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NICE, France (AP) — Tourism is booming again in France — and so is COVID-19. French officials have “invited” or “recommended” people to go back to using face masks but stopped short of renewing restrictions that would scare visitors away or revive antigovernment protests.

From Paris commuters to tourists on the French Riviera, many people seem to welcome the government’s light touch, while some worry that required prevention measures may be needed.

Virus-related hospitalizations rose quickly in France over the past two weeks, with nearly 1,000 patients with COVID-19 hospitalized per day, according to government data. Infections are also rising across Europe and the United States, but France has an exceptionally high proportion of people in the hospital, according to Our World in Data estimates.

French government spokesperson Olivia Gregoire has said there are no plans to reintroduce national regulations that limit or set conditions for gathering indoors and other activities.

“The French people are sick of restrictions,” she said Wednesday on channel BFMTV. “We are confident that people will behave responsibly.”

France’s parliamentary elections last month resulted in President Emmanuel Macron losing his majority in the national legislature, while parties on the far right and the far left that had protested his government’s earlier vaccine and mask rules gained seats.

After the prime minister this week recommended that people resume wearing masks on public transportation, commuter Raphaelle Vertaldi said, “We need to deal with the virus, but we can’t stop living because of it.”

Vertaldi, who was boarding a train in Boussy-Saint-Antoine south of Paris, said she opposed mandatory mask use but would cover her mouth and nose again, if the government requires it.

Hassani Mohammed, a postal worker in Paris, didn’t wait for the government to decide. He masks up before his daily commute. With his wife recovering from surgery and two children at home, he does not want to risk contracting the coronavirus a third time.

“I realized that the pandemic does not belong to the past,” Mohammed said.

Masks have been contentious in France. Early in the pandemic, the French government suggested masks weren’t helpful. It ultimately introduced some of Europe’s toughest restrictions, including an indoors and outside mask mandate that lasted more than a year, along with strict lockdowns.

A Paris court ruled Tuesday that the French government failed to sufficiently stock up on surgical masks at the start of the pandemic and to prevent the virus from spreading. The administrative court in Paris also ruled that the government was wrong to suggest early on that that masks did not protect people from becoming infected.

The government lifted most virus rules by April, and foreign tourists have returned by land, sea and air to French Mediterranean beaches, restaurants and bars.

In the meantime, French hospitals are struggling with long-running staff and funding shortages. Local officials are contemplating new measures, including an indoor mask mandate in some cities, but nothing that would curb economic activity.

French tourism professionals expect a booming summer season despite the virus, with numbers that may even surpass pre-pandemic levels as Americans benefit from the weaker euro and others rediscover foreign travel after more than two years of a more circumscribed existence.

On the French Riviera, a slow economic recovery began last summer. But with attendance at gatherings still capped, social distancing rules and travel restrictions in place a year ago, most visitors to the area were French.

A tour guide and electric bicycle taxi driver in Nice described her joy at seeing foreign visitors again. During France’s repeated lockdowns, she transported essential workers, and took people to hospitals, to care for elderly relatives or for PCR tests.

Now, passengers on her bike from the U.S., Australia, Germany, Italy or beyond reach for the hand disinfectant taped to the barrier between the passenger and driver’s seats. She said she still diligently disinfects the bike before each ride, “like it’s 2020.”

A retired couple from the U.K. visited France this week on their first trip abroad since pandemic travel restrictions were lifted. They started with a cruise down the River Rhône – face masks were mandatory on the ship – and ended with a few days on the Mediterranean.

“It’s been delightful from start to finish,” said Ros Runcie, who was in Nice with her husband, Gordon. “Everyone is so pleased to see you, everyone is really polite and nice to visitors.”

Sue Baker, who was traveling with her husband, Phil, and the Runcies, observed: “It feels very much like pre-2020.”

Asked about the possible return of French mask rules, Phil Baker said, “Masks are a bit uncomfortable, especially in the heat.”

