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FAIRFIELD, CONN.—Public safety officials in Connecticut say about 50 people have been hurt after two commuter trains collided outside New York City. Four of those injuries were deemed serious.

No fatalities were reported following Friday evening’s collision near Fairfield on the Metro-North Railroad.

The rail line referred to it in a news release as a “major derailment.”

A spokesman for public safety officials in nearby Bridgeport says about 250 people were on the two trains that collided after one derailed.

The railroad says a train that departed New York City’s Grand Central station en route to New Haven derailed. A westbound train on an adjacent track then struck the derailed train.

Some cars on the second train also derailed as a result of the collision.

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The no-parking sign didn’t really make sense. Nader Khan parked there anyway.

All along Finfar Court in Mississauga, signs stated parking was prohibited from 12 to 3 on Fridays. It seemed odd to Khan, since a large mosque — the Islamic Society of North America — was a few metres away and offered its main prayer service at the same time.

“When I first parked there, I genuinely thought the sign said no parking every day but Fridays,” said Khan, an Islamic singer and songwriter who had driven there to pray. “I thought, wow, how accommodating.”

But when he returned an hour later, he found that his car and all the others parked on both sides of the street in the light industrial area had been ticketed. “I was furious.”

A year later, Khan returned and saw the signs were still there. Instead of parking, he started taking photos and turned to Facebook to express his frustration. “Finfar Court: A most racist, discriminatory, Islamophobic street in the GTA, located in Mississauga Ontario,” he wrote to introduce the pictures.

The Facebook post sparked intense debate between those agreeing with Khan and those who thought the issue was merely a response to years of bad parking, including blocking driveways and parking too close to hydrants.

Across the GTA, places of worship have claimed intolerance and unfairness when their facilities face resistance from residents or their expansion plans and building permits are rejected by the city.

But a look at parking bylaws across the city and the outcomes of dozens of Ontario Municipal Board decisions suggests the real culprit is much more benign and mundane. It almost always comes down to indiscretions of the vehicular kind — traffic and parking.

“The truth is, places of worship have a need for a lot of parking,” said Joe D’Abramo, director of zoning and environmental planning for the City of Toronto. “Nobody wants to provide parking, because it takes up land and costs money to put it underground. But if we don’t require it, then they park on the streets and the community around it gets very upset.”

Toronto recently completed a review of its outdated zoning bylaws, including those for parking near a place of worship, and enacted them into law last week.

There was ample resistance. The Toronto Faith Coalition protested some of the zoning changes, concerned the parking requirements would make it impossible for existing places of worship to expand and new ones to set up.

“Parking is a big issue because it determines whether or not a church, synagogue and mosque can be built,” said Charles McVety, an evangelical Christian leader, who headed the Toronto Faith Coalition. “It’s fundamental, because if you do not have enough land to meet this high level of parking required, then you can’t build your building or expand it. They won’t approve it.”

D’Abramo said the changes were necessary. Not only were the bylaws old, but they were from pre-amalgamation and rules differed across the city. They also didn’t reflect the diversity of the city. “Some faiths have seating, and some faiths have no seating, so the standards are different depending on how you worship,” he said.

Generally, municipalities require a place of worship to provide parking based on complex formulas that account for the number of pews or square footage. The parking requirement is reduced if the religious centre is near transit or major city centres.

In recent years,the neighbourhood church has been replaced by mega-churches. According to a study commissioned by the City of Toronto on parking standards for a place of worship, the average size of a new place of worship built between 2000 and 2005 was more than double the average size of one built between 1975 and 1990. This means more people now drive to church. And, since many religious centres are set up in industrial areas — where land may be cheaper — public transit is rarely a realistic alternative.

A number of municipalities, including Brampton, Mississauga and Markham, have also conducted reviews of their parking bylaws around places of worship.

And it turns out nothing riles up the neighbours like bad parking and increased traffic. Infractions or even the perception that rules could be broken have been enough to ignite tensions and divide communities.

In Markham, a Taoist temple trying to build in a residential area faced heavy resistance from neighbours primarily due to fear of increased traffic and parking concerns — even though the temple said it expected attendance of 15 to 20 people at a time. The city voted against the temple’s plans for rezoning, and the matter eventually landed at the Ontario Municipal Board, which approved the building last summer payday loans online.

