Daniel Bach

One late feature of Trump's State of the Union address was his focus on Iran and its nuclear program.

Referring to the ongoing negotiations with Tehran, the president said they had not yet come to an agreement.

The comments come as tensions are growing between anti-regime activists and pro-government militias on campuses, which started in several major Iranian cities last weekend.

And in a display of strength ahead of further talks with the U.S.

on Thursday, Iranian state TV has been showing military drills, including missile rocket launchers and firing guns at targets.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates has apologized to Gates Foundation staff for his ties to Jeffrey Epstein, admitting his mistakes cast a cloud over the organization while maintaining he never participated in any crimes.

Gates acknowledged past affairs with two Russian women that Epstein later discovered, but clarified they were not among Epstein's victims.

Now to the latest twist in a Hollywood saga, and Warner Brothers Discovery says yesterday's takeover bid from Paramount could well beat the best offer from Netflix.

That said, journal media and entertainment reporter Joe Flint says the streaming giant will have a chance to match Paramount's offer for the historic Hollywood studios.

Paramount is scheduled to release its latest earnings results later today and Warner tomorrow.

Anthropic says it will relax its core safety policy if a comparable or superior AI model is released by a competing AI lab.

The company is in a fierce battle with the likes of OpenAI, XAI, and Google, but has in the past paused development work on its model if the changes could be classified as dangerous.

As we mentioned on last night's podcast, the Pentagon has also given Anthropic a Friday deadline to relax its usage policies at risk of losing its defense contract.

Anthropic previously told the Defense Department its clawed tools couldn't be used for domestic surveillance or to run autonomous weapons.

And the fallout from Blue Owl's liquidation of $1.4 billion in assets last week has got some retail investors panicking about how safe private credit investments are.

The journal Spendumit covers private credit for us and says advisors are urging everyday investors to keep faith.

And that's it for What's News for this Wednesday morning.

Today's show was produced by Heidi Moyer.

Our supervising producer is Sondra Kilhoff.

And I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal.