Stocks were also helped as a successful Portuguese debt offering eased risk aversion.

U.S. bank stocks recover from Tuesday losses as European bank shares bounced off their lows. JPMorgan Chase and Co (JPM.N) gained 2 percent to $39.06, while the S&P financial sector index (.GSPF) rose 1.4 percent.

“The sectors that were hit in the sell-off yesterday are bouncing back,” said David Chalupnik, head of equities at FAF Advisors in Minneapolis. “And the lower dollar does help the material and energy stocks.”

The Reuters/Jefferies CRB commodities index (.CRB) posted gains for a fifth day running.

The Dow Jones industrial average (.DJI) gained 74.40 points, or 0.72 percent, to 10,415.09. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index (.SPX) rose 9.01 points, or 0.83 percent, to 1,100.85. The Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC) added 21.27 points, or 0.96 percent, to 2,230.16.

Stocks fell in light volume on Tuesday as investors seized on renewed concerns about European banks’ exposure to sovereign debt to sell shares after strong gains last week.

Later Wednesday, investors will eye the release of the U.S. central bank’s Beige Book, the anecdotal reports gathered from its 12 regional banks that could offer insight into U.S. economic conditions. The report is due at 2 p.m. EDT.

U.S.-traded shares of BP Plc (BP.L)(BP.N) rose 3.1 percent to $38.36 after it issued an internal report on the rig blast that led to the worst-ever U.S. oil spill and the death of 11 crew members.

BP deflected much of the blame, claiming drilling contractor Transocean Ltd (RIG.N) missed danger signs and criticized the cementing of the well conducted by Halliburton Co (HAL.N). Transocean gained 2.5 percent to $54.36, while Halliburton added 1.1 percent to $30.17.

Staples Inc (SPLS.O) was up 2.7 percent to $19.17, and Costco Wholesale Corp (COST.O) rose 1.1 percent to $59.31 after Goldman Sachs upgraded their stocks to “buy.

In a warning letter issued Aug. 30, the Food and Drug Administration takes issue with the labeling of Canada Dry Sparkling Green Tea Ginger Ale. The agency issued a similar letter Aug. 23 to Unilever Inc., over website and product labeling for its Lipton Green Tea.

Food processors increasingly have been adding vitamins and nutrients to their products to make them more appealing to health-conscious consumers. But the FDA letter to Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, which makes Canada Dry, states that the agency “does not consider it appropriate to fortify snack foods such as carbonated beverages.” Furthermore, the agency states that the soft drink does not meet federal requirements to carry the claim that the drink is “enhanced with 200 mg of antioxidants from green tea and vitamin C.” According to FDA regulations, the ingredients in Canada Dry’s product “are not nutrients with recognized antioxidant activity.”

The FDA letter to Unilever takes issue with a company website that mentions four studies that showed a cholesterol-lowering effect with tea. According to the agency, the labeling is misleading because it suggests Lipton tea is designed to treat or prevent disease. The agency also cites antioxidant labeling claims on the company’s Lipton Green Tea, which do not follow federal guidelines.

The agency asks executives from both companies to respond to the citations within 15 days and to outline their plans for addressing the problems.

A spokesman for Plano, Texas-based Dr. Pepper Snapple Group said in a statement the company looks “forward to working with the FDA and addressing the issues raised.”

Unilever issued a similar response. The company’s U.S. operations are in Englewood Cliffs, N.J.-based, with headquarters in London and Rotterdam, Netherlands.

Once a niche market, nutrient-enriched beverages have grown into a multibillion dollar business that includes everything from calcium-enhanced orange juice to energy drinks containing ginseng, ginkgo and other organic products.

In recent years, the FDA has begun cracking down on food companies that overstate the benefits of their products.

The FDA generally endorses health claims on foods only after government researchers have verified that the products help prevent actual disease. Food containing oats, for example, can carry the FDA-approved claim, “may reduce risk of heart disease.”

The FDA regularly issues warning letters to companies that do not follow regulations for manufacturing and marketing. The letters are not legally binding, but the agency can take companies to court if they are ignored.

With the country sharply divided over the sweeping new insurance law, Republicans and their allies are taking to the airwaves to attack it as elections near, often resorting to exaggeration and omissions to make their points. Democrats generally shy away from even talking about the subject, unless it’s to distance themselves from it.

Meanwhile, Obama allies try to draw attention to the most immediate provisions, ignoring the biggest — and most contentious — parts of the expanded health care law that are still four years away.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE — An occasional look at the claims made in political advertising.

