Leading European businessmen claim Beijing has violated its trade treaty commitments to increase protections for its domestic firms. The European Chamber of Commerce in China found that almost 40 per cent of members believed the business climate in the country would worsen in two years.

Jacques de Boisseson, the Chamber's president, said EU businesses in China would "vote with their feet" if Beijing continued to frustrate their operations. He said: "I'm worried about rising protectionism - on both sides - because we see this as a vicious circle. If you start playing that game it is very difficult to control."

"We are trying to say to the Chinese government and the EU authorities, 'Don't give reasons for protectionist sentiment to rise'. The more unfairly you are perceived to be behaving, the more reasons you will give for the other side to retaliate." A row over market access for European-made wind turbines has become a lightening rod for foreign grievances over selective regulations alleged to benefit China's firms over international competitors.

New rules limiting the use of turbines below 1MW effectively cut out all but the biggest Chinese state-owned manufacturers who were the only companies making turbines of the correct size. Despite programmes to increase wind-power generation in China, no international turbine maker has won a concession tender since 2005. The trade issue is to be the subject of a key EU summit in September.

At a meeting to review the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty in May, the United States yielded to demands by Arab nations that the final document urge Israel to sign the treaty - a way of spotlighting its historically undeclared nuclear weapons. Israel believed it had assurances from the Obama administration that it would reject efforts to include such a reference, an Israeli official said, and it saw this as another sign of unreliability by its most important ally.

In a recent visit to Washington, Israel's defense minister, Ehud Barak, raised the issue in meetings with senior American officials. With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu scheduled to meet President Obama on Tuesday at the White House, the flap may introduce a discordant note into a meeting that both sides are eager to portray as a chance for Israel and the United States to turn the page after a rocky period.

In addition to singling out Israel, the document, which has captured relatively little public attention, calls for a regional conference in 2012 to lay the groundwork for a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. Israel, whose nuclear arsenal is one of the world's worst-kept secrets, would be on the hot seat at such a meeting.

Even though the mural had been in clear view of commuters for nearly nine years, a Caltrans spokesman said it wasn't until last month that someone in the agency asked if the flag was on state property. Spokesman Allyn Amsk said it was covered up Wednesday morning. "We don't allow graffiti on state property," Amsk said Wednesday, the San Jose Mercury News reported. "No matter what kind of graffiti it is, we don't show favoritism."

However, Schwarzenegger issued a statement Friday expressing profound regret. "It has come to my attention that Caltrans has recently removed a patriotic and meaningful flag mural that was painted on the side of Interstate 680 following the tragic events of 9-11," he said. "To do so only days before we celebrate our independence and reflect on the freedoms we are lucky enough to enjoy in America is unconscionable," he added. "I extend my apologies to the artists whose mural inspired drivers along 680 for over eight and a half years."

RJ Waldron, Eric Noda and Thomas Hanley - the three artists who painted the flag at the top of the Sunol Grade - have since received messages of support from across the country, the Mercury News reported. Hanley sought permission from Caltrans officials to repaint the mural and was asked by Bijan Sartipi, the Bay Area director for Caltrans, to come for a meeting to discuss what to do, the Mercury News reported.

Look at a few of today's mainstream headlines: Drought threatens global rice supply in the India Times; VA farmers say heat taking toll on crops, Associated Press; Severe food shortage follows lack of rainfall in Syria; and, finally, Corn prices bolt as USDA downsizes crop estimates, which states that, "Commodity professionals were caught off guard Wednesday by a US Department of Agriculture report showing 1 million fewer acres of corn planted this year than earlier projected, and almost 300 million fewer bushels of corn in storage." And these articles don't begin to address crops being damaged by the toxic rain from the Gulf oil disaster.

Temperatures over the Independence Day were just a warm up compared to how nasty the weather will get, especially for those who do not have air conditioning or must do manual labor outdoors. The highest temperatures will occur Tuesday and Wednesday in northern areas, while southern locations feel the inferno later in the week.

In New York City, according to the National Weather Service, the granddaddy of all heat waves occurred in late August into early September during 1953, when temperatures hit 90 or higher on 12 consecutive days. The blast furnace included two days of temperatures with 100 degrees or higher. The heat wave just now beginning could last for seven days or more and would be one of the worst, early-summer heat waves on record.

