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The Morning Risk Report: U.S. Prepares Charges, Sanctions Over Venezuela’s Food-Aid Program
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An emergency food program known as CLAP is the main food source for an estimated 15% of Venezuelans. PHOTO: MATIAS DELACROIX/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Good morning. The U.S. is preparing measures ranging from criminal charges to sanctions against people it believes to be involved in Venezuela’s military-run emergency food program, according to U.S. officials, part of an effort to target what they describe as a large-scale money-laundering operation run by the government.
The U.S. government is preparing to allege in criminal charges and sanctions that Venezuelan officials and private contractors, including a Colombian businessman, have laundered billions of dollars in state funds meant for the food program and other state operations, said the officials and other people familiar with the matter. Through the alleged money-laundering networks, some of these people amassed large sums in overseas accounts, as well as U.S. real estate, yachts and airplanes, according to a senior Treasury official.
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The measures are expected to be rolled out in coming weeks and months, in a bid to increase pressure on the Caracas regime. The U.S. and other countries have recognized the political opposition as Venezuela’s legitimate government, but President Nicolás Maduro—supported by Cuba and Russia—has held on to power, squelching a U.S.-backed push to force him out.
The latest actions targeting the food program are designed to disrupt the alleged money laundering, depriving the Maduro regime of income the U.S. believes is illegitimate. By exposing these activities, the U.S. also aims to undermine the regime’s legitimacy both at home and abroad and help track down state assets Washington says should be controlled by Juan Guaidó.
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Qualcomm is by far the leading supplier of chips that connect phones to wireless networks. PHOTO: MIKE BLAKE/REUTERS
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Qualcomm Inc. unlawfully suppressed competition in the market for cellphone chips and used its dominant position to exact excessive licensing fees, a federal judge ruled in a decision that could challenge the company’s business model and shake up the smartphone industry.
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A former banker at Credit Suisse Group AG this week became the first person to plead guilty in the U.S. in an alleged bribery and kickback scheme in Mozambique that financed corruption and destabilized the impoverished country’s economy.
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Mallinckrodt PLC lost almost one-quarter of its stock-market value Tuesday after the drugmaker said a dispute with health regulators might cost it hundreds of millions of dollars and reduce future sales for one of its top-selling products.
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Huawei Technologies Co. denounced U.S. actions against the company as “bullying” and implored European governments to resist American pressure to follow suit in a bid to safeguard one of its most lucrative markets.
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India’s antitrust watchdog is assessing the domestic e-commerce sector, a step that could have consequences for Amazon.com Inc. and Walmart Inc.’s Flipkart, which dominate online sales in the country.
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New guidelines from the Securities and Exchange Commission, released on Tuesday, will make it tougher for exchanges to boost fees for data and high-speed connections by requiring them to include detailed disclosures each time they seek to adjust a fee.
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A bipartisan group of four U.S. senators has asked financial regulators to create rules barring financial advisers from inheriting money or property from their clients.
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A port in Qingdao in Shandong province, China. If kept in place, new tariffs would shrink the U.S. and Chinese economies by 0.2% or 0.3% by 2021, said the OECD. PHOTO: AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Four weeks after faulty sensor data led a 737 MAX jet to crash in Indonesia last year, a high-ranking Boeing Co. executive raised and dismissed the possibility of a bird collision triggering a similar sequence of events that could cause a second accident.
U.S. aviation authorities increasingly believe that a version of that scenario, described by Boeing executive Mike Sinnett at a November meeting with American Airlines pilots, may have led to the Ethiopian Airlines crash nearly four months later, according to officials familiar with the details.
Airbus SE’s new chief operating officer said the European plane maker expects more regulatory scrutiny after the deadly crashes of two Boeing 737 MAX jets raised questions about safety oversight.
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Conflicts between the U.S. and its major trade partners have weakened business investment around the world, threatening to hamper future as well as current rates of economic growth, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Tuesday.
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Bing Xu, right, at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council conference in Tokyo on Tuesday. PHOTO: MAXIMILIAN ALEXANDER WOHLLAIB FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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The co-founder of SenseTime Group Ltd., a Chinese artificial-intelligence startup under fire for the use of its facial-recognition technology in mass-surveillance systems, said its technology should be regulated rather than banned.
SenseTime, which has received funding from the Saudi-backed SoftBank Vision Fund, is navigating rising privacy concerns as government agencies and companies around the world look to artificial intelligence to store and analyze data of people’s faces.
San Francisco recently became the first U.S. city to ban the use of facial recognition by local agencies, in response to criticism that the technology gives authorities excessive means to spy on the public.
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A slowdown in hiring approvals for Chinese nationals is proving troublesome for U.S. chip makers, like Intel, as the pool of talent for technical work is shallow. PHOTO: MAURITZ ANTIN/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
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The U.S. has sharply slowed approvals for the nation’s semiconductor companies to hire Chinese nationals for advanced engineering jobs, according to industry insiders, who say the delays are limiting access to vital talent. The disruption, which started last year, has affected hundreds of jobs across the industry at companies including Intel Corp., Qualcomm Inc. and Globalfoundries Inc., impeding their ability to hire Chinese employees or move existing employees to key projects in the U.S., these people said.
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The U.S. Postal Service is testing self-driving trucks on a more than 1,000-mile mail run between Phoenix and Dallas, the post office’s first use of the technology for long hauls.
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Clothing available for rent was hanging at the Nuuly office in Philadelphia. PHOTO: HANNAH YOON FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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Urban Outfitters Inc. is jumping into clothing rental, trying to tap one of the fastest-growing areas of fashion without discouraging shoppers from visiting its stores.
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Coca-Cola Co. is using one of its biggest failures as a marketing tool, bringing back New Coke for a limited time in a cross-promotion with the Netflix science-fiction horror series “Stranger Things.”
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Merck & Co. agreed to acquire cancer drug developer Peloton Therapeutics Inc. for $1.05 billion in cash, adding to a list of deals in 2019 by pharmaceutical companies looking to bolster their cancer treatment portfolios.
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Saudi Arabia has set up a deal to purchase U.S. liquefied natural gas from Sempra Energy, a new strategic direction for the kingdom as it seeks to establish a footprint in the growing global market for the fuel.
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PPG Industries said it would look for cost savings in its manufacturing facilities by reorganizing some its cost structures and exiting certain smaller product lines. PHOTO: JASPER JUINEN/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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PPG Industries Inc. won’t split its units making building paints and industrial coatings, choosing to forge ahead as a unified company after facing pressure from an activist investor to maximize value in its disparate operations.
Activist Trian Fund Management LP, which has a roughly 2.5% stake in PPG, has urged executives since October to separate those businesses to accelerate sales and profit growth.
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