Asian markets ended mixed today. Japan's Nikkei rose 1.7%; South Korea's Kospi index edged up 0.1% and Singapore's Straits Times index gained 0.2%. But Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 0.8% and China's Shanghai Composite index lost 1%. In economic news, Japan's retail sales rose 3.6% in May, compared to the year-ago period, smaller than gains in the previous two months, while sales at large-scale retailers declined 0.9%, government data released, today, showed.Meanwhile, China Securities Journal published a commentary that said that China may introduce more proactive policies to ensure stable growth. Policies to stabilize foreign trade, expand infrastructure investment, fine-tune monetary policy and structurally reduced taxes may be introduced, according to the commentary.In Europe, stocks dropped today, on concerns that differences among European leaders may prevent a resolution of the region's debt crisis, as a key two-day summit of the European Union to discuss the ongoing debt crisis begins, today. Key indices, London's FTSE-100, France's CAC-40 and Germany's DAX fell between 0.8% and 1.4% in intra-day trade today.In economic news, the seasonally-adjusted number of unemployed German workers rose 7,000 in June 2012, while the unemployment rate held steady at 6.8%, the Federal Labor Office reported today.British bank Barclays PLC, yesterday, said it will pay around 452 million dollars in penalties to settle a probe into attempted manipulation and false reporting, relating to two global benchmark interest rates that form the basis for hundreds of trillions of dollars of transactions. Meanwhile, Italy is set to sell five and ten-year government bonds today.