This accomplishment would fit in well with happenings this year. In many areas from the Tennessee Valley to the mid-Atlantic, we have had one of the warmest springs on record. The warmth has accelerated growth of fruits and vegetables. In parts of the Northeast, strawberries were harvested in during May instead of June, while peaches are also being picked a month ahead of schedule.

The Guardian newspaper reports, "Fixation with healthy eating can be sign of serious psychological disorder" and goes on to claim this "disease" is called orthorexia nervosa - which is basically just Latin for "nervous about correct eating." But they can't just call it "nervous healthy eating disorder" because that doesn't sound like they know what they're talking about. So they translate it into Latin where it sounds smart (even though it isn't). That's where most disease names come from: Doctors just describe the symptoms they see with a name like osteoporosis (which means "bones with holes in them").

Getting back to this fabricated "orthorexia" disease, the Guardian goes on to report, "Orthorexics commonly have rigid rules around eating. Refusing to touch sugar, salt, caffeine, alcohol, wheat, gluten, yeast, soya, corn and dairy foods is just the start of their diet restrictions. Any foods that have come into contact with pesticides, herbicides or contain artificial additives are also out."

Wait a second. So attempting to avoid chemicals, dairy, soy and sugar now makes you a mental health patient? Yep. According to these experts. If you actually take special care to avoid pesticides, herbicides and genetically modified ingredients like soy and sugar, there's something wrong with you. But did you notice that eating junk food is assumed to be "normal?" If you eat processed junk foods laced with synthetic chemicals, that's okay with them. The mental patients are the ones who choose organic, natural foods, apparently.

The Guardian even goes to the ridiculous extreme of saying, "The obsession about which foods are "good" and which are "bad" means orthorexics can end up malnourished." Follow the non-logic on this, if you can: Eating "good" foods will cause malnutrition! Eating bad foods, I suppose, is assumed to provide all the nutrients you need. That's about as crazy a statement on nutrition as I've ever read. No wonder people are so diseased today: The mainstream media is telling them that eating health food is a mental disorder that will cause malnutrition!

If you want to be alive, aware and in control of your own life, eat more healthy living foods. But don't expect to be popular with mainstream mental health "experts" or dieticians - they're all being programmed to consider you to be "crazy" because you don't follow their mainstream diets of dead foods laced with synthetic chemicals. But you and I know the truth here: We are the normal ones. The junk food eaters are the real mental patients, and the only way to wake them up to the real world is to start feeding them living foods.

In the mean time, try to avoid the mental health agents who are trying to label you as having a mental disorder just because you pay attention to what you put in your body. There's nothing wrong with avoiding sugar, soy, MSG, aspartame, HFCS and other toxic chemicals in the food supply. In fact, your very life depends on it.

The outdated vaccine, some of which expired Wednesday, will be incinerated. The amount, more than twice the usual leftovers, likely sets a record. And that's not even all of it. About 30 million more doses will expire later and may go unused, according to one government estimate. If all that vaccine expires, more than 43 percent of the supply for the US public will have gone to waste.

Government officials have known for months that they were looking at a huge surplus. According to an Associated Press calculation based on federal purchasing information, the dollar value of the 40 million expired doses is about $261 million. The government didn't release an official figure, but Hall said the AP estimate was approximately correct.

In Europe, where nations also found themselves with millions of unused doses, some commentators have attacked the World Health Organization, which declared swine flu a global epidemic, or pandemic. The critics have questioned the motivation of some WHO advisers who had links to the pharmaceutical industry. Some critics have simply lamented that a lot of anxiety was raised and money wasted, not just during the swine flu scare but also in government responses to bird flu and SARS, a respiratory virus that swept parts of Asia in 2003.

"Each time the so-called experts told us that millions of people would be killed worldwide by the respective viruses. We have learned that the experts were utterly wrong," said Dr Ulrich Keil, a professor at Germany's prestigious University of Muenster and a WHO adviser.

Mr Hynes shakes his head. "This is not some esoteric budget issue; we are not paying bills for absolutely essential services," he says. "That is obscene." For the last few years, California stood more or less unchallenged as a symbol of the fiscal collapse of states during the recession.

