Chip shares fall hard from New York to Seoul, oil nears $100, and firms cut jobs

President Trump says he will soon decide whether to resume the war with Iran. In October, 35 vessels were hit, the most of any month of the war.

An Iranian lawmaker says ships from 4 countries may cross the Strait of Hormuz, the sea lane out of the Gulf. In October, 10.23 million barrels of Gulf crude a day passed through it.

A barrel of oil rose 1.67% to $99.90 on Friday. Qantas, Australia's biggest airline, now expects a fuel bill of A$3.75 billion for six months.

US diesel at the pump averaged about $5.60 a gallon in late October, against about $3.70 a year before. UK farm costs rose 7.8% in the year to September.

US economist Mark Zandi counts about $1,100 of energy and transport costs per home from the Iran war. The Bank of England's forecasts show a typical British energy bill up 27% in January, to £2,150.

The US chip index closed down 12.25% on Thursday, as investors feared the Democrats' win may slow the building of data centres. South Korea's main share index fell as much as 8.8% in early Friday trade, which set off a 20-minute halt.

Sales of DRAM, the working memory in computers, reached nearly $200 billion in a quarter, close to 5 times a year earlier. More than 100 groups in 15 European countries planned protests against new data centres for Friday and Saturday.

The PS5 now starts at $649, and the Xbox Series S at $499, up from $299. Nintendo says it is not planning another rise for the Switch 2, after a $50 rise to $499.

Eaton, a big maker of electrical equipment, counts 366 gigawatts of data centres announced against 50 installed. Google would pay $600 million toward batteries in Arkansas, the power company Entergy says.

The US drug regulator approved a head and neck cancer drug on a trial of 102 patients. Early approvals for children's drugs rested on studies with a median of 13 children.

METR, a non-profit that tests AI, says Anthropic's AI is improving at around twice its old rate. Anthropic removed most of the evidence METR found most useful from the public report.

The US environment agency ended a 20-year effort to limit air pollution from big livestock farms, after studying 25 of the 14,000 that signed up. It now says its data are too old and too limited.

Heart attacks came up 4.5 times more often for energy drinks and stimulant supplements in 28,345 US reports. Those reports count complaints, not drinkers, so they cannot show how many drinkers are harmed.

BT, Britain's biggest broadband provider, cut 7,731 jobs since the end of March, while its pre-tax profit rose 12% to £1.1 billion. US job growth averaged only 35,000 a month from January 2025 to September 2026.

Canva, a design firm, is cutting 22% of its staff, and Block, a US finance technology firm, made its second round of job cuts this year. Poundland, a UK discount chain with 12,000 staff, has a second bidder after its owner rejected the first.

Some Disney managers must find as much as 20% in yearly savings, with job cuts likely in January. About 400 people lost their jobs when EA closed BioWare, a game studio, the game maker Warren Spector says.