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The Morning Risk Report: Companies Target Workforce Risks in 2021
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A computer scientist works in his home office in Dortmund, western Germany. PHOTO: INA FASSBENDER/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Good morning. Business-risk prognosticators are focused on the future of work—and the challenges an increasingly remote workforce could continue to pose—in 2021.
The transformation of work in the past year, due in large part to the coronavirus pandemic, has heightened dangers related to business continuity, cybersecurity, culture and talent management, organizations that monitor enterprise risks say. In the year ahead, organizations are expected to face those and new risks related to returning to the office—ranging from employee retention, workplace safety and liability issues raised by employees, risk management organizations say.
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“As businesses transform their workplaces, new vulnerabilities are emerging,” Carolina Klint, a risk management leader at insurance brokerage Marsh, said in a statement accompanying the release of WEF’s Global Risks Report 2021. “Rapid digitalization is exponentially increasing cyber exposures, supply chain disruption is radically altering business models and a rise in serious health issues has accompanied employees’ shift to remote working.”
Some of those risks emanate from employees depending on home networks, which can be less stable and less secure than corporate networks, risk management experts tell Risk & Compliance Journal. Companies also face challenges as they ask more employees to return to the office. Businesses are working through ways to ensure safe work environments, such as determining how many people can occupy an elevator at one time. Some are also grappling with whether to require employees to be vaccinated.
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How Sanctions Policy Could Change in 2021
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Join us Feb. 11 for a discussion of the outlook for sanctions policy under President-elect Joe Biden and now that the U.K. is fully separated from the European Union. Register here.
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Banks in Sweden Formalize AML Collaboration With Police
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The biggest banks in Sweden said Tuesday that they are taking the next step in their initiative to share information both with each other and the police to better fight money laundering, terrorism financing and organized crime.
The Swedish Anti-Money Laundering Intelligence Task Force was launched in June as a pilot project and has seen the largest banks operating in the country regularly meet, together with Sweden’s police intelligence unit, to share information about new types of crime and patterns. The banks participating in the project include Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB, Swedbank AB, Nordea Bank Abp, Svenska Handelsbanken AB and Danske Bank A/S.
“The pilot phase of the initiative has had promising results and the banks, and the police have now decided to take the co-operation to the next level by formalizing it to a greater extent,” the banks said in a joint statement.
—Dominic Chopping
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Iran conducted a military drill Tuesday involving commando units, fighter jets and displays of rocket-launcher systems. PHOTO: IRANIAN ARMY/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Iran sanctioned President Trump and nine other U.S. officials, in a parting shot against an outgoing administration that has pummeled the country and its top officials with sanctions. Iran’s Foreign Ministry said the U.S. officials were designated for their role in terrorist activities against Iran, including sanctions and last year’s killing of Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
The Iranian sanctions also targeted Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, former and current special representatives for Iran Brian Hook and Elliott Abrams, as well as former national security adviser John Bolton. The Iranian sanctions will have limited impact as the targeted U.S. officials have no known commercial links to Iran. Yet the move shows Tehran’s desire for a last-minute public relations blow to Mr. Trump, who leaves office today.
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President Trump issued a flurry of pardons and commutations on his final day in office, rewarding longtime allies including former chief strategist Steve Bannon and onetime fundraiser Elliott Broidy.
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Mr. Bannon was charged in connection to a scheme to siphon money from a crowdfunding campaign for a border wall. The White House said in a statement that he “has been an important leader in the conservative movement and is known for his political acumen.”
Mr. Broidy in October pleaded guilty to illegally lobbying the Trump administration, a charge that stemmed from an investigation into an alleged multibillion-dollar fraud at a Malaysian fund. The White House statement referenced his philanthropic efforts.
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The Justice Department wants to limit a Supreme Court ruling that protects gay and transgender people in the workplace, an attempt by the Trump administration to influence policy as President-elect Joe Biden takes over.
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The Supreme Court’s June ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County said a bedrock federal civil-rights law prohibits employers from discriminating against workers on the basis of their sexual orientation or gender identity. The 6-3 opinion, written by a Trump appointee Justice Neil Gorsuch, rejected the administration’s arguments that federal civil rights law provides no protection to LGBT employees.
