Wall Street drifts near its all-time high as oil prices keep swinging

NEW YORK (AP) — U.S. stocks are hanging around their records on Tuesday, while oil prices keep swinging on uncertainty about when the war with Iran will allow crude to flow freely again.

The S&P 500 was flat and remained near its all-time high set on Friday. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was up 101 points, or 0.2%, as of 9:35 a.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.1% lower.

The action was stronger in the oil market, where the price for a barrel of Brent crude briefly jumped above $90 in the morning before pulling back toward $87. It was most recently at $87.18, down 0.6% from Monday’s settlement price.

Such swings have become typical since the United States and Israel attacked Iran in late February, which led to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz and kept much of the world’s oil pent up in the Middle East. Last month alone, Brent’s price veered between $72 and $102 per barrel.

Higher oil prices make inflation worse, and they’ve sent the average cost for a gallon of regular gasoline to $4.01, according to AAA. That’s up from less than $3.14 a year ago, though it’s down from last week’s nearly $4.09.

That has Wall Street’s attention focused on Wednesday, when the U.S. government will release the latest monthly reading on inflation. Economists expect it to show inflation remains high but that it decelerated to 3.4% in July from 3.5% in June.

That could help the Federal Reserve, whose members are notably split on whether they should be raising the country’s interest rates to keep a lid on inflation. While higher rates could help slow the increases of prices on store shelves, they would also slow the overall U.S. economy by making it more expensive for U.S. households and businesses to borrow money. They would also undercut prices for stocks and other investments.

Traders are betting on a slightly better than coin flip’s chance that the Fed will raise its main interest rate at its next meeting in September, according to data from CME Group. If it does, that would be the first increase in more than three years. It also could anger President Donald Trump, who has been arguing for lower interest rates.

Treasury yields have jumped since the war with Iran because of higher oil prices and worries about inflation, sending long-term mortgage rates to their highest levels in a year.

The 10-year Treasury yield eased back a bit Tuesday, falling to 4.68% from 4.72% late Monday. But it remains well above its 3.97% level from before the war with Iran.

On Wall Street, Cardinal Health jumped 8.1% after becoming the latest big U.S. company to report a stronger profit for the spring than analysts expected.

Businesses have blown past analysts’ forecasts, which Wall Street loves because stock prices tend to follow the path of corporate profits over the long term.

Aramark, the food company and facilities manager, rallied 8.3% after reporting stronger profit and revenue for the latest quarter than analysts expected.

They helped offset a dip of 0.5% for Intel, which said it would sell $20 billion of its stock at $95 per share. That’s up from the $15 billion that it said it would sell the day before, and such moves dilute the ownership stakes of people who already own Intel stock.

Intel plans to use the cash it’s raising for investments to take advantage of the boom in demand for artificial-intelligence technology.

In stock markets abroad, indexes edged higher in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 1.1% for one of the world’s bigger moves.

AP Business Writers Matt Ott and Elaine Kurtenbach contributed to this report.

A general view shows the New York Stock Exchange, Friday, Aug. 7, 2026, in New York. (AP Photo/Yuki Iwamura)

A TV cameraman prepares to film near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the Korean Securities Dealers Automated Quotations (KOSDAQ) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A dealer walks past near the screens showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) and the foreign exchange rate between U.S. dollar and South Korean won at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

A dealer stands near the screens showing the foreign exchange rates at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

An employee walks past near the screen showing the Korea Composite Stock Price Index (KOSPI) at a dealing room of Hana Bank in Seoul, South Korea, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man)

BUNIA, Congo (AP) — At least 2,000 people have died in Congo’s Ebola outbreak, the fastest-growing on record, according to the latest data, as health authorities struggle to get help to remote localities due to rebel conflict, bad roads and work stoppages over payment issues.

Government data published overnight into Tuesday showed the outbreak has recorded a total of 4,381 confirmed cases, including 2,011 deaths. A total of 704 patients are in admission and isolation.

The outbreak was declared on May 15 but health authorities say sequencing showed it began months earlier, in February.

While it took about nine weeks for the outbreak to record the first 1,000 deaths, it’s taken just around three weeks for the figure to double, an evidence that the health crisis is moving faster than efforts to track and manage it.

It's already the second-largest outbreak in history, only behind the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak that recorded more than 28,000 cases including over 11,000 deaths.

The Ebola outbreak is unlike most previous ones because the rare Bundibugyo virus responsible for it has no approved vaccines or treatments. Clinical trials for those have begun in Ituri province, the epicenter of the outbreak, in eastern Congo.

Aid workers say the outbreak continues to outpace response that’s been expanding across the five eastern provinces affected. Many health workers have gone on strike to protest lack of payment for their work since the outbreak was declared. And WHO has said most new cases are still being recorded outside of contacts being monitored, showing that transmission remains out of the control of health workers.

Ebola can be caused by different types of virus. Although the type responsible for the 2014-2016 outbreak is considered the deadliest, government data shows this Bundibugyo outbreak has killed a higher percentage of people as care and support are not getting to patients quickly enough. Many cases are reporting symptoms late or not at all.

The ongoing outbreak has so far had a case fatality rate of 45.9%, more than the 39.6% rate recorded in the 2014-2016 West Africa outbreak.

“In the absence of an effective vaccine, control (for the outbreak) rests on identifying cases and then nursing them in secure facilities until they recover or sadly perish,” said Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia in the U.K.

In a remote region like this with an ongoing conflict and interrupted communications, routine surveillance can be very difficult and “identifying cases early enough to prevent spread can be impossible,” said Hunter.

The World Health Organization said on Monday that at the onset of the outbreak in one of Congo’s most remote and vulnerable areas, some cases were wrongly attributed to malaria and typhoid, and that early testing was conducted for the more common type of Ebola.

The WHO regional director for Africa, Dr. Mohamed Yakub Janabi, told a news conference that officials are “chasing the virus, the virus is ahead of us.”

The first Ebola virus to be identified was in 1976 near the Ebola River in what is now Congo. The current outbreak is the 17th — and largest — the Central African nation has faced.

A health worker dries boots that were washed to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A health worker dries boots that were washed to prevent the spread of the Ebola virus at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A man arrives at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A health worker in protective gear washes her hands at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A health worker on the dignified and safe burial team, monitors a casket at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A health worker waits to be sprayed with disinfectant at the treatment centre in Bunia General Hospital in Ituri, eastern Congo, Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A health worker in protective gear walks at an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A health worker in protective gear looks on at an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

A health worker in protective gear prepares to mop the floor at an ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)

Health workers in protective gear wave inside an Ebola treatment centre in Bunia, Congo, Monday, Aug. 10, 2026. (AP Photo/Dieudonne Dirole)