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The nation’s two largest hot dog makers are taking their legal beefs Monday to federal court in Chicago, where a judge will determine whether Oscar Mayer or Ball Park franks broke false-advertising laws in their efforts to become top dog.

Legal arguments in the long-ranging wiener war between Chicago companies pit Sara Lee Corp, which makes Ball Park franks, against Kraft Foods Inc., which makes Oscar Mayer. The case could clarify how far companies nationwide can go when boasting that their product is better than a competitor’s.

Thousands of pages of filings in three years of pretrial litigation by both food-industry giants demonstrate that the stakes are high.

Sara Lee fired the first volley in a 2009 lawsuit singling out Oscar Mayer ads that brag its dogs beat out Ball Park franks in a national taste test. Those tests, Sara Lee argued, stacked the deck against Ball Park in part by altering the way the hot dogs were cooked and served.

The lawsuit also contends that Oscar Mayer touts its Jumbo Beef Franks as “100 percent pure beef,” arguing that the claim is untrue, cast aspersions on Ball Park franks and damaged their sales.

Kraft defends the “100 percent pure beef” tag, saying its intent was to state that the only meat used is beef no fax payday loan. Some industry hot dogs include a mix of turkey, pork, chicken or other meats. Kraft further argues that the “pure beef” label is justified because surveys show a perception among some consumers that hot dogs contain “mystery meats.”

Kraft filed its own lawsuit in 2009, alleging Sara Lee ran false and deceptive ads including a campaign where Ball Parks are heralded as “America’s Best Franks.” The ad further asserts that other hot dogs “aren’t even in the same league.”

While implications of the case are serious, even litigants have injected humor into the debate.

In a ruling this spring denying a Sara Lee motion for Kraft to disclose its consumer surveys, Judge Morton Denlow noted the issue arose “on opening day of baseball season in Chicago” and that Sara Lee “strikes out” in justifying its motion.

And in first announcing the lawsuit, Ball Park brand director Chuck Hemmingway said in a press statement: “Simply put, we believe that these untrue statements are all a bunch of bologna.”

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Egyptian security officials say a militant Islamist group has blown up a terminal along the Egyptian natural gas pipeline to Israel in the northern Sinai Peninsula.

Officials say Saturday’s attack on the terminal in al-Shulaq destroyed the last terminal before the line enters the sea on its way to Israel.

It is the third attack on the pipeline this month and the fifth since the 18-day uprising toppled President Hosni Mubarak in February.

While no one claimed responsibility, officials accused a militant Bedouin group for the attack.

Clashes between the group and security forces killed 5 people Friday.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media.

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. Check back soon for further information. AP’s earlier story is below.

CAIRO (AP) _ Tens of thousands of ultraconservative Muslims in long beards, robes and prayer caps thronged Cairo’s central Tahrir Square in a massive show of force Friday, calling for the implementation of strict Islamic laws and sparring with liberal activists over their visions for a post-revolution Egypt.

It was the first rally with religious overtones in Egypt, and one of the largest, since the uprising that forced President Hosni Mubarak to step down in mid-February. The strong showing by the Islamists demonstrated their powerful organizational abilities, which will likely help them in parliamentary elections later this year.

“Islamic. Islamic. Not Western or Eastern. No liberal or secular,” chants of Salafis, who follow a strict form of Islam, echoed through the square. Others shouted: “With our soul and blood we defend you Islam.”

They unfurled an Egyptian flag, removing the central emblem of an eagle and replacing the Islamic slogan: “There is no god but God and Muhammad is his prophet,” similar to the insignia on the Saudi flag.

The youth activists who have been at the helm of mass protests calling for faster change from the country’s interim military rulers withdrew from the rally soon after Friday prayers, accusing the Islamists of violating an agreement to avoid divisive issues.

“While the civil organizations are trying to respect the effort to complete the revolution by unifying the ranks, the Islamic groups insisted on breaking the unity and assisting the military council in a deal that I think will divide this country in two,” said liberal activist Mustafa Shawki. “This is what we were afraid of.”

