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The Morning Risk Report: Trump Administration Hopes to Make Iran Pressure Campaign Harder to Reverse
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The Persian Gulf Star Co. gas condensate refinery in Bandar Abbas, Iran.
PHOTO: ALI MOHAMMADI/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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The Trump administration plans a pre-election volley of sanctions against Iran intended in part to fortify its pressure campaign against any future effort to unwind it, according to people familiar with the matter.
With former Vice President Joe Biden leading in most national and battleground state polls, Trump administration officials fear his plan to reengage with Iran could upend the diplomatic leverage they believe is critical to strong-arm Tehran into signing a new nuclear and security deal.
[Continued below...]
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The Trump administration has levied some sanctions under counterterrorism authorities, which analysts view as the most potentially difficult to undo. The administration previewed further planned action, according to the people, in calling out sectors it views as critical to financing Iran’s terror-linked activities, including the petrochemical and metals industries, but highlighting Iran’s energy sector in particular.
Even if potential new targets are already under existing sanctions, current and former officials say blacklisting them again under terror powers makes it more difficult to reverse the action. Since such sanctions are issued with justifying details, officials seeking to remove sanctions have to make the politically sticky case for delisting them.
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From Risk & Compliance Journal
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Banks Navigate Hazy Regulations to Serve Cannabis Businesses
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‘This administration will continue to aggressively defend the critical infrastructure of the United States from anyone attempting to disrupt it,’ said Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin.
PHOTO: POOL/REUTERS
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The Trump administration on Friday sanctioned a Russian government research institution it said was responsible for cyberattacks on the critical infrastructure of U.S. allies in the Middle East, the latest in a flurry of warnings this week about threats posed by Russian hackers.
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The Trump administration defended its attempt to ban Americans from using popular Chinese-owned video-sharing app TikTok over national security concerns, saying in court papers that the app makes U.S. user data susceptible to influence by Chinese leaders.
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Fewer companies are receiving warnings of potential civil-enforcement actions from the Securities and Exchange Commission as businesses under investigation increasingly opt to defend themselves before receiving a “Wells notice.”
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A lawsuit in federal court in northern California has cast a spotlight on so-called donor-advised funds managed by firms including Fidelity, the Vanguard Group and Charles Schwab.
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McDonald’s on Friday asked a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit accusing it of selling Black owners subpar stores and failing to support their businesses, saying that it wasn’t in the company’s interest to have its franchisees fail.
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A 78-year-old Indian entrepreneur has accused his two brothers of using bank accounts in his name to bilk his London-listed companies NMC Health PLC and Finablr PLC of billions of dollars and to perpetrate a “massive, systematic and sophisticated fraud,” according to a criminal complaint he made earlier this month to Indian law enforcement.
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Facebook is tightening its rules on content concerning the U.S. presidential election next month.
PHOTO: GABBY JONES/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Facebook teams have planned for the possibility of trying to calm election-related conflict in the U.S. by deploying internal tools designed for what it calls “at-risk” countries, according to people familiar with the matter.
The emergency measures include slowing the spread of viral content and lowering the bar for suppressing potentially inflammatory posts, the people said. Previously used in countries including Sri Lanka and Myanmar, they are part of a larger tool kit developed by Facebook to prepare for the U.S. election.
Facebook executives have said they would only deploy the tools in dire circumstances, such as election-related violence, but that the company needs to be prepared for all possibilities, said the people familiar with the planning.
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The Justice Department’s attempt to punish Google for its competitive practices in internet search could end up taking a major toll on a different tech giant: Apple. A multibillion-dollar deal in which Google pays to be the default search engine on Apple’s iPhones and other devices is at the heart of the case the U.S. government filed last week against Google.
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The demise of the mobile-streaming platform Quibi a mere six months after it went live is the latest example of Hollywood’s struggles in making a business out of short-form content. Quibi may be the best-known and best-funded attempt to crack the short-form riddle, but it is far from the only one. The media industry is littered with the carcasses of short-form streaming platforms.
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Reaction has been intense to a political email sent out by Expensify’s CEO, David Barrett.
PHOTO: EXPENSIFY
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Most companies are trying to avoid getting enmeshed in presidential politics this election season. Not software company Expensify.
The San Francisco-based startup plunged into the political deep end Thursday when its chief executive sent an anti-Trump email to roughly 10 million users of its software, saying that “anything less than a vote for Biden is a vote against democracy.”
The move set off a social-media debate over how political companies should be and what it means for their business and employees. Some Expensify customers said online that they would stop using the company’s expense-reporting tools, while others said they would start using its software because of the email.
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Dr. Barron, Glaxo's chief scientific officer and R&D president, joined a group of other industry R&D chiefs for a March 8 call to share information about the new coronavirus and approaches to drug development.
PHOTO: MARK JAYSON QUINES FOR THE WALL STREET JOURNAL
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The Covid-19 pandemic is turning some fierce drug-industry foes into the best of frenemies.
The pharmaceutical giant standing at the center of this team of rivals is GlaxoSmithKline, the world’s largest vaccine maker by sales. The British company is jointly developing a Covid-19 antibody drug with a San Francisco upstart, offering rivals a proprietary ingredient that is designed to boost a vaccine’s power and planning to share research study results.
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Harley-Davidson is eliminating about 30% of the models in its lineup.
PHOTO: DAVID PAUL MORRIS/BLOOMBERG NEWS
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Harley-Davidson is going back to the basics of making big, expensive motorcycles for its most devoted customers, abandoning a decadelong quest to reach new types of riders.
New Chief Executive Jochen Zeitz, a German-born former head of Puma SE and collector of African art, is scaling back overseas expansions, shrinking Harley supplies in the U.S. and delaying or abandoning new models that were intended to appeal to younger riders.
It is a hairpin turn from the strategy pursued by his predecessor, Matt Levatich, who tried to expand into new markets with smaller motorcycles.
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Lee Jae-yong arrives for the funeral of his father, the late Samsung Electronics Chairman Lee Kun-hee, in Seoul on Sunday.
PHOTO: -/AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE/GETTY IMAGES
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Under Lee Kun-hee’s leadership, Samsung Electronics became a ubiquitous name world-wide with its flat-screen TVs and slick smartphones.
That chapter closed for the South Korean tech giant on Sunday with the death of Mr. Lee, who for years was incapacitated in a hospital bed following a 2014 stroke.
Now his son, Lee Jae-yong, who has been Samsung’s de-facto leader since 2014, formally takes the reins at a very different time for the tech industry, where Samsung is on the defensive and struggling to evolve.
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