% poresed to the bills being enacted during the current session. i believe the will of the people is extremely important and is fundamental to making political decisions. >> translator: the best thing would be to win the people's understanding. and support for the bills. poll numbers are as you mention but even so i want lawmakers who were elected by the people to make their own judgment. after the bills are thoroughly debated. >> officials from the ldp and its coalition partner hope the legislation will be pass thousand week. in order to do that they nt committee members to hold a final question and answer session on wednesday and vote by thursday. opposition lawmakers may use tactics such as submitting a nonconfidence motion against the cabinet or a motiono censure the prime minister. they hope to delay voting on the security bills. supporters and opponents of the bills held rallies over the weekend in tokyo. about 200 people who backed the legislation gathered. >> translator: as i watch the situation near here in the east china sea i feel things are getting dangerous. >> further north, people expressed their opposition. >> translator: this bill absolutely can't pass if we want to protect the lives of our children and of the members of self-defense forces. >> organizers said about 400 people took part, many of them were mothers. a volcano on the southwestern japanese island of kyushu has erupted. mt. aso blasted plumes of smoke and ash hig above the crater. these images were captured by nhk camera meteorological officials say the eruption occurred on monday just before 10:00 a.m. local time. they say smoke rose as high as 2,000 meters. they observed large rocks flying near the site of the eruption. officials raised the alert level for the area to three on a scale of five. they say there are floss of hot ash and rock and they are cautioning people not to approach the volcano. they declared an area around the crater of 4 kilometers wide off limits. also city officials say 30 people including tourists were near the crater at the time of the eruption. all of them were evacuated to safety and police say they haven't received any reports of injuries. an official with the meteorological agency shed light on what experts have learned. >> translator: we found that the smoke grew vertically and horizontally. >> experts say there's a possibility magma played a role but the amount appears to be small and a major eruption is unlikely. some witnesses recorded what they saw. this man was working on his farm when the volcano erupted. a university student recorded this video he was visiting a sightseeing facility 3 kilometers west of the crater. he took the video from a car as it sped away. nhk spoke with a french staff member who works 7 kilometers north of the eruption. >> translator: we were kind of surprised because there was like a bank and we went out and we see a lot of smoke getting out of the crater. it was kind of impressive. >> what was the reaction of the people stopping by? did you see anyone being in panic? >> i didn't see anyone panic. everyone stayed calm. it seems the level of alert rose to level three, so what i hope is that the situation goes back to normal. rescue crews in eastern japan are searching for 15 people who went missing in a massive flood last week. the disaster also killed two people in joso city about 50 kilometers northeast of tokyo. a levee on kinugawa river broke. 10,000 rescue workers from police, self-defense force and fire departments are looking for the missing. they visited homes and offices to check whether any more people are missing. recovery efforts are under way. a water purify occasion plant in the city resumed operation on sunday. workers replaced the mortar of a submerged pump. officials can now supply water to more than 4,000 households and residents can clean their houses. >> translator: it's great. i can finally start clearing the mud out of my house. >> another water plant remains out of operation. about 8,000 households are still without water. city authorities say they don't know when the plant will be restarted. the governor of okinawa has taken another step in his campaign to prevent the central government from relocating a u.s. air base within his prefecture. onaga said he began procedures to prevent land reclamation work at the planned site. >> translator: the first step towards blocking the construction of a base by taking every possible measure. >> he said he made the decision because the approval process was found to have legal flaws. his predecessor approved the land reclamation work. government officials in tokyo plan to move the u.s. marine corps air base to henoko. officials from the central government and okinawa spent a month holding talks over the plan but failed to bridge their differences. the defense ministry had suspended preparatory work during that time but resumed the work this weekend. the decision to revoke approval is expected to take about a month to take effect. once that happens the defense ministry is considering taking legal steps to invalidate the move. >> translator: the government will take into consideration people's daily lives and the environment as we move ahead with the relocation plan in line with relevant laws. >> abe pledged to relocate the base as soon as possible to alleviate the concerns of the people in okinawa. the prefecture hosts 70% of u.s. military facilities in japan. the operator of the fukushima daiichi has begun releasing deacon at that my natured ground water from the plant into the sea. officials with the japanese government and tokyo electric power are trying to reduce the amount of waste water in the reactor buildings. the contaminated water is increasing at 300 ton as day. tepco has pumped up ground water around the building since august of last year on a trial basis. workers plan to release some 4,000 tons that has already been decontaminated. they are expected to release 850 tons on monday. and continue to release more over the next three days. officials say they will pump more ground water and release it after removing radioactive substances. they plan to resume the construction of steelalls along the coast to stop the ground water from seeping directly into the sea. the project has been suspended until the ground water is released. local authorities and fishermen say they are worried on effects of the environment if something goes wrong. >> translator: we have no other choice but to accept the release in order to reduce the amount of contaminated water. but i'm worried how consumers will take it. >> tepco officials say they will conduct strict monitoring. egypt says the country's security forces accidentally opened fire on a convoy of tourist vehicles. 