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Good morning, I'm Nathan Hager and I'm Karen Moscow. Here are the stories we're following today and Karen.
Oil is on the rise again after gaining the most since October yesterday this morning, West Texas Intermediate is up one percent. That's as Axios has reported, the Trump administration is closer to a major war in the Middle East than most expect. Axios says a US operation would likely be a week's long campaign. We get more from Bloomberg Managing editor Paul Wallace in Dubai.
It sounds as if Iron has roughly two weeks to get back to the Americans, and then if they're broadly satisfied, the Americans will say, okay, let's go to round three.
And we don't know where that will be. But of course there are plenty of people, including in the oil market, who think America might be essentially trying to allowl Ran into a false of security and maybe willing to strike the country, you know, before Iran, you know, returns with those proposals, because that's you know, in some senses, that echoes what happened in June last year with the twelve day war between Iran and Israel and then America at
the end. You know that will happen when, or at least it started when the US and Iran were in the middle of nuclear talks.
Bloomberg's Paul Waller says the US has announced visa restrictions on Iranian officials and executives for repressing recent anti regime protests and cutting off internet access.
Now Nathan to the latest fallout from the Jeffrey Epstein files. Billionaire retail mogul Les Wesner testified behind closed doors about his relationship with the late sex offender to Democrats on the House Overside Committee. The former CEO of L Brand said he visited Epstein's private island once with his wife and children, but was unaware of any sex trafficking operation, and he repeatedly said he could not recall the key details of his relationship with the late sex offender, including
giving him considerable financial support. Arizona Democrat Yesim and Ansari says it's all on the record.
He allowed Jeffrey Epstein to live in his homes, to have hundreds of millions of his dollars to use his yachts and his planes. This was obviously a very very close relationship, and so far what we have seen is a denial of that relationship.
Congressoman Yesim and Ansari spoke to reporters from Ohio, where Wexner agreed to testify under an agreement with the committee. The Justice Department named Wexner as one of the ten co conspirators in its twenty nineteen investigation into Epstein. Wexner was not charged in the case and says he was duped by Epstein well.
Meanwhile, Karen Bill Gates has backed out of a speech at the high profile AI summit in India, just hours before he was due to speak. In a post on x the Gates Foundation said the Microsoft co founder made the decision to make sure the focus remains on the event's key prior parties. Gates has come under criticism for his ties to Epstein. The Gates Foundation did not mention the financier and its statement, but Gates has called his relationship with the late sex defender a huge mistake.
Nathan, Let's get to the latest in the search for Nancy Guthrie. It's been nineteen days since the mother of Today's Show host Savannah Guthrie was last seen at her home near Tucson. Police are still looking for new leeds as they sort through upwards of fifty thousand tips. Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos spoke with BBC News.
I think she's somewhere here the work locally.
No, what makes you think that.
I just do.
I don't know why.
I don't have any evidence to prove that, but I just believe that she's somewhere locally.
Pima County Sheriff Chris Nano's speaking to the BBC. The sheriff has come under some criticism for his handling of the investigation. He declared the scene at Nancy Guthrie's home done three days after her disappearance, only to return later, and he has not held a news conference in almost two weeks. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Nanos some of the criticism is politically motivated, and in his words, haters are going to hate.
Karen Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has testified in a social media and safety trial in Los Angeles. He says it's very difficult to enforce Instagram's age limits, but Zuckerberg says Meta has introduced some proactive tools to try to identify and remove accounts that violate the rules, but he calls it a challenging problem. Bloomberg Kurt Wagner says, this is a signature moment for social media to.
Kind of be challenged with these allegations, and in Mark Zuckerberg's case, to defend himself and his company against these accusations. And so it's been highly watched, highly anticipated, and this is just really the first of more than a thousand potential trials that we could see.
Bloomberg's Kurt Wagner says, this trial centers on a twenty year old woman who blames Meta's Instagram and Google's YouTube for her years of mental health struggles.
Well Nathan, Bloomberg News has learned open Ai is close to final the first phase of a new funding round that's expected to bring in more than one hundred billion dollars. Source of say the overall valuation of the company, including the eventual funding, could exceed eight hundred and fifty billion. Brad Smith is Vice chair and president of Microsoft, a key OpenAI partner, and he says the chat GPT maker is branching out.
It's not as exclusive as it was, say a few years ago. OpenAI uses our compute they train models in our data centers, but they work with other companies as well. We critically rely on OpenAI's frontier models. They are among the best. Many days they are the best in the world, but we have a relationship with anthropic.
Microsoft's Bread Smith made the comments earlier in an interview with Bloomberg, and you can check out that interview as well as live streaming news, all our Bloomberg TV shows, documentaries, and more. It's all in one place at Bloomberg dot Com. Forward to slash videos.
It's turn to the markets now, Karen.
Futures have turned lower after yesterday's gains on Wall Street. The NASDAK dumped eight tenths of one percent. Barbara Reinhardt is Chief investment Officer of Multi asset Strategies at Voya Investment Management.
Short term are very oversold at this point. Look, you've had a thirty three percent correction in US software stocks from their peak in October of last year. It seems to be a bit overdone and somewhat indiscriminate selling at this point. So I don't think there's a reason for us to go to cash at this point. Earnings for
the fourth quarter. We're very strong earned your visions are still holding in their relatively well, and the labor market, which is a big part of consumer spending, seems to be getting a second second breeder at this.