Several hundred protesters, mainly liberal and leftist groups, have camped out at the square for more than three weeks, demanding swifter justice for those blamed in the killing of nearly 900 protesters during the 18-day uprising and more measures to ensure Mubarak loyalists are purged from the government. It was a crowd vocally critical of the military council, which they accused of protecting Mubarak’s regime.

Most of the Islamic groups, however, say the military needs time to break with the past.

The decision by the Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt’s best organized political force, to participate significantly boosted the turnout. But instead of a day of unity as had been advertised, the Islamists decided to flex their muscle, using the epicenter of the protests to press demands for a strict version of Islamic law.

Some Salafi Islamist groups mobilized their members to the square to oppose the adoption of a set of guidelines for drafting a new constitution after parliamentary elections later this year. Buses from a number of cities transported followers, many who were in the square for the first time.

Liberal parties are worried religious groups will win a large share of parliament and force an Islamic influence on the constitution. The Islamists say nothing should restrict the newly elected parliament’s right to oversee the process of drafting the document.

“The liberals are talking about a civil state. This won’t work in Egypt,” said Tarek Shaheen, a 31-year-old resident of Ismailiya. “We want to prove to the outside world even before domestically that Egypt is Islamic, that it has a large Islamic trend and that we are not terrorists.”

While opposing the measure, Muslim Brotherhood members did not press the issue Friday sticking to the agreement.

Salafis are ultraconservatives, close to Saudi Arabia’s Wahhabi interpretation of Islam and more radical than the Brotherhood. They seek to emulate the austerity of Islam’s early days and oppose a wide range of practices like intermingling of the sexes that they view as “un-Islamic.” Many also reject all forms of Western cultural influence, and preach that authorities must be respected.

Mubarak’s regime cracked down heavily on Islamic groups, specifically the politicized Brotherhood, arrested thousands of its members. Salafi groups are new to the political scene in Egypt.

Many like Shaheen felt that Egypt’s Islamic identity is threatened, reflecting the growing mistrust between the different groups only months before the first parliamentary elections, the first after Mubarak’s ouster.

Egypt’s constitution, which has been suspended by the military rulers, set Islamic law as the basis for legislation and nobody has proposed changing that clause. But some Islamic groups believe the liberal groups will use the guidelines to introduce what they perceive as Western values.

“Our religion is the constitution,” said Saber Mohammed, a 27-year-old Cairene wearing a short white robe and head cap, sporting the traditional bushy beard of a Salafi.

Nourhan Zamzam, a 29-year-old banker who supports the call for a civil state, said the ultraconservative Islamist groups are vying for influence but have little experience.

For her, the Salafi stance only undermines pressure on the military by dividing the efforts of the protesters.

“This is actually a message to us, the revolutionaries, who are critical of the military council,” she said. “This is a message to scar us: look infighting between groups is coming.”

By sundown, a large number of Islamists began leaving the square peacefully and the sit-in continued.

It was more tense in other cities.

In the southern city of Assiut, Salafist protesters beat up a group of protesters from the Communist party trying to join their demonstration, deputy police chief Yosri el-Gammasi said. At one point, some in the crowd yelled back at a speaker who criticized the idea of constitutional guidelines.

In the Sinai city of el-Arish, government troops clashed with Islamic militants firing rocket-propelled grenades and other heavy weapons outside a police station. Four people were killed, including a military officer and three civilians, and 18 people injured.

South of the capital in Minya province, gunmen fired on a car carrying Christians, killing two and injuring two, a military official said. It was the second killing in two weeks in the predominantly Christian village of Roman. While the motive was unknown, similar events have sparked religious violence in the past.

Officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to brief the media.

Friday’s rally came a day after Egypt’s Justice Ministry said Mubarak, along with his two sons, his former security chief and seven others, will be tried Wednesday at a Cairo convention center. Mubarak, 83, faces charges of corruption and ordering the deadly use of force against protesters.

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Starbucks Corp. says stronger sales helped drive its third-quarter net income up 34 percent to beat expectations.

The coffee giant said Thursday after the markets closed that it drew more customers around the globe and those customers spent more, despite the continued difficult economy.

“The third quarter really continues the trends we’ve seen for some time,” said Troy Alstead, chief financial officer at Starbucks. “It’s even more remarkable in what is a fragile consumer environment.”

