The European Commission approved Friday the latest, 90-billion-euros restructuring plan for Dexia, the Franco-Belgian bank bailed out at the height of the financial crisis and struggling ever since.

The Commission said the plan will allow the core banking business to be wound up while the remaining assets -- a development agency in France and the Belfius unit in Belgium -- will be put on a sound base.

Japanese factories slowed in November, spelling out the daunting task that lies ahead for a new conservative government in reviving the world's third-largest economy.

The 1.7 percent drop in output from a month earlier -- worse than a 0.5 percent decline expected by the market -- came as the Liberal Democratic Party took power this week on a campaign that pledged to inject new life into the limp economy, after it won a landslide election earlier this month.

Taiwan plans to start exploring for oil and gas in the South China Sea from next year, an official and local media said Friday, in a development that could increase tensions in the contested waters.

The Bureau of Mines and state-run oil supplier CPC Corp are expected to kick off exploration in 2013 in the sea around Taiping, the biggest islet in the Spratly archipelago, the United Daily News website and other media reported.

Bailed-out Belgian banking and insurance company KBC is pulling out of Slovenia's Nova Ljubljanska Banka (NLB) and will sell its 22-percent stake back to the state, Slovenia's finance ministry said Friday.

"KBC and Slovenia have agreed the sale of KBC's 22-percent stake in NLB," the ministry said in a statement.

Greece's four biggest banks need 27.5 billion euros ($36.4 billion) in recapitalization funds by the end of April, the national central bank said in a report released Thursday.

"Capital needs for all Greek commercial banks were estimated in May 2012 at 40.5 billion euros, of which the 27.5 billion euros corresponded to the four core banks," it said.

Endless supplies of cigarettes, a BMW or Mercedes for between $4,000 and $6,000 but fuel at vastly inflated prices -- the black market is thriving on the Syria-Turkey border.

"It is all legal," insists Abu Ahmad, once a grocer in Syria's war-ravaged city of Aleppo who is now dealing in motor vehicles in the rebel-held town of Aazaz near the frontier.

Europe's main stock markets rose Thursday following the festive break and a rally in Tokyo, as traders focused on whether the United States would avert the 2013 "fiscal cliff" of sharp tax hikes and spending cuts.

In afternoon deals, London's FTSE 100 index of top companies was up 0.30 percent at 5,972.17 points compared with the close on Monday, its previous trading session.

U.S. auto giant Ford said Thursday it will invest $773 million to expand factories across its home state of Michigan, generating 2,350 new jobs, part of a plan to add 12,000 jobs by 2015.

The investment will help save an additional 3,240 jobs, it said.

Bailed-out Ireland hopes to use the momentum of its presidency of the European Union in the first half of 2013 to push through measures to boost growth and create jobs.

Ireland is the first country to take on the six-month rotating presidency of the 27-nation bloc while being propped up by money from the European Union and the International Monetary Fund.

Spain revealed Wednesday an ocean of red ink in its bailed-out Bankia group at the heart of the nation's banking crisis.

The lender Bankia had a negative value of 4.148 billion euros ($5.5 billion) and its parent group BFA 10.444 billion euros, the state-backed Fund for Orderly Bank Restructuring, or FROB, said in a statement.