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Iran and the White House both denied that the US Navy had escorted an oil tanker through the Strait of Hormuz,

contradicting an earlier claim made on X by America's Energy Secretary,

Chris Wright. The post was quickly removed, but still helped push oil prices lower.

Brent Crude, the Global Oil Benchmark, briefly dropped below $80 a barrel,

continuing a slide that began with Donald Trump's mixed messages about the war in Iran on Monday.

Meanwhile, Mr. Trump said that America had completely destroyed 10 inactive mine-laying vessels

in Iran and warned the country against placing mines in Hormuz.

He said he had no reports of them doing so, although some media outlets have reported that Iran is

planting mines there. Earlier, Pete Hegseth, America's defense chief, threatened that Tuesday

would be the most intense day of

strikes inside Iran.

Oracle reported quarterly revenues of $17.2 billion, a 22% rise on the same period a year ago,

beating analysts' expectations.

The software giant has been investing heavily in cloud computing infrastructure to compete with Amazon and Microsoft. Oracle raised its revenue forecast for next year to $90 billion,

citing strong demand for its cloud services, which are used to train AI. Its share price rose

...