But his wife added, “If it means we can still go on a holiday, we’ll put them back on without hesitation.”

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Le Deley reported from Boussy-Saint-Antoine, France.

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Follow AP’s pandemic coverage at https://apnews.com/hub/coronavirus-pandemic

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WASHINGTON (AP) — When you groggily roll out of bed and make breakfast, the government edges up to your kitchen table, too. Unlike you, it’s perky.

It’s an unseen force in your morning. The government makes sure you can see the nutrients in your cereal. It fusses over your toast, insisting that the flour it comes from has no more than 75 insect fragments and one rodent hair per 50 grams.

The government also tends to your coffee, mandating that no more than 10% of your beans be moldy. Its satellites inform the weather forecast on your phone for the day ahead. The government weighs in on the water consumption in your bathroom and controls the fluoride in your toothpaste.

That’s all before you leave home. The government is going to be hanging with you on and off, mostly on, until you turn off the lamp last thing at night — no new incandescent bulbs, please, under a new rule.

The world of federal regulation seems both boundless and microscopic. It touches what you touch. It lends a helping hand at every turn or sticks its clumsy fingers in everything, depending on your viewpoint.

But a Supreme Court ruling this past week, limiting federal authority to control carbon emissions from power plants, was just the latest blow to what critics call the regulatory state and potentially a major blow to the fight against global warming.

In its farthest reach, regulation has become the go-to way for presidents to make policy when they can’t get Congress to pass a law, as on climate change. Barack Obama and Donald Trump did it for varied policies; Joe Biden does it. The court’s conservative majority said not so fast to Biden.

The decision imperils Biden’s goal of cutting greenhouse gas emissions by half by the end of the decade even as the damage from global warming mounts. Beyond that, it may hinder regulation across a range of public policy, in education, transportation, LGBTQ rights and more.

Congress, the court said, must speak with specificity when it wants to give an agency authority to regulate on an issue of national import.

Browse the Code of Federal Regulations and you will see just how specific rule-making can be. The voluminous code’s favorite words are “shall” and “must.”

Take sea otters, for example. If you’ve ever wondered how to measure a sea otter, the code has the answer.

The pool of water for sea otters in captivity, it stipulates, “shall be at least three times the average adult length of the sea otter contained therein (measured in a horizontal line from the tip of its nose to the tip of its tail) and the pool shall be not less than .91 meters (3.0 feet) deep.”

Even as they’ve expanded government with landmark laws and the explosion of regulations that arise from them, U.S. presidents have tried since the start to simplify government. As vice president, Al Gore took a run at “reinventing” it. Such efforts generally haven’t gone well.

Thomas Jefferson sought freedom from bureaucracy as well as the achievement of American liberty when he wrote of the British king, “He has erected a multitude of new offices, and sent hither swarms of officers to harass our people, and eat out their substance.”

What followed were several centuries of new offices and swarm upon swarm of bureaucrats come hither.

Associated Press writer Saul Pett took stock of the government in 1981 when President Ronald Reagan was trying to rein it in. Pett won a Pulitzer Prize for getting his hands around the behemoth. He described the government as:

“A big, bumbling, generous, naive, inquisitive, acquisitive, intrusive, meddlesome giant with a heart of gold and holes in his pockets, an incredible hulk, a ‘10-ton marshmallow’ lumbering along an uncertain road of good intentions somewhere between capitalism and socialism, an implausible giant who fights wars, sends men to the moon, explores the ends of the universe, feeds the hungry, heals the sick, helps the helpless, a thumping complex of guilt trying mightily to make up for past sins to the satisfaction of nobody, a split personality who most of his life thought God helps those who help themselves and only recently concluded God needed help, a malleable, vulnerable colossus pulled every which way by everybody who wants a piece of him, which is everybody.”

At the time, the U.S. government owned 413,042 buildings, excluding military facilities abroad, and employed 2.8 million civilians and 2.1 million military personnel. The expansion of federal programs especially swelled ranks in state and local government.

