Dozens of people have been evacuated in Japan's northern prefecture of Hokkaido after two wild bears were spotted near a ski slope. No one was injured.

Police say skiers on a lift noticed the bears in a forest near the peak of the Bibai Kokusetsu ski resort in Bibai City on Sunday morning.

Tokyo Metropolitan Government officials confirmed 480 new cases of the coronavirus in the Japanese capital on Sunday.

That marks the highest daily figure for a Sunday.

Japan's minister in charge of the coronavirus response says the government will take all possible measures in areas where infections are surging.

Economic Revitalization Minister Nishimura Yasutoshi said on an NHK program on Sunday that the government is responding with a strong sense of urgency as the country's daily new cases continue to hit record levels.

NHK has learned that Japan's defense budget for fiscal 2021 is likely to be around 51 billion dollars -- a record high. The budget would be higher for nine years in a row.

The Defense Ministry has been negotiating its budget request with the Finance Ministry before the government compiles the budget plan late this month.

Japanese Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide says his government will try to report to the UN by next November on how it will reduce greenhouse gas emissions through 2030.

Suga made the remark in his video message for an on-line summit commemorating the fifth anniversary of the adoption of the Paris Agreement. Under the agreement, each country must determine and regularly report on its contributions to mitigate global warming.

Relatives of Japanese nationals abducted by North Korea have called on the government to step up efforts to get all the victims back as soon as possible.

They made the appeal on Saturday at a government-sponsored symposium in Tokyo that coincided with a week-long campaign to raise awareness about human rights abuses in North Korea.

A record 3,031 new cases of coronavirus infection had been confirmed in Japan by 6:30 p.m. on Saturday.

It is the first time the daily tally has topped 3,000.

Japan's medical systems are increasingly under strain as the number of cases of coronavirus continues to rise.

On Tuesday, Hokkaido, Tokyo, Osaka and two other prefectures were at Stage 4, the worst of the four-level alert scale, in terms of hospital bed availability. The scale was set by a government advisory panel to assess the severity of an outbreak.

The Tokyo Metropolitan Government confirmed a record 621 new cases of coronavirus infection in the Japanese capital on Saturday.

The figure topped the previous daily high of 602 recorded on Thursday.

A survivor of the 1945 atomic bombing of Hiroshima has given an online lecture on her experience to tour guides at UN facilities around the world.

Kajimoto Yoshiko spoke on Thursday, Japan time, at an event organized by the Hiroshima Peace Culture Foundation. Her audience included tour guides from UN facilities in New York and Geneva.

Japanese authorities and experts are preparing for the next steps in the fight against the coronavirus as a crucial three-week period draws to a close. The panel of experts are calling on the government to stop giving a subsidy to travel to areas where cases are rising.

The experts met on Friday, just a few days out from the end of what they had called a critical three weeks. One of the agenda items was the government's domestic travel campaign which has been in place to support the pandemic-battered economy.

A group of fishermen has asked a court to issue an injunction to stop the government from conducting a drilling survey around an island in southwestern Japan. The Defense Ministry plans to relocate US military exercises to the island.

The ministry intends to build a Self Defense Force facility on Kagoshima Prefecture's Mageshima island in order to relocate the takeoff and landing exercises of US carrier-borne planes there. The ministry is about to start conducting the drilling survey at 37 locations east of the island on the seabed.

An expert panel at Japan's health ministry has given a go-ahead to sales of the country's first genome-edited food.

The panel on Friday approved an application for the sale of a tomato whose genome has been edited to make it produce more of an amino acid called GABA. The substance is said to help lower blood pressure.

A university in Japan is introducing an entrance exam method in which applicants can use smartphones and tablet computers to search for information.

Sanno University, which has campuses in Tokyo and Kanagawa, plans to introduce the new measure for some of its exams to be held in February.