Shanghai's government promised Thursday that the city's 23 million residents would not face shortages at home, after the city's electricity utility warned that some stores and factories may have to close in the hottest days of summer to limit demand. China's commercial center is scrambling to protect its drinking water from being overly tainted by salinity due to higher tides as the flow of the Yangtze River weakens. Upstream, conditions are worse, as crops wither and both people and livestock run short of drinking water.

The Three Gorges Dam, the world's largest hydroelectric complex, has been releasing larger-than-usual flows downstream in an effort to raise water levels brought so low by the lack of rain that inland shipping is being obstructed. As farmers in much of central China's Hubei and Hunan provinces find themselves unable to plant summer crops or keep fish ponds stocked, and with little rain forecast until at least next month, many are abandoning their fields and heading to the cities to seek work, the newspaper China Business News reported Thursday.

More than 3.2 million acres (1.3 million hectares) of farmland have been affected in seven provinces that form China's "rice basket," state media have reported. The government has pledged to boost spending on irrigation and other water works by billions of dollars, but in the long term much of the country is facing chronic water shortages.

Like many other cities, Shanghai often faces power shortages in summer and winter, when demand is high. The supply gap this summer is forecast to hit 1.1 gigawatts. But authorities have warned that in the Yangtze region, the gap could be as high as 40 gigawatts overall. Shanghai is purchasing power from other provinces to help meet demand, but the shortages in those regions are limiting the amount of power available, said a statement posted on the city government website.

Either the richer countries carry on bailing out the poorer ones more or less indefinitely, rather in the manner that Germany subsidises its formerly communist East, or membership of the euro has to be reconstituted on a smaller and more sustainable basis. There's really nothing in between. The longer European policymakers remain in denial about this choice, the worse the situation will become.

So it's with a sense of weary familiarity we approach the latest impasse. The European Central Bank is implacably opposed to debt restructuring, but the eurozone's solvent Northern states have reached the limit of their appetite for further bail-outs. This leaves Greece in an impossible position; it can neither reduce its debt burden through restructuring, nor will anyone lend it more money.

Who knows, maybe this time, the Greek sub-plot really will bring the euro's wider crisis to a head. Greece is apparently unable to agree additional austerity measures so the International Monetary Fund is refusing to release its share of the next 12 billion euros tranche of bail-out funding, or at least not until - and please don't laugh - its eurozone partners commit to more aid for Athens to plug next year's funding gap.

From the sublime to the ridiculous, Greek newspaper reports have it that Prime Minister George Papandreou has threatened to call a referendum on the austerity measures if he cannot secure political agreement. The story has been denied, but it demonstrates how desperate the situation has become. Mr Papandreou is in such a fix that he was thinking of relying on the idea that turkeys really would vote for Christmas.

The nub of the problem is this. The eurozone periphery has in essence been borrowing money from the core to buy the core's goods and services. In order to reduce this external indebtedness, the periphery must now rapidly close both its current account and fiscal deficits. Only then will things come back into balance.

The challenge is not dissimilar to the one faced by the UK, which has also borrowed to spend. Only in the UK, devaluation provides a relatively painless way back to current account surplus and again paying our way in the world. There's no such get out of jail card for the GIPS.

The United States is providing Pakistan about $3 billion a year - 10 times more aid than in Yemen - for an alliance that at best appears half-hearted. President Barack Obama acknowledged imperfect alliances in the Middle East during a speech on Wednesday before the British parliament. "We must squarely acknowledge that, yes, we have enduring interests in the region - to fight terror, sometimes with partners who may not be perfect," Obama said.

Earlier in the day he called on Saleh to "move immediately on his commitment to transfer power. But Saleh, in a Reuters interview on Wednesday, said he would not bow to international "dictates" to step down. Saleh, in power for three decades, was until recently seen as a crucial US ally who allowed US forces to conduct clandestine operations, including unmanned aerial drone strikes, against al Qaeda's local offshoot - al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP.

Continued violence Wednesday in Sanaa reinforced fears that Yemen could become a failed state like Somalia, and on the doorstep of Saudi Arabia, the world's biggest oil exporter. More than 40 percent of Yemenis live on less than $2 a day, while a third face chronic hunger.

French Finance Minister Christine Lagarde announced she was standing for the post on the eve of the G8 summit, after securing the unanimous backing of the 27-nation European Union and, diplomats said, support from the United States and China.