___

A look at some of the claims made in ads airing in key contests:

• An ad by Crossroads GPS, a group founded by top Republican strategists Karl Rove and Ed Gillespie, took aim at Democrat Joe Sestak in Pennsylvania’s contest for the Senate. It ran similar ads against Sen. Barbara Boxer in California and Democrat Jack Conway, seeking a Senate seat from Kentucky.

The Claim: “Sestak voted to gut Medicare — a $500 billion cut. Reduced benefits for 850,000 Pennsylvania seniors.”

The Facts: The law calls for cuts of about $500 billion over 10 years from projected payment increases to hospitals, insurance companies and others under Medicare and other government health programs. But the Congressional Budget Office places the overall cost of Medicare over 10 years at $7.1 trillion, making the reductions required by the new law amount to 7 percent of Medicare costs.

Not exactly a “gutting.”

And a portion of the reductions in spending would come from cuts to Medicare Advantage, a system of private insurance plans that now covers about one out of four seniors. Those seniors now receive more coverage than typical Medicare recipients and they could lose the extra benefits. The 850,000 seniors mentioned in the ad represent the number of Pennsylvanians covered under Medicare Advantage. But the law did not cut benefits guaranteed under traditional Medicare.

The tactic is a reversal of the usual political playbook. In the past it has been Democrats who have sought to tar Republicans with wanting to dismantle Medicare.

• Radio ads by AUL Action, the legislative arm of Americans United for Life, targets three House Democrats — John Boccieri of Ohio, Christopher Carney of Pennsylvania and Baron Hill of Indiana — for their votes in favor of the health care law.

The Claim: The three Democrats “voted for taxpayer-funded abortion in Nancy Pelosi’s health care bill … the largest expansion of taxpayer-funded abortions ever.”

The Facts: Before the bill passed, Obama signed an executive order affirming long-standing restrictions on taxpayer-funded abortions. In the order, Obama specifically prohibited “the use of tax credits and cost-sharing reduction payments to pay for abortion services (except in case of rape or incest, or when the life of the woman would be endangered).”

Under the law, private plans in new insurance markets opening for business in 2014 may cover abortion, but payment must come from enrollees themselves, not from federal tax credits that will be offered to make premiums more affordable.

Americans United for Life notes that the executive order is not permanent and could be repealed. Moreover, the group argues that a court “could interpret” the law as requiring federal funding of abortions because it does not specifically prohibit it.

But those are hypotheticals, and the trend is in the other direction. The Health and Human Services Department announced this summer that a program for high-risk uninsured will not cover abortions except in cases of rape, incest or when the mother’s life is in danger — exceptions traditionally allowed under federal law. Catholic bishops welcomed the policy while abortion rights supporters said the restriction went too far.

• The Health Information Campaign, a group supporting the law and founded by former Obama administration allies, is launching its own $2 million national cable and online ad campaign promoting the law and features that are now in effect or about to go into effect.

The Claim: The law provides small business tax credits to make employee coverage more affordable, it will begin to allow young people to remain on their parents’ coverage until they turn 26 years of age, and it will prohibit insurers from dropping people from coverage when they get sick.

The Facts: All those changes will indeed occur.

But the most expensive provisions of the new law won’t go into effect until 2014.

That includes the unpopular requirement that all Americans obtain insurance — some with taxpayer help — and that those who don’t will have to pay a fine.

There’s no mention of that provision in the Health Information Campaign ad.

The ancient city, known as Leukaspis or Antiphrae, was hidden for centuries after it was nearly wiped out by a fourth century tsunami that devastated the region.

More recently, it was nearly buried under the modern resort of Marina in a development craze that turned this coast into the summer playground for Egypt’s elite.

Nearly 25 years after its discovery, Egyptian authorities are preparing to open ancient Leukaspis’ tombs, villas and city streets to visitors — a rare example of a Classical era city in a country better known for its pyramids and Pharaonic temples.

“Visitors can go to understand how people lived back then, how they built their graves, lived in villas or traded in the main agora (square),” said Ahmed Amin, the local inspector for the antiquities department. “Everyone’s heard of the resort Marina, now they will know the historic Marina.”

The history of the two Marinas is inextricably linked. When Chinese engineers began cutting into the sandy coast to build the roads for the new resort in 1986, they struck the ancient tombs and houses of a town founded in the second century B.C.

About 200 acres were set aside for archaeology, while everywhere else along the coast up sprouted holiday villages for Egyptians escaping the stifling summer heat of the interior for the Mediterranean’s cool breezes.

The ancient city yielded up its secrets in a much more gradual fashion to a team of Polish archaeologists excavating the site through the 1990s.

