Word: arene
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...credit for repairing Japan's often fractious relations with its Asian neighbors. Shoichi Nakagawa, the LDP's powerful policy chief, asserts that the Abe Cabinet takes everyday issues just as seriously as it does ideological ones. "We can do constitutional reform and the economy as well," says Nakagawa. "We aren't ignoring daily matters." But Abe's critics say he's failing to prioritize and lacks the ability to articulate a vision that addresses the issues troubling ordinary Japanese. Instead, Abe seems mired in the past, calling for a return to traditional values, to Japan "the beautiful country," his favorite...
...Japanese workers aren't likely to feel richer or more secure anytime soon. Corporations have kept wages in check in part by shifting more work to part-time employees, who now constitute over 33% of Japan's workforce, up from 20% in 1992. Business leaders insist wages must be suppressed for Japanese companies to compete globally, but Katz points out that enforced fiscal austerity is toxic for the economy as a whole. "If every company cuts wages at the same time, no one is going to buy your products," he says. "That is what's happening...
...answer? Revise the fundamental education law to allow for greater emphasis on patriotism. Although a council he convened last month released more detailed recommendations, including increasing total class time, critics aren't impressed. Abe "doesn't address the real problems that Japan's education system faces," says the SDP's Fukushima, who notes that Japan still spends considerably less per student on public schooling than the O.E.C.D. average-forcing parents to plug the gap by sending their kids to private schools if they can afford...
...Make Immigration Smarter Europe is shrinking. Across the E.U., women are not having enough children to hold population levels steady. Europe's also aging. By 2050, over 30% of Europeans will be 65 or older, and there aren't enough young Europeans to replace their labor skills or pay for their pensions. And, if the E.U. seriously wants to achieve the Lisbon Agenda goal of becoming "the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-driven economy in the world" by 2010, it will need way more highly qualified researchers than Europe's universities can turn out. The argument that immigration...
...staff hide purloined stacks of bills in parish-office ceilings. Ryan and other experts emphasize that church ushers should put that money into tamperproof bags with numbered seals; that rotating teams should count it; and that separation-of-duties standards, such as ensuring that bookkeepers logging the funds aren't the ones counting and depositing it, should be adhered to. Professor West says that parish-finance councils--which are required by canon law but are too often as ornamental as stained glass--"have to stop acting like rubber stamps for priests...