Labour unions in Finland went on strike Wednesday, starting a three-days labor action that will affect up to 300,000 workers and severely disrupt the daily life. Trade unions are protesting revisions to labor market legislation and social security cuts proposed by the center-right government of Prime Minister Petteri Orpo. The strikes will shut down kindergartens and pre-schools, disrupt air traffic and postal services, close public transport and shut down factories across the nation. Grocery stores, hotels and restaurants will be also hit by strikes across the Nordic country of 5.6m from Wednesday to Friday. National airline Finnair said it is being forced to cancel some 550 flights, and substantially cut down traffic at Helsinki Airport, its main base. Most of the strikes were called by the Central Organisation of Finnish Trade Unions and the Finnish Confederation of Professionals. Their member unions say that the measures proposed by Orpo’s Cabinet will increase inequality in society, weaken the position of workers, and harm lower income groups and the unemployed.<br/>
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The seeds of former flight attendant Mitsuko Tottori's rise to the top of Japan Airlines were planted in the aftermath of the carrier's bankruptcy more than a decade ago. Tottori, who rose through the ranks from cabin crew to chief customer officer, takes over as president of JAL in April, becoming one of the few women to lead a major global airline. Qantas has a woman boss and KLM and Air France are led by women who report to a male group CEO. That ascent from cabin to boardroom is notable in a country where advancement opportunities are still limited for women: Japan's gender wage gap is the worst among the Group of Seven (G7) countries. "Her case shows that a woman who started her career from the lowest position could become the head of the firm. It serves as a great model for women's career development in Japanese companies," said Kumiko Nemoto, a professor of management at Tokyo's Senshu University, and author of a book on gender inequality. While Tottori's nomination is a sign of change in Japan Inc, it also reflects JAL's sweeping organisational shift after a turnaround by industrialist Kazuo Inamori following its 2010 bankruptcy. Inamori, the founder of electronics company Kyocera and mobile operator KDDI who died in 2022, was tapped by the government to revive JAL. Known in Japan as the "God of management", the ordained Buddhist monk prized hands-on experience and said the carrier long neglected customers. Story has more.<br/>
Judges at the top UN court on Wednesday found that Russia violated elements of a UN anti-terrorism treaty, but declined to rule on allegations brought by Kyiv that Moscow was responsible for the shooting down of Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 over eastern Ukraine in 2014. In the same ruling, judges at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) found that Russia had breached an anti-discrimination treaty by failing to support Ukrainian language education in Crimea after its 2014 annexation of the peninsula. The decisions were a legal setback for Kyiv. The court rejected Ukraine’s requests to order reparations for both violations and only ordered Russia to comply with the treaties. Ukraine’s representative Anton Korynevych stressed the judgment was important for Kyiv because it did establish Russia violated international law. “This is the first time that officially, legally Russia is called a violator of international law,” he told journalists after the ruling. Ukraine had filed the lawsuit at the ICJ, also known as the World Court, in 2017, accusing Russia of violating an anti-terrorism treaty by funding pro-Russian separatists in Ukraine. The court’s judges said Moscow violated the UN’s anti-terrorism treaty by not investigating plausible allegations that some funds were sent from Russia to Ukraine to possibly fund terrorist activities. The 16-judge panel ordered Russia to investigate any plausible allegations of terrorism financing but turned down a request by Kyiv for reparations. The court declined to rule on the downing of MH17, saying violations of funding terrorism only applied to monetary and financial support, not to supplying weapons or training as alleged by Ukraine.<br/>