A portrait emerged of a prosperous port town, with up to 15,000 residents at its height, exporting grains, livestock, wine and olives to the rest of the Mediterranean.

Merchants lived in elegant two-story villas set along zigzagging streets with pillared courtyards flanked by living and prayer rooms.

Rainwater collected from roofs ran down special hollowed out pillars into channels under the floor leading to the family cisterns. Waste disappeared into a sophisticated sewer system.

Around the town center, where the two main streets intersect, was the social and economic heart of the city and there can still be found the remains of a basilica, a hall for public events that became a church after Christianity spread across the Roman Empire.

A semicircular niche lined with benches underneath a portico provided a space for town elders to discuss business before retiring to the bathhouse across the street.

Greek columns and bright limestone walls up to six feet high (2 meters) stand in some places, reflecting the sun in an electric blue sky over the dark waters of the nearby sea. Visitors will also be able to climb down the steep shafts of the rock-cut tombs to the deeply buried burial chambers of the city’s necropolis.

It is from the sea from which the city gained much of its livelihood. It began as a way station in the coastal trade between Egypt and Libya to the west. Later, it began exporting goods from its surrounding farms overseas, particularly to the island of Crete, just 300 miles (480 kilometers) away — a shorter trip than that from Egypt’s main coastal city Alexandria.

And from the sea came its end. Leukaspis was largely destroyed when a massive earthquake near Crete in 365 A.D. set off a tsunami wave that also devastated nearby Alexandria. In the ensuing centuries, tough economic times and a collapsing Roman Empire meant that most settlements along the coast disappeared.

Today, the remains of the port are lost. In the late 1990s, an artificial lagoon was built, surrounded by summer homes for top government officials.

“It was built by dynamite detonation so whatever was there I think is gone,” said Agnieszka Dobrowlska, an architect who helped excavate the ancient city with the Polish team in the 1990s.

However, Egyptian government interest in the site rose in the last few years, part of a renewed focus on developing the country’s Classical past. In 2005, Dobrowlska returned as part of a USAID project to turn ancient Marina into an open air museum for tourists.

It couldn’t have come at a better time for ancient Marina, which had long attracted covetous glances from real estate developers.

“I am quite happy it still exists, because when I was involved there were big plans to incorporate this site in a big golf course being constructed by one of these tycoons. Apparently the antiquities authorities didn’t allow it, so that’s quite good,” recalls Dobrowlska.

Redoing the site is part of a plan to bring more year-around tourism to what is now largely a summer destination for just Egyptians — perhaps with a mind to attracting European tourists currently flocking to beaches in nearby Tunisia during the winter.

Much still needs to be done to achieve the government’s target to open the site by mid-September, as ancient fragments of pottery still litter the ground and bones lie open in their tombs.

But if old Marina is a success then similar transformation could happen to a massive temple of Osiris just 30 miles (50 kilometers) away, where a Dominican archaeological team is searching for the burial place of the doomed Classical lovers, Anthony and Cleopatra.

“The plan is to do the same for Taposiris Magna so that tourists can visit both,” said Khaled Aboul- Hamd, antiquities director for the region.

These north coast ruins may also attract the attention of the visitors to the nearby El-Alamein battlefield and cemeteries for the World War II battle that Winston Churchill once called the turning point of the war.

In fact, there are signs the allied troops took refuge in the deep rock cut tombs of Marina, just six miles (10 kilometers) from the furthest point of the Axis advance on Alexandria.

Crouched down awaiting the onslaught of German Gen. Rommel’s famed Afrika Corps, the young British Tommies would have shared space with the rib bones and skull fragments of Marina’s inhabitants in burial chambers hidden 25 feet (8 meters) below ground.

The 193-page report was posted on the company’s website even though investigators have not yet begun to fully analyze a key piece of equipment, the blowout preventer, that should have cut off the flow of oil from the ruptured well but did not.

That means BP’s report is far from the definitive ruling on the blowout’s causes, but it may provide some hint of the company’s legal strategy — spreading the blame around between itself, rig owner Transocean, and cement contractor Halliburton — as it faces hundreds of lawsuits and possible criminal charges over the spill. Government investigators and congressional panels are looking into the cause as well.

“This report is not BP’s mea culpa,” said Rep. Edward J. Markey, D-Mass., a frequent BP critic and a member of a congressional panel investigating the spill. “Of their own eight key findings, they only explicitly take responsibility for half of one. BP is happy to slice up blame, as long as they get the smallest piece.”

Members of Congress, industry experts and workers who survived the rig explosion have accused BP’s engineers of cutting corners to save time and money on a project that was 43 days and more than $20 million behind schedule at the time of the blast.

