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Exxon expects to see more and more hybrids on the world’s roads, with gas-sipping models like the Toyota Prius making up half of all vehicles by 2040.

The largest publicly traded oil and gas company says in its annual energy outlook that the use of hybrids _ vehicles that rely on both gas and electricity for power _ and other efficiency gains will keep energy demand in check for the U.S. and other major industrialized countries for years.

Exxon Mobil Corp. predicts that energy demand will remain flat through 2040 in developed nations instant payday loan.

However, Exxon says that China and other developing nations will increase their thirst for oil and other petroleum based fuels. Energy demand within developing nations is expected to rise nearly 60 percent from 2010 to 2040.

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China Shougang Group has tied up with Malaysia’s Hiap Teck to build a 1.8 billion ringgit ($573 million) steel mill, its first such investment outside of China.

A joint statement says the mill in Malaysia’s northern Terengganu state will produce 700,000 metric tons of steel slabs a year to cater to Southeast Asia’s growing markets when completed in mid-2013. It said Monday the mill, run by a joint venture called Eastern Steel, will later be expanded to raise output to 1.5 million metric tons.

Shougang, one of China’s top steel makers, controls 40 percent of Eastern Steel. Hiap Teck holds 55 percent.

Officials say there is strong demand in Southeast Asia, which imports more than 4 million metric tons of steel slabs annually, mostly from eastern Europe.

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The European Commission backed the introduction of jointly issued eurobonds, coupled with stricter budgetary discipline, as the best way out of a debt crisis that’s threatening the 17-country eurozone.

EU Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said Wednesday that the countries using the euro currency needed to work more closely together to dovetail their budgetary policies and avoid having one nation endanger all others by not living by its financial commitments. The crisis, which started in Greece nearly two years ago, has now spread to much-bigger economies such as Italy and Spain and there was a hint Wednesday that not even Germany is immune.

Barroso, who heads the executive arm of the European Union, said there was a need to “embrace deeper integration for the euro area” and that “implemented in the right way, the joint issuance of debt in the euro area could bring tremendous benefits.”

Barroso said it could lead to greater financial integration and to the creation of a much larger bond market, comparable to that of the United States treasuries.

Germany has opposed the use of eurobonds and has long called on profligate member states to clean up their own houses with as little outside intervention as possible. A big worry for Germany is that its low borrowing costs would get diluted if eurobonds came into issue and it would then be forced to pay higher rates to tap bond markets.

Anticipating the proposal, Chancellor Angela Merkel poured cold water on the idea in the German Parliament earlier in the day.

“It is extremely troubling, I might say inappropriate, that the Commission is now focusing on proposals on eurobonds in different varieties,” she told legislators.

Merkel argued that it was a pretense to suggest that a “collectivization of the debt would allow us to overcome the currency union’s structural flaws.”

While Merkel was voicing her opposition to the idea of eurobonds, Germany suffered what many in the markets are describing as a failed bond auction.

Despite being touted as the European bedrock of financial stability and rigor, Germany failed to raise as much money as it hoped in its latest bond auction, in a sign that even it may not be immune from the debt crisis raging across the continent.

Germany’s Financial Agency said its latest euro6 billion ($8.1 billion) auction of 10-year bonds met with only 60 percent demand. It blamed “the extraordinarily nervous market environment” for the weak demand.

Since Greece pushed the eurozone into its ever-worsening financial mess last year, many member states have seen their cost of government borrowing rise to record levels. Germany’s borrowing rates though have dropped sharply as investors buy up its bonds as a safe haven.

Germany has long been reluctant to bail out member states like Greece, Ireland and Portugal, insisting it was up to their governments to live by sound economic principles and win investor confidence.

Barroso said that eurobonds, or so-called stability bonds, “will not solve our immediate problems.”

Still he said “stability bonds are examples of reinforced governance, of a strong will to live together in the euro area and a good example of discipline.”

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Juergen Baetz in Berlin contributed to this report.

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Thailand’s prime minister is urging people in flooded areas to be patient because the government is working as hard as it can to drain the water.

Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra said Monday the flooding situation that has plagued the country since late July is improving as waters recede. However, she noted that water spreading across western Bangkok could drain more slowly than in other areas of the capital.

She urged people to “tolerate the flooding situation and turn unity into power to struggle through the crisis payday advance low fees.” Yingluck made the comments on her Facebook page.

The national death toll from Thailand’s worst floods in more than half a century has reached 562. The floods are still affecting 22 of the country’s 77 provinces.

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For a growing number of young American men, the childhood bedroom is the new bachelor pad.

The percentage of men 25 to 34 years old who live with their parents has increased by almost a third during the past five years, data from the U.S. Census Bureau show.

The economic downturn has accelerated that trend for young men, while women continue to be less likely to bunk with their parents.

Since 2006, the year before the recession began, the percentage of young men living with their parents has grown to 18.6 percent this year from 14.3 percent. Just 9.7 percent of women in that age group now live with their parents, up from 8.8 percent in 2006.

“It’s a way to save money and survive the hardship,” said Qian Cai, director of the Demographics and Workforce Group at the University of Virginia’s Weldon Cooper Center for Public Service.

Young women traditionally have left the house before men because they marry at a younger age. That reason may be changing: Now more women than men are getting college educations, so they may be less likely to be unemployed or lose jobs, Cai said.

Since the beginning of last year, the unemployment rate for women between 25 and 34 averaged 9.1 percent, compared with 10.4 percent for men in this age group.

On the flip side, parents may also be more generous than they used to be. “They have more resources than earlier generations, so they can help out more,” Cai said.

In the past year, the proportion of 25- to 34-year-old men living with parents jumped 2.2 percentage points, while the number of women in that age group staying or moving back home didn’t change significantly, the Census Bureau said.

While the trend is a reflection of the sluggish economy, there may be other factors, said Cheryl Russell, a demographer in Beaufort, S.C., and editorial director of New Strategist Publications.

“Women mature at a younger age, so they are probably more able to hold down a job and pay the rent,” she said. “Men sort of thrash around a bit.”

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Rupert Murdoch’s News International promised to pay all of News of the World editor Andy Coulson’s legal fees only a month after he resigned from the paper in disgrace, according to a court document obtained by The Associated Press on Tuesday.

The former editor, who later served as communications director for Prime Minister David Cameron, is a central figure in the phone hacking scandal that has convulsed the British media. He’s been arrested on suspicion of abetting a culture of illegal spying while at the top of the News of the World, an allegation he’s fighting with the help of the high-powered international law firm DLA Piper.

Such an open-ended promise to foot Coulson’s legal bill would have been highly unusual, according to Jo Keddy, an employment partner with the London law firm Winckworth Sherwood. She called it the equivalent of “writing a blank check for a former employee.”

The generous deals struck by News International with its victims and former staff members have emerged as a key issue for lawmakers investigating the scandal, with some suggesting that the company had tried to buy the silence of those involved to help bury the scandal, which first erupted more than five years ago.

The exact nature of the promises made to Coulson are under dispute.

According a nine-page lawsuit filed by Coulson in the court’s Queen’s Bench Division, News International subsidiary News Group Newspapers has recently refused to pay expenses incurred by Coulson’s criminal defense team, telling him that allegations of phone hacking fell “outside the scope of your contract of employment.”

Coulson’s lawyers reject the assertion, saying that News Group had made a blanket deal to pay any legal fees stemming from his time at the News of the World.

The complaint says News International struck the deal with Coulson in February 2007, a month after his royal editor, Clive Goodman, was jailed for hacking into the phones of members of the royal household. While Coulson denied knowing anything about the practice, he said he was resigning out of a sense of responsibility for what happened.

Goodman’s sentence was meant to draw a line under the scandal, but Coulson’s deal appeared to suggest that both parties feared trouble down the line.

The lawsuit says that News International promised to repay Coulson for “any professional (including without limitation, legal and accounting) costs and expenses … which arise from his having to defend, or appear in, any administrative, regulatory, judicial or quasi-judicial proceeding as a result of his having been the editor of the News of the World.”

The suit goes says that “it was anticipated” that Coulson would be drawn into the criminal investigation into phone hacking which was relaunched early this year.

News International declined to comment on the suit. DLA Piper, Coulson’s law firm, did not immediately return an email seeking further comment on Coulson’s complaint.

Coulson was arrested over the phone hacking allegation on July 8 _ making him one of more than a dozen former News of the World employees who’ve been arrested since the beginning of the year. The scandal has led to the closure of the 168-year-old paper and the resignation of several top Murdoch executives.

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World stock markets rose Wednesday, with investors emboldened by reports that Germany and France were moving closer toward resolving Europe’s debt crisis through a massive expansion of the region’s bailout fund.

Oil prices hovered above $88 per barrel, while the dollar was lower against the euro but edged up against the yen.

European shares rose in early trading. Britain’s FTSE 200 was 0.4 percent higher at 5,707.19. Germany’s DAX gained 0.8 percent to 5,925.43 and France’s CAC-40 added 0.7 percent to 3,162.89.

