Exxon CEO: Oil will be top energy source for years

DALLAS — The CEO of Exxon Mobil Corp. says alternative fuels will grow but that oil will remain the world's leading source of energy for another quarter century.

CEO Rex Tillerson says natural gas will surpass coal as the second most heavily used fuel.

Tillerson made the comments Wednesday at the company's annual shareholder meeting.

About 15 people protested outside the meeting hall, charging that Exxon was not doing enough to reduce climate change and develop alternative sources of energy to burning oil and natural gas. Shareholders were scheduled to vote on a resolution urging Exxon to set emission-reduction goals from both its own operations and the use of its products.

Tillerson said that the Irving, Texas, company has reduced greenhouse gas emissions over the past five years, which he said was equal to taking nearly 2 million cars off the road.

Exxon Mobil earned $32.6 billion last year, a decline of 26 percent from 2012. Revenue fell 9 percent to $438.3 billion. Exxon shares gained 17 percent last year; they have been flat in 2014.

But, as it has for several years, the environmental debate crowded out the financial one at the annual meeting of the nation's largest oil company.

A dissident shareholder and Dominican sister from New Jersey, Pat Daley, said that Exxon was making a long-term business mistake by not moving more aggressively into alternative fuels. She said the company was betting "that the nations of the world will continue to do nothing about climate change for the next 30 years."

Tillerson responded that he was confident technology will provide an answer to climate change, and he said proponents of ideas such as hard emissions-reduction goals were simplistic.

"There is not going to be a ready set of solutions that are going to fit the world's peoples" because, Tillerson suggested, people in developing countries will want to achieve the same living standards as those in the developed world, which will drive higher global demand for energy.

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Google: We're building car with no steering wheel

LOS ANGELES — Google will build a car without a steering wheel.

It doesn't need one because it drives itself.

The two-seater won't be sold publicly, but Google said Tuesday it hopes by this time next year, 100 prototypes will be on public roads. Though not driving very quickly — the top speed would be 25 mph.

The cars are a natural next step for Google, which already has driven hundreds of thousands of miles in California with Lexus SUVs and Toyota Priuses outfitted with a combination of sensors and computers.

Those cars have Google-employed "safety drivers" behind the wheel in case of emergency. The new cars would eliminate the driver from the task of driving.

No steering wheel, no brake and gas pedals. Instead, buttons for go and stop.

"It reminded me of catching a chairlift by yourself, a bit of solitude I found really enjoyable," Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google, told a Southern California tech conference Tuesday evening of his first ride, according to a transcript.

The electric-powered car is compact and bubble-shaped — something that might move people around a corporate campus or congested downtown.

Google is unlikely to go deeply into auto manufacturing. In unveiling the prototype, the company emphasized partnering with other firms.

The biggest obstacle could be the law.

Test versions will have a wheel and pedals, because they must under California regulations.

Google hopes to build the 100 prototypes late this year or early next and use them in a to-be-determined "pilot program," spokeswoman Courtney Hohne said. Meanwhile, by the end of this year, California's Department of Motor Vehicles must write regulations for the "operational" use of truly driverless cars.

The DMV had thought that reality was several years away, so it would have time to perfect the rules.

That clock just sped up, said the head of the DMV's driverless car program, Bernard Soriano.

"Because of what is potentially out there soon, we need to make sure that the regulations are in place that would keep the public safe but would not impede progress," Soriano said.

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Contact Justin Pritchard at https://twitter.com/lalanewsman.

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No end yet to salmonella outbreak tied to chicken

WASHINGTON — An outbreak of antibiotic-resistant salmonella linked to a California chicken company hasn't run its course after more than a year, with 50 new illnesses in the past two months and 574 people sickened since March 2013.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says there are about eight new salmonella illnesses linked to the outbreak a week, most of them in California. So far, there has been no recall of Foster Farms chicken.

The Agriculture Department says it is monitoring Foster Farms facilities and that measured rates of salmonella in the company's products have been going down since the outbreak began. The department threatened to shut down Foster Farms' facilities last year but let them stay open after it said the company had made immediate changes to reduce salmonella rates.

The CDC said 37 percent of victims were hospitalized, and that the outbreak is resistant to many antibiotics. In addition, the CDC said that 13 percent of the victims had developed blood infections, almost three times the normal rate. Victims came from 27 states and Puerto Rico.

Three-fourths of victims who were able to provide the CDC with brand information said they had consumed chicken produced by Foster Farms before they became ill.

In a statement, Foster Farms said it has put many new measures in place, including tighter screening of birds before they buy them, improved safety on the farms where the birds are raised and better sanitation in its plants. The company suggested that the recent cases may be because salmonella incidence increases in the warmer months.

