Japan's prime minister has outlined steps for his grand plan for restoring the country's economic power. Shinzo Abe has made some difficult reforms so far, but says the Human Resources funding and property sectors need to be more utilized for growth. His initiatives include a government-backed National Institute of Health for medical research, a proposal to extend parental leaving, trial employment programs to encourage more jobs.

 

And now time for business news.

 

And when the markets in Europe closed a couple of hours ago, London's FTSE 100 was up 43 points. The Daxwas down 14 points and Euro stocks index was up 20 points. In the U.S, tradingcomes to a close shortly and the Dow Jones is up 16 points, while the S&P500 is higher by 14 points.