By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Kaori Kaneko

Japan PM Abe's Pacific trade pact gambit pays off, for now
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Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe…

By Tetsushi Kajimoto and Kaori Kaneko

TOKYO (Reuters) - Japan Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's first politically risky step of declaring the country's intent to join talks on a U.S.-led Pacific Rim free trade pact appears to be paying off as his record high ratings edge even higher.

Public opinion surveys showed on Monday that Abe's support ratings had risen since last month to reach the highest levels since he took office in December and a majority backed Friday's announcement that Japan wanted to join Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) membership talks.

The decision launches the "third arrow" in Abe's policy triad following the fiscal pump priming and hyper-easy monetary measures he has pushed since returning to office in December after his Liberal Democratic Party's (LDP) big election win.

While "Abenomics" has been playing to rave reviews in the Tokyo stock market and with voters, business executives and economists say its lasting success hinges on whether and how Abe tackles thorny reforms such as deregulation.

Japan's TPP participation is one such thorny issue and serves as the first test of Abe's ability to navigate the political minefield to get there.

Proponents say the trade pact will help tap vibrant regional growth and act as a catalyst for reforms such as deregulation. However, it is staunchly opposed by the powerful farm lobby, which has long served as the LDP's power base.

Two of Abe's predecessors from the now-opposition Democratic Party of Japan promoted the idea of joining TPP when they were in government, but stumbled over divisions within their own party.

ABE'S SALESMANSHIP

"The public support for the TPP is high. This shows that Abe's explanation of Japan's needs to join the TPP talks probably brought a feeling of security among the public," said Takehiko Yamamoto, political science professor at Waseda University.

In its election campaign, the LDP said it would oppose joining the talks if that required a commitment to abolish all tariffs without any exceptions and Abe has said he had won Washington's assurances that no such commitment was needed.

A survey by Asahi newspaper showed 71 percent of voters backed Abe's approach to TPP talks, while similar surveys by the Yomiuri and Mainichi newspapers showed some 60 percent of voters were behind it.

Support for Abe - Japan's seventh premier since popular Junichiro Koizumi ended a rare five-year term in 2006 - edged up in all the media surveys to the highest levels since he took office in December.

The Asahi daily showed 65 percent of voters backed Abe's cabinet, while the Yomiuri and Mainichi put his rating at 72 percent and 70 percent respectively, up between 1 and 7 points compared with previous surveys taken in February.

The consistently high levels of support are rare for a Japanese leader, whose ratings often start high but then sink. That fate befell Abe during his troubled 2006-2007 first term.

Abe's LDP and its junior partner have a huge majority in parliament's lower house but need to win a majority in a July upper house election to cement their hold on power and winning over TPP opponents remains a challenge.

"The LDP and its small ally Komeito party are sweeping the board at the moment. But we still have to see how Abe's government can persuade people such as agriculture lobbies and how Japan can negotiate with TPP member nations," said Waseda's Yamamoto.

The United States and 10 other countries are pushing for a deal by the end of the year and possibly as soon as an Asia-Pacific leaders summit in Bali in October. But hurdles to Japan's joining the talks remain.

Tokyo must first hold bilateral talks with existing members and win their endorsement amid worries that three-year old talks could get bogged down if Tokyo proved slow to address U.S. concerns over barriers to its auto, insurance and agricultural markets.

Other countries in the trade talks include Canada, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, Peru, Vietnam, Malaysia and Brunei. The addition of the world's third-largest economy would expand the pact to cover nearly 40 percent of the world's economic output.

(Writing by Tomasz Janowski; Editing by Neil Fullick)

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"If Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world's population

Analysis: Europe's social shock-absorbers show crisis strain

By Paul Taylor

PARIS (Reuters) - Grigoris Lemonis, a 73-year-old Athens pensioner, uses his 580 euro ($760) monthly state pension to support his wife and the family of his son, an unemployed cook with two small children and a wife who works occasionally as a cleaner.

Three-generation families surviving on a single income are increasingly common across southern Europe as mass unemployment tears at the fabric of closely knit societies.