Ten years ago, city officials thwarted the plans of a Hindu temple in Scarborough to redesignate a property it purchased in an industrial zone into a religious facility. There were a number of concerns, including parking and lack of transit. The temple took its case to the OMB, but the city’s concerns were upheld.

And a new mosque project in Markham has divided an otherwise peaceful community with concerns that the construction of the facility would create a traffic nightmare and lead to parking chaos in a neighbouring residential area. The matter was further complicated by what the mosque called a “typo” on its website suggesting it could hold 1,600people when it only had approval for 500 — and parking accommodations for such. The mosque has since decreased the planned size of its worship space and will provide 188 parking spaces.

On the surface,the primary concern appears to be good planning. But there are some who question whether the zoning issues are simply a mask for underlying tensions.

“It becomes an oddly intense battle when it comes to parking and mundane zoning issues around a mosque or temple,” said Jason Hackworth, a geography professor at the University of Toronto who wrote a paper on the collision of faith and economic development in the city’s industrial zones. “You have to ask yourself why this is the case, as zoning issues normally don’t invoke such a reaction.”

But he, too, is careful. “Of course, something like that is hard to prove.”

Especially when mosque officials agree that their congregants are also at fault. “The officials are very frustrated with the small minority of people who park badly,” said Khan, the Mississauga man offended by the signs. But Khan still thinks the city went too far: “Have tow trucks on call, tow the cars that are being inconsiderate and fine them again and tow them again. Punishing an entire community or the actions of a few is very problematic.”

Mosque officials say they constantly make announcements about parking etiquette to their congregants, and have even organized a shuttle from free parking lots nearby to accommodate overflow. But they were surprised when the city put up the signs without any consultation.

The bylaw was enacted in December 2011 after the city received numerous other parking complaints from businesses, said Mississauga transportation commissioner Martin Powell. The staff report on the matter only refers to the concerns of one citizen. And the city did not send out a petition to local residents and businesses, as is the normal process, the report states.

“I know it seems a bit strange because of the hours, but that’s when we have a problem,” said Powell. “If there are safety issues involved, then staff will make recommendations to council, and that is what we did here.”

But Powell is quick to point out that the mosque isn’t the only place of worship that faces odd parking restrictions. Last spring, a number of churches in Mississauga were shocked to find their congregants could no longer park on the streets nearby from 10-1 on Sundays.

“We have been at our location for 19 years, and there has never been any problem,” said Desmond Singh, a pastor with Mississauga Gospel Assembly. “But it seems like the city has been targeting our church hours.”

Some of his congregants and those from the nearby St. Joseph Syriac Catholic Church took a petition to city hall, but their protest fell on deaf ears. A member of St. Joseph’s church wrote about the restrictions on a website on the Charter of Rights and Freedoms claiming that it infringed upon the rights of parishioners to freely practise their religion.

The Toronto Faith Coalition’s McVety believes further restrictions on where a place of worship can be set up will make the problem even worse. Toronto and Ajax have recently banned places of worship from setting up in industrial zones — forcing new places of worship into expensive residential areas.

McVety says the coalition is considering taking Toronto’s new zoning bylaws to the OMB.

“We bring in hundreds of thousands of new Canadians in the GTA every year, and then we pass laws to restrict their ability to worship.”

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Please remember that a payday loan is a rather expensive line of credit. Much like taking something to the pawn shop.

The Galaxy S4’s design is virtually unchanged from the Galaxy S III. And when I say virtually unchanged, I mean that you have to be pretty obsessive to notice the differences. Aside from a slightly more rectangular body and a more substantial, metal-esque band wrapping around the sides, there’s little to separate Samsung’s successor from its predecessor.

The most notable improvements to the phone’s hardware guts come in its processor, display and camera. None are revolutionary, but they all match or one-up the Android status quo.

The 5-inch, Super AMOLED display is one of the best Samsung has ever put on a phone, with a 1080p display and a pixel density of 441 per inch — more than enough to eliminate any trace of pixelation. The screen could stand to be a bit brighter, but that’s a minor quibble.

Even with a bigger screen and a beefier battery, the Galaxy S4 managed to get ever-so-slightly thinner, slimmer, and lighter than the Galaxy S III. It also got a power boost.