"I think on the sidelines the G8 leaders will debate this question, even if Madame Lagarde will probably be the best candidate," Russia's envoy to France told Reuters, adding he did not believe his country would have any objections to her. "But the question," ambassador Alexander Orlov added, "is whether western Europe should always be heading up this institution and why can't other countries, notably the BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), have their own candidate?"

The IMF has promised a meritocratic process to replace Strauss-Kahn, a Socialist ex-finance minister who was favourite to defeat Sarkozy in a French presidential election next year. It has set a June 30 deadline to pick a successor to the post, which has been held by a European since 1945.

Overnight violence in Yemen, one of several Arab states where veteran rulers have faced unprecedented popular uprisings, may also get attention - the United States, a key sponsor of President Ali Abdullah Saleh, ordered all but essential diplomatic staff to leave the country as clashes intensified.

Officials from the G8 - the United States, Canada, Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and Russia - had held preparatory talks on Wednesday in the seaside resort of Deauville to hammer out common positions on issues ranging from the world economy to Libya's civil war, Iran's nuclear goals and unrest in Syria.

Hosted by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, the summit runs until Friday. It is expected to approve a multi-billion-dollar aid package for Tunisia and Egypt, after "Arab Spring" uprisings deposed their autocratic leaders, and to seal an agreement to back others in the region who want democracy. Protests against other allies of the West, notably in the oil-rich Gulf, are, however, unlikely to win clear assistance.

"We share a compelling interest in seeing the transitions in Egypt and Tunisia succeed and become models for the region," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner wrote in a letter to the G8 on Wednesday. "Otherwise, we risk losing this moment of opportunity."

Wednesday's storms followed a deadly outbreak Tuesday in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kansas that killed at least 15 people. The nation's deadliest single tornado since 1950 killed 125 on Sunday in the southwest Missouri city of Joplin. Heavy rain, hail and lightning pounded Memphis on Wednesday night as a tornado warning sounded. Menacing clouds showed some rotation, but there were no confirmed reports of tornadoes touching down.

A violent storm system on Tuesday killed at least 14 people in Oklahoma and Arkansas as rescue crews in Missouri continued to find survivors left in the rubble after a fierce tornado ripped through the city of Joplin on Sunday, killing at least 122 people and injuring 750 others. The National Weather Service said the tornado appeared to have more than one vortex and gave the tornado an EF5 rating, the strongest assigned to tornadoes, with winds of more than 200 mph.

That moment will be "one of joy and strength. He will not come as a baby, but as goodness and glory to judge the living and the dead," he added. The archbishop gave his homily one day after a religious group from Oakland, California predicted the world would end. Those who pretend to prophesy about the end of the world "generally end up looking ridiculous, because they are only trying to scare people," the archbishop said.

The Pope made this reflection when he addressed today delegations from Bulgaria and Macedonia, together with their delegations. The delegations' visit to the Pontiff has become a tradition to celebrate the co-patrons of Europe, the brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius, celebrated May 11 in the East and February 14 in the West. Bulgaria was represented by the chairwoman of the national assembly, Tsetska Tsacheva, and a Catholic-Orthodox delegation from the country.

"These two great saints remind that [Europe's] unity will be firmer if it is based on [its] common Christian roots," the Holy Father said. "In fact, in Europe's complex history, Christianity represents a central and determinant element. The Christian faith has molded the culture of the Old Continent, and is indissolubly intertwined in its history."

The Bishop of Rome emphasized the need for Europe to grow spiritually. And he said that the unity of the continent "represents a prospect of great hope. Europeans are called to commit themselves to create conditions of a profound cohesion and an effective collaboration between nations," he said. "To build the new Europe on solid bases it is not enough to appeal solely to economic interests, but, rather, it is necessary to begin from authentic values, which have their foundation in the universal moral law inscribed in every man's heart."

Moody's said the 14 lenders have levels of government support in their existing ratings that may be "too high for the evolving post-crisis environment."

"The reassessment is not driven by either a deterioration in the financial strength of the banking system or that of the government," said Elisabeth Rudman, a Moody's Senior Credit Officer and lead analyst for a number of UK banks. "It has been initiated in response to ongoing guidance from the UK authorities that banks that fail in the future should not expect capital injections from the public purse."

The review, which could lead to a rise in the banks' borrowing costs, will take around three months. The ratings agency will consider the levels of government support available, and any other mitigating factors that could rule out the need for a downgrade.

What happens when Greece defaults. Here are a few things:

- Every bank in Greece will instantly go insolvent.

- The Greek government will nationalise every bank in Greece.

