News when you want it with Bloomberg News now, I'm Nathan Hager.

And I'm Karen Moscow. 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. Axios says the U.S.

operation would likely be a weeks long campaign.

We get more from Bloomberg managing editor Paul Wallace in Dubai.

It sounds as if Iran 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 including in the oil

market, who think America might be essentially trying to lull Iran into a

false sense of security and may be willing to strike the country

before Iran returns with those proposals.

Because that's, you know, in some sense is echoes what happened in June last

year with the 12 day war between Iran and Israel and then America 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 U.S.

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. Two Democrats on the House Oversight

Committee, the former CEO of L Brands, 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 Yasmin 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 Yasmin Ansari spoke to reporters from Ohio, where Wexner agreed

to testify under an agreement with a committee, the Justice Department named

Wexner, as one of the ten co-conspirators in its 2019

investigation into Epstein. Wexner was not charged in the case and

says he was duped by Epstein. Meanwhile, Karan, Bill Gates has backed

out of a speech at a high profile aid 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.

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, you know, locally.

You know what makes you think that? I just do.

I don't know why I don't have any evidence to prove that.

Well, I just believe that she's someone here locally.

Pima County Sheriff Chris Nanos 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 is not held a news conference in almost two weeks.

In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Nanos said some of the

criticism is politically motivated and in his words, haters are going to hate.

Karen Meadows, 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 Matter 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 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 20 year old woman who blames Metters Instagram and Google's

YouTube for her years of mental health struggles.

Well, Nathan Bloomberg News has learned open air is close to finalizing the

first phase of a new funding round that's expected to bring in more than

$100 billion. 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 AI partner, and he says that GPT maker is branching out.

It's not as exclusive as it was, say, a few years ago.

Open air uses our compute. They train models in our data centers,

but they work with other companies as well.

We critically rely on open eyes 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 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 forward slash videos.

And we have this red headline crossing the Bloomberg terminal carrying 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 Sandringham 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.

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. And that's news when you it with

Bloomberg News now. I'm Karen Moscow.

I'm Nathan Hager and this is Bloomberg.