BP’s report acknowledged, as investigators have previously suggested, that its engineers and employees of Transocean misinterpreted a pressure test of the well’s integrity. It also blamed employees on the rig from both companies for failing to respond to warning signs that the well was in danger of blowing out.

Outgoing BP chief Tony Hayward, who is being replaced Oct. 1 by American Bob Dudley, said in a statement that there was a bad cement job and a failure of a barrier at the bottom of the well that let oil and gas leak out.

Transocean blasted BP’s report, calling it a self-serving attempt to conceal the real cause of the explosion, which it blamed on what it called “BP’s fatally flawed well design.”

“In both its design and construction, BP made a series of cost-saving decisions that increased risk — in some cases, severely,” Transocean said.

Transocean said its own investigation will be concluded when all of the evidence is in, including critical information the company has requested of BP but has yet to receive.

New Orleans attorney Scott Bickford, who represents relatives of a worker who died in the explosion and a worker who survived the blast, said he found no surprises in the report.

“My knee-jerk reaction is that there was no huge smoking gun they found that hasn’t already been discussed,” he said.

An AP analysis of the report shows that the words “blame” and “mistake” never show up. “Fault” appears 20 times, but only once in the same sentence as the company’s name.

Steve Yerrid, special counsel on the oil spill for Florida Gov. Charlie Crist, said the report clearly shows the company is attempting to spread blame for the well disaster, foreshadowing what will be a likely legal effort to force Halliburton and Transocean, and perhaps others, to share costs such as paying claims and government penalties.

“What’s you’re seeing right now is the format of BP’s defense. The defense is, ‘We took the initial blow. But it wasn’t only me,’” Yerrid said. “They are looking to restore their losses by seeking to attribute components of the wrongdoing to others.”

BP shares were up 2 percent at 414.95 pence ($6.41) in London shortly after the report was made public Wednesday.

Several divisions of the U.S. government, including the Justice Department, Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management, Regulation and Enforcement, are also investigating the explosion.

The blowout preventer was raised from the water off the coast of Louisiana on Saturday. As of Tuesday afternoon, it had not reached a NASA facility in New Orleans where government investigators planned to analyze it, so those conclusions were not part of BP’s report.

The rig explosion killed 11 workers and sent 206 million gallons of oil spewing from BP’s undersea well.

Investigators know the explosion was triggered by a bubble of methane gas that escaped from the well and shot up the drill column, expanding quickly as it burst through several seals and barriers before igniting.

But they don’t know exactly how or why the gas escaped. And they don’t know why the blowout preventer didn’t seal the well pipe at the sea bottom after the eruption, as it was supposed to.

The details of BP’s internal report were closely guarded — and only a short list of people saw it ahead of its release.

There were signs of problems prior to the explosion, including an unexpected loss of fluid from a pipe known as a riser five hours before the explosion that could have indicated a leak in the blowout preventer.

Witness statements show that rig workers talked just minutes before the blowout about pressure problems in the well.

At first, nobody seemed too worried, workers have said. Then panic set in.

Workers called their bosses to report that the well was “coming in” and that they were “getting mud back.” The drilling supervisor, Jason Anderson, tried to shut down the well.

It didn’t work. At least two explosions turned the rig into an inferno.

In its report, BP defended the well’s design, which has been criticized by industry experts.

Other findings in the BP report include:

_Flammable fluids rising up the pipe toward the Deepwater Horizon rig were directed to a system that allowed gas to vent onto the rig, and that gas was then circulated by the air conditioning, heating and ventilation systems. BP says that if the crew had directed the fluids overboard, there might have been more time to respond to the pending disaster and the consequences of the accident may have been reduced.

_BP concluded that a “more thorough review and testing by Halliburton” and “stronger quality assurance” by BP’s well team well might have identified potential flaws and weaknesses in the design for the cement job.

_BP counters the concerns that were raised prior to the explosion by Halliburton over the potential for a severe gas flow problem if a BP plan was used. Halliburton and BP were at odds over a key device, known as a centralizer, that is used as part of the process to plug a deepwater well like the oil giant was doing at the time of the disaster. Halliburton’s well design expert testified previously he told BP officials April 15 — five days before the well blew — that fewer centralizers would cause a bigger gas flow problem. BP rejected Halliburton’s recommendation to use 21 centralizers. Instead, BP used six. In its report Wednesday, BP said the decision likely did not contribute to the cement’s failure.

