Good morning. Social-media companies such as Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc. could be sued by government attorneys in California for features that allegedly harm children through addiction under a first-in-the-nation bill.

The measure would permit the state attorney general, local district attorneys and the city attorneys of California’s four largest cities to sue social-media companies including Meta—which also owns Instagram—as well as TikTok, owned by Chinese company ByteDance Ltd., and Snap Inc. under the state’s law governing unfair business practices. The bill would allow lawsuits if a prosecutor believes a company employed features it knew or should have known would addict minors.

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In a version passed 51-0 by the state Assembly in May, parents would have been able to sue the companies for harm to their children, with a minimum $1,000 payout for a claimant in class-action lawsuits. Addiction was defined as the use of social media that is difficult to reduce despite a desire to do so and that causes physical, mental, emotional, developmental or material harms.

But after lobbying from business and tech-industry groups, the chairman of the state Senate Judiciary Committee and the bill’s author agreed this past weekend to amend the bill so that only government attorneys can file the suits, according to a spokesman for the author, Republican Assemblyman Jordan Cunningham.

The U.S. has banned imports of Russian gold, broadening sanctions against the country following the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine in February, the U.S. Treasury Department said Tuesday.

The Treasury on Tuesday also blacklisted 70 groups, many of which the U.S. said are critical to Russia’s defense industrial sector, including state-owned defense conglomerate Rostec, as well as 29 Russians.

The Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, which implements U.S. sanctions, has sanctioned 1,207 entities and individuals since Feb. 22, according to data compiled by Adam M. Smith, a partner at law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP.

• Oil Tanker Stopped in Transit From Russian Port to New Orleans
• G-7 Bid to Cap Russian Oil Price Faces Hurdle of Global Enforcement

U.S. prosecutors this week dropped charges against two people accused of attempting to bribe officials in Haiti after new evidence came to light regarding lost recordings of calls that undercover agents conducted with one defendant.

A judge on Tuesday dismissed the Justice Department’s case against Roger Richard Boncy and Joseph Baptiste. The two men were slated to go on trial at the U.S. District Court in Boston for a second time in July on charges that they solicited bribes from Federal Bureau of Investigation agents posing as potential investors in a project to develop an $84 million port in the Mole-Saint-Nicolas area of Haiti.

• Juul Labs Inc. said the Food and Drug Administration overlooked a key part of Juul’s application when the agency ordered the e-cigarette maker’s products off the U.S. market, according to court documents.
   
• The Michigan Supreme Court canceled a lower court judge’s criminal indictments against former officials stemming from their handling of lead contamination in water pipes of the city of Flint that led to illness and death of residents.
   
• Jeff Fortenberry, a former congressman from Nebraska, was sentenced to probation for lying to FBI agents about the source of illegal campaign contributions, avoiding any prison time.

Russia threatened to station ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons on its border if Sweden and Finland are allowed to join NATO, and warned that Ukrainian membership of the military alliance could trigger World War III.

Dmitry Medvedev, deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, said Moscow didn’t envision any threat from Sweden and Finland as potential North Atlantic Treaty Organization members because past relations with these countries had been “quite respectful and mutually well meaning,” but that Russia would still need to be ready for any retaliatory action.

• Turkey Backs NATO Membership for Sweden, Finland
• G-7 Summit Exposes West’s Challenges in Tackling Russia

• War and weather are imperiling global food supplies, according to U.S. agriculture officials and executives, as rising food prices drive shortages and protests around the world.
   
• Federal Reserve Bank of New York President John Williams said the U.S. central bank will be weighing another large rate rise when it meets next month, while noting that he also believes the economy can escape falling into recession.
   
• Efforts to revive the Iranian 2015 nuclear agreement resumed Tuesday in Qatar’s capital, with U.S. and Iranian officials playing down expectations of a quick breakthrough that would open the way to a restored deal.
   
• Scotland’s leader Nicola Sturgeon laid out plans to hold a fresh independence referendum in October 2023, attempting to break a legal logjam on any potential secession by referring the legality of a vote to the U.K.’s Supreme Court.

Credit Suisse Group AG plans to cut technology expenditure to spend more targeting ultrarich customers, in its latest effort to stabilize an operation hobbled by scandals and missteps.

The embattled Swiss bank has been hit harder than peers by a downturn this year in companies raising stock and bonds, and rich customers borrowing less. Chief Executive Thomas Gottstein warned earlier in June that the bank would post a third consecutive quarterly loss.

• Royal Philips NV said its recalled DreamStation One sleep-apnea device passed a range of safety tests conducted by independent laboratories, but that the sound-dampening foam inside the machines could be harmful if it enters the body.
   
• Airbnb Inc. has made its global ban on parties at listings on its home-rental platform permanent, the company’s latest move to take a more active approach to regulating listings.

Ernst & Young agreed to pay a record $100 million fine and to admit that some of its auditors cheated on required ethics exams in recent years, according to a settlement order released on Tuesday.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the penalty is the largest fine ever imposed on an audit firm, and stemmed partly from EY’s failure to report the scandal to regulators who had asked the firm about such misbehavior.

The case is the latest reputational setback for a profession entrusted with overseeing the reliability of public companies’ financial statements.

• SEC Includes Novel Probe Into Lawyers’ Actions in EY Settlement

• Pinterest Inc.’s longtime chief executive is stepping down and a Google commerce executive is taking over the top job, the social-media company said.
   
• Dollar Tree Inc. said its finance chief is stepping down as part of a broader executive reshuffling as the discount retailer faces pressure from an activist investor to improve its performance.
   
• The board of Walt Disney Co. said it has voted unanimously to renew Chief Executive Bob Chapek’s contract for another three years.

Chinese authorities slashed quarantine periods for inbound travelers, a sign that officials are eager to curb the economic pain from recent Covid-19 restrictions and boost confidence in a recovery.

Travelers from overseas and anyone who has been in close contact with those infected with Covid-19 will be subjected to a total of 10 days in quarantine under the new rules—seven days in a hotel, followed by three days of home monitoring—down from 21 days previously, China’s National Health Commission said Tuesday. It didn’t say when the new rules would take effect.

• Federal health authorities moved a step closer to authorizing modified Covid-19 booster shots that better target the Omicron variant and could be rolled out by the fall.
   
• The easily spread Omicron BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants represent more than half of all U.S. Covid-19 cases, federal estimates showed, ramping up pressure as a spring surge stretches into summer.