Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts,

radio, news.

>> 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 1%. That's as Axios

has reported, the Trump administration

is closer to a major war in the Middle

East than most expect. Axio 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 Iran has, you know,

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. Um but of

course there are plenty of people

including uh including in the oil market

who think America might be uh

essentially trying to lull Iran into a

false sense of uh uh security and maybe

willing to strike the country um you

know before Iran you know returns with

those proposals cuz that's you know in

some senses that echoes what happened in

June last year with the 12-day war

between Iran and Israel and then America

um at the end you know that that will

happen when or at least it started when

the US and Iran were in the middle of

nuclear talks.

>> Bloomberg's Paul Wallace 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 Wexner testified behind

closed doors about his relationship with

the late sex offender to Democrats on

the House Oversight Committee. The

former CEO of Elbrand 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 key

details of his relationship with the

late sex offender including giving him

considerable financial support. Arizona

Democrat Yasiman 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.

>> Congresswoman Yasim 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 10 co-conspirators

in its 2019 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 a 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 priorities. Gates has come under

criticism for his ties to Epstein. The

Gates Foundation did not mention the

financier in its statement, but Gates

has called his relationship with the

late sex offender a huge mistake.

>> Nathan, let's get to the latest in the

search for Nancy Guthrie. It's been 19

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 leads as they sort

through upwards of 50,000 tips. Pima

County Sheriff Chris Nanos spoke with

BBC News. I think she's somewhere here

in North

>> locally. Yeah.

>> 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 here

locally.

>> Puma County Sheriff Chris Nano is

speaking to the BBC. The sheriff has

come under some criticism for his

handling of the investigation. He

declared the scene at Nancy Guthri's

home done 3 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, Nano said,

"Some of the criticism is politically

motivated and in his words, haters are

going to hate."

>> Uh 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's Kurt

Wagner says this is a signature moment

for social media

>> to kind of be challenged with these

allegations and and in Mark Zuckerberg's

case to defend himself and his company

against these accusations. And so uh

it's been highly watched, highly uh

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

20-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

OpenAI is close to finalizing the first

phase of a new funding round that's

expected to bring in more than a hundred

billion dollars. Sources say the overall

valuation of the company, including the

eventual funding, could exceed $850

billion. Brad Smith is vice chair and

president of Microsoft, a key open AAI

partner, and he says the chat GPT maker

is branching out.

>> It's not as exclusive as it was, say, a

few years ago. Open AAI uses our

compute. They train models in our data

centers, but they work with other

companies as well. We critically rely on

Open AI's frontier models. They are

among the best. In many days, they are

the best in the world. But we have a

relationship with Anthropic.

>> Microsoft's Brad 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.com/videos.

>> Let's turn to the markets now. Karen,

futures have turned lower after

yesterday's gains on Wall Street. The

NASDAQ dumped 8/10en of 1%. Barbara

Reinhardt is chief investment officer of

multiasset strategies at Voya Investment

Management. short-term are very oversold

at this point. Look, you've had a 33%

correction in US software stocks from

their peak uh 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 reason

for us to go to cash at this point.

Earnings for the fourth quarter were

very strong. Earnings revisions are

still holding in there relatively well.

And the labor market, which is a big

part of consumer spending, seems to be

getting a second a second breather at

this point.

>> Voya Investment Management's Barbara

Reinhard, the NASDAQ is still down more

than 5% from its all-time high of from

late October. And 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 prince's Sanding

Estate. It 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. Uh 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 a 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 Bar.

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

JetBlue 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. The moment we

got off the plane, everybody was there

was a lot of release of of emotions, a

lot of um tears and shaking and and

shouting.

Airport operations resumed after flight

543 was removed from the taxi way.

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 uh

north side of the highway there. It is

not a groomed area or a ski resort area.

This is a backcountry 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 meteorologist 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 tri-state area late tonight and

tomorrow. Then a stronger storm system

which could potentially affect the area

Sunday and on into Monday. The problem

right now is the computer models aren't

in agreement. Some of them take it out

to sea to the south of the tri-state

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 24 hours a day and

whenever you want it with the Bloomberg

News Now. I'm Michael Bar and this is

Bloomberg. Aaron,

>> thanks Michael. Time now for our

Bloomberg sports update. And for that we

bring in John Stash Hour.

>> Thanks Darren. It was quite a day at the

Olympics with Michaela Shiffren winning

the gold medal in the slalom. And three

quarterfinal hockey games went to

overtime including team USA's dramatic 2

to1 victory over Sweden. women's hockey

today, the US versus Canada for the gold

medal, and Jordan Stole goes for a third

gold medal in speed skating. Just a

couple days after Tony Clark resigned as

the head of the Baseball Players

Association, they've promoted his

assistant, Bruce Meyer. That's your

Bloomberg Sports Update.

>> Stay with us. More from Bloomberg

Daybreak coming up after this.

Coast to coast on Bloomberg radio,

nationwide on SiriusXM, and around the

world on Bloomberg.com and the Bloomberg

Business app. This is Bloomberg

Daybreak.

>> Good morning. I'm Nathan Hager. After

the latest round 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 may

be edging closer to war than many

Americans might think. Here's White

House press secretary Caroline Levit.

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

Levit. This morning we're joined from

Dubai by Bloomberg News managing editor

Paul Wallace. Uh Paul, that sounds like

a veiled threat. Is that how Iran is

taking it this morning? Good morning.

>> Hi, good morning. Yes, it is um 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 uh that

they want to try to make um 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 uh but easy. Um but

at the same time if they don't reach a

deal if if Iran doesn't agree to a deal

then um it should be prepared for

military uh action which I think is

something you know Caroline Lever was

reiterating uh yesterday. I think what

you've got also to uh you know to to

note is you've got a massive buildup of

US forces in the region. Um naval ships

and uh jets as well. A second aircraft

carrier is on the way and and should be

in the Middle East pretty pretty soon.

Um so this is a huge armada bit looking

bigger than what the US had um off the

coast of Venezuela in um you know

December uh and at the beginning of

January before it captured Nicholas

Maduro. So there's a lot of um military

hardware there. It seems as if the US is

pretty much ready to go uh the military

is ready to go at a moment's notice if

Trump decides to go that route. And

there are some people who think that

even though uh the US is saying it will

let diplomacy run its course um that it

may not actually do that. It may decide

to strike uh whilst the talks are

ongoing and before there's been any

collapse in them. So that's something

that's sort of uh hanging over the oil

market right now and I think that's a

big reason why oil is rising.

>> Paul, what are we hearing about whether

the the administration is close to

making that decision? What's the latest

that we're hearing? We've only got about

30 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.

Look for us on your podcast feed by 6:00

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informed all day long. I'm Karen Moscow.

>> And I'm Nathan Hager. Join us again

tomorrow morning for all the news you

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Bloomberg Daybreak.