Good morning. A major U.S. data-storage equipment provider violated U.S. export rules by continuing to sell hard-disk drives to Huawei Technologies Co. after the Commerce Department tightened export restrictions last year, a report by a group of Senate Republicans alleged.

Seagate Technology Holdings PLC supplied a substantial share of the Chinese company’s estimated $800 million worth of annual purchases of hard-disk drives after the tougher restrictions took effect in September 2020, according to the report by Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation.

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The company didn’t seek a license from the Commerce Department to do so, and continued shipments after its rivals had halted sales to Huawei, the report alleged. The report cited market research by banks, disclosures by the company and committee staffer interviews with Seagate officials.

“By shipping these prohibited products to Huawei, it appears Seagate benefitted from an uneven playing field to the detriment of national security and at the expense of its competitors who abide by the rule designed to combat threats posed by companies with known connections to the Chinese government,” the report said.

• U.S. Bans China Telecom Over National Security Concerns

Swedish regulator drops Swedbank market abuse probe. Swedbank AB said Tuesday that the Swedish Financial Supervisory Authority has dropped its investigation into breaches of European Union market abuse regulations at the bank.

The Swedish FSA opened an investigation in September 2020 into suspected breaches of articles 17 and 18 in the European Union’s regulation on market abuse, but it has now closed the investigation without charges.

Coordinated bust of dark-web dealers yields 150 arrests in U.S., Europe. The Justice Department and European police authorities said they arrested 150 people who sold and bought drugs and weapons on darknet forums, using evidence drawn from the world’s largest illegal online marketplace after it was taken down in January.

Authorities rounded up people in nine countries, including the U.S., the Netherlands, Australia and the U.K., and seized around 234 kilograms of drugs, 45 guns and more than $31.6 million in cash and virtual currencies.

• The White House nominated Jessica Rosenworcel to lead the Federal Communications Commission and Gigi Sohn as a commissioner on the five-member body, filling two vacancies that had hobbled the telecom regulator for months.
   
• Over seven weeks in the criminal fraud trial of Elizabeth Holmes, prosecutors have shown that her startup Theranos Inc. took shortcuts when claims about its revolutionary blood-testing technology became scientifically unfeasible and that employees feared retaliation for raising concerns.
   
• The federal judiciary is planning a new electronic financial-disclosure system to spot judges’ conflicts, but the chairwoman of the judiciary’s ethics committee stopped short of promising an end to long delays in getting those reports to the public.
   
• The U.S. is fast becoming the new global hub for bitcoin mining. After a government crackdown in China, many miners are betting on reliable access to energy and a more predictable regulatory environment in the U.S. More than a third of the global computing power dedicated to mining bitcoin is now drawn from machines in the U.S., up from less than a fifth last spring, according to data from the University of Cambridge.

U.N. finds nations’ climate plans fall short of Paris accord. The world’s emissions-reduction plans would allow far more global warming than targeted in the Paris climate accord, and some of the biggest emitters, including the U.S., aren’t on track to hit their pollution targets, according to a report from the United Nations.

Return to office meets supply-chain snarls. The push by companies to bring workers back to the office is running up against the global supply chain logjam.

Electronics industry executives and experts say the lead times to get commercial desktop computers and other equipment has increased as suppliers shift gears from the scramble for work-from-home setups early in the pandemic to office and hybrid work.

“We are looking at up to 120 days’ wait for some large enterprises if they have specific components required, and right now they are planning to receive the devices in January and February,” said Mikako Kitagawa, a research director at Gartner Inc. who focuses on tech. “Generally large corporations are desperate to find the devices.”

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