The continent's social shock-absorbers are creaking under the strain of a prolonged economic crisis that began in 2008 and engulfed the euro zone in a sovereign debt crisis from 2010.

The welfare state that Europeans built after World War Two, and which many view as a defining achievement of their civilization, is one reason why the Great Recession has not triggered a revolution or severe social unrest so far.

"Daily life has become pure misery," said Lemonis, a former painter in the construction industry who owns his own house.

"We are up to here with bills and once all that is paid there's nothing left to live a decent life," he said, adding that the family can only afford meat once or twice a month.

With more than 26 million unemployed in the 27-nation European Union, including nearly 6 million young people, the system is struggling, and in some places failing, to cope. Many of the jobless have exhausted their benefit entitlements.

"In many countries, the poor are getting poorer," says Laszlo Andor, the EU's Commissioner for Employment and Social Affairs, pointing to a growing North-South divergence. "Europe's social fabric is clearly under pressure and a stronger response at EU and national level is needed."

Social spending rose across the continent in the first phase of the crisis but states like Greece, Portugal, Ireland, Spain and Italy that were hardest hit have now had to cut outlays on pensions, healthcare, education and unemployment benefits.

Countries that target social spending towards providing services such as childcare, vocational training, job-search assistance and accessible healthcare have better results than those that spend most in cash payments to pensioners and the unemployed, Andor told Reuters in an interview.

While Austria and Spain both spent about 15 percent of GDP on social welfare other than pensions, Austria achieved a 55 percent poverty reduction while Spain managed only 28 percent.

Countries like Italy and Poland that spend a higher share of their social budget on pensions tend to be less effective in alleviating poverty because the working-age population most severely hit by the crisis is less well covered, Andor said.

But welfare systems breed their own interest groups and are fiendishly hard to transform.

AFFORDABILITY

Political leaders are fretting about the affordability of the European social model in an era of high public debt, low growth and ageing populations.

"If Europe today accounts for just over 7 per cent of the world's population, produces around 25 per cent of global GDP and has to finance 50 per cent of global social spending, then it's obvious that it will have to work very hard to maintain its prosperity and way of life," German Chancellor Angela Merkel said in an interview with the Financial Times last December.

Social spending as a proportion of output is now at least 6 percent higher than in 2007 on average in the 34 countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development, a club of industrialized democracies of which 21 are EU members.

Moreover, ageing populations are set to drive up the costs of pensions and healthcare in coming years, the OECD said.

The majority of EU governments have used the crisis as a reason to raise the retirement age, bringing it more into line with increasing life expectancy, said Willem Adema, an OECD expert on employment, labor and social affairs.

Social scientists distinguish three broad welfare models: Nordic, continental European and Anglo-Saxon.

Nordic countries offer a high level of "cradle to grave" welfare with an emphasis on pre-school childcare and education, designed to keep women and older people in the labor market.

The continental European model features contributory social insurance systems that offer strong protection to "insiders" with protected jobs, while continuing to regulate employment and the labor market.

The Anglo-Saxon model tends to make welfare payments smaller and more selective and encourages private provision of healthcare, education and pensions for the better-off.

The Nordic model seems to have proven the most effective at reducing poverty without discouraging people from work, although it comes with the highest taxes.

Britain and Ireland pay cash allowances to stay-at-home single mothers, contrary to the OECD and EU view that such money is better spent on providing public childcare. In Germany, Merkel's government plans to introduce such a benefit this year.

"It makes more sense to get people into work than to focus on paying benefit to stay home," the OECD's Adema said. "Yet amazingly, some countries are cutting pre-school childcare."

European governments have found it easier to trim welfare systems at the edges than to reform them radically.

In particular, spending more on young children and school-leavers to promote employment and skills and less on the elderly is politically difficult. Older people vote more than the young.

"In many countries, it is the middle class who are the direct beneficiaries of social security entitlements," policy analysts Patrick Diamond and Guy Lodge wrote in a paper for the Policy Network think-tank. "This makes pensions and welfare payments to older cohorts practically untouchable."

