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Oil Prices Are Spiking — Here's What It Means for Your Gas Tank and Grocery Bill

  Published July 17, 2026 Crude oil is trading near one-month highs this week, and if you've filled up your tank recently, you've probably already felt it. The culprit: an escalating conflict in the Middle East that's disrupting one of the world's most important oil shipping routes — and it's starting to show up at Canadian pumps and, eventually, on grocery store shelves. What's happening with oil prices West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the North American benchmark, has been trading around the $79–$80 per barrel range this week — up roughly 5% over the past month. Brent crude, the global benchmark that matters more for what Canadians pay at the pump, has been hovering near $85 per barrel, also near a one-month high. The spike traces back to renewed fighting between the U.S. and Iran. The U.S. reimposed a naval blockade on Iran and has intensified strikes, while Iran has responded with attacks on U.S. bases and threats to disrupt regional energy shipments further. ...

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Google Lays Off Hundreds of Employees in Hardware, Voice Assistant Teams Amid Cost-Cutting Drive

 

Google has laid off hundreds of employees working on its hardware, voice assistance and engineering teams as part of cost-cutting measures. 

The cuts come as Google looks towards “responsibly investing in our company’s biggest priorities and the significant opportunities ahead,” the company said in a statement. The job cuts are part of a broader effort to reduce costs and streamline operations.

Google earlier said it was eliminating a few hundred roles, with most of the impact on its augmented reality hardware team. The cuts follow pledges by executives of Google and its parent company Alphabet to reduce costs  In a post on X — previously known as Twitter — the Alphabet Workers Union described the job cuts as “another round of needless layoffs”. The union wrote, “Our members and teammates work hard every day to build great products for our users, and the company cannot continue to fire our coworkers while making billions every quarter. We won’t stop fighting until our jobs are safe!”.


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