Good morning. Federal prosecutors on Thursday charged crypto lobbyist Michelle Bond with conspiring with her romantic partner, former FTX executive Ryan Salame, to illegally fund her failed 2022 congressional bid.

The case is the latest offshoot of prosecutors’ sprawling investigation into the collapse of FTX, the crypto exchange that imploded in November 2022. FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried was sentenced to 25 years in prison earlier this year for what prosecutors called one of the biggest financial frauds in American history.

• Sham agreement: Prosecutors said that shortly after Bond, a Republican, launched her campaign in May 2022, Salame, then an FTX executive, put together a sham consulting agreement between his girlfriend and the exchange. Bond allegedly used that $400,000 payment to illegally fund her campaign.
   
• High-profile lobbyist: Bond, 45 years old, now runs a crypto think tank called Digital Future. At the time she entered the congressional primary, she was serving as chief executive of the Association for Digital Asset Markets, a trade group for the digital-assets space. Bond previously held a string of legal jobs, including four years at Bloomberg, as head of global regulatory affairs and public policy, and as senior counsel at the Securities and Exchange Commission, according to her LinkedIn profile.
   
• Imprisoned partner: Bond faces four campaign-finance offenses. Salame pleaded guilty last year and a judge sentenced him to more than seven years in prison.

Apple to let iPhone users delete Safari, other native apps to comply with EU law.

Apple will let iPhone users in the European Union delete native apps, including the App Store and Safari, and allow more third-party tools to replace its own in a bid to comply with the bloc’s digital competition law.

The U.S. tech giant said Thursday that software updates later this year will allow iPhone and iPad owners in the EU to delete the company’s pre-installed applications. Those programs include the Safari web browser, the App Store, and its photo, camera and messaging apps—tools that are synonymous with the company’s flagship product.

• Federal auto-safety regulators have ended an investigation into the autonomous-driving system used by General Motors’ driverless-car business after a recall resolved concerns around inappropriately hard braking.
   
• Three Houston bankruptcy judges who are overseeing civil litigation stemming from the resignation of their former colleague, David R. Jones, have been identified by the government as potential witnesses regarding the ethics scandal that forced him off the bench, people familiar with the matter said.
   
• Skydance Media is accusing Paramount’s special committee of directors of breaching the terms of its deal by extending the period when it can engage with other bidders for the company, according to a letter viewed by The Wall Street Journal.
   
• Companies are drawing up their own best practices for the use of AI-generated imagery and video, also known as deepfakes, for a range of business situations, from research to employee training. Amid a dearth of U.S. regulatory guidance on artificial intelligence, it’s a delicate dance.

PG&E is racing to stem increasing fires ignited by its power lines.

PG&E is racing to confront an uptick in fires ignited by its power lines ahead of the riskiest months of wildfire season.

The California utility company has reported to state regulators 62 ignitions in high-threat fire areas so far this year, compared with 65 for the entirety of 2023, according to company executives. Twenty-nine of them occurred in recent weeks after an early July heat wave that set record temperatures throughout the state and dried out grasses and brush, making them more likely to catch fire.

BOJ governor reaffirms that rate hikes are on the table.

Bank of Japan Gov. Kazuo Ueda reaffirmed that he is open to more interest-rate increases, clearing up doubts about the central bank’s intention to continue on its path of policy normalization.

“There is no change to our basic stance of adjusting the level of monetary easing going forward if we can confirm that the outlook for the economy and prices is more likely to realize as we expect,” Ueda said in a parliamentary session Friday.

• Japan Overall Consumer Prices Stay Above Central Bank’s Target in July

• The U.S. economy has slowed slightly this month, but other parts of the global economy are showing surprising signs of resilience in the face of still-high borrowing costs, according to business surveys.
   
• China is cranking up its massive export machine again, and this time there’s nowhere for competitors to hide.
   
• Air Canada pilots have voted to strike if necessary to break an impasse with the airline over a new pay deal, a walkout that would add to labor strife in the country and upend travel plans for many Canadians.
   
• Ukraine used aerial drones to attack an air base in Russia’s Volgograd region early Thursday in an escalating campaign of long-range strikes seeking to damage Moscow’s war machine.
   
• Canada on Thursday ordered an end to a work stoppage at the country’s two main railroads, saying an arbitrator would resolve disagreements between the companies and a Teamsters union which had disrupted freight traffic and supply chains across North America.
   
• Palestinians in Gaza have long lived in one of the most crowded places on the planet. Since the war broke out there over 10 months ago, the designated space in which they can hope to exist safely has dramatically diminished.

• Andersen Global, the tax firm carrying the Arthur Andersen brand name, is exploring an IPO.
   
• Democrats say they would like to pass federal AI regulation this year.
   
• Companies haven't abandoned sustainability, but they are talking about it less.

• Mike Lynch, the British tech tycoon who went missing after his luxury yacht suddenly sank off the coast of Sicily, was confirmed dead by Italian officials.
   
• Kamala Harris will try to accomplish something she has struggled to do since her unsuccessful presidential bid in 2019: provide a clear case to Americans of what she stands for—and why.
   
• As school districts across the country wisely ban smartphones from classrooms, students are panicking about days without screens.
   
• For the better part of a century, player drafts have been a cornerstone of American pro sports. That picture has now changed forever.
   
• Under pressure from Washington and its South American neighbors, Brazil is tightening visa rules to curb a wave of migrants from Africa and Asia who have turned the refugee-friendly country into a stopover on the way to the U.S.
   
• The breakup of a Chinese rocket following a satellite launch generated a fresh field of debris—and new concern over Beijing’s attitude toward space junk.

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Follow Risk & Compliance editor David Smagalla @DSmagalla_DJ and reporters Mengqi Sun @_MengqiSun, Dylan Tokar @dgtokar and Richard Vanderford @VanderfordRich.

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