Six times world rally champion Sebastien Ogier announced on Friday he had shelved retirement plans and signed up for another year with Toyota after a COVID-19 affected 2020 season.
The 36-year-old Frenchman is still in the running for a seventh title but is 14 points behind Welsh team mate Elfyn Evans with one round remaining, the Monza Rally in Italy next month.
Japanese automaker Mitsubishi Motors is planning to seek early retirement for about 500 domestic workers as it tries to rebuild its business amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Sources say Mitsubishi plans to call for the workers to voluntarily retire as early as November. The measure will apply to those aged 45 or older, including staff at the head office and factories in Aichi and Okayama prefectures.
A private research firm says 52 listed companies in Japan have offered early or voluntary retirement programs to employees so far this year.
Tokyo Shoko Research says the offers were made to a total of 9,323 employees between January 1 and August 13. It also says offers have surged since last month due to the impact of the coronavirus pandemic.
A bill that created a heated debate in Japan over the retirement system for public prosecutors has been scrapped.
The legislation aimed to raise the retirement age for public prosecutors in stages to 65. The Cabinet would have also allowed senior prosecutors to stay in their positions for up to three additional years.
A group of legal and political scholars has protested the government's abrupt change of its legal interpretation to allow a senior prosecutor to put off his retirement.
The government decided at a cabinet meeting in late January to delay until August the retirement of Hiromu Kurokawa as the head of the Tokyo High Public Prosecutors Office.