Smartphone makers have spent the past few years flinging extra cores at everything, so yet another quad-core processor — this time in the form of , Fortune 500) Snapdragon 600 — doesn’t sound all that exciting, especially compared to the “octo-core” Samsung Exynos 5 Octa that international markets are getting. (Geek caveat: Those extra four cores in the Exynos 5 are meant for low-power scenarios, so they don’t provide the massive boost over Snapdragon that you might expect.)

Still, the fact that the Galaxy S4 is more than three times faster than the Galaxy S III when run through the same benchmarking tests is nothing to scoff at.

In using the phone regularly for a week, I rarely came across a moment when it suffered from significant stuttering, lag or overheating. The one noticeable exception was when I played “Real Racing 3,” a graphically intense game that got choppy when too many cars were onscreen. That’s not really Samsung’s fault — Android is notorious for its game lag.

The Galaxy S4’s camera is also improved, though we’re at the point of diminishing returns. On paper, the leap from 8 megapixels to 13 megapixels sounds substantial, but we learned years ago that the megapixel arms race is only part of the story when it comes to camera quality. The Galaxy S4’s best new photo trick is a camera sensor that’s back-illuminated, which means it can capture more light and produce brighter, more-detailed images without the use of a flash.

The camera works well in most normal situations. Its new user interface, pulled from Samsung’s point-and-shoot Galaxy Camera, is nicely laid out and easy to use. The image processing time between hitting the shutter button and having a saved photo isn’t blazing, but also isn’t a nuisance one hour payday loan. A few of the software advances, like being able to erase unwanted objects from an image’s background or create time-lapse action shots, are neat and well-implemented.

Of course, these improvements — especially to the camera and screen — require more power, and Samsung obliged by packing in a bigger battery. With the screen’s brightness ranging between 50% and 75%, 4G turned on, and a few apps and services running in the background (Facebook, Gmail, Google Talk, etc. — the usual suspects), I was still able to get through a full day with moderate use. With heavier usage, I found myself having to recharge after 6 to 8 hours. On the whole, I didn’t notice any huge leap in battery life over the S3, but it certainly wasn’t worse, either.

The features Samsung wants buyers to focus on, though, aren’t the Galaxy S4’s internal guts, which are more or less identical to other top smartphones right now. It’s the software upgrades baked into Samsung’s custom “TouchWiz” interface. The phone’s flashier tricks include pausing video when you look away from the screen, letting you answer the phone by waving in front of it, and activating tilt-based scrolling when eye contact is detected. Samsung also pinched a few features from its Galaxy Note 8.0 tablet, like allowing two apps to simultaneously run side-by-side, and the Airview feature, which detects when your finger is hovering over — but not quite touching — the screen. The gesture can activate a secondary action or menu.

Those are neat tricks, but they’re more like a sword-juggling circus act than the revolutionary breakthrough Samsung would like them to be. They’re interesting, novel and sometimes impressive, but they’re not significant or lasting advances. None are meaningfully better than our existing methods of smartphone interaction.

So, is the Samsung Galaxy S4 one of the best Android phones available? Yes. There are few other phones, period, that are as powerful and capable. But, in line with what we’ve seen from the past few iPhone generations, the improvements here aren’t as pronounced and exciting as in past years. This isn’t a phone that’s going to convert an iPhone user, and current Galaxy S III owners aren’t going to miss out on a whole lot as far as features go.

If you’re ready for an upgrade, and are in the market for an Android phone, there’s no reason why this shouldn’t be one of top two or three phones you consider. It’s not the standout, though, that Samsung needs to remain the preeminent leader of the Android field. Hear that, HTC?

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On Twitter, negative views of vaccination are more contagious than positive sentiments — and too many pro messages may backfire.

That’s according to Penn State University researchers who tracked about 350,000 tweets from more than 100,000 people during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic. Their study was published Thursday in the journal EPJ Data Science.

The findings have implications that extend beyond the issue of vaccinations.

“People are getting information about how to deal with their health from a variety of sources and increasingly from social media,” said the study’s lead author Marcel Salath

The closure of the PRACS Institute research office in St. Charles last month resulted in the loss of 267 jobs, according to a WARN notice filed with the state of Missouri. 

The  Fargo, N.D.-based drug trial company’s St. Charles office closed suddenly, and pending studies were cancelled at the site. 

According to a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) that PRACS filed with the state of Missouri March 27, 267 people lost their jobs at the St. Charles office, effective March 20. The federal WARN Act requires employees to detail information about layoffs and job reductions. 