Now Illinois has shouldered to the fore, as its dysfunctional political class refuses to pay the state's bills and refuses to take the painful steps - cuts and tax increases - to close a deficit of at least $12 billion, equal to nearly half the state's budget. Then there is the spectacularly mismanaged pension system, which is at least 50 percent underfunded and, analysts warn, could push Illinois into insolvency if the economy fails to pick up.

States cannot go bankrupt, technically, but signs of fiscal crackup are easy to see. Legislators left the capital this month without deciding how to pay 26 percent of the state budget. The governor proposes to borrow $3.5 billion to cover a year's worth of pension payments, a step that would cost about $1 billion in interest. And every major rating agency has downgraded the state; Illinois now pays millions of dollars more to insure its debt than any other state in the nation.

The federal dollars are nearly spent. Last month, local governments nationwide shed more than 20,000 jobs. Should the largest struggling states - like California, New York or Illinois - lay off tens of thousands more in coming months, or default on payments, the reverberations could badly damage a weakened economy and push housing prices down still further. "You're not seeing these states bounce back, and that could be a big drag on the national economy," said Susan K Urahn of the Pew Center on the States. "It could be a very tough decade."

Commentators and pundits in Germany were unanimous: Wednesday's laborious election of Christian Wulff as the country's new president was anything but helpful for Chancellor Angela Merkel's already ailing coalition. A survey conducted by Infratest Dimap seems to indicate that voters agree.

According to the poll, commissioned by public television station ARD, fully 68 percent of Germans believe that the election was a "disgrace" for Merkel and 77 percent feel that she no longer has complete control over her own governing coalition. Sixty-two percent believe that Merkel's government, which pairs her conservatives with the business-friendly Free Democrats (FDP), will not survive much longer.

Wednesday's vote highlighted the deep fractures in Merkel's governing coalition after her hand-picked candidate Wulff required three rounds of voting to get elected, despite her government having a sizeable majority in the Federal Assembly, the 1,244-member body that chooses Germany's president. In the first round, 44 coalition delegates refused to back the chancellor's candidate; in the second, 29 balked. He was finally elected in a third round of voting.

On Thursday, a whole series of senior coalition politicians sought to assure the German public that they have learned their lessons from the Wednesday vote. The coalition, said FDP head Guido Westerwelle, who is also Merkel's vice chancellor, "must begin solving problems." Merkel said it is time "that the government does its work."

The public, though, has heard it all before. The bumpy election of Wulff was not the first time this coalition has tripped itself up. Merkel's government has addressed a whole slew of issues in the last nine months - including health care reform, tax reform, nuclear reactor lifespans and mandatory conscription, to name a few - and found convincing solutions to none of them. German voters are not optimistic that such a track record can be changed. Only 31 percent of Germans, according to Thursday's survey, believe that Merkel's coalition can right the ship.

BP and the Obama administration faced mounting complaints yesterday that they are ignoring foreign offers of badly needed equipment and making poor use of the fishing boats and volunteers available to help clean up what may now be the biggest spill ever in the Gulf of Mexico. Based on some government estimates, more than 140 million gallons of crude have now spewed from the bottom of the sea since the April 20 explosion that killed 11 workers on the Deepwater Horizon oil platform, eclipsing the 1979-80 disaster off Mexico that had long stood as the worst in the Gulf.

In recent days and weeks, for reasons that BP has never explained, many fishing boats hired for the cleanup mostly have been waiting around. At the same time, there is mounting frustration over the time that the government has taken to approve offers of help from foreign countries and international organizations.

The Coast Guard said that there have been 107 offers of help from 44 nations, ranging from technical advice to skimmer boats and booms. But many of those offers are weeks old, and only a small number have been accepted, with the vast majority still under review, according to a list kept by the State Department. A report prepared by investigators from the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform for Representative Darrell Issa, Republican for California, detailed a case in which the Dutch government on April 30 offered to provide four oil skimmers that collectively could process more than 6 million gallons of oily water a day. It took seven weeks for the US to approve the offer.

A nuclear fix to the leaking well has been touted online and in the occasional newspaper op-ed for weeks now. Washington has repeatedly dismissed the idea and BP execs say they are not considering an explosion - nuclear or otherwise. But as a series of efforts to plug the 60,000 barrels of oil a day gushing from the sea floor have failed, talk of an extreme solution refuses to die.