Point, Voya Investment Management's Barbara Reinhardt. The Nasdaq is still down more than five percent from its all time high from late October. We have this red headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal, Karen. The BBC is reporting that the UK's former Prince Andrew has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct
in public office. The report shows cars arriving at the former Princess Sandrimis State comes after local police said they were assessing a complaint that the former prince may have shared confidential material with the late sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Andrew has denied any wrongdoing. Again, the BBC is reporting former Prince Andrew of the UK has been arrested on suspicion of misconduct in public office.
Time now for look at some of the other stories making news in New York and around the world, and for that we're joined by Bloomberg's Michael Barr.
Michael, good morning, Good morning, Karen in New Jersey. Flights in and out of Newark Airport were temporarily suspended last evening after a reported engine failure forced a Jet Blue flight to return to the airport and evacuate passengers shortly after takeoff. The flight heading to West Palm Beach immediately returned to the airport after takeoff. This passenger says, while everyone remained calm in the air, once they were safely evacuated on the slide, it became emotional.
Everybody was panicked, but the moment we got off the plane, everybody was. There was a lot of release of emotions, a lot of tears and shaking and shoutings.
Airport operations resumed after flight five forty three was removed from the taxiway. Authorities say the bodies of eight backcountry skiers have been found and one remains missing after Tuesday's avalanche near Lake Tahoe in California. Six others were found alive. Heavy snow and the threat of additional avalanches slowed the rescue effort in the mountains near Castle Peak, Nevada County Sheriff Shannon.
Moon it's a very remote, rugged area on the north side of the highway. There it is not a groomed area or a ski resort area. This is a back country area, rugged terrain.
Sheriff Moon says this is the deadliest skiing avalanche in modern US history. The New York area could get another winter storm system this weekend. Bloomberg medirologist Rob Carolyn has the latest.
Michael, the weather pattern's getting rather active. We've got another weather system which is going to bring rain to the Tristed area late tonight and tomorrow, then a stronger storm system which could potentially affect the area's Sunday and on into Monday. The problem right now is the computer models
aren't in agreement. Some of them take it out to see to the south of the Tristate area don't bring us any precipitation at all, and some of them bring it close enough to us that we'll be dealing with some snow during the day on Sunday that would end Monday morning. We'll be keeping a watch on this over the next several days. I'm Rob Carolyn, Bloomberg Radio.
Global News twenty four hours a day and whenever you want it with the Bloomberg News. Now, Michael Barr And this is Bloomberg.
Hemon Well thanks Michael all the time. Now for our Bloomberg Sports update, and for that we bring in John stash Hour.
Guys, darreny was quite a day at the Olympics, with the Kayals shiffer in winning the gold medal in the slalom, and three quarter final hockey games went to overtime, including Team USA's dramatic two to one victory over Sweden women's hockey. Today the US versus Canada for the gold medal and Jordan Stoles goes for a third gold medal in Speedskatie. Just a couple of days after Tony Clark resigned as the head of the Baseball Players Association, they've promoted his assistant,
Bruce Meyer. That's a Bloomberg Sports Update.
Stay with us.
More from Bloomberg Daybreak coming up after this.
Coast to coast on Bloomberg Radio, nationwide on Sirius XM, and around the world on Bloomberg dot Com and the Bloomberg Business app. This is Bloomberg Daybreak.
Good morning on Nathan Hager.
After the latest ground of Iran nuclear talks, both the US and Iran said they had made progress on a deal, but oil is on the rise. This morning on reports the US maybe edging closer to war than many Americans might think.
Here's White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt.
The President has always been very clear though, with respect to Iran or any country around the world, diplomacy is always his first option, and Iran would be very wise to make a deal with President Trump and with this administration.
White House Press Secretary Caroline Levitt. This morning, we're joined from Dubai by Bloomberg News Managing editor Paul Wallace. Paul, that sounds like a veiled threat. Is that how Iran is taking it? This morning?
Good morning, Hi, good morning.
Yes, it is a threat of Iran for sure. The thing is that the Americans in the White House, they've been pretty consistent in the last few weeks. They have said publicly that they want to try to make the negotiations with Iran work, to try to resolve this diplomatically. They've said they know it will be very difficult. Dealing
with the Islamic Republic is anything but easy. But at the same time, if they don't reach a deal, if Iran doesn't agree to a deal, then it should be prepared for military action, which I think is something you know, Caroline Levitt was reiterating yesterday.
I think what you've.
Got also, you know, to note, is you've got a massive build up of US forces in the region, naval ships and jets as well, and a second aircraft carrier is on the way and should be in the Middle East pretty soon. So this is a huge amount of but looking bigger than what the US had off the coast of Venezuela in you know, December and at the beginning of January before it captured Nicholas Maduro. So there's
a lot of military hardware there. It seems as if the US is pretty much ready to go, the military is ready to go to moments notice, if Trump decides to go that route. And there are some people who think that even though the US is saying it will let to promise you run its course, that it may not actually do that. It may decide to strike whilst the talks are ongoing and before there's been any collapse
in them. So that's something that's sort of hanging over the oil market right now, and I think that's a big reason why.
Is rising.
Paul.
What are we hearing about whether the administration is close to making that decision, what's the latest that we're hearing. We've only got about thirty seconds left.
Yeah.
To be honest, I don't think it's a cliche in this situation to say only Donald Trump knows. I mean, some of the things we're hearing from the White House suggests that even pretty senior White House people don't know that Donald Trump is going to make that decision himself, and he hasn't fully let on what he'll do yet.
This is Bloomberg Daybreak, your morning podcast on the stories making news from Wall Street to Washington and beyond.
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And I'm Nathan Hager.
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