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An explosion during a training exercise at a military ammunition storage facility in western Nevada is believed to have killed "several" people, a U.S. military spokeswoman said Tuesday.

An official at the facility in western Nevada said the explosion occurred late Monday during a U.S. Marine training exercise.

Marines spokeswoman Kendra Motz said "several" people had been killed by the explosion, but declined to comment further no faxing payday loan.

Hawthorne Army Depot is a 147,000 acre site used for storing ammunition and other military equipment.

Reuters is reporting seven marines were killed.

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WASHINGTON—Republican Senator Rob Portman, who was on the short list last year to be the party’s vice-presidential candidate, said he reversed his opposition to same-sex marriage after learning in 2011 that his son is gay.

The Ohio senator announced that he now supports gay marriage in an opinion piece on Friday in an Ohio newspaper.

“I have come to believe that if two people are prepared to make a lifetime commitment to love and care for each other in good times and in bad, the government shouldn’t deny them the opportunity to get married,” Portman wrote in an op-ed piece in the Columbus Dispatch, titled “The Freedom to Marry.”

“That isn’t how I’ve always felt. As a Congressman, and more recently as a Senator, I opposed marriage for same-sex couples. Then something happened that led me to think through my position in a much deeper way.”

Portman said his 21-year-old son, Will, told the senator and his wife that he was gay in February 2011.

Portman’s announcement comes about a week before the U.S. Supreme Court is to hear oral arguments in two cases related to gay marriage. One challenges the 1996 federal Defence of Marriage Act, which defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

In a related case, the court will also hear arguments that question a California law, known as Proposition 8, banning gay marriage. The cases will be argued on March 26 and March 27.

Portman told another Ohio newspaper, the Cleveland Plain Dealer, he now believes same-sex couples who marry in states where it is legal should be eligible for the same federal benefits granted to heterosexual couples.

He was among the front-runners to be Mitt Romney’s vice-presidential pick during the 2012 election, but budget hawk Paul Ryan, a congressman from Wisconsin, eventually got the nod.

The Republican Party has become increasingly split on the gay marriage issue, with many arguing that socially conservative positions such as opposition to same-sex marriage are contributing to the party’s election losses.

An early Republican favourite for the 2016 presidential race, Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, staged a defence of traditional marriage in a high-profile speech to a conservative conference on Thursday.

“Just because I believe that states should have the right to define marriage in the traditional way does not make me a bigot,” the 41-year-old Cuban-American told the Conservative Political Action Conference, or CPAC.

Among the headliners at the CPAC event on Friday is Romney, who will be making his first major public speech since he lost the election.

Portman’s new position was supported by former opponent David Axelrod, who was President Barack Obama’s senior campaign adviser.

“Courageous decision by Rob Portman to endorse same-sex marriage, guided by the love of a parent rather than by party ideology,” Axelrod tweeted.

In his op-ed piece, Portman wrote of how he has “wrestled” with reconciling his Christian faith with the desire for his son to have the same opportunities as his siblings.

“Ultimately, for me, it came down to the Bible’s overarching themes of love and compassion and my belief that we are all children of God,” he said.

Portman told the Ohio newspapers in an interview that because of his son he was able to “think of this issue from a new perspective, and that’s of a dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have — to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years.”

Portman’s son, now a junior at Yale University, told the senator that being gay was “not a choice,” and that he had been gay “since he could remember,” Portman told the newspapers.

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Zynga laid off 5% of its employees from multiple offices Tuesday.

The gaming pioneer best known for FarmVille and its other -Ville franchises shut down its Boston studio, laid off staff at its Austin office, and proposed closures of its Japan and UK outposts.

“Earlier today, we initiated a number of changes to streamline our operations, focus our resources on our most strategic opportunities and invest in our future,” Zynga CEO Mark Pincus said in a note to staff. “As part of these changes, we’ve had to make some tough decisions around products, teams and people.”

Employees were notified of the layoffs during Apple’s widely hyped iPad mini announcement. The news comes ahead of ) third-quarter earnings report set to release Wednesday.

In addition to layoffs, Pincus said the San Francisco-based company would be “significantly reducing” its investment in The Ville franchise, and would be shutting down 13 games under the Zynga umbrella.

