Tokio Marine & Nichido Fire Insurance will no longer decide on intra-company transfers without employees’ consent by 2026, in an attempt to improve job satisfaction and recruit younger talent. The new rule will apply to its 6,000 Global Course employees.

A Tokyo branch of the national convenience store chain Lawson is donating food that is past its sell-by time to a cafeteria that serves children from needy families. This addresses the issues of food loss and children going hungry due to poverty.

Recently, advertisers are more frequently hiding their identities by disguising ads as “personal recommendations” for products or services on social media platforms and elsewhere. The Consumer Affairs Agency released a report calling for regulations, including clear labeling of ads so as not to deceive consumers.

The president of the operator of Kappa Sushi, the smallest of Japan’s “big four” conveyor-belt sushi chains, was arrested on suspicion of stealing data from a rival, Hama-sushi operator Zensho Holdings. He is a former executive at the latter company, and is accused of copying trade secrets such as wholesale seafood prices.

The operator of the mobile carrier “au” will cut millions of customers’ bills to make up for disrupted service last month. Besides the inconvenience of being unable to communicate or receive data, the disruption meant users could not make emergency calls, prompting discussion of technical changes to address such situations.

SoftBank’s mobile service outage affected millions of users in many parts of Japan on Thursday afternoon. Sweden’s manufacturer Ericsson apologized and said its equipment fault was to blame for the disruption.