possible. myanmar and former prime minister, they report 651 prisoners are scheduled to be released starting today. also, the government has signed a cease fire with the current ethnic group to try to end a 63-year armed conflict. u.s. secretary of state hillary clinton is calling for an end to the arab league's work. they've criticized the mission as ineffective and understaffed. there's been no letup in the fuel price protests paralyzing my gear yeah talks between the labor unions and the government ended without an agreement to restore fuel subsidies. they're threatening to stop production if the nigerian government does not reverse its position. negotiations are scheduled to resume saturday. those are the top stories. "world business today" starts right now. happy friday to you. welcome to "world business today." i'm nina dos santos in london. >> and i'm andrew stevens in hong kong. welcome. top stories this day, apple fans in china turn angry and skuffle with police after sales of the new iphone are shelved. kristie will he gallon tells hungary to get its finances in order before it cuts a check. and can japan's new cabinet push through the unpopular changes needed to fix the economy? first up let's go straight to the european markets. they've been open for about an hour today. as you can see, this is how the main indices are performing on track to have four straight weeks of gain. when it comes to the broad 50 index which tracks 50 leading stocks around this particular region, i can tell you that it's at its highest level in two months. when it comes to the volatility index which measures fear based on the euro stocks 50, that has been going in the right direction. it's fallen to its lowest level in about five months on the back of worries about the eurozone decreasing, let's say. investors cheered the success of two particular events in yesterday's session. on the one hand we had bond auctions by italy and spain and those yields have come right down and that is one of the reasons why these stocks are doing quit a bit better than expected. banks also saw the main gain as an early trade. bit of weakness in the metals and mining. the ftse 500 is outweighed by the optimism that europe's leaders have a grip on the crisis in the eurozone. >> it's a big call, isn't it? certainly that optimism may be reflected here in asia as well this friday, nina. there is a feeling, as you say, that maybe the worst could be behind the eurozone crisis. very early to say that though. it has been a tore tore rouse past. this is how the asian markets ended. three green arrows. that was all about europe. the bond auctions, those encouraging comments from the acb. commodity stocks were higher. that helped the aussie market as well. see the australian market up by a third of one percent. shanghai down 1.3% today. that's the third day in a row it's fallen. you'll see there that it really came fairly sharply. it came back a little bit but it's on a down note again toward the end of the day's trading. the concern in shanghai remains that even though we saw those inflation numbers coming down yesterday, they're not coming down fast enough. the government still doesn't have enough room to ease the policy to get the economy stimulated if it needs to. there's still concern about the state of china's economy, nina. >> andrew, the united states the main indices ended broadly speaking with some modest gains on thursday. this is how they're set to begin when trading opens in just under five hours from now. feeding off the kind of optimism that we've seen here in europe and the optimism that reflected the markets where you are. the s&p 500, the broader index there, that one up to the tune of about .13%. not huge gains. we have many hours before trading starts state side, but for the moment it's green arrows across the board, andrew. now china has had a long love affair with apple. the company reporting sales revenues there reached nearly $9 billion for the first three-quarters of last year, up six fold from the previous year. but those fond feelings turned a little sour early on friday after a long awaited official iphone 4 s release failed to happen. angry crowds erupting in violence outside a flagship store in beijing. apple says it will stop selling the apple iphone 4s for the time being to protect employee as well as customer safety. stan grant was there. >> reporter: it wasn't supposed to be like this. eggs pelted at the apple store. people furious. then tempers reaching boiling point. angry potential apple customers viciously attacking security. security are running down here now and the mob are continuing to follow them. this is what happened when they didn't open the apple store. the crowd are getting angrier and angrier. punches have already been thrown. they're still following security. look over here. >> reporter: it didn't start this way. >> i really like the apple store. >> reporter: 18-year-old tom was among hundreds who cued in the freezing cold overnight for the official china release of the apple iphone 4s. this store was supposed to be open at 7:00 a.m. as the time ticked past, the mood turned sour. then an announcement. the phone would not be sold here today. as people refused to leave, police moved in. >> reporter: so we're here in the middle of the crowd. the police have been thinning them out slowly. as you can see here now, they're moving in -- they're shouting on the megaphone for people to leave. over here they're trying to force people to leave now. >> reporter: those who wouldn't leave peacefully were hauled away by force. >> people are pissed off, and that's for sure. >> reporter: some people blamed apple. others holding the united states to account. but anger also directed at china itself, a country they say too quick to attack its own people, too ready to use force to impose order. >> this is china. we just need it. the press push us. >> reporter: you don't like china police. >> china police is not good. >> reporter: what should have been a day of celebration has backfired for apple, its