In January, USDA inspectors briefly closed the a Foster Farms plant in Livingston, California, after finding cockroaches on five separate occasions over four months.

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Follow Mary Clare Jalonick on Twitter: http://twitter.com/mcjalonick

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Nestle to pay $1.4 billion for skin treatments

FRANKFURT, Germany — Nestle says it is paying $1.4 billion in cash for the rights to sell lip and wrinkle treatment Restylane and other skin products in the U.S. and Canada.

The Swiss company said Wednesday it is is acquiring commercialization rights from Canada's Valeant Pharmaceuticals International.

The products are Restylane, which can be used to make lips fuller and smooth out wrinkles, as well as Perlane, Emervel, Dysport and Sculptra, used to reduce wrinkles or address other issues in different areas of the face.

Nestle already had the rights to the products outside the U.S. and Canada.

Vevey-based Nestle is in the process of expanding its skin business by taking full control of Galderma, its 50-50 joint venture with L'Oreal. That deal is awaiting final regulatory clearance.

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Same-sex kisses have arrived in mainstream news media

Sometimes, a kiss is just a kiss.

And sometimes, it's a sign of swift and sweeping cultural and political change.

Over the past days, weeks, and perhaps not even years, same-sex kisses have started to arrive in mainstream news media.

"We're now seeing this stuff completely across the board," said Bob Thompson, director of the Bleier Center for Television & Popular Culture at Syracuse University. "This has been evolving for a long time."

Just five years ago, CBS's "The Early Show" blurred a kiss from Adam Lambert and his boyfriend during a musical performance on the "American Music Awards," deeming it "a subject of great current controversy."

The year before, Katy Perry titillated much of the country by merely singing that she kissed a girl — and she liked it.

How times have changed.

Last week, following the opening of the Allegheny County Marriage License Bureau to same-sex couples, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette website featured a photo of two women kissing.

That same night ABC aired a gay wedding of characters Mitchell and Cam on its hit show "Modern Family," sealed with a kiss afterwards.

And earlier this month, ESPN showed Michael Sam giving his boyfriend a celebratory kiss after he became the first openly gay football player to be drafted. The sports network actually aired its first gay kiss — a celebratory smooch between a gay professional bowler and his husband — last year.

To some extent, same-sex kisses have been prevalent in the media for some time.

There were same-sex couples on shows as far back as "Dynasty" and "Thirtysomething," said Thompson, with a then-controversial same-sex kiss on a 1994 episode of "Roseanne."

For a period of time in the 1990s, he said, same-sex kisses appeared with some regularity on network television, becoming almost trendy. "The same-sex kiss became one of those things that gave credibility to a show — that is was serious, cutting edge," he said, referring to television programs such as "Ally McBeal" and "Dawson's Creek."

Still, there has been a much more recent change in media showing same-sex kisses from real people, rather than fictional ones.

In some cases, those pictures have still been accompanied by controversy.

Both the Denver Post and the Fayetteville Observer newspapers ran editor's notes of explanation to readers who criticized front-page photos of gay kisses — in Colorado, from the state House speaker and his partner after passage of a civil unions bills and in North Carolina after the first gay military wedding at Fort Bragg.

As long as the images aren't meant to shock, but are a reflection of the news of the day, those are the images that the media should be using, said Al Tompkins, a senior faculty member at the Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.

"If they got married on the first day the law allowed and they didn't kiss, it would be news," he joked. "If they stood there, they got married and they kissed each other, our job is to tell what happened."

The Post-Gazette received few, if any, complaints after using an image of a same-sex kiss online Wednesday.

Given that same-sex couples have been present on mainstream network television for decades, Thompson noted that it's actually taken quite a while for same-sex kisses to regularly appear in news media.

"By the time stuff made it to network television back in the network era, it meant that the controversy was kind of over," he said. "This is taking some time but it's happening — there's no question about it."

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©2014 Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com

Distributed by MCT Information Services

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Thai Facebook users get censorship scare

BANGKOK — Thailand's new military rulers said that a sudden interruption of access to Facebook on Wednesday was not part of a censorship policy, but due instead to a technical hitch.

The afternoon blockage did not affect all users but drew a flurry of attention online. It lasted for at least an hour and came just a day after the new military government announced an Internet crackdown. The junta has banned dissemination of information that could cause unrest, effectively banning criticism of last week's coup.

A statement from the junta, called the National Council for Peace and Order, declared that "there is no policy to suspend or close down Facebook."

It said an inspection found that there was a "technical error" at the telecommunications gateway that connects Internet service providers to international circuits, and it had ordered the problem fixed.

