Exxon Mobil of the U.S. announced July 21 that it had agreed to buy InterOil, a natural gas explorer based in Papua New Guinea, for up to $3.6 billion. InterOil owns rights to some of the world's richest gas fields.

Papua New Guinea has low labor costs and is close to major consumers of liquefied natural gas, including Japan, South Korea and China. Exxon Mobil decided to make its biggest acquisition since 2012 in hopes that crude rises from the current level of $50 a barrel by 2020, when InterOil is expected to begin LNG production.

The industry began moving toward consolidation in 2014 amid a downturn in crude prices. Royal Dutch Shell decided in April 2015 to purchase U.K.-based BG Group. Industry watchers expected other energy majors to follow suit, but they held back as crude continued to decline.

The InterOil deal signals changing tides as industry titans battle over smaller players while cheap crude keeps equipment and labor costs low. Papua New Guinea-based Oil Search, backed by French giant Total, had reached an agreement to buy the company in May but was eventually outbid by Exxon Mobil.

BP has plans for expanding the Tangguh LNG project in Indonesia, in which such Japanese companies as Inpex and Mitsubishi Corp. also have interests. An estimated $8 billion will be invested to boost annual output by 50% to 3.8 million tons.

Tangguh is the most competitive LNG project for delivering gas to such markets as Japan, CEO Bob Dudley said last Tuesday.

Asia accounts for three-quarters of global LNG demand, and consumption in such countries as China and India is only expected to grow. In contrast to crude oil development, where governments usually take the lead, most LNG projects are headed by corporations.

Chevron and partners including Exxon Mobil have agreed to invest a total of $36.8 billion in a Kazakhstan oil project to expand crude oil production there to a daily 260,000 barrels. The crude can be transported directly from the field to China via pipeline.

An immediate jump in crude prices remains unlikely, and overall investment by oil majors continues to fall. Exxon Mobil is behind on its planned capital expenditures of more than $23 billion for the year, according to Vice President Jeff Woodbury. Shell is also cutting down on investments.

Aeon intends to launch a joint venture with Creation Myanmar Group of Companies in early August to operate food supermarkets in the booming Southeast Asian country.

The new company will run 14 supermarkets that the local partner currently operates mainly in Myanmar's largest city of Yangon. It will begin opening new stores by the end of the year.

A number of Japanese firms are racing to invest in Myanmar which is called Asia's final frontier.

Aeon hopes to establish an advantageous position in the Myanmar market by making early inroads into the country.

It has already begun operating supermarkets and shopping malls in 5 Southeast Asian countries.

The magazine calculates Mayer will get $42 million in stock options and $25 million from selling 650,290 shares of restricted stock.

Mayer is also entitled to receive her salary, which was $1 million in 2015, for two years after she leaves the company. Yahoo is also obliged to pay $26,324 per year for her health insurance and $15,000 for 24 months to help her get a new job.

“I think the bottom line is look at what [Mayer] is ending up with: She did quite well even if shareholders didn’t,” said compensation consultant Brian Foley, who helped Fortune with the figures.

Marissa Mayer joined Yahoo as chief executive in 2012 from rival Google. Mayer had been unsuccessful in trying to revive the company’s core media and online advertising business. She was criticized for spending funds on projects that failed to produce any substantial revenue.

At the height of the dot-com boom the Silicon Valley web pioneer had a market capitalization of $128 billion. Today, Yahoo’s market cap is $36.36 billion.

On Monday, Verizon announced the acquisition of Yahoo for $4.83 billion. The deal has doubled Verizon's digital advertising business, and the buyer got Yahoo's search, mail, and content businesses. Yahoo will be merged with Verizon's AOL unit.

Yahoo is keeping its 15 percent stake in Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba and Yahoo Japan, which have a combined value of $40 billion. The company tried to sell its stake in the Chinese e-commerce giant, but has abandoned the idea.

According to the original reports, Mayer’s compensation was supposed to be $54.9 million. Mayer said she doesn’t want to leave, saying “It's important to me to see Yahoo into its next chapter.”