In 2021, a year of pandemic-dampened employment, the civilian federal civil service was about the same size as in 1981 while 600,000 or so fewer were in uniform.

For all of that, citizen encounters with the federal government often play out in the background, unacknowledged. The days are long gone when anyone could stroll at will through the front doors of Washington’s grand government buildings and do business.

It shapes their lives, nonetheless. That smartphone GPS came from the government. So did the internet.

People stroll on sidewalks built to requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Text messages and apps run off nearby cellphone towers that the Federal Communications Commission registers and licenses.

But it’s more visible when the government takes instead of gives. Motorists steer 18.4 cents to Washington for each gallon of gas they buy and 24.4 cents for each gallon of diesel. Most states grab an even bigger take per gallon.

At work, federal rules stand ready to step in if you are a victim of unlawful discrimination or hazardous working conditions. After work, food at the dinner table made it there through a regimen of meat, factory and farm inspection and truth-in-labelling rules.

That pizza sauce? Relax and enjoy. It can only have 30 fly eggs in each cup, by federal mandate. Except when a maggot is present; then only 15 fly eggs are permitted.

When you tuck your children in, the feds are there for the nighty-night, too.

If the young ones are old enough to get around and in trouble — nine months — they go off to sleep in the only bedtime garments that can be sold for them — body-hugging nightwear or flame-retardant pajamas.

Says a government order: That must and shall be so.

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Associated Press writers Amanda Seitz, Kevin Freking and Seth Borenstein contributed to this report.

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STOCKHOLM (Reuters) -Scandinavian airline SAS and its pilots have agreed to extend their wage talks until Monday in the hope of averting a strike, a company executive told reporters on Saturday.

Close to 1,000 pilots in Denmark, Sweden and Norway plan to strike if talks break down, according to the unions, which SAS had said could leave some 30,000 passengers stranded each day.

“We need to sleep, none of us have slept for a really long time,” SAS’ lead negotiator Marianne Hernaes told reporters after the latest round of talks which ran through the night.

A strike would comes at a difficult time for loss-making SAS as it seeks to restructure its business by undertaking large cost cuts, raising new cash and converting debt to equity as part of a plan to rescue the carrier from collapse.

Swedish daily Expressen had earlier reported, citing unnamed sources, that a deal had been reached, but SAS said the talks were still ongoing in the hope of averting a strike.

(Reporting by Terje Solsvik; editing by Niklas Pollard)

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MOSCOW (AP) — Russian President Vladimir Putin has handed full control over a major oil and natural gas project partly owned by Shell and two Japanese companies to a newly created Russian firm, a bold move amid spiraling tensions with the West over Moscow’s military action in Ukraine.

Putin’s decree late Thursday orders the creation of a new company that would take over ownership of Sakhalin Energy Investment Co., which is nearly 50% controlled by British energy giant Shell and Japan-based Mitsui and Mitsubishi.

Putin’s order named “threats to Russia’s national interests and its economic security” as the reason for the move at Sakhalin-2, one of the world’s largest export-oriented oil and natural gas projects.

The presidential order gives the foreign firms a month to decide if they want to retain the same shares in the new company.

Russian state-controlled natural gas giant Gazprom had a controlling stake in Sakhalin-2, the country’s first offshore gas project that accounts for about 4% of the world’s market for liquefied natural gas, or LNG. Japan, South Korea and China are the main customers for the project’s oil and LNG exports.

Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said Friday that there is no reason to expect a shutdown of supplies following Putin’s order.

Shell held a 27.5% stake in the project. After the start of the Russian military action in Ukraine, Shell announced its decision to pull out of all of its Russian investments, a move that it said has cost at least $5 billion. The company also holds 50% stakes in two other joint ventures with Gazprom to develop oil fields.

Shell said Friday that it’s studying Putin’s order, which has thrown its investment in the joint venture into doubt.