Deputy army spokesman Col. Winthai Suvaree later came on television to offer the same explanation and announce that the problem had been corrected. All television stations must broadcast official announcements from the junta, which seized power May 22 in what it said was a bid to end more than six months of sometimes violent political disorder. Newspapers and TV and radio stations are exercising self-censorship.

On Tuesday, the government's Ministry of Information and Communication Technology told the Thai press that a new national gateway was being planned to filter the Internet more effectively, and that social media was being monitored closely for violations of the new censorship rules.

Thanit Prapatanan, director of the ministry's Office of Technology Communications Crime Prevention and Suppression, said Wednesday that his office has shut down at least 330 websites since the junta's censorship orders came out, but he denied shutting down Facebook in Thailand.

"We're blocking access to webpages that could incite chaos, instigate violence or division or pose a threat to national security. We are looking at the individual pages. For example, on Facebook, we only look for such posts, not looking to shut down Facebook in Thailand as a whole. But if there are any pages that violate the order, we will definitely block it."

Before the interruption, a junta spokesman also said services such as Facebook would not be targeted for shutdown, but individuals would be investigated.

"People put hate speech in social media and create confusion and division in society," Col. Weerachon Sukhondhapatipak said at a news conference.

Even under elected leadership, Thailand has exercised unusual control over the Internet, blocking thousands of web pages containing pornography or material deemed insulting to the nation's royal family. Criticism of the monarchy — online or elsewhere — is a crime punishable up to 15 years in jail.

Several years ago, the government reached an agreement with YouTube that allowed it to block selected pages to viewers in Thailand. The government and the army also maintain teams of watchers to monitor web boards and other sites for inappropriate content.

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AP writer Thanyarat Doksone contributed to this report.

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Stocks mostly lower after latest record high

NEW YORK — Stocks are mostly lower in early trading after setting a record high the day before.

Botox maker Allergan fell 3 percent after Valeant Pharmaceuticals made a new unsolicited offer for the company.

Toll Brothers rose 4 percent after reporting that its profits more than doubled as the home builder raised prices and delivered more houses.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index was flat at 1,912 in the first few minutes of trading. The index closed at a record the day before.

The Dow Jones industrial average fell 22 points, or 0.1 percent, to 16,653. The Nasdaq lost two points, less than 0.1 percent, to 4,234.

Bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.47 percent from 2.52 percent late Tuesday.

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US bank earnings decline 7.7 percent in 1Q

WASHINGTON — U.S. banks' earnings declined 7.7 percent in the January-March quarter from a year earlier, as higher interest rates dampened demand for mortgage refinancing and reduced banks' revenue from the mortgage business.

The data issued Wednesday by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. highlighted the impact of the increase in interest rates that occurred in the spring of 2013.

It was only the second time in the last 19 quarters that the banking industry, which has been recovering from the financial crisis, posted a decline in net income from the year-earlier quarter.

The FDIC reported that the banking industry earned $37.2 billion in the first quarter of this year, down from $40.3 billion in the same period in 2013.

It was the first time since the third quarter of 2013 that banks marked a year-over-year profit decline — and that was the first decline since the spring of 2009, when the country was still mired in the Great Recession.

The latest report also showed the number of banks on the FDIC's problem list fell to 411 in the first quarter from 467 in the fourth quarter of last year.

Despite recent declines, long-term mortgage rates still are nearly a full percentage point above record lows reached about a year ago. The increase over the year was driven in part by speculation that the Federal Reserve would reduce its bond purchases, which have helped keep long-term interest rates low. Indeed, the Fed has announced four declines in its monthly bond purchases since December because the economy appears to be healing. But the Fed has no plans to raise its benchmark short-term rate from record lows.

Reduced income from trading also contributed to the first-quarter decline in banks' profit, the FDIC said. But the comparison was being drawn with banks' highest-earning quarter on record in January-March of last year, which the FDIC said was pumped up by some unusual profit gains.

The health of the banking industry continued to improve in the first quarter, with sour loans on the books declining, lending getting more robust and fewer banks unprofitable, FDIC officials said.

"The first-quarter results show a continuation of the recovery in the banking industry," FDIC Chairman Martin Gruenberg said in a statement.

The pace of banks' lending picked up in the first quarter. Total loan balances rose by $37.8 billion, or 0.5 percent, from the final quarter of 2013 even as mortgage lending declined and credit card loans marked a seasonal decrease.

Some experts have predicted strong growth in lending this year, with demand for loans growing as new jobs are created, incomes rise and business confidence strengthens.

Community banks earned $4.4 billion in the first quarter, the FDIC said, adding a new data category to its quarterly report.

Banks with assets exceeding $10 billion continued to drive the bulk of the earnings growth in the January-March period. While they make up just 1.6 percent of U.S. banks, they accounted for about 82 percent of industry earnings.