customers, even the state itself. stan grant, cnn, beijing. certainly extraordinary scenes there in beijing, nina, but as stan points out, it's interesting, the level of frustration generally in china. you talk to people and you talk to people who travel there a lot. there is a lot of anger not that far below the surface. obviously apple is a passionate object -- object of passion i should say in china. it doesn't take much to sort of reveal the level of frustrations there. in those official numbers for 2010, there were 180,000 protests logged in china in 2010. gives you the level of frustration going there. >> they're gathering momentum. going back to the apple scenario, andrew, i wonder how much all of these publicity stunts, let's say, to get people cuing overnight at the release of the latest product has had a hand in all of this because i followed many of those cues myself here in london when they launched the ipad 2 and people have been cuing overnight in the freezing temperatures. there were hundreds of them and you've just got to wonder, perhaps that might have something to do with those scenes as well. >> yeah, it would certainly shorten your temper if you had been standing around in freezing temperatures and then be told that. i'm sure apple is appalled. still here, "world business today," we've got our eye on japan. the prime minister says the solution to the dent load is doubling taxes. not everyone is happy about that. they'll be hearing from the people minister's spokesman. nearly a year after the world was shocked by scenes like this. we'll be asking him about the rebuilding process as 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[honks horn] [circus music plays] here you go, pete. thanks, betty. betty: we're out of toner. announcer: if you're facing foreclosure, talk to the right people. speak with hud-approved housing counselors free of charge at... price of oil is sharply up in today's session. as you can see, up about 88 cents. still just slightly shy of $100 a barrel on thehe nymex crude. the threat of more in the offing, some are saying that the oil price will continue to rise. now thousands of people are continuing to strike to protest the government's removing fuel subsidies at the start of the year. prices doubled virtually overnight. negotiations between labor unions and government officials ended late on thursday without any agreement. if the decision is not reversed, workers from nigeria's main oil union are threatening to walk off the job starting on sunday, nina. in the meantime, the japanese prime minister yoshihiko noda has been sacked or he sacked five of his cabinet ministers to push his controversial sales tax policy. he's proposing to double the sales tax to 10%. this is designed to tackle the country's debt burden. this is to pay for post tsunami reconstruction. the cost of rebuilding japan weighed heavily on the country's fragile finances. >> so far it's a policy that's not proving popular to the japanese public. just to clarify, the entire reason to reshuffle was to apiece the opposition so they would support this tax increase? >> reporter: absolutely. this is largely a political move. the goal being to pass this tax. this tax, the reshuffling of the cabinet, that is, those five members who were eliminated and then replaced, among them were two who were censured by the opposition last month. this was seen almost -- those two were seen as political sacrificial lambs. appease the opposition, get them on board and get the measure through the parliament. the sales tax doubling from 5% to 10% if the prime minister can get it done, what would it pay for? japan needs to fix its financial house beginning with a very large debt to gdp radio. it's nearing 200%. that is among the highest of developed nations. japan also has the fastest aging society on the planet as well as trying to pay for all the reconstruction after the tsunami and the cleanup of the fukushima daiichi nuclear disaster. a lot to pay for, andrew. the sales tax certainly wouldn't fix everything but may begin to start addressing it. >> and just the reaction on the streets. do the japanese now accept that the finances of the country have gotten to a position where this sort of -- these sort of measures have to be taken or are they still opposing it? >> you know, you actually can actually sense that there is a slight shift. part of the reason is because this past year was so tough. japan sees, and people here on the streets see that there is a lot to pay for, that they have to reconstruct the country. even though this measure is not directly squared at tsunami reconstruction or the disaster at the nuclear plant, there has been a shift in the mood of the people as well as they are paying attention to what is happening in europe. a lot of people here are aware of that, and they are aware that the debt here in japan is higher than in europe although the debt certainly here is less risky because it is domestically owned. there is a shift in the streets. there's also the sense that the people here want the politicians to get something done. they want the feeling that something can be done to move the country forward even if it's something, andrew, that they don't want like an unpopular sales tax hike. >> understandable when i see those images of what's happening on the streets of greece. they don't want to see it in their own hometown. well, the proposed sales tax increase has already cost the prime minister yoshihiko noda in political capital. it may cost him more than that. we'll have to wait and see. the japanese prime minister's approval rating is down at about 30% and his political career depends on selling this plan to voters. take a look at this. this is the revolving door of japanese leaders. it's notoriously fickle. these are some of the former prime ministers that have ruled japan going back only 12 years beginning in 2000. in total, nine men have held the job during that time. nina? some amazing statistics there. then one wonders what's going to happen next in japan, don't they, andrew? up