“As a shareholder, Shell has always acted in the best interests of Sakhalin-2 and in accordance with all applicable legal requirements,” the company said in a statement. “We are aware of the decree and are assessing its implications.”

Seiji Kihara, deputy chief secretary of the Japanese cabinet, said the government was aware of Putin’s decree and was reviewing its impact. Japan-based Mitsui owns 12.5% of the project, and Mitsubishi holds 10%.

Kihara emphasized that the project should not be undermined because it “is pertinent to Japan’s energy security,” adding that “anything that harms our resource rights is unacceptable.”

“We are scrutinizing Russia’s intentions and the background behind this,” he told reporters Friday at a twice-daily news briefing. “We are looking into the details, and for future steps, I don’t have any prediction for you at this point.”

Asked during a conference call with reporters if Putin’s move with Sakhalin-2 could herald a similar action against other joint ventures involving foreign shareholders, Peskov said, “There can’t be any general rule here.” He added that “each case will be considered separately.”

Sakhalin-2 includes three offshore platforms, an onshore processing facility, 300 kilometers of offshore pipelines, 1,600 kilometers of onshore pipelines, an oil export terminal and an LNG plant.

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AP reporters Kelvin Chan in London and Elaine Kurtenbach in Bangkok contributed to this report.

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ROME (AP) — The Vatican said Friday it had finalized the sale of a London property that is the focus of a criminal trial in the Vatican courts, offloading the former Harrods warehouse for 186 million pounds (215 million euros, US$223 million).

The Vatican secretariat of state had poured some 350 million euros into the building and related fees and commissions paid to brokers — losses that are at the heart of the accusations of fraud, embezzlement and extortion against 10 people on trial.

The Vatican said it sold the warehouse on 60 Sloane Ave. in Chelsea to Bain Capital, the Boston-based private investment firm co-founded by Republican U.S. Senator Mitt Romney, after a bidding process that involved 16 preliminary offers and relied on the expertise of property advisers Savills.

The scandal over the London property has convulsed the Vatican for three years and prompted Pope Francis to strip the secretariat of state of its 600-million-euro asset portfolio, which had essentially operated as a sovereign wealth fund not answerable to rigorous internal or external controls.

Trial testimony has shown that the office’s investment decisions were essentially made by one man, Monsignor Alberto Perlasca, and confirmed by his boss, the No. 2 in the secretariat of state, with minimal outside financial expertise or advice.

Perlasca had initially been the leading suspect in the investigation, but flipped and began cooperating with prosecutors. He is now a leading witness for the prosecution and was granted the status of an injured party in the case, able to recover damages in the event of convictions.

The secretariat of state’s money is now managed by another Vatican office, APSA, which is under the authority of an economy ministry that oversaw the sale of the property after Francis decided to sell the building given the reputational and financial harm the deal had caused the Holy See.

In a statement Friday, the Vatican said the losses incurred in the deal — which prosecutors have estimated topped 200 million euros overall — had been absorbed by the secretariat of state’s reserve funds. It stressed that the losses didn’t hit the so-called “Peter’s Pence” fund that collects annual donations from the faithful for the pope’s works of charity and to help run the Holy See bureaucracy.

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By Blake Brittain

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday declined to hear American Axle & Manufacturing Inc’s bid to revive its patent on technology for quieting driveshaft noise, turning away a case that may have clarified the circumstances under which inventions warrant a patent.

The justices rejected American Axle’s appeal of a lower court ruling that invalidated the Detroit-based company’s patent in a legal fight with Farmington Hills, Michigan-based rival Neapco Holdings. Critics have said court precedent on patent eligibility has produced unpredictable decisions and undermined the U.S. patent process.

President Joe Biden’s administration in May urged the high court to take up the case, saying American Axle’s invention was a classic example of a patent-eligible industrial process.

The Supreme Court last addressed patent eligibility in a 2014 ruling called Alice Corp v. CLS Bank International that helped establish a two-part eligibility test. The test requires courts to determine if an invention involves an unpatentable abstract idea, natural phenomenon or law of nature, and if so, whether it includes an inventive concept.

