Good morning. Companies have long dabbled in scenario planning exercises to help understand and reduce risk. Recently, amid tariff talks, threats of trade wars, geopolitical uncertainty, and, of course, the global pandemic, such war-gaming has become more popular.

Consulting firms often design and oversee exercises to simulate real external threats that might derail a company’s operations. The players, from executives to rank-and-file employees, gather around tables, sometimes for hours, responding to and attempting to resolve simulated emergencies. Similar to a choose-your-own-adventure book, every move a player makes leads to new and frequently unanticipated consequences that can have ripple effects throughout the company as the multiround games advance.

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The drills can be designed to help companies work through multiple types of external threats. Cyber-threats are common, but other examples can be weather-related disasters (including climate change), tariffs, changes in interest rates, active shooters and other forms of risk. Of course, pandemic-related threats are also becoming an increasingly popular tabletop exercise.

“There has been a rising sense that the world is becoming more complicated and resiliency is something executives need to think about,” says Ed Barriball, a partner at McKinsey & Co. “I think for a lot of folks, Covid brought that fully into focus.”

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A U.S. accountant was sentenced Thursday to more than three years in prison for his role in a case related to the leaked documents known as the Panama Papers, the U.S. Justice Department said.

Richard Gaffey of Medfield, Mass., pleaded guilty in February to an eight-count federal indictment that charged him with wire fraud, conspiracy to commit money laundering and conspiracy to defraud the Internal Revenue Service, among other charges. Mr. Gaffey, 76 years old, helped clients evade U.S. taxes, including by obscuring their ownership of offshore shell companies and bank accounts holding tens of millions of dollars in investments, prosecutors said.

A lawyer representing Mr. Gaffey didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. U.S. District Judge Richard M. Berman in New York ordered Mr. Gaffey to serve 39 months in prison and three years of supervised release. Mr. Gaffey was also ordered to forfeit gains of about $5.4 million and pay restitution of about $3.5 million plus a $25,000 fine, the Justice Department said.

Keysight Technologies Inc. agreed to pay $473,157 on behalf of a former subsidiary to settle apparent violations of U.S. sanctions on Iran, the U.S. Treasury Department said, in a case that underscores the risks U.S. companies face when acquiring foreign companies with customers in blacklisted jurisdictions.

• The Blue Cross Blue Shield insurance group has negotiated a tentative settlement in a sweeping antitrust suit filed on behalf of customers, according to people with knowledge of the matter, in a deal that would require a payout of around $2.7 billion and curtail practices that allegedly limited competition among its three dozen member-companies.
   
• Blank-check companies that have raised tens of billions of dollars to acquire hot startups are under the microscope at the Securities and Exchange Commission. SEC Chairman Jay Clayton said the regulator is examining how sponsors of these special-purpose acquisition companies, or SPACs, disclose their ownership and how any compensation is tied to an acquisition.
   
• Apple’s legal battle in Europe over a $15.2 billion tax bill will continue after the European Union appealed a court ruling that sided with the tech giant. EU officials doubled down on their ruling from 2016, which alleged that Ireland had granted illegal tax breaks to Apple.
   
• Republicans on the Senate Commerce Committee scheduled an Oct. 1 vote to subpoena testimony from the CEOs of Facebook, Twitter and Google, in the latest GOP action against social-media giants.
   
• Mary L. Trump, the president’s niece, filed a lawsuit claiming he and others swindled her out of a multimillion-dollar inheritance by engaging in a decadeslong fraud that also harmed New York City taxpayers. The complaint names as defendants President Trump, his sister Maryanne and the executor of their late brother Robert’s estate, and alleges the siblings perpetrated a scheme to defraud her of interests in the family business after her father, Fred Trump Jr., died in 1981.
   
• An Italian cardinal whose former office has been embroiled in a financial scandal resigned from his Vatican post and renounced his rights as a cardinal, a surprise escalation of an affair that has overshadowed that Holy See for the last year.

TikTok’s Chinese owner said it is seeking approval from Beijing for a White House-endorsed plan to turn the short-video app into a U.S.-based company, officially placing the fate of the year’s hottest social-media asset in the hands of Chinese authorities. ByteDance said it had submitted its plan, which involves joining with Oracle and Walmart, to commerce authorities in the Chinese capital under recently expanded export restrictions and is awaiting a decision.

A federal judge, meanwhile, gave the Trump administration until this afternoon to postpone a fast-approaching ban on U.S. downloads of TikTok, or defend the policy in a court hearing this weekend. The administration contends that the data TikTok collects from U.S. consumers could be shared with the Chinese government, threatening U.S. national security. TikTok has said it would never hand over such data.

• Medical institutions have faced an onslaught of hacking attempts this year, ranging from ransomware attacks on hospitals to espionage campaigns targeting pharmaceutical companies developing vaccines. Ransomware crippled servers at University Hospital Düsseldorf this month, prompting the hospital to send emergency patients to other facilities. One woman died during the delay in her treatment.

Companies including “Fortnite” maker Epic Games, Spotify Technology and Tinder owner Match Group have forged an alliance to pressure Apple and other app-store operators to make changes to their marketplace rules.

The Coalition for App Fairness, a nonprofit registered in Washington, D.C., made its public debut Thursday, saying most app stores collect excessive commissions from software developers on users’ digital purchases and stifle competition by giving unfair advantages to their own products and services.

Facebook will train and require employees to moderate internal discussion groups devoted to politics, social causes and other topics unrelated to company business as part of its effort to curb internal debate around divisive issues.

The company said that the move—taken amid a contentious U.S. election and ongoing social justice protests around the country—will be accompanied by restrictions in the ways employees can express their opinions on controversial social topics on Facebook’s internal Workplace communications tool and a tightening of company policy on “respectful workplace communications.”

• United Airlines Holdings Inc. will offer Covid-19 tests for a fee to passengers flying from San Francisco to Hawaii, as airlines look to testing as a way to reopen some destinations that have been largely closed to travel during the pandemic.
   
• Some European governments are relying on targeted local restrictions to stem contagion in an effort to avoid returning to the full-blown lockdowns of early 2020, including widespread business closures and stay-at-home orders, which broke the pandemic’s first wave but also froze European economies.
   
• Israel ordered all nonessential businesses and synagogues to close starting Friday, tightening restrictions a week after imposing a second nationwide lockdown as the government struggles to contain a resurgent coronavirus outbreak.
   
• The British government joined other European countries in offering extended help to businesses in the face of a new surge in coronavirus cases.
   
• Newly reported U.S. coronavirus cases rose, closing in on seven million, as House Democrats prepared a new aid package and another vaccine entered final-stage trials.