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Europe’s largest retailer Carrefour SA Wednesday posted an unexpected net loss in the first half and abandoned its growth target for the year amid the economic slowdown.

The French retailer reported a net loss of euro249 million ($359 million) in the first six months of the year, compared with a profit of euro97 million a year earlier.

Carrefour said it expects its operating profit to decline this year, reversing a target the retailer set in March when it said an ongoing and expensive “transformation plan” would raise profits this year.

The company’s share price slumped on the Paris stock exchange as investors took fright at the suddenly worsened outlook for the giant retailer, which which operates chains of grocery stores and hypermarkets across Europe as well as in Latin America and Asia.

By mid-morning Carrefour shares were down 4 percent at euro17.88.

As it did last year, Carrefour booked what it calls “significant one-off charges” again in the first half. They amounted to euro884 million in the first half, over half of which went to writing down the value of Carrefour’s Italian assets.

Worringly for Carrefour, after years of failed attempts to turn-around profitability in its core French market, earnings fell 40 percent in the first half. The company blamed a reorganization of its processes and systems which caused large inventory shortages, as well as rising raw commodity costs and sharpened price competition among retailers fighting to draw in increasingly budget-minded consumers.

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Hundreds of thousands of Yemenis poured into the streets of major cities and towns across the country on Friday, keeping the pressure on the nation’s embattled president to step down.

The mass demonstrations in the capital, Sanaa, and at least 17 other cities and towns, including Taiz and Ibb, were the largest since President Ali Abdullah Saleh left a hospital in Saudi Arabia, where he was recovering from wounds suffered in a June attack on his palace compound, and signaled he intends to return home soon.

Yemen is reeling from nearly six months of protests by activists calling for an end to Saleh’s 33 years in power. The crisis has sparked armed conflict between Saleh’s forces and heavily armed tribesmen who have turned against him, further destabilizing the already fragile and impoverished country. And there are fears that Yemen’s al-Qaida offshoot will gain from the turmoil and have a freer hand in plotting attacks on the West.

On Friday, hundreds of thousands of anti-government protesters defied the scorching summer weather and the dawn-to-dusk fasting hours during the holy month of Ramadan to renew their demands for Saleh’s resignation, waving Yemeni flags and chanting anti-regime slogans, according to witnesses.

Protest organizer Abdel Handi al-Azazi said that the high turnout for Friday’s demonstrations sent a clear message to Saleh that “you will not return to the country whatever you do.”

Al-Azazi said if Saleh does indeed return, the protest movement will push to have him put on trial.

“We want to see Saleh in cage, to be the second Arab president to be tried by his own people,” he said.

Former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who was toppled by a popular uprising in February, went on trial earlier this month in Cairo.

Since Saleh left Yemen, the country has been in limbo, with both the protesters demands and the question of who will succeed Saleh unresolved. The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have pressured Saleh to remain in Riyadh since his return is likely to spark renewed violence in the country.

Yemen’s opposition parties and the country’s most powerful tribal confederation have endorsed a U.S. backed power-transfer deal which would give Saleh immunity from prosecution if he steps down.

On Thursday, Saleh told his top ruling party officials in a meeting in Riyadh that he objects to key issues in the deal and has made ambiguous demands for changes.

Pro-democracy youth groups and Yemeni protesters however reject the deal and demand prosecution of Saleh and his regime members.

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The Dow Jones industrial average edged lower in afternoon trading Wednesday, putting it at risk of logging the longest losing streak since 1978.

Markets have become increasingly volatile this week as worries about the economy deepen. The Dow was headed for its ninth straight day of losses, the Standard & Poor’s 500 index its eighth.

Investors are becoming increasingly focused on the poor state of the U.S. economy. Shortly after the market opened, the Institute of Supply Management said its index measuring the service sector of the U.S. economy grew in July at the weakest pace in 17 months. Economists had expected a slight increase.

