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HONG KONG — <\/span>Asian shares declined Friday tracking Wall Street losses<\/a>, while oil prices gained with Brent crude trading above $108 a barrel in its highest since May.<\/p>\n U.S. futures edged higher.<\/p>\n Japan\u2019s Nikkei 225 dropped 2.8% to 63,442.30. Shares of multinational investment holding firm SoftBank Group, an investor of OpenAI, fell 4.1%.<\/p>\n South Korea\u2019s Kospi lost 2.3% to 6,872.39. Samsung Electronics slid 3.9%, while memory chipmaker SK Hynix declined 3.6%.<\/p>\n Hong Kong\u2019s Hang Seng dipped 0.8% to 24,753.54. The Shanghai Composite index was down 1.8% to 3,862.73. Shares of Chinese AI chipmaker Enflame surged around 180% in its trading debut in Shanghai.<\/p>\n Australia\u2019s S&P\/ASX 200 fell 1.2% to 8,712.20.<\/p>\n Taiwan\u2019s Taiex lost 1.7%, while India\u2019s Sensex declined 1%.<\/p>\n Oil prices continued to gain early Friday as tensions between the U.S. and Iran intensified. Brent crude, the international standard, was 0.9% higher at $108.59 per barrel. It was approximately $72 a barrel in late February, before the start of the war.<\/a><\/p>\n Benchmark U.S. crude was up 0.7% to $103.22 per barrel.<\/p>\n Oil flowing through the Strait of Hormuz<\/a>, a narrow waterway critical for global oil transport, remained \u201cwell below pre-war levels,\u201d wrote ING commodities strategists Warren Patterson and Ewa Manthey in a commentary Friday. That\u2019s \u201cunderscoring how fragile the situation has become,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n On Thursday, Wall Street\u2019s benchmark S&P 500 dropped 0.6% in its fourth straight loss<\/a>. The Dow Jones Industrial Average lost 0.6%, and the technology-heavy Nasdaq composite fell 0.7%.<\/p>\n Investors are also monitoring the U.S.\u2019s consumer price index data for August set to be released Friday ahead of the Federal Reserve\u2019s meeting next week.<\/p>\n