Good morning. China encircled Taiwan with rocket and ballistic-missile fire while testing the democratic self-governing island’s defenses with navy ships and war planes, as Beijing protested a visit by U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

“The exercises have begun,” China’s navy said on its official social-media account shortly after noon local time Thursday.

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The show of force in response to Mrs. Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, a self-governed island that Beijing claims as its own territory, disrupted commercial air and sea routes and raised concerns about further military escalation.

The four-day exercises—which included firing nearly a dozen missiles—are taking place in six zones delineated by the Chinese military. Several face the island’s biggest commercial ports and overlap with what Taiwan claims as its territorial waters.

The zones effectively encircle Taiwan in what amounts to a temporary blockade as some ship and air traffic is warned away.

• China’s Military Exercises Around Taiwan Disrupt Shipping
• U.S. Delays Minuteman III Missile Test Amid Tensions Over Taiwan
• China’s Drills Around Taiwan Give Hint About Its Strategy
• China Boasts of Ability to Blockade Taiwan as Exercises Continue

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Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said on Thursday that regulators are investigating business practices at its credit-card unit.

The bank said in a securities filing that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is looking into several areas, including how the bank handles customer refunds and resolves billing disputes. The regulator is also looking into Goldman’s advertisements and how it reports consumer information to credit bureaus, the bank said.

Former Puerto Rico Gov. Wanda Vázquez Garced was arrested Thursday and charged with participating in a bribery scheme to finance her 2020 gubernatorial campaign, the U.S. Justice Department said.

The alleged bribery scheme took place from December 2019 through June 2020 and involved bank executives, a former Federal Bureau of Investigation agent and a political consultant, according to the Justice Department.

• Penguin Random House’s chief executive testified Thursday that the publishing giant’s planned acquisition of competitor Simon & Schuster would benefit consumers and authors, pushing back against antitrust claims from the Justice Department.
   
• Authorities in a southern Indian state are investigating safety conditions at a factory in an apparel manufacturing hub that supplies clothes to global clothing brands after more than 100 workers were hospitalized due to a suspected gas leak.
   
• Cryptocurrency brokerage firm Voyager Digital Holdings Inc. secured approval to return $270 million in customer cash, settling one of the larger issues it faced after filing for bankruptcy.
   
• Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis suspended a state prosecutor Thursday for pledges he made to decline prosecuting cases involving violations of state laws on abortion and gender-transition treatments.
   
• Two top lawyers who worked in the White House under former President Donald Trump have been subpoenaed to appear before a federal grand jury investigating the events leading up to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, people familiar with the matter said, in the latest sign that the Justice Department’s probe is entering a more aggressive phase.
   
• Alex Jones was ordered by a jury to pay $4.1 million to the parents of a 6-year-old boy killed in the Sandy Hook school shooting in the first of several trials seeking damages for his repeated public statements suggesting the massacre was a hoax.

Ukraine said its first grain shipment since the start of Russia’s invasion had been a success and could lead to a surge in exports to prewar levels within two months, but industry players warned that sizable hurdles remain.

Oleksandr Kubrakov, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, said 17 vessels loaded with grain were ready to depart the three Ukrainian Black Sea ports operating under a deal agreed upon last month. He said two or three ships will soon begin leaving daily, with a view to traffic ultimately reaching 100 outgoing vessels each month.

• Ukraine Braces for Brutal Fight for Occupied Southern Regions
• Ukraine Fires on Bridges, Rail Lines in Bid to Loosen Russia’s Grip

• The Bank of England raised interest rates by the most in a quarter-century Thursday even as it predicted the U.K. economy will fall into recession later this year, underscoring global central banks’ urgency in fighting a surge in inflation.
   
• French President Emmanuel Macron secured passage of a package of measures to help bolster household finances, a boost for the French leader as the country copes with rampant inflation.
   
• The National Weather Service issued heat advisories across the Northeast and mid-Atlantic coast, and said temperatures in the regions will be 10 degrees Fahrenheit higher or more than the average temperature for this time of year. Meanwhile, more than 4 inches of rain hit parts of the St. Louis area Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, after record rainfall pounded the city last week and led to heavy flooding. And Phoenix is on the leading edge of an issue facing many cities on a warming planet: more summer days that raise the risks of injury or even death.
   
• Worker filings for unemployment benefits rose last week, holding close to the highest level of the year as the U.S. labor market showed several signs of cooling.

Brad Jacobs plans to step aside as chief executive of XPO Logistics Inc., the company said on Thursday, pulling back from a business he built through an aggressive acquisition strategy into a sprawling, multibillion-dollar international supply-chain heavyweight.

Mr. Jacobs, 66 years old, said he would move to an executive chairman role in the fourth quarter and would be succeeded as CEO by Mario Harik, now head of the trucking operation that anchors XPO as it proceeds with plans to break apart the business into three publicly-traded companies.

The biggest U.S. companies keep stepping up their spending on capital projects, an encouraging signal to investors in an uncertain economic climate.

Companies from Google parent Alphabet Inc. to General Motors Co. to PepsiCo Inc. are among those that have increased spending on big-ticket items, such as real estate, equipment or technology, to fuel growth. The investments are generally intended to expand the companies’ fast-growing operations or even optimize their inventory in the midst of a challenging business environment, according to executives.

• TikTok is getting rid of pandemic-era perks including daily meal stipends for many employees, according to people familiar with the situation, as the company pushes staff to work more from its offices.
   
• Warner Bros. Discovery Inc. is exploring launching a free, ad-supported streaming service, its chief executive said, the latest effort by a streaming giant to reach a broader audience as the competition for users intensifies.
   
• Apollo Global Management Inc. reported its second-straight quarterly loss with a $2 billion deficit stemming largely from rising interest rates that drove down the value of assets held by the firm’s retirement services operations.
   
• BlackRock, the world’s largest money manager, announced a partnership with Coinbase Global on Thursday—some good news for an industry where layoffs and turmoil have become commonplace.