Anna Edwards

Chevron, the U.S. energy giant, said Monday that it had agreed to acquire Hess, a medium-sized rival, in an all-stock deal valued at $53 billion.The deal marks a further consolidation of the energy industry, especially in the United States, where smaller companies appear to be taking advantage of relatively high oil prices to join forces with bigger players. The transaction follows Exxon Mobil’s $60 billion purchase of shale driller Pioneer Natural Resources earlier this month, another sign of confidence among large industry players in the future of fossil fuels even as policymakers promote cleaner energy sources.In a news release, Chevron…

Online posts asking to “#PrayForPalestine.” Entreaties for peace. Pleas to “Free Gaza.”Over the last 10 days, a website called anti-israel-employees.com published more than 17,000 posts, which one of the people behind the site said had been taken mainly from LinkedIn. The site, which claimed to be a “global live feed of potentially supportive sentiments for terrorism among company employees,” listed thousands of people and grouped them by their workplaces, in an apparent attempt to shame them for their sentiments on the Israeli-Hamas conflict.The website, which was taken offline for a day before being migrated to a new web address, named…

Martin Goetz, who joined the computer industry in its infancy in the mid-1950s as a programmer working on Univac mainframes and who later received the first U.S. patent for software, died on Oct. 10 at his home in Brighton, Mass. He was 93.His daughter Karen Jacobs said the cause was leukemia.In 1968, nearly a decade after he and several other partners started the company Applied Data Research, Mr. Goetz received his patent, for data-sorting software for mainframes. It was major news in the industry: An article in Computerworld magazine bore the headline “First Patent Is Issued for Software, Full Implications…

There is something different lately about the olive oil Michelle Spangler buys, bottles and infuses with flavors like basil and blood orange for her store in Dallas. It’s not the taste but the cost: Global olive oil prices have soared to record levels, more than doubling over the past year.Ms. Spangler has an agreement with her store’s supplier that protects against such rapid price increases, but she still expects to pay up to 20 percent more. She plans to raise prices 10 to 15 percent in her store, Infused Oils & Vinegars, early next year.“It’s not a cheap product,” Ms.…