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The Morning Risk Report: Companies Grapple With Questions About Covid-19 Vaccine Mandate
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Federal rules will require most employees to be vaccinated or receive weekly Covid-19 testing. PHOTO: BRANDON BELL/GETTY IMAGES
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Good morning. Companies preparing to implement the Biden administration’s Covid-19 vaccine mandate face logistical challenges and unanswered questions about how to comply, employment and compensation lawyers told Risk & Compliance Journal's Dylan Tokar.
Businesses are awaiting more details in a formal rule that the Occupational Safety and Health Administration plans to issue in coming weeks.
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One of the biggest unknowns is who will be responsible for covering the cost of testing for employees who choose to remain unvaccinated, lawyers said. Under the mandate announced last week, all employers with 100 or more workers would have to require that their workers be vaccinated or undergo at least weekly Covid-19 testing. Employers that don’t comply can face fines of up to about $14,000, according to the administration.
Companies also are wondering exactly how OSHA will determine the threshold for which businesses are covered by the requirement, and about exemptions for employees who continue to work from home or who have religious or medical accommodations that are protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
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WSJ Risk & Compliance Forum
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Join us on Oct. 12 for the WSJ Risk & Compliance Forum. The virtual program includes sessions on anti-money-laundering laws, emerging risks, compliance and cryptocurrencies, lessons from Wirecard, and workshops on ESG reporting and responding to ransomware. You can register here.
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Purdue pleaded guilty last year to three federal felonies over its marketing and selling of OxyContin, its flagship opioid painkiller. PHOTO: GEORGE FREY/REUTERS
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The Justice Department, continuing its fight against a roughly $4.5 billion settlement that will shield the family who owns OxyContin maker Purdue Pharma LP from opioid lawsuits, is seeking to pause the deal until after federal appeals courts have weighed in on the agreement.
U.S. Trustee William Harrington, who is part of the Justice Department unit monitoring the nation’s bankruptcy courts, said in a Wednesday court filing that U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Robert Drain was wrong to approve the settlement earlier this month and said his ruling authorizing the deal between Purdue and its Sackler-family owners will likely be overturned by a higher court.
The Justice Department challenge represents the next stage in the fight over the settlement, which will likely move to an influential federal appeals court that oversees bankruptcy courts in New York, where Purdue filed for chapter 11.
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The Securities and Exchange Commission’s $10 million settlement this week with an analytics firm suggests regulators are taking a harder line on the data-broker industry that investors increasingly rely on to make trades, legal experts and former SEC officials say.
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The SEC said Tuesday it settled securities fraud charges with App Annie Inc., which analyzes data about consumers’ mobile app usage, for misleading developers about its privacy controls. The agency said the settlement is the first such action against an alternative data provider, a firm that sells third-party information to investors who are trying to project companies’ performance.
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Federal prosecutors plan to criminally charge a former Boeing Co. pilot they suspect of misleading aviation regulators about safety issues blamed for two fatal crashes of the 737 MAX, according to people familiar with the matter.
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The Federal Reserve is launching a review of its internal rules governing the financial activities of its officials in the wake of news last week that the leaders of the Dallas and Boston regional Fed banks actively traded in financial markets.
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Democrats are taking a fresh look at their proposals for reducing carbon emissions in their $3.5 trillion spending package, hoping to win over moderate party members who raised concerns about elements of the plan.
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Online-dating company Match Group Inc. is working to sidestep Apple Inc.’s and Google’s payments systems following moves by authorities in the U.S. and South Korea to loosen the tech giants’ grip on app-store transactions.
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A Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. subsidiary agreed to pay a $4 million fine to settle an inquiry from Massachusetts securities regulators into the social-media and trading activity of its employees, including well-known GameStop Corp. investor Keith Gill.
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A grand jury has indicted a high-profile cybersecurity lawyer in connection with special counsel John Durham’s investigation into the origins of the FBI’s Russia probe, on charges that he lied to investigators during the 2016 presidential campaign.