Defendants in patent-infringement cases often challenge the validity of patents to try to end these cases quickly. Detractors have said the Alice case ruling and subsequent decisions guided by it have created confusion and inconsistency that has led courts to cancel patents on inventions that should be protected.

American Axle sued Neapco in federal court in Delaware in 2015, accusing it of infringement of a patented method of manufacturing a driveshaft that vibrates less. At issue were Neapco driveshafts made for the Chevy Colorado and GMC Canyon pickup trucks.

After a judge in Delaware ruled in favor of Neapco, American Axle appealed to the Washington-based Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, which specializes in patent law, but lost again. A three-judge Federal Circuit panel voted 2-1 to invalidate American Axle’s patent after finding that it covered a simple application of Hooke’s law, a physics principle.

The Federal Circuit then decided, thanks to a 6-6 deadlock, not to rehear the case with all of its judges. Dissenting judges said the panel’s decision could threaten “most every invention for which a patent has ever been granted,” and that the court’s eligibility rulings had turned the patent system into a “litigation gamble.”

The dispute left the Federal Circuit “bitterly divided” and “at a loss” on how to apply the law, as one of its judges put it. All 12 of the Federal Circuit’s then-active judges asked the Supreme Court to hear a similarly divisive 2019 case that the high court rejected despite a recommendation by former President Donald Trump administration’s to take it up.

The Supreme Court has also denied several other petitions related to patent eligibility since the Alice case.

A U.S. Patent and Trademark Office spokesperson said after the ruling that innovation “cannot thrive in uncertainty,” and that the office is committed to “making every effort to ensure that the U.S. patent system is as clear and consistent as possible.”

An attorney for Neapco said the decision validates its view that the current framework for patent eligibility does not need to be overhauled.

American Axle and its lead attorney in the case did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

(Reporting by Blake Brittain in Washington; Editing by Will Dunham)

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By Stephen Culp

NEW YORK (Reuters) – Wall Street ended the session lower on Thursday, crossing the finish line of a grim month and quarter, a dismal coda to the S&P 500’s worst first half in more than half a century.

All three major U.S. stock indexes finished the month and the second quarter in negative territory, with the S&P 500 notching its steepest first-half percentage drop since 1970.

The Nasdaq had its largest-ever January-June percentage drop, while the Dow suffered its biggest first-half percentage plunge since 1962.

All three indexes posted their second straight quarterly declines. The last time that happened was in 2015 for the S&P and the Dow, and 2016 for the Nasdaq.

The year began with spiking cases of COVID-19 due to the Omicron variant. Then came Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, decades-high inflation and aggressive interest rate hikes from the Federal Reserve, which have stoked fears of a possible recession.

“All year it’s been a tug-of-war between inflation and slowing growth, balancing tightening financial conditions to address inflation concerns but trying to avoid outright panic,” said Paul Kim, chief executive officer at Simplify ETFs in New York. “I think we are more than likely already in a recession and right now the only question is how harsh will the recession be?”

“I think it’s very unlikely that we’ll see a soft landing,” Kim added.

Economic data released on Thursday did little to allay those fears. Disposable income inched lower, consumer spending decelerated, inflation remained hot and jobless claims inched higher.

“We’ve started to see a slowdown in consumer spending,” Said Oliver Pursche, senior vice president at Wealthspire Advisors, in New York. “And it seems that inflation is taking its toll on the average consumer and that translates to corporate earnings which is what ultimately drives the stock market.”

The graphic below shows year-on-year growth of core inflation indicators, all of which suggest that while a peak appears to have been reached in March, they all continue to soar well above the Fed’s average annual 2% target:

Graphic: Inflation – https://graphics.reuters.com/USA-STOCKS/egvbkgwxypq/inflation.png

According to preliminary data, the S&P 500 lost 32.58 points, or 0.85%, to end at 3,786.25 points, while the Nasdaq Composite lost 146.95 points, or 1.31%, to 11,030.95. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 219.61 points, or 0.71%, to 30,809.70.