next, we'll be speaking to a spokesman for the japanese prime minister about the reshuffle and the future for the country as we've been seeing its struggles to pay for the post-tsunami reconstruction. now it's nearly a year since a massive earthquake rocked northern japan sending tsunami waves tearing into the coast. almost 20,000 people -- 200,000 people are believed to have been killed. buildings ripped from their foundations and cars tossed around like toys. soon after the nuclear plant of fukushima went into meltdown. higher than usual levels of radiation were found in surrounding areas and in food. thousands of people living nearby were evacuated. industrial production plummeted. exports slow for the first time in more than a year. an initial $78 billion in emergency funds were approved to help with the recovery, but reconstruction efforts appear to have stalled in many of the disaster hit areas. the task at hand, of course, is a colossal one. much of the debris was cleared early on. tens of thousands of people are living in temporary accommodations. they're for the most part uncertain about when or indeed if they're going to be able to return home in the future. many are blaming government red tape for the holdups and distributing money that would be helping to reconstruct and get that process into gear and get people back into their homes, andrew. >> certainly is, nina, a lot of pressure on the japanese government at the moment. the prime minister yoshihiko noda announced a cabinet reshuffle. that happened earlier today. his spokesman is here now. thank you very much for coming in. >> you're welcome. >> i want to pick up on the reconstruction first of all. i think the figures are around about 100,000 people are still in temporary accommodations. the debris has been cleared up. there are villages that still have the debris cleared up but no work is going on. there's a lot of frustration with red tape. what is the government doing about that. >> of course 3/11 was a major, major disaster. the government has been trying to help those people who are affected by tsunami and other quake-related disasters. we are moving on from recovery to reconstruction phase. the government just passed the $150 billion reconstruction supplementary budget. >> do you think you need to cut the red tape to move things faster? certainly that is the message which comes from many of the people in the area. >> right. so the tohok region, we are coming up with new special zones where there will not be regulations being applied as is usually the case there. will be special measures being implemented so that there will be rejuvenated tohok region with creative reconstruction. >> there's really two separate disasters here. there was the tsunami and the nuclear meltdown. talking about the tsunami zone, when does the government think that the affected area will return to normal? and from here, how much more is it going to cost to get there? >> as a region, we are talking about supply chains being recovered. we have seen already over 90% of supply chains have recovered. of course, you know, there are still work to be done in the coastal areas. that's more challenging. we are talking about relocating some of the residents, making use of high land areas. so those are the kind of projects we are making use of this supplementary budget. >> do you have a time frame? will it take ten years from here to get back to where it was pre-tsunami? >> we are talking about next several months to come in terms of just addressing the major work for reconstruction. of course, there is going to be the immediate reconstruction work during the next few years to come. >> i want to ask you about an issue involving the reports we've had a while ago about contaminated food. for example, here in hong kong there are people i know who won't go to japan because they worry about where the food in japan being contaminated by the nuclear disaster. can the government now guarantee the safety of food in japan everywhere? >> right. the japanese people, i think, one of the most sensitive people in terms of food safety. and the government is putting the system in place to guarantee all the food safety in terms of when those products are distributed. so when japanese food products are exported over seas, we can guarantee 100%. >> what about people in japan? >> of course. we are eating and drinking all the food coming from tohok region. i don't have any worry about the food safety issues. >> let's turn to the new consumption tax that the government is pushing through at the moment doubling the consumption tax. the previous japanese government did this increase of consumption tax in the mid 1990s which resulted in an economic slowdown because people stopped spending. are you worried this could happen again? this is a much bigger increase this time. >> this is something we think is necessary in order to maintain sustainable social security system and prime minister noda is tackling integrated reform of the social security system. our consumption tax rate in terms of 5% is pretty low by global comparison. mr. noda is committed to implementing those reforms, which is very important in the context of maintaining viability of our economy. >> there's a huge amount of spending going on. there is reconstruction. there is dealing with an aging population. there is dealing with the massive debt, sort of overall debt. if this tax goes through when will we start to see a meaningful cut of that deficit? it's at 200% of gdp. >> when we are talking about social security and taxation reform, we are talking about, say, 10% in the year 2015 and it's medium term issues. before that we are taxing the issue of reconstruction during the next few years. our economic growth forecast is not that bad in comparison to other economies like eurozone or the united states. we are talking about 2% growth for the japanese economy this year. >> okay. thank you so much for coming in. he's the spokesman for the japanese prime minister. nina? 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