The social gaming company is facing mounting pressure as it struggles to keep users buying virtual goods on its biggest platform: ). The social network makes money from games like Zynga’s Farmville and Mafia Wars, but users have cut back on their purchases. Facebook’s latest earnings report showed a 20% decline in payments revenue from Zynga over the last year.

Zynga has been focused on building out its mobile platform, scooping up gaming company OMGPop, the maker of Draw Something, in March. But it’s unclear whether the investment paid off. In the company’s last earnings report, Pincus said the game had “underperformed verses our early expectation.”

Several weeks ago, Zynga lowered its outlook for 2012, citing reduced expectations for various web games.

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President Obama and Mitt Romney each used their second presidential debate to talk tough on China.

Romney pledged that he would label China as a currency manipulator on his first day in office — a promise he frequently works into his campaign speeches. And he accused China of “stealing” designs, patents and technology pioneered by U.S. companies.

“There’s even an Apple store in China that’s a counterfeit Apple store, selling counterfeit goods,” Romney said. “They hack into our computers. We will have to have people play on a fair basis.”

Obama was more circumspect in his use of language, but he touted the trade complaints his administration has filed against China over auto parts. Obama also recently blocked the sale of American wind farm companies to a Chinese firm.

Talking tough on China has become a campaign ritual for politicians of both parties — even if, as experts predict, the rhetoric moderates after Nov. 6 regardless of who wins.

The latest criticisms from the Republican candidate comes after the Treasury Department last week delayed the release of a report that has in the past criticized China for keeping the value of its currency artificially low.

Delays are nothing new, but the next edition of the report is now unlikely to be issued until after the election.

The president has run a campaign that has repeatedly sought to draw connections between Romney’s tenure at Bain Capital and the outsourcing of American jobs to China.

“Mitt Romney: tough on China? Since when?” a recent ad asked.

“[Romney] says he’s gonna take the fight to them, he’s going to go after these cheaters, and I’ve got to admit, that message is better than what he has actually done about this thing,” Obama said earlier this month in Ohio.

Romney and Obama are not the first presidential candidates to beat up on China.

Bill Clinton famously referred to China’s leaders as the “butchers of Beijing” during the 1992 presidential race. Four years later, George W. Bush criticized Clinton for being too easy on China.

“These guys all ate crow,” said David Zweig, an associate dean at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. “Once in office, presidents tend to change their behavior.”

That shift is not surprising given the nature of the relationship. China is one of the United States’ largest trading partners, and the economies of the two countries — the largest and second largest in the world — are increasingly interconnected.

Beijing holds more than $1 trillion in U.S. debt, and U.S. exports to China are on the rise. China’s currency, the yuan, has been allowed to appreciate in recent years but many American businesses argue it still does not reflect its true market value, giving Chinese exporters an unfair competitive advantage.

Many analysts worry that Romney’s plan to label China a currency manipulator could backfire, and the specificity of the promise leaves him few options but to follow through.

“He has created a huge problem for himself,” Zweig said. “He has said consistently he will do it. So how does he climb down from that?”

Economists are even more worried about the second part of Romney’s initial China plan, which is to direct the Department of Commerce to institute countervailing duties on Chinese imports if China “does not quickly move to float its currency.”

That could spark a trade war between the two countries — a circumstance likely to end unhappily for both Beijing and Washington.

The Obama administration has taken protectionist actions, introducing tariffs on Chinese-made solar panels and tires.

But the benefits have been hard to discern, and consumers have ended up paying more for goods. According to a study by the Peterson Institute for International Economics, the tire tariff cost American consumers a total of $1.1 billion in 2011.

Chinese officials have tolerated the campaign rhetoric with relatively good humor so far. Comment has been restricted to editorials in state-run media that are particularly critical of Romney.

Zweig said that China’s top officials are very much in tune with the realities of American politics, even down to which states are crucial to secure electoral victory.

But talk is one thing, Zweig said, and action is another. Should a future administration depart from precedent and become significantly more aggressive toward China, Beijing will respond.

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U.S. stocks sank Friday, as the Dow erased all its gains for the year, and the 10-year yield on U.S. Treasuries hit another record low, after a U.S. jobs report fell far short of expectations.

The jobs report showed only 69,000 jobs were added to payrolls, less than half the 150,000 jobs forecast by economists surveyed by CNNMoney. The unemployment rate ticked higher for the first time in a year, rising to 8.2%.

"The U.S. employment report was simply terrible," said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman.