Those banks include Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Wells Fargo & Co. Most of them have recovered with help from federal bailout money during the financial crisis and record-low borrowing rates.

Last year, the number of bank failures slowed to 24. That is still more than normal. In a strong economy, an average of four or five banks close annually. But failures were down sharply from 51 in 2012, 92 in 2011 and 157 in 2010 — the most in one year since the height of the savings and loan crisis in 1992.

So far this year, eight banks have failed. Thirteen had been shuttered by this time last year.

The decline in bank failures has allowed the deposit insurance fund to strengthen. The fund, which turned from deficit to positive in the second quarter of 2011, had a $48.9 billion balance at the end of March, according to the FDIC. That compares with $47.2 billion as of Dec. 31.

The FDIC, created during the Great Depression to ensure bank deposits, monitors and examines the financial condition of U.S. banks.

The agency guarantees bank deposits up to $250,000 per account. Apart from its deposit insurance fund, the FDIC also has tens of billions of dollars in reserves.

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S&P 500 index holds at record levels

NEW YORK — The Standard & Poor's 500 index held at a record level on Wednesday as a rally in the bond market increased demand for stocks that pay dividends. Investors were unimpressed with a second bid by Valeant Pharmaceuticals for Botox maker Allergan.

KEEPING SCORE: The S&P 500 was unchanged at 1,912 as of 12:07 p.m. Eastern time. The Dow Jones industrial average fell 17 points, or 0.1 percent, to 16,658. The Nasdaq composite dropped three points, or 0.1 percent, to 4,233.

RECORD RUN: The stock market has edged up to record levels against a backdrop of reports that have shown the U.S. economy is gradually strengthening after a winter slump. The S&P 500 closed above 1,900 for the first time on Friday. On Wednesday, telecom and utilities stocks, traditionally companies that pay big dividends, rose as the bond market rally continued.

DRUG DEAL: Valeant Pharmaceuticals added more cash to its offer to buy Botox maker Allergan in a bid that could now be worth more than $50 billion. The Canadian drugmaker is now offering $58.30, $10 more than its previous offer, and a portion of its own stock for each Allergan share. Allergan fell $7.89, or 4.5 percent, to $157.10. Analysts and investors had been expecting a bigger bid.

TOUGH TIMES: Consumer discretionary stocks, which include retailers, automakers and entertainment companies, fell the most of the 10 sectors that make up the S&P 500 index. Dollar General had the biggest loss. The stock dropped $1.68, or 3 percent, to $54.62 after analysts at Deutsche Bank cut their forecast for the company's earnings, saying that it faces tough pricing competition from other retailers including Walmart and Target.

BUILDERS: Toll Brothers rose after the homebuilder reported that its second-quarter income more than doubled as the company raised its prices and delivered more houses. The results beat Wall Street's expectations and sent the stock up 71 cents, or 2 percent, to $36.33.

BONDS: In the market for U.S. government bonds, the yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.44 percent from 2.52 percent late Tuesday. The yield is the lowest it's been in 11 months. Bonds have gained this year, pushing yields lower, as economic growth has continued at a moderate pace without stoking inflation.

Bonds are also rising on speculation that the European Central Bank will take some kind of action to stimulate the region's economy at its next policy meeting. That has pushed European bonds yields lower, making U.S. bonds more attractive by comparison. The yield on 10-year German government bonds is currently 1.33 percent.

"In terms of safety and yield the U.S. still is the prettiest girl at the dance," said JJ Kinahan, chief strategist at TD Ameritrade.

COMMODITIES: The price of crude oil dropped 47 cents, or 0.4 percent, to $103.64 a barrel. Gold fell $7, or 0.6 percent, to $1,258.30 an ounce.

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ISS seeks ouster of most of Target's board

NEW YORK — A prominent proxy advisory firm is recommending that Target shareholders vote out seven of its 10 board members after a massive data breach.

Institutional Shareholder Services on Wednesday targeted those members who serve on the company's audit and corporate responsibility committee. Included on that list are Anne Mulcahy, former chair and CEO at Xerox, and James A. Johnson, who was once the CEO at Fannie Mae.

The data breach, which led to the theft of 40 million debit and credit card numbers, has rattled one of the world's biggest retailers.

The board fired CEO Gregg Steinhafel three weeks ago. The company's chief information officer lost her job in March.

Target said that it views risk oversight as the responsibility of the full board.

"As one would expect, following the criminal attack that resulted in the data breach, the Board is re-examining the entire risk oversight structure, including senior management roles and reporting structures, as well as Board oversight," the company said Wednesday.

The ISS recommendation comes less than two weeks before Target's annual shareholder meeting.

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