In June, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce’s chairmen said it was BP that made five crucial decisions before the Deepwater Horizon well blowout that “posed a trade-off between cost and well safety.” One of those decisions: BP opted against conducting a certain kind of test of the integrity of a cement job at the well. The test would have cost more than $128,000 and taken 9 to 12 hours to perform, the committee’s letter notes.

In May, senior BP drilling engineer Mark Hafle told the Coast Guard and Bureau of Ocean Energy Management investigators that BP didn’t order the test even though more than 3,000 barrels of mud had been lost while drilling, a possible warning sign.

The committee also criticized BP’s well design.

Authorities say that with calmer winds in the forecast Tuesday, they plan to dump large amounts of fire retardant from the air. Gusty winds Monday grounded air tankers for much of the day.

The fire has destroyed dozens of homes, and some 3,000 people have been forced to flee the area.

At a news conference Tuesday, Rich Brough of the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office had no detail on precisely how many homes have been damaged or destroyed.

The cause of the fire isn’t know, but he says there’s no indication it was intentionally set.

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

BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — A wind-whipped wildfire sent flames roaring through a rugged canyon in the Colorado foothills, forcing about 3,000 people to flee the area and destroying dozens of homes — some that belonged to the firefighters themselves, authorities said Tuesday.

Fire officials were assessing the extent of the damage and planned to release details at a morning news conference.

The blaze broke out Monday morning in Four Mile Canyon northwest of Boulder and rapidly spread across 5 1/2 square miles or 3,500 acres. Erratic 45-mph gusts sometimes sent the fire in two directions at once.

Crews managed to save the historic town of Gold Hill, including an old West grocery store and structures once used for stagecoach stops. But firefighters in the area had to relocate their engines and equipment several times to avoid the flames.

“The fire moved too quickly and was much more active than anticipated,” said Brett Haberstick of the Sunshine Fire Protection District.

Despite the fire’s destructive advance, no injuries have been reported, although some residents told of narrow escapes.

“I just drove through a wall of flames,” Tom Neur told KDVR-TV. “The bumper is melted off in the front of the van.”

Neur’s wife, Anna, left earlier, and the couple reunited at temporary shelter. They said their house was destroyed.

“I don’t care about the house,” Anna Neur told her husband. “I’m just glad you’re OK.”

The south line of the evacuation zone — a 17-mile-long road linking Boulder to the town of Netherland — has reopened but classes were canceled for mountain area schools Tuesday. Only 12 people took overnight shelter at the Coors Event Center at the University of Colorado in Boulder.

Fire managers said 1,000 homes had to be evacuated from the canyon and surrounding areas. Four belonging to firefighters were destroyed. Those firefighters were allowed to leave to attend to their families and personal affairs, said Laura McConnell, a spokeswoman for the fire management team.

More than 100 firefighters were on the scene on Monday, and the winds quieted enough by late afternoon to allow three tankers to drop more than 40,000 gallons of fire retardant along the leading edge of the fire.

The winds pushed the fire through three canyons where pine trees have been left prone to fire by disease, drought and beetles that burrow under the bark of pine trees, fire managers said. Such beetles have killed more than 3.5 million acres of trees in Colorado and southeastern Wyoming.

“We haven’t had any rain there for almost a month. Maybe more than a month,” said Craig Douglas, who lives north of the fire and received a knock on the door from a sheriff’s deputy at about 8 p.m. on Monday. “The humidity the last couple of days has been in the single digits, so it was a fire waiting to happen.”

The cause of the fire was unknown, and officials said it was too early to say how much, if any, of it was contained.

“It’s very rocky, hilly, mountainous terrain,” said Boulder County sheriff’s Cmdr. Rick Brough.

Officials said one fire vehicle was destroyed by the blaze.

Some ground crews remained at the fire through the night. At least four more aerial tankers were requested to join the fight Tuesday morning.

More than a half-dozen dirt roads that thread the narrow canyons were closed.

A billowing, white plume of heavy smoke was visible for miles before sunset. County h

Chefs are pickier than you think.
Liver, sea urchin, tofu, eggplant, and oysters, of all things, topped the list of foods chefs hate most. Only 15% of chefs surveyed said they’d eat absolutely anything.

Still, chefs hate picky eaters.
More than 60% said requests for substitutions are annoying. Some of their biggest pet peeves: When customers pretend to be allergic to an ingredient, and when vegetarians make up rules, like “a little chicken stock is OK.”

When eating out in other restaurants, chefs say they avoid pasta and chicken.
Why? These dishes are often the most overpriced (and least interesting) on the menu. Said one chef, “I won’t pay $24 for half a chicken breast.” Said another, “I want something I can’t make myself.”