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President-elect Joe Biden on his first day in office will take a range of executive actions, including implementing a national mask mandate on federal property, revoking a permit for the Keystone XL oil pipeline and reversing a travel ban from several largely Muslim and African countries, officials said.
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The Justice Department won’t pursue charges against GOP Sen. Richard Burr after ending its investigation of stock trades he made in advance of the coronavirus market turmoil last year, the North Carolina lawmaker said.
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The Supreme Court on Tuesday stepped into the middle of a long-running battle over federal limits on media ownership in local markets, weighing whether a recent regulatory rollback sufficiently addressed concerns about racial and gender diversity.
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The U.S. Justice Department filed charges against an Iranian academic, alleging he covertly drew a salary from the government of Iran while living and working in the U.S. as a professor, political scientist and Middle East expert.
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The Trump administration concluded China has committed “genocide and crimes against humanity” against the Uighur ethnic group, delivering a forceful condemnation to Beijing on policies that have so far failed to galvanize international action.
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A federal appeals court vacated the Trump administration’s rules that eased restrictions on greenhouse-gas emissions from power plants, potentially making it easier for the incoming Biden administration to reset rules targeting climate emissions.
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Google removed the small social-media site Wimkin from its Google Play store, joining Apple in cutting the app’s reach amid a broader effort to rein in misleading or potentially harmful content.
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The Salesforce Tower in San Francisco. Chief Information Officer Jo-ann Olsovsky commented, “Now more than ever in this all-digital, work-from-anywhere world, every industry needs IT support.” PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Corporate technology recruiters say rolling back restrictions on immigrant work visas, a move backed by President-elect Joe Biden, will expand the pool of information technology job candidates and help ease a longstanding labor shortage.
Meanwhile, President Trump authorized a program to give work permits and deportation protections to Venezuelan immigrants in the U.S. without legal permission, an action Mr. Biden had promised to take during the 2020 campaign.
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Beijing’s bar against Australian coal imports is upending global flows of the energy commodity, leaving dozens of loaded ships stranded off the Chinese coast and reshaping the direction of the seaborne trade.
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The New York Mets fired general manager Jared Porter on Tuesday. PHOTO: ZOOM VIA ASSOCIATED PRESS
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The New York Mets fired general manager Jared Porter after publication of accusations that he sent explicit, unsolicited texts and images to a female journalist in 2016 when he worked for the Chicago Cubs.
Major League Baseball also intends to launch an investigation into Mr. Porter, which could lead to him being suspended from the sport, a person familiar with the matter said. Former Houston Astros assistant GM Brandon Taubman was indefinitely banned from baseball last January after he made inappropriate comments toward female reporters at a postgame celebration during the 2019 playoffs.
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Experts from China and the WHO joint team in Wuhan on Feb. 23. A panel is investigating how a virus first detected in the city managed to spread world-wide. PHOTO: CHINA DAILY/REUTERS
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The World Health Organization was poorly prepared to prevent a disease like Covid-19 from becoming a pandemic, and wasn’t adapted for a globalized era of easy travel and extensive trade, an international panel said.
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Rochelle Walensky, the incoming director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said she will start her new job focusing on helping states fix Covid-19 vaccination programs and persuading exhausted Americans to wear masks and take other precautions. The agency also will try to help people overcome doubts about Covid-19 vaccines.
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Drugmakers are racing to develop a new generation of Covid-19 medicines to make them easier to give to patients and to stay ahead of virus mutations that could make some current drugs less effective. Moderna Inc.’s leader, meanwhile, said the drugmaker is on track to produce enough doses of its new Covid-19 vaccine to help meet President-elect Joe Biden’s goal to administer 100 million vaccine doses in the first 100 days after he takes office.
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The open-outcry pit at the London Metal Exchange in Finsbury Square on Sept. 25, 2019. PHOTO: JASON ALDEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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The London Metal Exchange is proposing closing its open-outcry ring, where traders have swapped metals like copper and lead using shouts and hand signals for 144 years, in a bid to attract more financial players to its marketplace.
The LME temporarily closed the ring when Covid-19 ripped through the U.K. in March, judging the tight circle of red couches that dozens of traders crowd around to be a health risk.
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