The Netherlands, where retirees enjoy the highest purchasing power in Europe, provides an example. Its recently created 50PLUS party that campaigns on behalf of pensioners won two seats in the 150-member parliament for the first time last year.

Since the new coalition of centre-right Liberals and the centre-left Labor party agreed to raise the retirement age to 67 from 2021, support for the grey movement has soared. A poll this month showed 50PLUS would win 18 seats if the election were held now, making it the third biggest party.

Older voters may fight their political corner, but they also should grasp the need to leave resources for social spending for the young. Just ask Lemonis - the Athens pensioner supporting two younger generations on his dwindling monthly allowance.

"At least we pensioners are old and we've lived our lives," he said. "I'm worried about our children. What will they do when we can no longer help them?"

($1 = 0.7680 euros)

(Additional reporting by Karolina Tagaris in Athens and Sara Webb in Amsterdam; Writing by Paul Taylor; Editing by Peter Graff)

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Bahrain sentences 17 to 15 years for bombing

Bahrain sentences 17 to 15 years for bombing

MANAMA, Bahrain (AP) — A lawyer in Bahrain says 17 suspected anti-government protesters have been sentenced to 15-year prison sentences for links to a bombing last year that injured four policemen.

At the time, the April 2012 blast was a stunning escalation in more than two years of unrest between Bahrain's Sunni monarchy and the kingdom's majority Shiites seeking a greater political voice.

Defense lawyer Jassim Sarhan said eight of the defendants are in custody, and the others were tried in absentia. The judgments Sunday are among the harshest sentences imposed for alleged protest-related violence, although some Shiite political leaders have received life sentences.

Sarhan said an appeal is planned.

Also Sunday, the official Bahrain News Agency said a blast from an explosive device in a mainly Shiite area injured an Asian worker.

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The conference is to assume that super smile of visitors from all over the country

Viewers based on the concept of "Nico Nico Douga reproduce roughly to the ground," smiling News rapture (original) on a tour of the Blue Train fan lend to cut railway train go by Blue Watch "super-conference special train trip smiling", April 28, 2012, "smiling super conference" will be held at Makuhari Messe in Chiba on the 29th. Corner and enjoy super smile that further meeting user expectations Nico Nico gather that! "Tried super conference Road to" from January 21 in "Nikoraji" live smile began. Among the information that has been introduced for the first time on this day, the reaction of the audience was greatest, was "super-conference special train journey" in the Blue Train. Blue Train to be used on this tour is that with the head marked as "ultra-issue meeting smiling." The conference is to assume that super smile of visitors from all over the country,モンクレール キッズ 方言の持つ力ですね, special tours are put together have been published, the details of which were revealed in the show. Is "special train journey" in the blue train Minoru Mukoya the echo of the viewer was larger among them is a member of the fusion band "Cassiopeia", known as the core fan train supervision. Mr. Mukoya, but I also have one that is still the idea of ​​giving the night train, "in the live appearance via the relay net, blue train sleeper train locomotive is pulling, not after much of the lost at least starting it. from the Osaka area, arrival was a formation called Ueno station, rather than in Tokyo a mystery considerably, where the "and I wonder have ran, I suggest that there is a surprise in the middle of the course. Also reveals the plan to put the (plate, which is attached to indicate the number and the like system of the train) head mark that says "No. conference super smile" to the Blue Train, "Blue Train locomotives, got pulled ,7556, but I've also done work related to railway until now. attempt to give the locomotive the head mark called "super-conference issue smiling," It's the first time Kashikiru the Blue Train, also put a mark on your own head, let alone I told (the first time) and "I wish it years and years. outrageous 2012. Mr. Mukoya says the plan asleep several other, he announced that there is a further in February. ◇ view from the live smiling] site related Minoru Mukoya talks about Journey "Blue Train" - http://live.nicovideo.jp/watch/lv75470507?po=news registration required

