Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Here's your midday brief for Friday, February 13th. I'm Pierre Bien-Aimé for The Wall Street Journal. Inflation slowed to 2.4% in January, falling more than economists expected. The Labor Department said prices fell for gasoline and used vehicles. But costs for services rose at their fastest monthly clip in a year.
Prices overall are growing more slowly, a good signal for the economy, along with a better-than-expected jobs report earlier this week. The reports taken together suggest that the Federal Reserve will stick with its wait-and-see approach to cutting interest rates. In Dubai, the CEO of ports operator DP World, who was named in the Epstein files, has resigned.
The Justice Department files and other recent public disclosures showed Jeffrey Epstein and Sultan Ahmed bin Sulaym exchanged friendly emails for years, including discussing women in crude terms. Photos showed that bin Sulaym visited Epstein's island.
Chapter 2: What are the latest inflation statistics and their implications?
Bin Sulaym couldn't immediately be reached for comment.
And we exclusively report that Anthropic has added former Microsoft and General Motors executive Chris Liddell to its board of directors, as the AI startup considers an IPO. As chief financial officer at GM, Liddell led the carmaker's successful $23 billion IPO in 2010. He also served in President Trump's first administration.
Anthropic yesterday said it had closed a $30 billion funding round that valued the company at $380 billion. Heads up, an artificial intelligence tool helped us make this episode by creating summaries that were based on WSJ reporting and then reviewed and adapted by an editor. We'll have more coverage of the day's news on the WSJ's What's News podcast.
You can add it to your playlist on your smart speaker or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.