The report was the latest sign over the last week that the economy may be slowing. Consumer cut their spending in June for the first time in nearly two years; manufacturing slowed, and the government said that in the first half of the year the economy grew at its slowest pace since the recession ended in June 2009.

“There has been too much at the same time for investors to hang in there and you’re starting to see some element of panic finally showing up,” said Andrew Goldberg, U.S. market strategist at JP Morgan Funds.

The Dow Jones industrial average was down 36 points, or 0.3 percent, to 11,830 in afternoon trading. It had been down as many as 166 points earlier.

The S&P 500 was down 1, or 0.1 percent, to 1,253. The Nasdaq composite rose 12, or 0.5 percent, to 2,681. Each index had been down more than 1 percent earlier in the day.

Coca-Cola led the Dow average higher with a gain of nearly 2 percent. Companies that depend most on an expanding economy in order to make profits had the steepest losses. Caterpillar Inc. fell 3 percent, the most of the 30 stocks in the Dow average, followed by Chevron Corp.

Along with the U.S. economy, investors were also unnerved by a surge in bond yields to 14-year highs for Italy and Spain. High bond yields typically indicate that investors believe there is a greater chance that a country or corporation will be unable to make interest payments.

“We’ve been so focused inwardly because of the debt ceiling debate that we’ve ignored Europe over the last couple of weeks,” said J bad credit payday advance.J. Kinahan, chief options strategist at T.D. Ameritrade. “We have problems, but if Italy falls the euro zone doesn’t look sustainable.”

The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to another low for the year of 2.60 percent, from 2.62 percent Tuesday, as investors moved money into assets that hold up better during economic downturns. Gold, another traditional safe haven, rose nearly 2 percent to $1,671 an ounce.

The S&P 500, the most widely used measure of the stock market, is headed for its eighth straight day of losses. It is down 7.6 percent since July 22. The last time the S&P had eight consecutive losses was in October 2008, at the height of the financial crisis. That slump was far worse, erasing 22.9 percent of the index’s value.

Several large U.S. companies reported earnings before the market opened. MasterCard rose nearly 13 percent after the company beat analysts’ estimates. Clorox fell 2 percent after the company said higher commodity costs were eating into its income. And CBS gained 1 percent after it said a deal with Netflix Inc. had lifted profits.

Payroll processor ADP said private companies added 114,000 jobs last month. The number was within Wall Street’s forecasts, but still well below the rate of growth that signifies a healthy jobs market. ADP’s employment figures do not always predict the government’s broader employment report, which will be released Friday morning. Last month, for example, ADP reported that private employers added 157,000 jobs in June. The government later said that private companies added just 57,000 jobs.

Economists expect that 90,000 were created in the U.S. last month. That’s fewer than the 125,000 jobs per month that are needed just to keep up with population growth. At least 250,000 jobs need to be created every month to substantially bring down the unemployment rate.

Analysts predict that the unemployment rate was 9.2 percent in July, unchanged from the month before.

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A round of confidence-building corporate deals in the U.S. helped lift Asian stock markets Tuesday, despite China’s inflation rate jumping to a near three-year high.

Oil prices hovered around $97 a barrel after a drop in Greece’s credit rating added to concerns about more debt and fiscal problems in Europe. The dollar was slightly lower against the euro and up slightly against the yen.

Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 1.2 percent to 9,559.80. Tokyo Electric Power Co., the embattled Japanese utility known as TEPCO, soared 18.6 percent after announcing it had begun testing a new radioactive water treatment system at its troubled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. TEPCO has been struggling to get control of a radiation leak at the plant since it was crippled by an earthquake and tsunami on March 11.

Sliding oil prices sent energy shares lower. Hong Kong-listed PetroChina Ltd., the publicly traded unit of China’s biggest oil and gas company, slipped 0.7 percent. China National Offshore Oil Corp., known as CNOOC, lost 1.2 percent.

South Korea’s Kospi rose 1.2 percent to 2,074.39. Among most active shares was Hynix Semiconductor, a world leader in memory chip production, rose 0.8 percent. Samsung Electronics, the top global manufacturer of flat screen televisions, memory chips and liquid crystal displays, rose 1.9 percent.

Gains were capped, however, due to worries about the U.S. economy and concerns that Europe’s fiscal crisis will worsen. On Monday, Standard & Poor’s cut Greece’s credit rating to CCC, two notches above default. S&P also said it doubts Greece will be able to sell bonds to finance its budgets in 2012.

Hong Kong’s Hang Seng rose nearly 0.1 percent to 22,529.87 and Australia’s benchmark S&P/ASX 200 edged up narrowly to 4,566.30. Benchmarks in Singapore, Taiwan and Thailand were also higher, while those in Indonesia and the Philippines dropped.

Shares in airlines, whose earnings benefit when fuel prices drop, were broadly higher payday loans. Hong Kong-listed China Eastern Airlines rose 3.2 percent. Korean Air Lines Co. was 1.2 percent higher, while Taiwan’s EVA Airways Corp. gained 1.1 percent.

Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index rose 0.9 percent to 2,723.67, and the smaller Shenzhen Composite Index added 1.2 percent to 1,124.16.

China’s National Statistics bureau said Tuesday that consumer prices rose 5.5 percent over a year earlier in May, driven by an 11.7 percent jump in food costs. That was up from April’s 5.3 percent rate and exceeded March’s 32-month high of 5.4 percent.

The figure was in line with forecasts and didn’t rattle trading.

On Wall Street on Monday, a round of corporate deals spurred confidence and helped eke out a day of gains.

Wendy’s/Arby’s Group Inc. rose nearly 1 percent after the company said it would sell control of its Arby’s restaurant business to a private equity firm that owns several other quick-service franchises, including Moe’s Southwest Grill and Auntie Anne’s. And clothing maker VF Corp., whose brands include Wrangler and The North Face, jumped 10 percent after agreeing to buy the boot maker Timberland for more than $2.2 billion.

The Dow Jones industrial average gained less than 0.1 percent to close at 11,952.97. The Standard and Poor’s 500 inched up less than 0.1 percent to 1,271.83. The Nasdaq composite lost 0.2 percent to 2,639.69

Benchmark crude for July delivery was down 8 cents to $97.22 in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract dropped $1.99 to settle at $97.30 on Monday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.4416 from $1.4412 late Monday in New York. The dollar strengthened slightly to 80.21 yen from 80.19 yen.

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Russia promised Friday to lift its blanket ban on European vegetables once the European Union provides documented proof of their safety, and voiced hope that it could join the World Trade Organization this year after nearly 20 years of talks.

Russia has banned all fresh vegetable imports from the EU due to the E. coli outbreak that has killed 29 people and sickened 2,900 others. The EU has called the Russian ban disproportionate, and the controversy has clouded Russia’s WTO accession talks.

Speaking after a summit with an array of top EU officials in the Volga River city of Nizhny Novgorod, 400 kilometers (250 miles) east of Moscow, Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev said the country will be ready to lift the ban after receiving the safety certificates from the EU.

“We are ready to resume the shipments under guarantees of the EU authorities,” Medvedev said at a news conference.

European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said the EU will send a form for issuing such certificates to Russia in the next few days.

“Our teams have agreed that the ban on vegetables from the EU will be lifted,” Barroso said. “The system of the certification of the vegetables will be put in place without any delay.”

Russian officials had said before the summit the ban will only be lifted once the EU determines what caused the outbreak and how the bacteria spread.

Despite the expressions of hope over the lifting of the ban, there’s still uncertainty as to when it will actually be done.

Gennady Onishchenko, Russia’s top sanitary official who attended Friday’s summit, wouldn’t say when the ban could be lifted, signaling that it could take longer than just a few days.

“The ball is at their court,” he told The Associated Press. “Everything depends on how hard they (the EU) try.”

Onishchenko said the EU has agreed to provide Russia with safety certificates for specific vegetables from individual countries.

Vegetable imports from EU countries last year accounted for nearly a quarter of all Russian vegetable imports, or 620,000 tons, Russian Agriculture Minister Yelena Skrynnik said this week.

Despite seeming benefits for local producers, Russia is paying a high price for the ban as officials warn it will likely fuel inflation, which is already running at an annual rate of 9.6 percent.

The dispute over the vegetable ban has also affected WTO talks, though Medvedev said Russia hopes to join the organization that sets rules for international trade by the end of the year payday loans for bad credit.

“The chances for that are high, and it will largely depend on our ability to understand each other,” he said, adding that Russia hopes to conclude the WTO talks with the EU within a month.

Barroso was more cautious, saying Russia and the EU need to continue a dialogue on a host of trade issues to achieve that goal.

“We believe that Russia’s WTO accession is still possible this year,” Barroso said.

He added that Russia and the EU would be negotiating in the coming weeks to deal with issues like Russia’s quotas on meat and dairy exports, sanitary control and the investment regime for the car industry in Russia.

Russian Economic Development Minister Elvira Nabiullina told reporters that Russia and the EU were hoping to reach a final agreement before the end of July.

Russia is by far the largest economy still outside the WTO, which regulates trade between its 153 member states, despite being in talks to join since 1993.

Medvedev said that Russia “is sick of ” 18 years of talks and described the remaining differences as insignificant.

“Russia needs to be a member of the WTO, but to be honest our partners also need it,” Medvedev said.

Medvedev said Russia also expects the EU to revise its energy market regulations that Moscow considers discriminatory against Russian energy supplies.

He also used the occasion to push for visa-free travel between Russia and the EU.

Relations between the two have been lukewarm over the past few years and on the summit’s eve, the European Parliament passed a resolution outlining conditions for better EU-Russia ties.

It urged Moscow to do more to protect basic human rights by ending “politically motivated court decisions,” remove curbs on press freedom and freedom of assembly and pull troops out of Georgia.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy told reporters after Friday’s talks that Europe is still concerned about the violations of human rights in Russia “despite the personal engagement and initiatives of the (Russian) president.”

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A cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland that has caused headaches for air travelers spread to Germany on Wednesday, forcing the closure of Berlin’s airports and disrupting hundreds of flights, but experts said the eruption appeared be winding down.

European air traffic controllers said they expect about 700 flights to be canceled on Wednesday, but Eurocontrol added the ash cloud from Iceland’s Grimsvotn volcano appeared to be dissipating and traffic in European airspace could return to normal Thursday.

The cloud forced the cancellation of hundreds of flights over Britain on Tuesday as winds blew the ash over Scotland, but British airspace was largely clear on Wednesday.

In Iceland, a volcano expert said that observers at the crater were reporting only steam, an indication that the eruption could be nearing its end.

“It’s not over,” said Pall Einarsson, from the University of Iceland. “But it’s declining rapidly.”

German air traffic control ordered all flights to and from Berlin’s Tegel and Schoenefeld airports, stopped at 11:00 a.m. (0900GMT). Airports in Bremen, Hamburg and Luebeck, have already been closed for hours, causing hundreds of flights to be struck. The flight ban is expected to remain in place for much of Wednesday, Eurocontrol said. Sweden saw some 20 flights canceled.

While experts say particles in the ash could stall jet engines and sandblast planes’ windows, many argue the flight bans are a massive overreaction by badly prepared safety regulators.

A British Airways test flight passing through the affected area was unaffected, said Willie Walsh, the chief executive of International Airlines Group _ formed from the merger of BA and Iberia.

“We flew in the red zone for about 45 minutes at different altitudes over Scotland” and the north of England, Walsh told BBC radio cheap pay day loans. “All the filters were removed and will be sent to a laboratory for testing. The simple answer is that we found nothing.”

Irish budget airline Ryanair has also challenged the results, saying Tuesday it had sent its own airplane into Scottish airspace and found no ash in the atmosphere.

But, German transport minister Peter Ramsauer insisted the precautions were justified, and said that authorities were better prepared after the Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruption last year forced the closure of European air space for five days, stranding millions.

“We have developed a very refined regulation since the big ash cloud last April,” Ramsauer told ARD public broadcaster. “We are much better prepared to handle such a situation.”

Last year, European aviation authorities closed vast swaths of European airspace as soon as they detected the presence of even a small amount of volcanic ash in the atmosphere. This year, they are trying a more sophisticated approach.

Aviation authorities will give airlines information detailed information about the location and density of ash clouds. Any airline that wants to fly through the ash cloud can do so, if it can convince its own national aviation regulators it is safe.

The Grimsvotn volcano began erupting on Saturday, sending clouds of ash high into the air.

The main international body representing carriers, the International Air Transport Association, complained to the British government Tuesday about the way it had handled the issue, saying it should have had Cessna planes ready to carry out tests, instead of relying on the weather service.

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An ex-car racing boss who sued a tabloid over a story about his sadomasochistic orgy with dominatrixes lost his privacy case Tuesday in the European Court of Human Rights _ a ruling applauded by free speech advocates.

Max Mosley won a lawsuit against Britain’s News of the World tabloid for its 2008 front-page story claiming he, the president of the governing body overseeing Formula One racing, had an hours-long Nazi-themed orgy with five women. Mosley, the son of a former fascist leader, acknowledged the orgy but denied the Nazi theme.

Despite winning sizable damages and legal costs, Mosley didn’t stop fighting.

He then took the case to the European court in France, which can intervene in British court rulings. Mosley claimed that his privacy rights, which are protected by the European Convention on Human Rights, should force news organizations to notify subjects before publishing details about their private lives.

But the court disagreed, saying European law didn’t require pre-notification and that such a requirement could have a chilling effect on freedom of speech.

“I am disappointed at today’s judgment, because I think that there is widespread recognition that privacy is fundamental to the way we live our lives,” said Mosley, who plans to ask the court’s grand chamber in Strasbourg to reconsider its decision.

But free speech advocates were heartened.

“This is very welcome news for the media,” said lawyer Robin Shaw. “The obligation to give prior notification would not have been restricted to stories about the sexual behavior of people in the public eye, such as Mr. Mosley, but would potentially have embraced any story about an individual, however seemingly innocuous.”

Privacy has become the latest buzz word in Britain, where scores of celebrities and sports figures have been granted recent injunctions or gag orders to prevent media from publishing the details of their extramarital affairs.

But those very injunctions became obsolete this week when a Twitter user made an anonymous post naming many of the men who were granted the gag orders, including a married soccer star who allegedly had a fling with a topless model and a well-known married British actor who had sex with a prostitute.

U.S.-registered sites are largely exempt from British gag orders because they fall outside the court’s jurisdiction.

Freedom of speech in the United States is protected under the First Amendment and often trumps privacy arguments. European law protects both privacy and freedom of expression, but it is often left to interpretation by judges.

In Britain, the parents of Prince William’s new bride, Kate Middleton, also recently complained to the Press Complaints Commission after tabloids published photos of Kate and her sister Pippa Middleton wearing bikinis off the coast of the Spanish island of Ibiza.

In Britain, more than 30 public figures have won gag orders since 2008. In France, too, privacy is considered sacred, and editors there long shied away from reporting that former President Francois Mitterand had an illegitimate daughter.

But the questions go beyond privacy. Mosley said his tabloid sex tale offered little to no public interest value, but some say the same argument could have applied to Tiger Woods, whose image as a squeaky clean role model was tarnished after reports of widespread infidelities.

Had Mosley won, the ruling also could have also forced non-governmental organizations to warn people before publishing details of investigations.

The human rights group Global Witness, for example, was sued by the president of the Republic of Congo’s son in 2007, who wanted it to remove documents from their web site that showed he had been using state oil revenues to find his posh lifestyle. The group ultimately won the case and were awarded costs but it was a lengthy process. Had they been required to warn the son first, the details may have never come to light.

“What we have in Europe is a very broad interpretation of privacy, which has serious ramifications for freedom of speech,” said Jo Glanville of the London-based Index on Censorship.

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Food for thought: The price of food is on the rise, but investors should be aware that this global phenomenon doesn’t affect all food companies the same way.

Cereal, salty-snack, candy and beverage companies can most easily pass along their price increases. Firms dependent on luncheon meats, dairy products and eggs have a harder time because their products aren’t so significantly different from each other.

It is a hard fact of life for investors that what boosts the bottom line of a food company in which they own stock can also increase the prices they must pay in the grocery checkout line.

“Costs are going up, and food companies need a 4 to 6 percent retail price increase to cover increases already incurred,” said Jonathan Feeney, food and beverage analyst with Janney Capital Markets in Philadelphia. “The number is even more significant for the grain-based companies, such as Kellogg in the breakfast segment, which need 6 to 7 percent retail increases.”

McCormick & Co. Inc. (MKC), a leading global maker of spices, herbs, extracts and seasonings, is a Feeney recommendation.

The company experienced some commodity cost increases but not nearly as many as companies that must buy grains and sugar. Its acquisition of Lawry’s several years ago eliminated a primary competitor, and it continues to launch new products. McCormick supplies not only grocery stores, but also industrial, restaurant and packaged-food companies.

The more impulse-driven the food category and the lower the product price to begin with, the easier it is to get a price increase through, noted Feeney. A 10-cent increase in a Hershey’s chocolate bar won’t prompt many complaints, while Kraft Foods is less able to pass along price increases because it offers a greater number of daily mealtime items.

“If we start seeing gas at the pump costing $4 or more, it will challenge consumers even further and increase the transportation costs for companies,” said Ann Gurkin, equity analyst with Davenport & Co. in Richmond, Va. “The companies that are leaders in their segments have better relationships with retailers, so that’s helpful, but no companies are going to escape.”

The Hershey Co. (HSY), North America’s largest confectionary manufacturer with 43 percent of the U.S. chocolate market, is a stock recommendation of both Feeney and Gurkin. Hershey’s, Reese’s, Kit Kat and Twizzlers are some of its 80 brands that it sells in more than 60 countries outside the U.S. Cash flow is plentiful.

Another Feeney choice is General Mills Inc. (GIS), the second-largest producer of ready-to-eat cereals in the U easy payday loans.S., because it has leading brands in so many segments and has a firm handle on cost increases and product pricing. Through a partnership with Nestle, it distributes cereal products in more than 130 countries.

Raising prices is a tricky business.

“If there’s just a few-percent increase in cost, this can be passed along via price increases, or you can change the package size and it won’t be that noticeable to consumers,” explained John Toohey, vice president with USAA Equity Investments in San Antonio, Texas. “The challenge is when cost increases become bigger than a few percentage points.”

Food distributor Sysco Corp. (SYY) is a company that tried to raise prices and experienced a push-back with negative impact on sales volume, Toohey said. The firm’s food inflation is running higher than the company’s ’sweet spot” profitability, he said. An investor should look closely at food companies with solid brands, global businesses and strong balance sheets, he believes. The ability to launch new products is also important.

The two biggest nonalcoholic beverage companies fill that bill.

Feeney and Toohey recommend PepsiCo Inc. (PEP), maker of carbonated and noncarbonated drinks as well as a variety of snacks, largely because it can pass along price increases. The company’s brands include Pepsi, Gatorade, Tropicana, Lay’s, Doritos and Quaker. It now owns most of its bottling infrastructure in North America and distributes to stores internationally. It is the world’s largest snack food company, with 40 percent of the U.S. salty-snack market.

Feeney also recommends Coca-Cola Co. (KO), the world’s largest maker and distributor of nonalcoholic beverage concentrates and syrups. The company, which also sells a variety of noncarbonated drinks, has pricing power. Three-fourths of its revenue comes from outside the U.S. through brands such as Coca-Cola, Sprite, Dasani, Powerade and Minute Maid. It now owns much of its North American distribution.

“Remember that a company’s ability to pass through price increases is also a function of how strong its competitive position is and how strong the consumer desire for it is,” concluded Feeney, whose firm suggests that investors should also look closely at shares of food companies St. Louis-based Ralcorp Holdings Inc. (RAH), Fresh Del Monte Produce Inc. (FDP), Dole Food Co. (DOLE), Treehouse Foods Inc. (THS) and Chiquita Brands International Inc. (CQB).

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The operator of Japan’s crippled nuclear plant began pumping highly radioactive water from the basement of one of its buildings to a makeshift storage area Tuesday in a crucial step toward easing the nuclear crisis.

Removing the 25,000 metric tons (about 6.6 million gallons) of contaminated water that has collected in the basement of a turbine building at Unit 2 of the Fukushima Dai-ichi plant will help allow access for workers trying to restore vital cooling systems that were knocked out in the March 11 tsunami.

It is but one of many steps in a lengthy process to resolve the crisis. Tokyo Electric Power Co. projected in a road map released over the weekend that it would take up to nine months to reach a cold shutdown of the plant. But government officials acknowledge that setbacks could slow the timeline.

The water will be removed in stages, with the first third of it to be handled over the coming 20 days, said Hidehiko Nishiyama of Japan’s Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency. In all, there are 70,000 tons (about 18.5 million gallons) of contaminated water to be removed from the plant’s reactor and turbine buildings and nearby trenches, and the entire process could take months.

TEPCO is bringing the water to a storage building that was flooded during the tsunami with lightly contaminated water that was later pumped into the ocean to make room for the highly contaminated water.

The operator plans to use technology developed by French nuclear engineering giant Areva to reduce radioactivity and remove salt from the contaminated water so that it can be reused to cool the plant’s reactors, Nishiyama said, adding that this process would take “several months.”

Once the contaminated water in the plant buildings is safely removed and radioactivity levels decline, workers can begin repairing the cooling systems for the reactors of Units 1, 2 and 3, which were in operation at the time of the tsunami. Workers must also restore cooling functions at the plant’s six spent fuel pools and a joint pool for all six units.

When the tsunami struck, units 5 and 6 were going through a regular inspection. On March 20, they were put in cold shutdown, which is when a reactor’s core is stable at temperatures below 212 Fahrenheit (100 Celsius).

With the nuclear crisis dragging on, public frustration with the government is growing. Opinion polls show more than two-thirds of Japanese are unhappy with the leadership of Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who was grilled for hours Monday by opposition politicians, many demanding he resign.

TEPCO has offered residents forced to evacuate from homes around the plant about $12,000 per household as interim compensation. People elsewhere in the disaster zone who lost houses to the tsunami _ which also left more than 27,000 dead or missing _ say help has been slow to materialize.

“I don’t understand what the politicians are doing, there are new committees and meetings everyday,” said Hiroshi Sato, who lost his house in Kesennuma and now lives in a fabric warehouse from his old business.

“We need support, financial assistance, and nothing has come yet,” he said.

In TEPCO’s blueprint for stabilizing the reactors, the utility aims to cool the reactors and spent fuel pools and reduce radiation leaks over the next three months. Within 6-9 months, the goal is achieve a cold shutdown of the reactors and cover the buildings, possibly with a form of industrial cloth, to further tamp deter any possible radiation leaks.

Two remote-controlled robots sent into the reactor buildings of Unit 1 and Unit 3 on Sunday showed that radiation levels inside _ up to 57 millisieverts per hour _ were still too high for humans to realistically enter.