Chefs have expensive taste.
The restaurant chefs most often cited as the best in the country was The French Laundry in California’s Napa Valley. It ought to be — dinner there is $240 per person, before wine.

…and yet they like fast food.
Their favorite chain: Wendy’s. Culinary degrees aren’t necessarily the norm. Just half the chefs surveyed graduated from a cooking school. The rest got their training the old-fashioned way, by working their way up through the kitchen ranks.

Critics trump movie stars in the VIP pecking order.
A whopping 71% of chefs said they give special treatment to restaurant critics when they spot them; only 63% do the same for celebrities. Making out in the bathroom is old news. More than half of the chefs have found customers kissing — and much more — in the restaurant loo.

Roaches are more common than you think.
Yes, 75% of chefs said they’ve seen roaches in the kitchen. And yet, chefs swear their kitchens are clean. On a scale of 1 to 10, 85% of chefs ranked their kitchens an 8 or higher for cleanliness.

Only 13% of chefs have seen a cook do unsavory things to a customer’s food.
The most unbelievable tale: “Someone once ran a steak through a dishwasher after the diner sent it back twice. Ironically, the customer was happy with it then.”

Your bread basket might be recycled.
Three chefs admitted that uneaten bread from one basket goes right into another one.

Chefs work hard for low pay.
The chefs we surveyed work between 60 and 80 hours a week and almost all of them work holidays. Sixty-five percent reported making less than $75,000 a year. Waiters take home an average of $662 a week, often tax free.

“Vegetarian” is open to interpretation.
About 15% of chefs said their vegetarian dishes might not be completely vegetarian. Beware if you’re one of those super-picky vegan types: One chef reported seeing a cook pour lamb’s blood into a vegan’s primavera.

Paying for a last-minute reservation probably won’t work.
Only one chef said bribes will help you score a table when the restaurant is fully booked; he suggested “promising to buy a bottle of Dom Pérignon or Opus One.” A better bet: Being buddies with the chef.

Menu “specials” are often experimental dishes.
Contrary to popular belief — that specials are just a chef’s way of using up old ingredients — most chefs said they use specials to try out new ideas or serve seasonal ingredients. Only five chefs admitted that they try to empty out the fridge with their nightly specials.

The appropriate tip is 20%…
That’s what chefs leave when they eat out, and it’s the amount they think is fair.

…unless the service is really poor.
An astounding 90% of chefs said it’s fair to penalize bad waiters with a smaller tip.

That rule about not ordering fish on Sunday might be worth following.
Several chefs warned, “We don’t get fresh deliveries on Sunday.”

Chefs hate working on New Year’s Eve more than any other holiday.
Valentine’s Day was a close second, but don’t take that to mean chefs aren’t romantic: 54% of those surveyed said they like it when couples get engaged in their restaurant.

They secretly want to be Alton or Giada.
Nearly 60% of chefs said they’d want their own cooking show.

Chefs cook when they’re sick.
It’s a long-standing tradition in the restaurant industry: Cooks report to duty unless they’re practically hospitalized. Half of those we surveyed said they come to work sick, and they stay there through injuries, too. Many chefs have cut themselves on the job, gone to get stitches, and returned to work to finish out the night. Accidents definitely happen: Almost every chef we surveyed has been injured on the job in some way, and several chefs said they’re missing parts of their fingers.

The five-second rule actually applies.
A quarter of the chefs surveyed said they’d pick up food that dropped on the floor and cook it.

Your waiter is trying to influence your order.
Almost every chef surveyed (95%) said he or she urges servers to steer customers toward specific dishes on the menu each night.

Restaurants mark up wine by a lot more than you might expect.
Most chefs said that a bottle on their wine list costs 2½ times what the same one would cost in a wine store.

There’s a reason so many restaurants serve molten chocolate cake.
More than 75% of chefs said they take inspiration from other restaurant menus.

Hermine continued dissolving just south of San Antonio and was expected to be downgraded into a tropical depression later Tuesday. Most of south Texas woke up to few signs that a tropical system had swept through, aside from scattered downed trees and power lines.

As when Hurricane Alex lashed the same flood-prone Rio Grande Valley in June, there was a feeling that Hermine could have been worse. There were no reports of serious injuries, damage or flooding, and authorities ordered no evacuations.

Hermine dumped between 5 inches to a foot of rain after crossing into Texas late Monday. The storm made landfall in northeastern Mexico with winds of up to 65 mph (100 kph), arriving near the same spot as Alex, whose remnants killed at least 12 people in flooding in Mexico.

But unlike Alex, which swiped Texas then plunged southwest into Mexico, Hermine was felt in more places.