12 mexicans and egyptians were killed. ten others were injured. minute city officials say it happened on sunday in a restricted area of the western desert. a joint force of police and military personnel were carrying out an anti-terrorism operation. the president condemned the attack and called for an investigation. egypt set up a task force how the vehicles entered the area. and what caused the security forces to open fire. egypt's military and police have been conducting operations against militants. the militants have bases on the sinai peninsula and in the desert near the border with libya. scandal hit electronics maker toshiba. gene otani has the details from our business desk. thanks, james. the report for april through june post an operating loss of about $91 million that's compared with about $400 million in profit a year ago. toshiba has been shaken by disclosures of major accounting irregularities. company officials say they find no problems in this quarterly report. the report is about one month late. toshiba twice postponed its financial results for the last fiscal year due to the irregularities. april through june sales stood at more than $11 billion down 4.5% from the same period last year. company officials said sales of personal computers fell in the united states and europe. they plan to review production of personal computers and housing appliances this year. japan and the european union trade negotiators began another round of talks on a free trade pact. they hope to reach a deal by the end of the year. the working level officials are trying to narrow differences and economic partnership agreement during the five day talks. it's the 12th round of negotiations. a key sticking point is better access to japan's railway business. eu officials want foreign firms to have greater acss. japanese officials say railway markets are already open to private companies and it's difficult for the government to interfere. the negotiators will discuss farm and food products. recent economic figures out of china point to a slow down. the country's national bureau of statistics announced key data over the weekend that add to the gloomy picture. the latest figures show domestic demand is still weak. industrial output rose about 6% year-on-year for the month of august. that growth rate is lower than what we saw throughout much of last year. the lower figure stem from weaker output of building materials and industrial machinery. that was caused by less investment in property and corporate capital. chinese officials are cautious on the outlook. they say driving down production remains sale. retail sales rose 10.8%. while that's up from the previous month the pace of growth is slower than last year. sales of clothes, shoes and daily goods were sluggish. some analysts put part of the blame for china's slow down on their state-owned businesses. beijing is hoping to improve that. a news report says policymakers are working on major reforms to make the enterprises more next and become strong enough to compete with rivals from overseas. china's state-run news agency reported on a guideline released by the communist party and the state council. the reform is in response to the criticism the state-owned enterprises are unprofitable and ineffective. the report says the companies are also under fire for poor services despite substantial government protection. guidelines says the enterprises should introduce salary systems determined by corporate performance. it also calls for hiring more outside managers. the guideline also encourages the enterprises to go public in the target year to change reforms is 20. checking the markets tokyo stocks closed lower on the lackluster data from china. nikkei average ended below 18,000 for the first time in a week. we go to our business reporter for details. >> reporter: many investors remain cautious ahead of poli policy -- will fed officials raise interest rates now or later. the nikkei average lost 1.6% closing at 17,965. it post ad third day in the red. the broader topix fell 1.2%. cell phone carriers were leading the loss. ntt docomo was down 9.8%. softbank was down 5.5%. and kddi was down 8.5%. on the flip say, defensive sectors like utilities were higher leading gains were kansai electric power climbing 1.5% and chubu electric up 1.4%. and kawasaki kisen rose. the big unknown is how markets will react to the u.s. fed policy meeting after the economy has benefitted from almost a decade of near zero interest rates. that's the wild card everyone is watching. moving on to other markets in the asia-pacific region. in china the shanghai composite sank 2.67 closing at 3114. that's the sharpiest one day fall in three weeks. investors shrugged off the government's plan to revamp the state-run companies. investors in hong kong cheered beijing's reform plan. it rebounded 0.3 brs. kospi slid half a percent. malaysia up by 2.25% after the government announced its stimulus package. sidney rote half of a percent. here's a look at some of the other business stories we're following. the number of new condominium put on sale in tokyo rose almost 24%. analysts say demand is expected to rise ahead of a planned consumption task hut in 2017. some developers are launching sales of new units. japan will provide $110 billion to build infrastructure in asia. finance ministry officials want the japan backed bank to take part in vechts and loans with higher risks. and here's a look at our global economic calendar for this week. first bank of japan will wrap up a two day policy