Of the 11 major sectors in the S&P 500, energy is only one showing a year-to-date gain, aided by crude prices spiking over supply concerns due to Russia-Ukraine conflict. [O/R]

The major stock indexes showed monthly losses, with the S&P 500 logging its largest June percentage decline since the financial crisis.

Second-quarter reporting season begins in several weeks, and 130 of the companies in the S&P 500 have pre-announced. Of those, 45 have been positive and 77 have been negative, resulting in a negative/positive ratio of 1.7 stronger than the first quarter but weaker than a year ago, according to Refinitiv data.

Worries over inflation dampening consumer demand and threatening profit margins will have market participants listening closely to forward guidance.

Shares of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc fell after its quarterly profit plunged 76%, hurt by its opioid settlement with Florida and a decrease in U.S. pharmacy sales on waning demand for COVID-19 vaccinations.

(Reporting by Stephen Culp; Additional reporting by Shreyashi Sanyal and Amruta Khandekar in Bengaluru; Editing by David Gregorio)

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TOKYO (Reuters) -Core consumer prices in Japan’s capital Tokyo rose 2.1% in June from a year earlier, data showed on Friday, marking the fastest pace of increase in seven years in a sign of broadening inflationary pressure from higher commodity and fuel costs.

The rise in Tokyo’s core consumer price index (CPI), which matched a median market forecast, followed a 1.9% gain in the previous month. The pace of increase was the fastest since March 2015.

The data heightens the chance nationwide consumer prices will continue to rise in coming months. Japan’s nationwide core CPI rose 2.1% in May from a year earlier, mainly due to the impact from higher fuel and raw material costs.

It stayed above the Bank of Japan’s 2% target for a second straight month, following a 2.1% rise in April, which was also the fastest pace of increase in seven years.

(Reporting by Leika Kihara)

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BRUSSELS (AP) — A huge Belgian chocolate factory has halted production after detecting salmonella in a batch of chocolates.

The Barry Callebaut company said Thursday that its plant in Wieze – which it says is the world’s largest chocolate factory – shut down all production lines as a precaution while the contamination is investigated.

Barry Callebaut produces chocolate for multiple brands sold around the world.

The salmonella was detected Monday, and all chocolate products made at the plant were placed on hold pending investigation, the company said. It identified lecithin, an emulsifier routinely used in making chocolates, as the source of the contamination.

The company said it informed Belgian food safety authorities and is contacting customers who might have contaminated products in their possession.

It is unclear whether any consumers have reported being sickened by the chocolates.

Earlier this year, at least 200 reported cases of salmonella were believed linked to chocolate Easter eggs made in another Belgian plant operated by Italian company Ferrero.

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COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) — Sweden’s central bank raised a key interest rate by half a percentage point Thursday to combat rapidly rising inflation and price increases that are spreading through the economy.

Riksbanken said that it decided to raise the policy rate to 0.75% to try to prevent high inflation from becoming entrenched.

“The imbalances arising when demand increased faster than supply have been reinforced by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and new pandemic-related restrictions in China,” the bank said, and had pushed up prices for energy, food and other goods.

“The high rate of inflation in Sweden and abroad is affecting households and is undermining purchasing power,” it said. “Central banks around the world are now tightening monetary policy to cool down economic activity and bring inflation down.”

The U.S. Federal Reserve has raised interest rates three times this year. The Bank of England has hiked rates five times since December, while the European Central Bank plans its first increases in 11 years next month, followed by another hike in September.

Sweden’s central bank said the rate will be raised gradually going forward and that it will be somewhat below 2% at the start of next year.

Inflation in Sweden, which is part of the European Union but does not use the euro, is 7.2%, according to official figures. Consumer prices jumped 8.1% in the 19 countries sharing the euro last month from a year earlier and 8.6% in the U.S.

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