“This is going to be much more of a memorable storm than Alex,” National Weather Service meteorologist Joseph Tomaselli said Tuesday.

Raymondville won’t forget Hermine anytime soon. The rural farming town, about 20 miles off the Texas coast, began cleaning up early Tuesday without power after Hermine ripped the roof off a roadside motel occupied by terrified guests who say they fled for safety in the nick of time.

Melanie Tamyl and Roy Tamez were in their second-story room when their ceiling began bowing up and down. They opened the door just in time to watch the awning get peeled back like a lid.

“I told (Melanie) that we’ve got to get out of here right now,” said Tamez, 52. “The whole roof is about to go.”

Tamez and Tamyl helped two other families to evacuate the motel. They returned Tuesday to find half the roof over their room gone and their bedding soaked and soiled with ceiling tile and mud. They picked through soggy clothes and food, salvaging what they could.

As many as 35,000 homes were without power in the Rio Grande Valley early Tuesday, according to an online outage map of American Electric Power, the area’s power utility. A company representative did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Shelters throughout Rio Grande Valley were on standby but mostly kept their doors shut, and offers for sandbags saw relatively few takers.

Flash flood warning remained in effect Tuesday, but officials said first reports only indicated nuisances such as high water on neighborhood streets.

Hermine might have been no Alex in terms of strength, but it wasn’t taken lightly: Mexican emergency officials in Tamaulipas worked to evacuate 3,500 people around Matamoros, across the border from Brownsville, Texas, and schools on both sides of the border canceled classes Tuesday.

Forecasters said remnants of Hermine will be felt as far north as Oklahoma and Kansas in the coming days.

In Mexico, Hermine brought another unwelcome downpour.

Mexico’s northeast cattle-ranching region is one of the most dangerous hotspots in the country’s bloody turf war between two drug cartels. It is the same area where 72 migrants were killed two weeks ago in what it believed to be the country’s worst drug gang massacre to date.

Mexican emergency officials urged those living in low-lying coastal areas to move to shelters. Classes in Matamoros and several other Mexican towns were canceled, and authorities began releasing water from some dams to make room for expected rains.

In inland Hidalgo state, authorities said heavy rains caused by the passing storm unleashed landslides that damaged 20 homes, left 120 people homeless and cut off small communities.

Tropical storm warnings in Mexico were canceled early Tuesday.

On South Padre Island, Hermine arrived too late to ruin another long weekend at the tourist hotspot. Alex plummeted Fourth of July hotel occupancies to about one-third of the normal rate, but most Labor Day weekend vacationers were already packing up for home by the time Hermine came into the picture.

“It really crept up on us,” said Dan Quandt, executive director of the South Padre Island Convention and Visitors Bureau.

“I’m so happy!” said Sonya Thomas, who ate 4.86 pounds of chicken wings to win the contest, besting world eating marvel Joey Chestnut at the ninth annual National Buffalo Wing Festival.

Buffalo, about 300 miles northwest of New York, is said to be the birthplace of the wings, typically fried and covered in tangy vinegar and hot sauce.

Chestnut, America’s No. 1 professional eater, was favored to win Sunday’s competition. He came in second after eating 169 chicken wings, or 4.55 pounds.

This was the first time Thomas, of Alexandria, Va., and Chestnut, of San Jose, Calif., faced off in a chicken wing eating contest. They went at it “neck and neck,” said Drew Cerza, the founder of the festival, which was inspired by the 2001 Bill Murray comedy “Osmosis Jones,” about a compulsive eater.

“They pushed each other really hard,” Cerza said. “Joey is so strong. He’s got great jaw strength. But Sonya’s so fast with the hand.”

Thomas, who’s 5 feet tall and weights 105 pounds, calls herself the Black Widow because she often defeats bigger male competitors – Chestnut is 6-foot-2 and weights 230 pounds – in eating contests. She set the previous wings record in 2005, when she ate 174 in 12 minutes.

She also previously set eating records for oysters, hard-boiled eggs, cheesecake and jalapeno peppers. She won her first competitive eating event in 2003.

The sprightly 43-year-old said she owed Sunday’s triumph to her fancy finger work.

“Sometimes if I try to chew too much I slow down,” she said. “I used my hands more than the mouth.”

During the public contest, in front of thousands of people, she twirled the wings in her small fingers while quickly tearing off the meat with her teeth and lips.

Her cheeks were covered in a sheen of orange Buffalo sauce by the end.

But she said she was still hungry afterward, calling the wings “an appetizer.” About an hour later, she made a guest appearance in the Ridiculously Hot Buffalo Wing Eating Contest and ate 20 more.