meeting. the governor will hold a news conference. over in the u.s. the latest consumer price index is due on wednesday. on thursday japan's finance ministry will release trade data for august. in july the trade balance was in the red for the fourth straight month. on the same day investors will find out whether the u.s. federal reserve will raise their benchmark rate for the first time in a decade. every monday we ask specialists to share their views on the coming week. in this edition of expert view we speak to jeffrey li. he's focusing on that fed meeting on thursday. >> i don't think they will raise rates next week. the latest they will do it is perhaps in december. as you can see from the jobs number and from the inflation and from real wages, the fed will not raise rates because they are not hitting in the right direction especially considering the fact historically whenever the fed makes an interest rate decision they look at market conditions and so far market conditions have been very volatile, not only in the u.s. but globally and especially in the world's second largest economy and what happens in china do ultimately impact the rest. so the fed is likely to stall for the time being. >> lee says asian markets are seeing outflows in anticipation of the possible rate hike. but he says whatever the fed does the impact on two of asia's major economies will be limited. >> as for what is happening in india and china, i just came back from a visit to india. its conferencecy has been very stable because it has enough foreign exchange reserves of more than $350 billion and consequently you saw that the impact on india has actually been fairly muted both on the stock market and on tcurrency front. china should be in a fairly strong position. independent of whether the u.s. raise interest rates or not. subsequently we do not expect much impact from this rate rise in the u.s. that's it for business news. i'll leave you with the markets. thanks for watching nhk world "newsline" comes from our studios here in tokyo. time for a check on world weather and we begin in japan where a volcano erupted earlier on monday. our meteorologist jonathan oh has the forecast. jonathan. >> it looks like we're going to see the positive rain later on this week as we have the instability remaining over the island of kyushu. here's a look at the satellite perspective. as we start off the day we had sunnier skies. then later on we had some clouds rolling over the island and that's, maybe a little concern because we're thinking there's showers associated with this. there isn't enough energy to produce precipitation at the moment. high pressure is pretty strong over the sea of china and producing an easterly flow. as we go into wednesday a system will try to develop down south and west and bring the possibility of showers and rain by the middle of this week. meanwhile the rest of japan looking at relatively dry conditions, we do have the expectation some showers will move further to the north and into the central portions of japan. further towards the east over tokyo looking at dry conditions but we'll see some clouds for the next couple of days. as we broaden out the view looking at showers over the eastern coast of china but mainly seeing dry conditions because of the influence of high pressure. now down towards the south and as we get closer to vietnam there's a tropical storm named vanko. it only packs winds of 65 kilometers per hour, gusts up to 90 but because it's such a slow mover we're expecting vietnam into cambodia, laos and thailand to see rain, heavy amounts for an extended period of time. so flooding will be of some concern as this system continues to moves to the west. showers continue into the philippines and also into taiwan. temperatures topping around 30 degrees as we go into tuesday. now as we look over into europe and see what's happening we do have a system that's moving through france and the western portions of the continent. that produced some very heavy rainfall during the weekend. when we take a look at the video you may notice this particular situation really taking over this portion of france. in fact, southern france saw severe storms saturday night into sunday morning so that brought a lot of flooding and damage. heavy rainfall cause ad rock slide and that destroyed a major highway, a roadway that's running through the area. so sunday residents in the city were seen cleaning up the mud left behind by those floodwaters. now the system did bring also some heavy rain into northern italy and this cold front that's associated with the low will move towards the north and east and so all that moisture will be moving towards the scandinavia peninsula and so we'll see the chance for heavy rainfall as we progress through the week. as we go through monday we're looking at mainly rain for paris and also into rome. thunderstorms expected. drier and sunnier conditions for place like warsaw, vienna and also into athens. now wrapping things up with a look at north america, high pressure is the dominant force for the eastern side of the united states. that's going to bring sunny conditions and warm conditions. meanwhile further back towards the south and west we do have moisture that's going to be in play. that's going to bring the possibility of precipitation into an area that need some rain. los angeles you'll see a chance for rain on monday. high of 27 degrees. also looking at rain for vancouver and seattle. drier conditions for most of the united states and also into the southern portion of canada. toronto at 24. and mid-20s from new york all the way down into atlanta for monday. hope you have a good day wherever you are. here's your three day outlook. don't forget to logon to our website and click on contact us in the upper right-hand corner. for all of us here at "newsline," ññ÷?÷?ñ?ñó6óñd >> this is france 24. these are today's top stories. egypt and police forces mistakenly fire on a convoy carrying mexican tourists. 12 people are killed and 10 hurt. eu ministers meet in brussels for emergency talks on migration one day after germany since a temporary border control.