The U.S.-made Packbots, which resemble drafting lamps on tank-like treads, also were briefly sent into Unit 2 on Monday, officials said, and the radiation level was found to be a much lower 4.1 millisieverts per hour.

But the high level of humidity inside the reactor building fogged up the robot’s camera lens, making it difficult to see conditions inside. They were pulled out after less than an hour, officials said.

“We didn’t want to lose sight of where the robot was and then not be able to retrieve it,” TEPCO manager Hikaru Kuroda said.

The reason for the higher humidity wasn’t clear, but it suggests that workers _ if they were to go inside _ also would have difficulty seeing through their masks, Kuroda said.

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Associated Press Writer Jay Alabaster in Kesennuma contributed to this report.

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Launching a week devoted to selling his deficit-reduction plan, President Barack Obama on Saturday drew sharp contrasts with a House Republican budget that he says offers a vision that “is wrong for America.”

In his weekly radio and Internet address, Obama charged Republicans with seeking to dismantle venerable safety net programs and choosing tax cuts for the wealthy at the expense of students paying for college or older adults on Medicare.

“To restore fiscal responsibility, we all need to share in the sacrifice - but we don’t have to sacrifice the America we believe in,” Obama said.

The criticism echoed his speech Wednesday in which he unveiled a $4 trillion deficit-reduction plan over 12 years, a goal he says he can achieve with a blend of spending cuts, changes in major government health care programs and tax increases.

Obama’s message represents his clearest attempt to place ideological distance with Republicans after months spent negotiating a compromise six-month spending bill that trimmed more than $38 billion from the government. Obama signed that legislation Friday.

Obama plans to continue his plan’s pitch throughout the week, holding town halls in Northern Virginia Tuesday and in Palo Alto, Calif,, and Reno, Nev., later in the week during a Western tour that includes at least two Democratic Party fundraisers.

While trying to cast the debate in his own terms, the president’s attention to fiscal discipline signals a watershed in national politics. After two years devoted to priming an anemic economy with new spending and passing an overhaul of health care, Congress and the White House are beginning a debate about how to tame long-term deficits and a crushing debt of more than $14 trillion.

In the Republicans’ weekly address, Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma called that turning point “a monumental shift for Washington.”

Still, Obama predicted in an interview with The Associated Press on Friday that fundamental questions about how to change giant benefit programs like Medicare and Medicaid or how to change the tax system might have to wait until after the 2012 presidential elections.

He conceded, however, that he would have to offer spending cuts to win votes in the Republican-controlled House for an increase in the debt limit. The debt will hit its ceiling of $14.3 trillion by mid-May, and administration officials say the cap must be raised by no later than early July.

And while Obama, in the interview, predicted a “smart compromise,” his address Saturday left little room for common ground with the House Republican budget. That plan, approved by the House Friday, would reduce deficits by $4 trillion over the next 10 years. It would extend Bush-era tax cuts at all income levels, repeal Obama’s health care law and overhaul of Medicare by providing future retirees a voucher-style federal payment to purchase coverage from private plans.

“It’s a vision that says that in order to reduce the deficit, we have to end Medicare as we know it and make cuts to Medicaid that would leave millions of seniors, poor children and Americans with disabilities without the care they need,” Obama said.

Obama has adopted a sharper, partisan tone since announced his re-election bid more than a week ago.

Coburn said Obama’s sharp critique of the House Republican budget amounted to “campaign-style political attacks.”

“Instead of describing the threat and bringing both sides together, the president attacked those who have a different vision of the government,” he said.

Coburn is one of a bipartisan group of six senators working to find a compromise on long-term deficit reduction. The group has not tipped its hand as its members continue to seek common ground. They have not set a timeline for achieving a compromise.

Coburn, however, praised the House Republican Medicare proposal, suggesting that the so-called Gang of Six may still have a long way to go before reaching a compromise.

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