Starbucks, based in Seattle, said it earned $279.1 million, or 36 cents per share, for the quarter that ended July 3. That’s up from $207.9 million, or 27 cents per share, earned in the same quarter last year.

Revenue rose 12 percent to $2.93 billion.

Analysts on average were expecting earnings of 34 cents per share on revenue of $2.83 billion, according to FactSet.

Starbucks said it expects to earn $1.50 to $1.51 per share for the full year, which is in line with analyst expectations of $1.50. It’s an increase from the company’s earlier forecast for earnings of $1.46 to $1.48 per share.

The news sent shares of Starbucks up about 2 percent in after-hours trading to $40.80.

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The first week of July is off to a much slower start than the last week of June, when stocks had their biggest gains in two years.

Major indexes were mixed for much of the day Tuesday but dipped in afternoon trading after Moody’s downgraded Portugal’s debt to “junk.” The credit ratings agency cited concerns that Portugal will not be able to meet targets to reduce its deficit due to the “formidable challenges” the country is facing in cutting spending.

Investors have been worried that Europe’s debt problems could slow the global economy and cause a crisis for European banks. “The European debt crisis is going to be with us for a while,” said David Kelly, chief market strategist at J.P. Morgan Funds. “There still is a very big issue out there.”

Trading volume was light as many traders took vacations. U.S. markets were closed Monday for the July Fourth holiday. Many investors are looking ahead to next week, when aluminum maker Alcoa Inc. becomes the first major U.S. company to report quarterly financial results.

Last week, the Dow rose 648 points, its best week in two years, after Nike reported strong earnings and Greece cleared its final hurdle before receiving another round of loans. Automakers also reported that their sales rose 7 percent in June compared with the same month a year ago.

The gains erased nearly six weeks of losses. Prior to last week, stocks had been falling since late April because of concerns about the debt crisis in Europe, weak home sales in the U.S. and slowing manufacturing. By mid-June, stocks had given up most of their gains for the year.

With last week’s rally, the Dow is now down just 1.8 percent from April 29, when it reached a three-year high. The Dow is up 8.6 percent for the year. The S&P 500 index is up 6.4 percent and the Nasdaq composite is up 6.5 percent.

Analysts are optimistic about the corporate earnings reports that will start to come in next week. Earnings from companies in the S&P 500 index are expected to rise 14 percent from the same period a year ago, according to FactSet. Revenue is expected to rise 11 percent.

“There hasn’t yet really been a reason to get concerned about corporate America,” said Randy Warren, chief investment officer of Warren Financial Service. “It’s the rest of the America that’s struggling.”

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Christine Lagarde’s bid to head the International Monetary Fund could face new scrutiny now that Greece’s worsening debt storm risks toppling one of her candidacy’s key pillars _ her track record shepherding the eurozone through the worst crisis of its 12-year existence.

With Greece coming close to a default, which would spark a chain reaction that some fear could break up the eurozone, the crisis management strategy of Lagarde and her European colleagues will come in for renewed criticism, analysts say.

Lagarde, France’s finance minister, heads to Washington D.C. next week to try to drum up critical U.S. support for her bid. Her distant lead over the rival candidate, Mexican central banker Agustin Carstens, means a Greek default now is unlikely to derail her campaign.

But it will come back to haunt her _ should she be chosen _ because Europe’s indecisive and disjointed handling of the crisis has caused the total size of the final bill to balloon, experts say.

Ever since Greece began its death spiral early last year, Lagarde has been one of the highest profile architects of the European response. She once threatened to pull the plug on Europe’s financial lifeline to Greece if the country didn’t honor its terms.

But a year on from its bailout, Lagarde and her European cohorts are again preparing yet another rescue package for Greece, despite its failure to meet promised deficit cuts.

“She’ll argue that she’s well placed, with political skills and managerial skills to broker compromises,” said Simon Tilford, chief economist at the Center for European Reform, a London-based think tank. “But the problem is that in many people’s eyes the eurozone leadership is discredited” by its failure to get a handle on its Greek problem once and for all.

“I think she’d make a brilliant president of the EU Commission, but I’m not entirely convinced she’s the right person for this job,” Tilford said.