- The Greek government will forbid withdrawals from Greek banks.

- To prevent Greek depositors from rioting on the streets, Argentina-2002-style (when the Argentinian president had to flee by helicopter from the roof of the presidential palace to evade a mob of such depositors), the Greek government will declare a curfew, perhaps even general martial law.

- Greece will redenominate all its debts into "New Drachmas" or whatever it calls the new currency (this is a classic ploy of countries defaulting)

- The New Drachma will devalue by some 30-70 per cent (probably around 50 per cent, though perhaps more), effectively defaulting on 50 per cent or more of all Greek euro-denominated debts.

- The Irish will, within a few days, walk away from the debts of its banking system.

- The Portuguese government will wait to see whether there is chaos in Greece before deciding whether to default in turn.

- A number of French and German banks will make sufficient losses that they no longer meet regulatory capital adequacy requirements.

- The European Central Bank will become insolvent, given its very high exposure to Greek government debt, and to Greek banking sector and Irish banking sector debt.

- The French and German governments will meet to decide whether (a) to recapitalise the ECB, or (b) to allow the ECB to print money to restore its solvency. (Because the ECB has relatively little foreign currency-denominated exposure, it could in principle print its way out, but this is forbidden by its founding charter. On the other hand, the EU Treaty explicitly, and in terms, forbids the form of bailouts used for Greece, Portugal and Ireland, but a little thing like their being blatantly illegal hasn't prevented that from happening, so it's not intrinsically obvious that its being illegal for the ECB to print its way out will prove much of a hurdle.)

- They will recapitalise, and recapitalise their own banks, but declare an end to all bailouts.

- There will be carnage in the market for Spanish banking sector bonds, as bondholders anticipate imposed debt-equity swaps.

- This assumption will prove justified, as the Spaniards choose to over-ride the structure of current bond contracts in the Spanish banking sector, recapitalising a number of banks via debt-equity swaps.

- Bondholders will take the Spanish Banking Sector to the European Court of Human Rights (and probably other courts, also), claiming violations of property rights. These cases won't be heard for years. By the time they are finally heard, no-one will care.

- Attention will turn to the British banks. Then we shall see…

Mr Zuckerman's book was one of the first to reveal the billions in profits raised by hedge funds and banks taking bets against the sub-prime market just before the housing bubble burst. China, where the economy has expanded 10.1 per cent a year on average since 1978, is reminiscent of the housing market before credit default swaps allowed hedge funds to make bets against the entire market, according to Mr Zuckerman.

When China's growth will decelerate or come to an abrupt stop is probably the most critical question facing the world economy. But predictions of a hard landing on everything from bad loans to investment-led overheating or inflation has yet to derail the country's expansion. This is because the government-controlled economy is insulated from speculators testing the true voracity of the market, claims Mr Zuckerman. "We need short sellers," he said.

"The problem with the housing bubble was that for a long time people couldn't bet against it. Credit default swaps gave hedge funds specific tools to short the entire market. That pricked the housing bubble. It is very difficult to make a direct bet against China. You can short property companies in Hong Kong but it is not the same thing. It is a candidate for the next catastrophe."

Kathy Witterick, 38, and David Stocker, 39, are raising their third child, Storm, to be free of societal norms regarding gender. Is Storm male or female? The parents won't say, so no one knows except Storm's older brothers, Jazz and Kio, as well as a close family friend and two midwives who helped deliver the baby, according to the Toronto Star.

Since publishing a story about the couple on Saturday, the newspaper has received a "rush of responses" from readers, including some who believe the Toronto couple is acting "very selfish" and "very inconsiderate" in their attempt to undo evolution. Others, meanwhile, told the newspaper that "breaking social norms" is not synonymous with bad parenting.

Clinton Anderson, director of the American Psychological Association's Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual Concerns Office, told FoxNews.com that while the organization supports gender nondiscrimination, there is no research available regarding potential harms or benefits to raising a so-called genderless child. "I don't think the APA has any basis for concluding one way or the other on that issue," Anderson said. "In the short term, in the long term, there's really just no basis for saying. This is not an area of research that exists, to my knowledge."

What is certain, Anderson said, is that a "supportive" environment for any child is one that provides them love, nurturing care and a "good enough" context to develop. Other mental health professionals contacted by FoxNews.com said they saw several advantages to the atypical scenario, including true self-determination for Storm.