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The World Bank canceled a prominent report rating the business environment of the world’s countries after an investigation concluded that senior bank management pressured staff to alter data affecting the ranking of China and other nations.
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Sales at restaurants were flat last month after rising briskly for most of this year. PHOTO: LEV RADIN/PACIFIC PRESS/ZUMA PRESS
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The U.S. economy is proving resilient in the face of the Delta variant. Americans briskly increased spending at retailers last month, while employers have largely resisted the urge to lay off workers, the government reported Thursday, both signs of strong demand in the economy.
Sales at the nation’s retailers rose 0.7% in August, rebounding from a drop in July, the Commerce Department said. With many schools, college campuses and offices reopening, consumers shelled out more for groceries and merchandise at big-box stores. Those purchases—along with higher spending on furniture and hardware—offset another big decline in car sales, which have suffered from a global computer chip-shortage that has crimped supply.
Meanwhile, initial jobless claims—a proxy for layoffs across the U.S.—rose 20,000 last week to 332,000 but remained near a pandemic low, the Labor Department said.
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Soaring natural-gas prices in Britain have prompted U.S. fertilizer maker CF Industries Holdings Inc. to close two U.K. plants, in a sign that Europe’s energy crunch is affecting industry as the economy struggles with several other disruptions amid the recovery from the pandemic.
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Transportation costs—typically a fraction of a finished product’s price—are emerging as another supply-chain hurdle, overwhelming some companies already paying more for raw materials and labor.
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While energy companies have struggled to restore output since Hurricane Ida tore through the Gulf of Mexico, satellite surveillance of oil spills left in the storm’s wake has continued around the clock, documenting the potential environmental impact.
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Healthcare and education staff must already show Covid-19 ‘green passes’ to enter workplaces. PHOTO: YARA NARDI/REUTERS
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Italy is making Covid-19 health passes mandatory for all workers in the private and public sectors, in one of the toughest vaccine-promoting measures adopted by any major Western country.
Prime Minister Mario Draghi’s government passed a decree Thursday requiring workers, including those who are self-employed, to have a digital certificate known as a green pass. This shows a person has been fully vaccinated, has recently recovered from Covid-19 or has freshly tested negative for the virus. The step reflects the government’s belief that Italy’s fragile economy can’t afford another winter of resurgent coronavirus contagion that forces a return to lockdowns.
Italy has fully vaccinated 75% of its population aged 12 years or older, but the government wants to push the level higher to ensure that the mass return to offices and schools in a largely reopened country doesn’t lead to another deadly wave.
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General Motors vehicles sit in a holding lot in Lansing, Mich. Global production of computer chips has been running behind for months. PHOTO: BILL PUGLIANO/GETTY IMAGES
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General Motors Co. is extending its plans to idle some of its North American factories, compounding the effects of the world-wide semiconductor shortage on the auto maker’s production.
The company said Thursday it will add to scheduled downtime at seven plants in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The move builds upon curtailments that have slammed GM and the broader auto industry throughout the year as supply constraints on computer chips continue to hold back car production.
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Big retailers are loading up on goods for the holiday season in a strong show of confidence in consumer demand even as the Delta variant and supply-chain disruptions add uncertainty to restocking efforts. Best Buy Co., Target Corp. and other large merchants are amassing more inventory compared with last year’s pandemic-depressed levels.
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Patricia Wanja Kimani at home in Nairobi last week. She was taken in by human traffickers who recruited workers on Facebook. NICHOLE SOBECKI/VII FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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In January, a former cop turned Facebook Inc. investigator posted an all-staff memo on the company’s internal message board. It began “Happy 2021 to everyone!!” and then proceeded to detail a new set of what he called “learnings.” The biggest one: A Mexican drug cartel was using Facebook to recruit, train and pay hit men.
The behavior was shocking and in clear violation of Facebook’s rules. But the company didn’t stop the cartel from posting on Facebook or Instagram, the company’s photo-sharing site.
Scores of internal Facebook documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal show employees raising alarms about how its platforms are used in some developing countries, where its user base is already huge and expanding. They also show the company’s response, which in many instances is inadequate or nothing at all.
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