Many investors and economists say Greece’s debt problems will eventually end in default and that European leaders are guilty of misdiagnosing the crisis from the beginning.

One indication of that strategy’s cost was given Thursday by a top official at the European Central Bank. Nout Wellink, a member of the ECB’s rate-setting council, said European governments need to be ready to increase the size of their bailout fund to euro1.5 trillion _ double the size of the package that Lagarde and other officials said only months ago would be enough to stave off disaster.

“For the sake of argument, a year’s delay has cost at least euro750 billion,” Neil MacKinnon, an analyst at VTB Capital in London. And that excludes indirect costs such as higher interest rates and bond yields, particularly in countries on Europe’s troubled periphery such as Greece, Portugal and Ireland loans for people with bad credit.

Europe’s leaders have been “kicking the can down the road, and now we’re running out of road,” he added.

In launching her candidacy, Lagarde said she’d “bring all my expertise as a lawyer, a minister, a manager and a woman” to the job.

Her popularity is based in part on her reputation for deftness in international negotiations to stabilize the world economy during the world financial crisis. She also was seen as instrumental in getting the IMF and European Union to agree on rescue plans for Greece, Ireland and Portugal when their debt crises threatened the entire shared euro currency.

The 55-year-old headed the law firm Baker & McKenzie in Chicago before joining French politics in 2005. With excellent English, a direct manner and relatively pristine image, she is seen by many as a good candidate to quickly step into the job vacated by Dominique Strauss-Kahn and manage Europe’s continuing debt difficulties as well as the myriad other challenges to the world economy.

Carstens, Lagarde’s rival, has won the support of 12 Latin American countries, but not those with the most voting power _ Argentina and Brazil.

The United States has continued to stay on the sidelines with the Obama administration not announcing its support for a candidate yet. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner met with Carstens on June 13 and is expected to confer with Lagarde when she is in Washington next week.

The top position became vacant after Dominique Strauss-Kahn resigned last month following his arrest on sexual assault charges, allegations that he denies.

The IMF’s 24-member executive board is expected to interview both Lagarde and Carstens next week and aims to make a decision by June 30.

Lagarde was unavailable for an interview. Her spokesman Bruno Silvestre said that the potential worsening of the European financial crisis would have no bearing on Lagarde’s candidacy. “She’s ridden the wave, she knows how to handle a crisis,” Silvestre said. Without Lagarde’s input, the crisis “could have been a lot more severe for a lot more people,” he added.

That argument holds little water with Tilford, however.

Europe’s ineffective and divisive handling of the Greek debt crisis “has caused a lot of damage to political relations between member states,” Tilford said. “That’s going to make it difficult to bring about what’s needed, which is closer political integration,” Tilford said.

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Two workers at Japan’s crippled nuclear plant might have exceeded a radiation exposure limit amid concerns about the risks faced by the workers struggling to contain the crisis.

Tokyo Electric Power Co. said Monday the two control room operators are being tested further and don’t have immediate health problems.

If exposures beyond the limit are confirmed, they would be the first men to reach the government-set limit.

The government had eased its previous limit for men soon after the earthquake and tsunami set off the crisis at the tsunami-hit Fukushima Dai-ichi plant on March 11.

The two men were responsible for Unit 3 and 4 central control rooms when the quake and tsunami knocked out the plant’s power and cooling functions.

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Italy’s Mario Draghi may reach for the German policy manual when he takes the helm of the European Central Bank.

Draghi, 63, will on Nov. 1 inherit an ECB that’s almost unrecognizable from the one Jean-Claude Trichet took charge of eight years ago. The bank’s balance sheet has more than doubled to 1.9 trillion euros ($2.7 trillion), mostly as a result of the extraordinary measures it used to battle the global financial crisis and now Europe’s sovereign debt woes.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s endorsement of Draghi yesterday means it will fall to an Italian to steer the ECB out of a crisis triggered by southern European fiscal profligacy. Merkel made clear she’s backing the Bank of Italy governor in the expectation he will subscribe to the tight-money tradition of the Bundesbank, which provided the blueprint for the ECB when it was created 1998.