The Dow Jones industrial average () plunged 220 points, or 1.8%. The blue-chip index gave up all its gains for the year, and is now 40 points below where it finished 2011. The S&P 500 () lost 26 points, or 2%, and the Nasdaq () dropped 62 points, or 2.2%.

The sell-off was broad, with all 30 Dow components in the red, and 95% of the S&P 500 trading lower.

The CNNMoney Fear and Greed index showed investor confidence sliding even farther into "extreme fear" territory on the news.

Behind the jobs report

As jittery investors fled stocks, they plowed into the safety of U.S. government debt, pushing the yield on the 10-year Treasury note to a fresh record low below 1.5%.

"The move in bond markets is even more telling," said Joe Saluzzi, co-head of equity trading at Themis Trading. "A 1.5% 10-year yield? That’s fear."

Bond yields have been in record low territory for the past couple of weeks, as fears of Europe’s escalating debt crisis have been building. A report on Friday showed the eurozone unemployment rate at a record high of 11%. (Unemployment rate - explain it to me)

Concerns about slowing growth in emerging markets, including China and India, have also put investors on edge. Two reports out of China Friday morning showed that the manufacturing sector contracted more than expected in May, fueling investors concerns that the country may be headed for a hard landing.

As global economic growth has slowed in the last year, exports to Europe — China’s largest foreign market — have taken a hit as the debt-ridden region teeters on the brink of recession.

"We’ve got concerns about Europe, China, India, the United States — this is a global problem," said Saluzzi. "Investors have no place to hide."

Given the growing fears, and fragile market and economic environment, Saluzzi said central banks around the world — particularly the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve — will likely come out with plans to help stimulate the global economy.

Speculation that the Fed will launch a third round of bond buying, or QE3, which is meant to keep long-term interest rates low, has been growing, but Saluzzi is not convinced that it’s the right solution cash till payday advance.

"Interest rates are already low, and that hasn’t worked," he said. "I’m sure the Fed will try something, because that’s what it does, but it needs to attack from a different angle."

U.S. stocks finished in the red Thursday, ending a difficult month on a weak note. The Dow and S&P 500 dropped more than 6% in May, while the Nasdaq shed more than 7%.

Economy: Personal income and personal spending for April increased 0.2%. Analysts had expected the figure to increase by 0.3%.

The May installment of the ISM Manufacturing Index showed that U.S. manufacturing growth slowed in May. The index fell to 54.5, down from 54.8 last month and below expectations of 54. Any reading above 50 indicates growth in the sector.

April construction spending rose by 0.3%, but that was below forecasts for a 0.5% rise.

Companies: Shares of Facebook () hit a fresh low of $26.83 Thursday before bouncing back, ending the day up 5% at $29.60. The stock resumed its downward push Friday, shedding more than 5% in midday trading.

Shares of food producer Sara Lee (, Fortune 500) slipped after the company said it was spinning off its international coffee and tea business, which will pay a special dividend to existing Sara Lee shareholders. Sara Lee also announced a 1-for-5 reverse stock split.

BP () said it was considering selling its 50% stake in TNK-BP, a Russian oil joint venture, after it received an unsolicited bid for the holding. Shares of BP gained ground.

Groupon () shares fell. The online discount service, which has been dogged with questions about its accounting practices since its initial public offering in November, ends its lock-up period Friday, meaning that insiders who own shares will be able to sell them.

The nation’s Big Three automakers — General Motors (, Fortune 500), Ford Motor (, Fortune 500) and Chrysler — all reported a jump in car sales in May, but the results were less than expected by some analysts — another sign that the U.S. economy, while growing, remains weaker than hoped.

World markets: European stocks closed deep in the red. Britain’s FTSE 100 () dropped 0.9%, while the DAX () in Germany sank 3.2% and France’s CAC 40 () tumbled 2.5%.

Asian markets ended mixed. The Shanghai Composite () closed slightly above breakeven, while the Hang Seng () in Hong Kong slid 0.4% and Japan’s Nikkei () fell 1.2%.

Hedging won’t save your portfolio or pension

Currencies and commodities: The dollar rose against the euro and British pound, but fell versus the Japanese yen.

Oil for July delivery slid $3.18, or 3.7%, to $83.35 a barrel.

Gold futures for August delivery rose $49.40 to $1,613.60 an ounce.  

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