The approval rating for Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's Cabinet has risen 6.3 percentage points to 58.7 percent despite recent verbal gaffes by ministers and an infidelity scandal involving a parliamentary vice trade minister, a Kyodo News poll showed Sunday. Some 73.2 percent of the respondents said they acknowledged the gaffes and the scandal as a sign of slackness on the part of the government, according to the nationwide telephone survey conducted on Saturday and Sunday. Kyodo News made calls not only to fixed-line phones but also to mobile phones for the first time. The move is…READ FULL ARTICLE