“Draghi will have to make a huge effort to assert his hawkish credentials,” said James Nixon, an economist at Societe Generale in London and a former ECB forecaster. “He may have to contend with the very real threat of a sovereign restructuring. Persuading the Germans that an Italian is the best man for that particular task is going to be difficult.”

Under Trichet, the ECB flooded markets with cheap cash and bought government bonds to prop up banks from Greece to Ireland and prevent a sovereign default. Draghi must eventually withdraw those measures to assuage fears of inflation, even as Greece struggles to repair its finances.

‘I Know Mario’

“I know Mario Draghi,” Merkel told Die Zeit newspaper in an interview published yesterday. “He’s very close to our ideas of the stability culture and solid economic policy.”

That may mean further interest-rate increases to tame inflation, which at 2.8 percent is above the ECB’s 2 percent limit. The ECB raised its benchmark rate by a quarter point to 1.25 percent in April, the first move in almost three years. Economists forecast it to tighten policy every three months.

“If, as the markets expect, Trichet raises rates in October, Draghi may find himself in the position that he’s expected to raise rates in January,” said Julian Callow, an economist at Barclays Capital in London. At the same time, economic growth may slow later this year, “so Draghi may be faced with questions about why unemployment is increasing,” Callow said. The euro area’s jobless rate stayed at 9.9 percent in March, compared with 9 percent in the U.S. last month.

‘Double-Act’

Economic pain is already acute in Greece, prompting strikes and protests against the government’s austerity drive. Ireland and Portugal — home to ECB Vice President Vitor Constancio — are also struggling to grow.

By contrast, Germany’s economy, Europe’s largest, is booming and unemployment is at a two-decade low, threatening to fuel wage and price pressures.

“If there has been some unease at a southern European double-act running the ECB, then the first priority for Draghi is to signal that he’s committed to delivering the ECB’s mandate,” said Ken Wattret, an economist at BNP Paribas in London.

Draghi’s candidacy has attracted criticism in Germany, and in that context, Bild, the nation’s biggest-selling newspaper, wrote on Feb. 11 that “inflation is as much a part of Italian life as tomato sauce and pasta.”

Sensibilities

Recent comments suggest Draghi is willing to placate German sensibilities. He said April 13 that monetary policy is still “accommodative” even after the ECB raised its benchmark rate that month. In February, he told Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that Germany is an example for other nations, calling for tougher sanctions for budget-rule breaches and vowing to ensure price stability.

Determining withdrawal of crisis measures will test Draghi’s resolve. While the bank refrained from buying bonds for the past six weeks, its purchase program remains in place. It extended unlimited liquidity provision through the second quarter and conceded that some banks are addicted to funds. The risk for Draghi is that the longer the ECB leaves the cash tap on, the greater the threat of inflation.

Greece may be an obstacle to an exit. ECB officials have publicly opposed debt restructuring as the nation struggles to pay its creditors. Executive Board member Lorenzo Bini Smaghi warned as early as October last year that it would mean a “total collapse” of the Greek economy, while his colleague Juergen Stark told the Financial Times yesterday that a restructuring “will not resolve the Greek problems.”

Restructuring

Restructuring is “very likely” said David Owen, Managing Director of Jefferies International in London. “That restructuring event would happen on Draghi’s watch.”

Germany lost its ECB presidency candidate when Axel Weber, one of the central bank’s toughest hawks, unexpectedly announced in February he would resign as Bundesbank president. German memories of hyperinflation after World War I forged the Bundesbank’s resolve for stable prices and made it a role model for central banks across Europe, including the ECB.

Draghi “will be an orthodox, single-minded inflation fighter,” said Nick Kounis, an economist at ABN Amro NV in Amsterdam. “He will be in the Bundesbank mould as ECB president. It’s the heart and soul of the institution.”

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The yen and dollar fell versus most of their major peers on speculation the central banks in Japan and the U.S. will this week keep interest rates near zero, while policy is being tightened elsewhere.

The euro rose toward a 16-month high versus the dollar on prospects European Central Bank officials will signal that further rate increases will be necessary to contain inflation. Australia’s dollar climbed to a record as rising gold prices boosted the outlook for the nation’s resource exports, spurring demand for higher-yielding assets.

