News Headlines - 26 April 2019

▽Shifting to more diverse hiring practices | The Japan Times

Keidanren (the Japan Business Federation) and representatives from universities have compiled an interim report calling for a departure from the long-established practice in which most big companies recruit prospective graduates en masse around the same time of year to start working in April - and a shift to more diverse hiring practices, such as year-round hiring, which is much more common in other countries and is increasingly being adopted here by firms in the IT and other growth sectors. The move reflects a sense of crisis among many Japanese firms that if they stick to the established hiring practice they will lose out in the race to secure employees with the knowledge and skills they need in the increasingly competitive and globalized business environment.

▽2 Japan opposition parties agree to merge ahead of upper house poll - The Mainichi

The leaders of the Democratic Party for the People (DPFP) and the Liberal Party (LP) agreed to merge the two opposition parties ahead of the House of Councillors election, now just months away.
DPFP leader Yuichiro Tamaki and LP co-head Ichiro Ozawa reached a formal agreement on the merger during an April 26 meeting at DPFP headquarters. The meeting followed a general assembly of DPFP members of both houses of the Diet held at the party headquarters in the predawn hours of April 26, where a majority of attendees agreed on the LP merger.

▽Japan nuclear regulator to halt reactors without anti-terrorism systems - Reuters

Japan’s nuclear regulator on Wednesday said it would start ordering shutdowns on any reactors for which power companies have not met deadlines for installing anti-terrorism safety features.
The deadlines start next year and are different for each reactor. The earliest deadline falls in March 2020 for Kyushu Electric’s Sendai reactor in southwestern Japan.

▽Myanmar court rejects final appeal by jailed Reuters journalists | The Guardian

The highest court of Myanmar has denied the final appeal of the two Reuters journalists who were imprisoned for their reporting on the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya Muslims, upholding the seven-year prison sentence and dashing the last hope that justice would be served.
The swift ruling, by Myanmar’s highest court, was a devastating blow to Wa Lone, 33, and Kyaw Soe Oo, 29, who were arrested in December 2017 and accused of breaking a colonial-era Official Secrets Act, and have now been in jail for 16 months.

▽Hundreds of thousands protest against Algeria's ruling elite - Reuters

Hundreds of thousands of protesters demanding the departure of Algeria’s ruling elite rallied peacefully in Algiers for a tenth consecutive Friday.
President Abdelaziz Bouteflika stepped down after 20 years in power this month, bowing to pressure from the army and weeks of demonstrations mainly by young people seeking change.