The deals, involving financial institutions and enterprises, were signed on the eve of a meeting on delivering the outcomes of the Johannesburg Summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC).

More than 400 participants from government agencies, financial institutions, business associations and enterprises attended the Seminar on China-Africa Business Cooperation and Signing Ceremony in Beijing on Thursday.

The seminar was hosted by the China Council for the Promotion of International Trade (CCPIT), which is a supporting event for the Coordinators' Meeting of the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the Johannesburg Summit of the FOCAC.

During the seminar, participants exchanged views on industrial capacity cooperation, trade and investment facilitation and financial cooperation.

Chinese and African companies spanning the sectors of infrastructure, processing and manufacturing, finance, investment, energy, chemicals, agriculture, pharmaceutical and ICT, reached consensus for future cooperation.

Jiang Weixin, chairman of the CCPIT, said the development strategies of Africa and China were highly compatible, and the two sides have many advantages.

In the future, the CCPIT will work with its African counterparts to enhance communication, strengthen policy coordination, and organize more trade and investment events to boost China-Africa trade ties, said Jiang.

Chinese Vice President Li Yuanchao had a group meeting with the African delegates.

Hailing the success of the Johannesburg summit, Li called on China and the African countries to enhance mutual trust, promote pragmatic cooperation, expand people-to-people exchanges and improve coordination on global affairs.

State Councilor Yang Jiechi held separate meetings with the foreign minister of Chad, Moussa Faki Mahamat; Sudanese Presidential Assistant Al-Jaz; and Gambian Foreign Minister Neneh MacDouall-Gaye, exchanging views on China's ties with their respective countries as well as Africa as a whole.

At the summit of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAC) last December in Johannesburg, South Africa, Chinese President Xi Jinping announced ten major China-Africa cooperation plans for the next three years, backed by 60 billion U.S. dollars, including interest free loans and preferential policies.

Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi met with his counterparts from Mali,Madagascar, Comoros and Democratic Republic of Congo.

The $25 billion project will allow vehicles to travel under the Norwegian Sea avoiding a 21-hour drive along the coastline.

The route from the southern city of Kristiansand to Trondheim in the north currently includes seven ferry crossings. As most of the waterways are wide with the largest a mile deep, it is not feasible to construct a traditional bridge. The tunnel would shorten the trip to just over 10 hours.

The first-of-its kind structure will be made up of two 1,200 meter (4,000ft) curved concrete tubes, floating up to 30 meters (100ft) below the surface. The tubes will be supported by pontoons on the surface and kept stable with connecting trusses. For extra stability, the construction might be bolted to the bedrock as well.

On the surface, there would be wide gaps between the pontoons to allow ferries to pass through.

The first underwater tunnel will connect Oppedal and Lavik, passing through the 1,300 meter (4,300ft) deep, 1,000 meter (3,300ft) wide Sognefjord.

Traveling along the new route would feel like driving through any other tunnel, according to Arianna Minoretti, a senior engineer with the NPRA.

The submerged construction will be able to cope with rough weather that is typical for the country, according to NPRA. It will also allow easier access to rural communities.

“Having this connection means that people there do not have to wait for a helicopter to go to the hospital,” Minoretti says.

The project is planned to be completed by 2035, and will preserve the landscape for those who still want to take the scenic route, the agency says.

The group at the University of Tuebingen found that many of the people who don't carry in their nostrils the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus, which causes infectious skin diseases and other ailments, instead have the bacteria Staphylococcus lugdunensis, which produces a new class of antibiotics. The scientists named the new antibiotic "lugdunin."

The scientists also tested the new antibiotic on mice and found it could clear bacterial infections on their skin. Tests on mice also showed that lugdunin worked against methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, as well.

Professor Mitsuo Kaku of Tohoku University says antibiotics are usually found in soil bacteria, and finding one in the human body is quite significant.

Kaku says new antibiotics are difficult to find, while drug-resistant strains of bacteria continue to emerge.
He says it may become possible to develop new drugs using bacteria from the human body.