"The child has self-determination as to what its interests may be in life, the goals for that child and what direction the child wants to go in as far as all avenues in life, as well as sexuality," said Jeff Gadere, a clinical psychologist and contributor to HealthGuru.com. "They're banking on the child being genetically predisposed to its sexuality, as well as its station in life." A potential downside, Gadere said, could occur when the child looks to its parents for guidance in areas of self-discipline, education and other topics associated with gender. But overall, Gadere sees little potential for psychological or emotional damage to the child.

Israeli settlers, the Islamic militant Hamas and Netanyahu's moderate parliamentary opposition also expressed criticism. The Palestinians want to establish their state in the West Bank, Gaza and east Jerusalem, areas Israel captured in the 1967 Mideast war. They have said they are ready for minor border adjustments through land swaps, to enable Israel to annex several of the largest of the dozens of Jewish settlements it has built on war-won land since 1967.

Netanyahu said Tuesday that he is willing to make "generous" territorial concessions, but also told Congress that Jerusalem must remain united as Israel's capital and that Israel wants to keep key areas of the West Bank where tens of thousands of Jews have settled, as well as areas of strategic importance.

Abbas is set to meet with leaders of the Palestine Liberation Organization and his Fatah movement on Wednesday to discuss their next move. The Palestinians have developed an alternate strategy to moribund negotiations, largely on hold since 2008, and have said they will seek UN recognition of their state in September.

He strongly criticized the changed versions of history that are being promoted by others. Interrupted dozens of times by standing ovations, after minutes-long applause as he entered the chamber, Netanyahu also said that there are 300 million Arabs in the Middle East, but the only ones who are free are Israeli citizens.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu noted in his opening remarks that the "ground is still shifting" in the Middle East and that the uprisings in the Muslim countries represent people's demands for liberty. He thanked the United States for helping Israel reach its defense capabilities despite the "tough" economy. He jokingly said that the United States doesn't have to help build Israel - it is already built. More seriously, he said that the United States doesn't have to send soldiers to defend Israel, because Israel defends itself.

Netanyahu also stressed that the borders must be negotiated because Israel "will not return to the indefensible borders of 1967." He relied on his interpretation of US President Barack Obama's statement that any future borders of Israel will not be identical with the 1949 Armistice Lines that existed until the Six-Day War in 1967. He repeated his insistence that the Jordan River have an Israeli Army presence, remarking that in the Middle East, peace depends on the ability to defend oneself.

Prime Minister Netanyahu also buried the issue of "refugees," meaning the Arabs who either fled Israel in the wars in 1948 and 1967, or their descendants. "Jews around the world have a right to immigrate to the only Jewish state, and Arabs around the world should have the right to immigrate to a Palestinian state." he told Congress. In case anyone doubted his intentions, he added, "This means that the refugee problem will be solved outside the borders of Israel".

Repeating that the obstacle to peace is not the creation of a Palestinian State to which six successive Israeli Prime Ministers agreed, but the Palestinian acceptance of the existence of a Jewish State, Netanyahu called to Abbas to tell Palestinians clearly that Israel has a right to exist. Meanwhile, he said, incitement continues in Palestinian school curricula, squares are named after terrorists and the only reward Israel got for leaving Lebanon and Gaza was 12,000 rockets fired at its children.

"Imagine a siren sounding and giving you 60 seconds to find shelter before a missile strikes. You couldn't live with that. No one can live with that, " he said emphatically, adding, "Israel is not what is wrong in the Middle East. Israel is the only thing that is right in the Middle East."

Five separate tornadoes made landfall in Oklahoma, said Rick Smith, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Norman. Oklahoma City and Norman were spared, but smaller towns to the northwest, south and southeast of Oklahoma City sustained damage. In Newcastle, south of Oklahoma City, a storm blew the steeple off Jesus Alive Church and flung it nearly 100 yards away, where it landed on the doorstep of the longtime pastor's 86-year-old mother, Lovina Frizzell.

A new round of tornadoes began two days after a monster twister ripped through the heart of Joplin, Missouri, killing more than 120 people. It was the deadliest single tornado in the United States in some 64 years. Storms also extended into Texas, where fans at the Texas Rangers-Chicago White Sox game in Arlington were asked to go to underground tunnels in the stadium, according to KTVT-TV in Dallas.

John Blake, vice president of communications for the Rangers, told the Weather Channel that the game had a crowd of 30,000 and that play was stopped about 8:30 pm because of hail. "We do have a lot of thunderstorm activity here this time of year," he said. "This hail is really starting to pile up on the field."