But Wall Street, coming off a strong rally the previous day, appeared to be headed lower. Dow Jones industrial futures fell 0.5 percent to 11,465 and broader S&P 500 futures shed 0.7 percent to 1,215.10.

Asian shares were mostly higher after taking a beating on Monday. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index rose 0.4 percent to 8,772.54 and Hong Kong’s Hang Seng added 1.3 percent to 18,309.22. South Korea’s Kospi gained 0.9 percent to 1,855.92.

Benchmarks in Australia, India and Indonesia were higher. Those in Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia and Thailand fell.

The Guardian newspaper reported that France and Germany have agreed to expand the rescue fund for nations using the euro common currency to euros 2 trillion ($2.74 trillion). The paper cited unnamed European diplomats and said European officials are expected to take up the expansion along with a package of other measures at a meeting this weekend.

Wall Street rose sharply Tuesday on the news. The Dow Jones industrial average rose 1.6 percent to close at 11,577.05. The S&P 500 index rose 2 percent to 1,225.38. The Nasdaq composite rose 1.6 percent to 2,657.43.

Gains in Asia were muted, however, since investors may want to see more consistent gains before wading deeply back into the market, analysts said.

“Following recent volatility, it is unlikely that we will see quite as big a rally locally as our U.S. peers today. Particularly at the retail end of the market, investors will probably wait to see successive gains before rushing back into the market,” Stan Shamu of IG Markets in Melbourne said in a research note.

Mainland China’s Shanghai Composite Index fell 0.3 percent to 2,377 payday loan lenders.51. That comes on top of a 2.3 percent loss Tuesday, when data showed China’s economic growth eased last quarter to 9.1 percent. The smaller Shenzhen Composite Index lost 0.6 percent to 1,004.20.

Hong Kong-based analyst Francis Lun cautioned investors not to overreact to data about China’s economy, which is still enjoying steady growth.

“Don’t worry about China,” Lun said. “I think even a 9.1 percent growth is not the end of the world. I think people just overplayed the slowdown.” The overwhelming concern for markets is Europe and fears of a messy debt default by Greece, he said.

The Greek government is widely expected to go through some kind of default or restructuring of its debt. If that process becomes disorderly, European banks could suffer big losses on Greek government bonds and that could spread overseas, jolting global credit markets. That could escalate into another financial crisis similar to the one that occurred in 2008 after the collapse of Lehman Brothers.

Hopes for a solution to the European crisis sent banking shares higher. National Australia Bank Ltd. rose 1.5 percent, Japan’s Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group rose 0.9 percent, and Hong Kong-listed Bank of China Ltd. gained 2.3 percent.

Japan’s export shares slid amid a stubbornly strong yen, which makes domestically manufactured products more expensive overseas. Sony Corp. was down 1.2 percent and Toshiba Corp. lost 2.4 percent.

Camera and precision instruments maker Olympus Corp. fell 2 percent, continuing its retreat in the aftermath of the firing of CEO Michael Woodford, whom media reports said was dismissed after challenging Olympus executives about questionable corporate governance practices and several acquisitions.

Benchmark crude for November delivery was up 7 cents at $88.41 a barrel in electronic trading on the New York Mercantile Exchange. The contract rose $1.96 to settle at $88.34 in New York on Tuesday.

In currencies, the euro rose to $1.3806 from $1.3747 late Tuesday in New York. The dollar rose to 76.78 yen from 76.76 yen.

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A week after the state ended its relationship with SynCare, the embattled Medicaid contractor, the company on Friday laid off its workers and circulated a terse memo threatening to dock their final paychecks under a variety of conditions paydayloans.

The memo struck a certain irony with SynCare workers who had awakened to learn that SynCare

Katia has weakened to a tropical storm as it moves across the Atlantic but forecasters say they expect it to strengthen again over the next two days.

Katia (KAH’-tee-yah) was about 930 miles (1497 kilometers) east of the Leeward Islands and moving west near 18 mph (30 kph) with maximum sustained winds late Thursday afternoon near 70 mph (113 kph), a 5 mph drop. It could become a major hurricane this weekend.

The U.S. National Hurricane Center said it’s too early to tell if Katia will hit the U no faxing pay day loans.S. It is expected to pass north of the Caribbean.

Meanwhile two other storm systems were developing over open water, in the Gulf of Mexico and in the Atlantic well north of Bermuda. But forecasters said it was too soon to tell if either might hit land.

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