“Japan and the U.S. are the countries that can’t steer toward monetary tightening, so the yen and dollar will be weak,” said Daisaku Ueno, president of Gaitame.com Research Institute Ltd. in Tokyo, a unit of Japan’s largest currency margin company. “The yen will continue to depreciate as long as the global economy is recovering gradually.”

The yen dropped to 119.75 per euro as of 9:08 a.m. in Tokyo from 119.24 in New York last week, while declining to 82.08 per dollar from 81.88. The euro bought $1.4593 from $1.4561 after reaching $1.4649 on April 21, the highest level since December 2009. The Australian dollar, known as the Aussie, touched $1.0776, the strongest since it was freely floated in 1983.

The Dollar Index, which IntercontinentalExchange Inc. uses to track the greenback versus the currencies of six major U.S. trading partners, slid 0.2 percent to 73.972 after touching 73.735 on April 21, the lowest since August 2008.

The Federal Open Market Committee announces its policy decision on April 27 and will hold the benchmark rate in a range of zero to 0.25 percent, according to all 80 economists surveyed by Bloomberg. Most of the 50 analysts in a Bloomberg survey last month said they expect the Fed will keep its bond portfolio stable for some time after its $600 billion purchase program ends in June.

“What’s behind the dollar’s weakness is the difference in monetary policy in the U.S. from other major economies excluding Japan,” Gaitame.com’s Ueno said.

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Ford Motor Co., after increasing its share of the U.S. light-vehicle market for the last two years, is falling short of its retail goal this year, which may put pressure on the automaker to offer larger discounts.

Ford in the first quarter had 13.6 percent of the U.S. retail auto market, which excludes sales to fleet buyers, according to researcher Edmunds.com. That trailed the 14.1 percent target Ford’s board set for executives to match or exceed this year, according to the automaker’s government filings.

Ford’s share slipped as General Motors Co. increased sales incentives 11 percent in the first three months of the year, according to Autodata Corp. Ford, which reduced discounts by 9.1 percent in the first quarter, saw its total U.S. market share fall to 16.2 percent from 16.8 percent a year earlier, Autodata said.

“We believe Ford’s management could be forced to become more aggressive with incentives to avoid additional market share loss,” Joseph Amaturo, an analyst with the Buckingham Research Group who rates Ford “neutral,” said Tuesday. “We are increasingly concerned about net-price erosion.”

Chief Executive Alan Mulally, who has emphasized profits over market share, said Ford will maintain pricing discipline.

“The most important thing about our plan is profitable growth, so that leads us to tremendous discipline on everything about the business,” Mulally said Wednesday.

“The number one thing is to match the production capacity to the real demand.”

Ford, which earned $6.56 billion last year, failed to achieve its market share targets globally and in the Americas, according to its proxy statement filed this month. Ford achieved 44 percent of its corporate market-share goal and 58 percent of its target for the Americas, it said.

Ford has said its market share in Europe fell to 7.6 percent last year from 8.9 percent in 2009 as it resisted matching competitors’ discounts.

The automaker said its retail market share in the U.S. last year was 14.1 percent, trailing the board’s 14.2 percent target.

Mulally said Ford will continue to avoid the heavy, profit-eroding discounts that U.S. automakers used in the past to keep factories running.

“We will always be very disciplined about our production and our pricing and have the pricing reflect the real demand and inherent value of the product,” he said.

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Diplomats say they’re hammering out an offer to sway Moammar Gadhafi’s family and key aides into publicly withdrawing their support for the Libyan strongman.

Gadhafi’s seven sons, one daughter, cousins and other close allies will be offered a chance to reclaim billions of dollars of seized funds and have travel bans against them lifted.

Britain’s Foreign Office said Tuesday that diplomats are in talks with partners in the European Union over sanctions imposed by the 27-nation bloc payday advance low fees.

The United Nations will also hold talks if any of those named under its sanctions chooses to break with Gadhafi.

The move follows a decision Monday by the U.S. Treasury to lift sanctions against Moussa Koussa, the former Libyan foreign minister who fled Tripoli and is providing information to British officials.

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