“The hottest wings!” she said. “I had to drink a lot of water.”

Time and tides are conspiring to condemn the weathered old warrior to a fate two wars failed to inflict. Without a major refurbishment to its aging steel skin, the Olympia either will sink at its moorings on the Delaware River, be sold for scrap, or be scuttled for an artificial reef just off Cape May, N.J., about 90 miles south.

The 5,500-ton Olympia’s caretakers monitor every inch of its deteriorating lower hull and deck, already covered with hundreds of patches. Independent inspectors have concluded that the ship could decay to a point beyond saving within a few years if nothing is done.

“It’s an absolute national disgrace. It’s an appalling situation,” said naval historian Lawrence Burr, author of a book on Olympia. “She is a national symbol, and she marks critical points in time both in America’s development as a country and the Navy’s emergence as a global power.”

Olympia, which gets about 90,000 visitors annually, closes to the public Nov. 22 to await its fate. Visitors to the museum pay up to $12, which includes the chance to board the warship.

Since taking stewardship of the floating museum from a cash-strapped nonprofit in 1996, the Independence Seaport Museum has spent $5.5 million on repairs, inspections and maintenance. But it can neither afford the $10 million to dredge the marina, tow the ship to dry-dock and restore it to fighting trim, nor the $10 million to establish an endowment to care for it in perpetuity.

“She’s an icon,” said Jeffrey S. Nilsson, executive director of the Historic Naval Ships Association in Smithfield, Va. “She’s worthy of being saved.”

Efforts to secure private or public funding have been unsuccessful, a stark reminder of recessionary times. Museum officials are reluctantly mulling whether to scrap the National Historic Landmark, said to be the world’s oldest steel warship still afloat, or have the Navy sink it off the coast of Cape May.

The 344-foot-long protected cruiser ideally should have been dry-docked every 20 years for maintenance. Instead it has been dutifully bobbing — and quietly wasting away — in the Delaware since 1945 without a break from the wind and waves.

The waterline is marked with scores of patches, and sections of the mazelike lower hull are so corroded that sunlight shines through. Above deck, water sneaks past the concrete and rubberized surface layers, past the rotting fir deck underneath, and onto the handsomely appointed officers’ quarters below.

“She generally looks good for her age, but her expensive pre-existing conditions make it daunting,” said Jesse Lebovics, longtime caretaker of Olympia. “We’re still hoping someone will step up. We’re hoping for an 11th-hour reprieve.”

Two local nonprofits — Friends of the Cruiser Olympia and The Cruiser Olympia Historical Society — are striving to drum up money, manpower and publicity from other historic preservation groups, veterans organizations and corporate sponsors.

“We don’t want to see the ship reefed and the museum doesn’t either,” said Jay Richman, president of Friends of the Cruiser Olympia. “We’re optimistic that a bunch of small groups working together for a common cause can save the ship.”

Olympia steamed out of San Francisco in 1892 and served most notably as flagship of the Asiatic Squadron in the Spanish-American War.

Its vertical reciprocating engines, refrigeration system and hydraulic steering previewed the technological advances to come; its vestigial sails and oak-paneled, parlor-like officers’ quarters marked the passing Victorian era.

From Olympia’s bridge on May 1, 1898, during the Battle of Manila Bay in the Phillippines, Commodore George Dewey uttered the famous command: “You may fire when you are ready, Gridley.” The Spanish fleet was decimated, making Dewey — and the Olympia — national heroes.

In a letter home after the victorious battle, Capt. Charles Gridley wrote: “We did not lose a man in our whole fleet, and had only six wounded, and none of them seriously. … The Olympia was struck seven or eight times, but only slightly injured, hardly worth speaking of.”

The ship later was active in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Mediterranean, served as a Naval Academy training vessel, and took part in the 1918 Allied landing at Murmansk during the Russian Civil War.

Its final mission was bringing home the body of World War I’s Unknown Soldier from France in 1921. The vessel was decommissioned in 1922 and was largely forgotten until it was nearly scrapped in the 1950s — and local citizens rallied with donations and labor to bring it back from the brink.

Olympia opened as a museum in 1958 but funding woes and threats of sale or scrap have been part of its history ever since. The Seaport Museum itself has weathered its own share of storms, most recently in 2008, when a former president of the organization was convicted of bilking the institution of more than $1 million.

Meanwhile, two other beleaguered vessels nearby are similarly awaiting saviors: the USS New Jersey battleship across the river in New Jersey and the historic 1950s cruise ship SS United States three miles downriver.

“There’s a lot of need out there, and the economy makes it worse … but we really can’t wait,” Lebovics said.