For some, blasting the problem seems the most logical answer in the world. Mikhailov has had a distinguished career in the nuclear field, helping to close a Soviet Union program that used nuclear explosions to seal gas leaks. Ordinarily he's an opponent of nuclear blasts, but he says an underwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico would not be harmful and could cost no more than $10 million. That compares with the $2.35 billion BP has paid out in cleanup and compensation costs so far. "This option is worth the money," he says.

The Soviets first used a nuclear blast to seal a gas leak in 1966. Urtabulak, one of its prized gas-fields in Uzbekistan, had caught fire and raged for three years. Desperate to save the cherished reserves, Yefim Slavsky, then Minister of Light Industry, ordered nuclear engineers to use the most powerful weapon in their arsenal.

"The Minister said, 'Do it. Put it out. Explode it,'" recalls Albert Vasilyev, a young engineer and a rising star in the project who now teaches at the Lenin Technical Institute in Moscow. Vasilyev remembers the technology behind the program with obvious pride. "The explosion takes place deep underground," he says. "We pinch the pipe, break it and the pipe collapses." According to Vasilyev, the blast at Urtabulak sealed the well shut leaving only an empty crater.

Roberts said that after they submitted the proposal to the Army Corps of Engineers last week, Corps officials said last Friday that discussion on the plan would have to be put on hold until the following Monday, because the Corps office would be closed for the weekend.

"Whoever reviews permits, and whatever departments and stakeholders and agencies need to give approval for this... should be working around the clock, just like the people are that are trying to get this oil picked up," Roberts said. According to Roberts, after cooling their heels for the weekend, parish officials are still awaiting an answer. He says, however, he would be very surprised to get a response over the long federal holiday weekend to come.

Roberts told WWL First News that even if some federal responders take the 4th of July weekend off, many parish workers would be working overtime. "We don't take breaks, this is an emergency for us," he said. "We're going to continue plugging away at it."

The Pope made a reflection on the "holy roots" of the Church of Rome when he prayed the midday Angelus on Tuesday, following a Mass he celebrated for the feast of Saints Peter and Paul. It is during the Mass for this feast that the Pontiff traditionally gives out the pallium to new metropolitan archbishops.

"THE TWO PATRON SAINTS OF ROME, though having received from God different charisms and different missions to fulfill, ARE BOTH THE FOUNDATION OF THE ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC AND APOSTOLIC CHURCH," he said. "May the example of the Apostles Peter and Paul illumine minds and ignite in the hearts of believers the holy desire to do the will of God, so that the Church journeying on earth may always be faithful to her Lord," the Pope concluded.

"Let us turn with confidence to the Virgin Mary, QUEEN OF THE APOSTLES, WHO FROM HEAVEN GUIDES AND SUSTAINS THE PATH OF THE PEOPLE OF GOD."

Europe's banking watchdogs have been holding stress tests to see how lenders would be affected by a sharp downturn in the economy or other shocks, aiming to boost confidence and bring a negative spiral in financial markets to a halt.

They are working ahead of an end-of-July deadline to publish the test results. "I do not believe that any of the 16 German banks tested could fall under the crucial 6 percent in terms of the Tier 1 ratio," a senior banking source said.

This source did not see the country's eight landesbanks - regional wholesale banks owned by local states and savings banks - at risk either, given the high level of support they already have from their current owners.

Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez announced that Venezuela would nationalize the Tulsa, Oklahoma-based company's rigs. He said in a statement Wednesday that Helmerich & Payne had rejected government demands to resume drilling operations for more than a year.

Helmerich & Payne announced in January 2009 that it was stopping operations on two of its drilling rigs, because Venezuela's state-run oil company, PDVSA, owed the company close to $100 million. It said it would shut down the rest of its rigs by the end of July as contracts expired unless PDVSA began to make good on its debts.

The company said Thursday that PDVSA's debt was $43 million as of June 14. President and CEO Hans Helmerich said in a statement on Thursday the company's position has remained clear: "We simply wanted to be paid for work already performed."

"We stated repeatedly we wanted to return to work, just not for free," he said. "We are surprised by yesterday's announcement only because we have been in ongoing efforts in a good faith attempt to accommodate a win-win resolution, including a willingness to sell rigs." The company has worked in Venezuela for 52 years, Helmerich added.