Economy

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.…

The major entertainment studios and the union representing tens of thousands of striking actors will return to the negotiating table on Tuesday, less than two weeks after talks were suspended because the sides remained far apart on significant issues.The restart of negotiations was announced in a joint statement on Saturday from the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers, which bargains on behalf of the studios, and SAG-AFTRA, the actors’ union. Four top studio executives — NBCUniversal’s Studio Group chairwoman and chief content officer, Donna Langley; the Netflix co-chief executive Ted Sarandos; the Walt Disney Company chief executive Robert A.…

Some of the most powerful people in business have taken aim at universities over their responses to the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and to accusations of antisemitism.Marc Rowan, the chief executive of Apollo Global Management and a major donor to the University of Pennsylvania, has called for the resignation of the school’s president and its chairman. Former Ambassador Jon Huntsman halted giving to the school, and Ron Lauder, the Estée Lauder cosmetics heir, said he was “re-examining” his financial support.Donors accuse Penn of applying its free-speech values inconsistently. Clifford Asness, the chief investment officer at AQR Capital Management, wrote…

When Ana Kirova first heard the idea that she should become chief executive of Feeld, the dating app, she was “terrified.”It was 2021, and Ms. Kirova had been working at the company for five years. The suggestion came from Dimo Trifonov, the app’s founder, and Ms. Kirova’s romantic partner. Ms. Kirova had a strong hand in Feeld’s transformation from a niche app to something closer to mainstream. Still, she wondered if it would be smarter to hire someone from the outside.Over dinner at Seamore’s, a restaurant in Brooklyn, Ms. Kirova, 31, speculated that her hesitation to accept the job was…

Mr. Galanis, a 2010 Duke University graduate, recruited a fellow alumnus and software engineer, Devon Townsend, to build it. In the spring of 2017, the website BookCameo.com launched with a tweet from Mr. Marsh, promising videos for around $20; Tori Spelling and niche Vine personalities like Evan Breen joined later that year. (Mr. Blencowe, 37, and Mr. Townsend, 33, who are also co-founders, still work at the company.)For Mr. Galanis, Cameo, based in his hometown, Chicago, felt like the company the trio was destined to build. He and Mr. Blencowe were fresh from a short-lived production career. (Mr. Galanis still…

They are smooth white boxes, roughly the size of large cargo vans, and they are now at the heart of the U.S.-Chinese technology conflict.As the United States tries to slow China’s progress toward technological advances that could help its military, the complex lithography machines that print intricate circuitry on computer chips have become a key choke point.The machines are central to China’s efforts to develop its own chip-making industry, but China does not yet have the technology to make them, at least in their most advanced forms. This week, U.S. officials took steps to curb China’s progress toward that goal…