フェンディ リュック の１７・０％だった

２３万８千人が受験　国公立大２次前期日程国公立大２次試験の前期日程は２５日、初日を終えた。文部科学省によると、１時間目の受験者数は２３万８４３９人で、欠席者は１万３１３６人。欠席率は昨年と同じ５・２％だった。　前期日程は１５８大学５３４学部が実施。センター試験の結果で合否を決めたり、２６日以降に試験をしたりするケースがあるため、２５日に試験を実施したのは１５５大学５１６学部だった,保守管理会社の社長ら３人も同罪で在宅起訴され、公判前整理手続き中。　欠席率は国立が４・７％、公立が７・１％。最も欠席率が高かったのは、国立は徳島大の１４・８％、公立は名寄市立大（北海道）の１７・０％だった,中東専門家。

グッチ 中国共産党に詳しい消息筋の話としている

【北核実験】中国が北朝鮮代表団派遣拒否か　交流中断も　韓国紙報道２２日付の韓国紙、ソウル新聞は、北朝鮮が１２日の核実験直後に実施の経緯を説明する代表団派遣を中国に打診したが、中国側が拒否していたと報じた。中国共産党に詳しい消息筋の話としている。　消息筋によると、北朝鮮側は「核実験は日米韓などを狙ったもので、中国とは無関係だ」と説明しようとしたが、中国は代表団を受け入れれば北朝鮮への制裁を求める国際社会の圧力が強まることを懸念したという,モンクレール 通販 【その他の写真】。　消息筋はまた「中国は当面、北朝鮮と体育や文化などの交流を中断し、一定の距離を置く方針を決めた」と述べた,　９番・松田　レフトへの２点本塁打。（共同）

iphone5 ケース レザー これに対し、寄せられた回答は「春一番＝５４％」「花粉症＝４６％」

【にっぽんのミンイ】春が近いなって思うニュースはどっち？前のニュース　一日の終わりに人々の「ミンイ（民意）」を問うフジテレビの情報番組「にっぽんのミンイ」。その日に起きたニュースや話題について、生放送で皆さまの意見を集計し発表します。投票はスマートフォンや携帯電話、パソコンから可能です。３月４日の質問は、春が近いなって思うニュースはどっち？これに対し、寄せられた回答は「春一番＝５４％」「花粉症＝４６％」（投票数３５６０）でした。　先週金曜日、気象庁は関東と中四国、九州北部（山口県含む）で「春一番」が吹いたと発表しました。そしてこの時期、強風が吹くと深刻になるのがスギ花粉です,YOU / 譜久村聖・生田衣梨奈・鞘師里保・鈴木香音・飯窪春菜・石田亜佑美・佐藤優樹・工藤遥。先週金曜日もマスクをした花粉症の人が辛そうな表情でいるのを目にしました。春一番と花粉症、どちらも春が近いことを思わせますが、それをより意識させるニュースはどちらなのか、皆さんに聞いてみました。　結果はほぼ半数に割れ、わずかに「春一番」が上回りました。男女別では、男性の方が「春一番」と答える人が多かったです。一方、年代別では、２０代以上は「春一番」と答えたものの、１０代は「花粉症」と答えた人が多かったです。　寒い日々が続く中、温かい南風が吹くと季節が変わりつつあることを感じさせます。この春一番が以前から春の訪れを告げるものとして知られています。しかし、花粉症の人は年々増えているようで、最近は日本人の３割が花粉症という調査もあります。花粉症の人が増えるのに従って「花粉症」という言葉が春先の季語になってきているようですね。特に若い人に「花粉症」と答える人が多かったことからもそんなことが伺えるようです。（にっぽんのミンイ番組スタッフ）結果の詳細はこちら　フジテレビの新たな「顔」として注目の新人女性デジタルアナウンサー、杏梨（あんり）ルネ（２２）がレギュラー出演する同番組は毎週月～木曜の２４時３５分放送開始です。年末の忘年会のお誘い…あなたは正直どう思う？（投票数：３５６０）春一番５４％花粉症４６％にっぽんのミンイ n.min-i,　日産は現在、三菱自やスズキからＯＥＭ.jp次のニュース