The rise of oil prices had brought positive growth to most of the Asian markets, except for Japan. On the other hand, European market had seen a drop. The oil prices increased overnight due to speculations that U.S Federal Reserve would possibly decide not to increase interest rates throughout 2016.

VirnetX has been in the limelight for its achievement in realizing $223 million from Microsoft in out of court settlements. Now the patent litigation company has won a court verdict that instructs Apple to pay $625.6 million for patent infringement issues. VirnetX has claimed for $532 million initially, but Apple’s deliberate infringement over the patented products has reportedly increased the amount.

Luxembourg has proposed to tap the mineral-rich asteroids orbiting between Earth and Mars for minerals that are scarce in our planet. Its deputy prime minister, Etienne Schneider, has already announced the roll-out of the initiative named SpaceResources.lu, which will be set up with the help of its US and European commercial partners.

Royal Dutch Shell said that its profit for the fourth quarter dropped 44% as the price of the crude oil tumble. The UK-based oil firm also confirmed that it is trimming 10,000 jobs, a move to reduce its costs.

The deal was a huge move forward for both Veolia and Kurion. Veoila is determined to expand its business to nuclear waste management and believes that Kurion is the perfect partner to achieve that goal. Kurion itself is a successful startup focusing in nuclear waste involved in the Fukushima nuclear incident clean-up in 2011.

Sharp Corp board has gathered today to weigh the bidding offers. The competition is between the Taiwanese electronics giant, Foxconn and the Japanese government-backed establishment, Innovation Network Corporation of Japan. While ICNJ has always been the favoured choice, Foxconn is giving it a stiff competition by way of doubling the offered price along with debt pay-offs and retention of management and employees.

Wal-Mart Will Soon Operate Its Own Gas Station in order to gain more profits. The company will leave Murphy USA Inc., which has become its gas stations operators for 20 years. However, Murphy will still continue its existing gas stations.

Cisco announced its intention to purchase Jasper Technologies, a provider of cloud service for internet-powered devices, for $1.4 billion. The merger will enable Cisco to provide a full IoT solution which is inter-operable through devices and coordinates with application developers and IoT service providers.

Google, for the first time, has disclosed financials on earnings, expenditure, asset value and future business planning. From the financials, analysts have found lot of scopes for Google and its parent company, Alphabet to expand. Google’s ad earnings have been witnessed to rise significantly during the year 2015. Meanwhile, it has spent only $3.6 billion in its ambitious technology projects during the same period. The net earning of Alphabet has been reached to $4.9 billion. Adding this earning to the net asset value, Alphabet has been recognized as the worlds most worthy enterprise.

The France-based pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur has committed to develop Zika virus vaccination in three to five years. The vaccine will be administered mainly in adolescent girls that is yet to involve sexual relationship.