Largest U.S. creditor China and Wall Street piled on pressure Thursday for President Barack Obama and his Republican foes to reach an elusive budget compromise and avert a ruinous early August default.

Cries of alarm over the stalemate's potential impact on the world economy grew louder as Obama and congressional leaders opened their fifth straight day of talks at the White House with long odds of a breakthrough.

Waterfront City, the flagship project to line the Joseph Khoury Marina stretch in Dbayeh , was launched Wednesday, in a breathtaking ceremony on-site in Lebanon. Hundreds of guests, partners and members of the press gathered on the vast project site, where the much-anticipated grand-scale master planned development will rise from, to witness its unveil. The project, as was confirmed, will include residential, commercial and leisure facilities, to unfold in multiple phases over the next few years.

On July 13, 2011, Phase One of Waterfront City was launched, which will include 7 unique buildings, an uplifted promenade with cafes, restaurants and a retail zone. The project, located on the Mediterranean Sea, approximately 15km north of Beirut, is a product of a strong joint collaboration between Ste Joseph G. Khoury et Fils Holding and regional developer Majid Al Futtaim Properties.

The nation's largest food companies say they will cut back on marketing unhealthier foods to children, proposing their own set of advertising standards after rejecting similar guidelines proposed by the federal government.

A coalition of food companies — including General Mills, ConAgra and Kellogg — plan to announce the guidelines Thursday. The companies said the effort will vastly change what is advertised, forcing them to curb advertising on one out of three products currently marketed to children.

China is watching whether the Federal Reserve launches a new stimulus that might hurt China by pushing up commodity prices, a Cabinet researcher said Thursday.

The U.S. economy "has been doing worse than expected" and Beijing needs to "seriously assess" possible risks to its vast holdings of American debt, said Yu Bin, an economist in the Cabinet's Development Research Center.

Videogame publishing titan Ubisoft announced Tuesday that it is buying a French developer specializing in games played free on the Internet.

The purchase of Owlient comes as part of a strategy by Ubisoft to follow players onto the Internet, social networks, smartphones, tablet computers and other venues while still serving up blockbuster titles for consoles.

The eurozone is under immense pressure on all fronts to deal with its spreading debt crisis, as a rift on rescue strategies and even on the need for a crisis summit deepened on Wednesday.

In extraordinarily outspoken terms, the next head of the European Central Bank issued a blunt warning that the solvency of eurozone countries should not be taken for granted.

The price of gold surged to a record close to $1,580 an ounce here on Wednesday, as investors switched into the metal for safety from the eurozone debt crisis, traders said.

The price of gold reached $1,578.72 an ounce by mid-day on the London Bullion Market, beating the previous record of $1,577.57 set on May 1. It later stood at $1,573 an ounce in afternoon London trade.

U.S. videogame titan Electronic Arts said Tuesday it is buying PopCap Games, maker of popular titles such as Plants vs. Zombies, Bejeweled, and Zuma, for at least $750 million in cash and stock.

EA said it will pay $650 million in cash and $100 million in shares of EA common stock to be issued to certain stockholders of PopCap, which makes casual games for mobile phones, personal and tablet computers and social networks.

China's foreign exchange reserves soared to a record $3.1975 trillion at the end of June, the central bank said Tuesday, highlighting concerns over inflation in the world's second biggest economy.

China's forex reserves have ballooned in recent years, fuelled by strong foreign investment, large trade surpluses and inflows of "hot money" -- short-term speculative funds in search of quick profits.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC and Japan's Mitsubishi Corp. have signed an initial deal with Iraq to tap natural gas in the country's south, an oil executive said Tuesday, the latest push to develop Iraq's energy sector battered by years of neglect and war.

The deal is expected to be a key part of the government's strategy to alleviate its power generation woes as chronic power outages have led to sometimes violent protests.