Good morning. A federal judge in New York declined to throw out fraud charges against a former Allianz fund manager who claimed he was double-crossed by his lawyers, citing the terms of a joint defense agreement the executive entered into with the firm’s counsel.

The ruling is one of several recent court actions pushing back on claims by executives that the way their employers handled internal investigations into allegations of white-collar misconduct violated their due-process rights.

• Impact on case against Tournant's: The ruling by Judge Laura Taylor Swain allows federal prosecutors to forge ahead with their prosecution of Gregoire Tournant, a former chief investment officer for one of Allianz’s U.S. investing divisions who was blamed by the firm for losses it suffered during a market meltdown in 2020 sparked by the Covid-19 pandemic.
   
• Basis for Tournant's motion to dismiss: After being arrested last year and charged with securities and investment adviser fraud, Tournant in January launched his first attack against the government’s case, arguing that prosecutors had encouraged lawyers who were acting for both Allianz and for him personally to use his privileged communications to help build a false narrative against him.
   
• What Allianz faced: The Munich-based financial services company last year agreed to pay about $6 billion in penalties and restitution to investors in a settlement with prosecutors that resolved its own liability for the market meltdown. The firm admitted to having deficient internal controls but said criminal misconduct was limited to a handful of former employees.

Elon Musk withheld Twitter data to ‘cozy up’ to Donald Trump, judge suggests.

Twitter fought to withhold information from federal prosecutors about former President Donald Trump’s account, leading a federal judge to suggest the tactic was aimed at mending fences with the former president, court records show.

Twitter—now known as X—resisted efforts to make it turn over Trump’s private direct messages and other communications, the newly unsealed records show.

That prompted U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell to wonder at a Feb. 7 hearing whether Twitter’s then-chief executive, Elon Musk, had an ulterior motive.

Neogen says Iran sanctions probe concluded without fine.

Food-safety and veterinary-products company Neogen said the U.S. Treasury Department’s sanctions enforcer concluded an investigation into the company’s business dealings with entities in Iran with a cautionary letter but without imposing a fine or any other enforcement action.

Lansing, Mich.-based Neogen disclosed two years ago that it had received an administrative subpoena from the Office of Foreign Assets Control. Neogen said its internal investigation found it had provided genomic-testing services to a U.S.-based entity that was engaged in veterinary activities involving an Iranian party.

Construction Specialities, a New Jersey construction materials company, has agreed to pay about $661,000 in a settlement with the U.S. sanctions enforcers after a Dubai-based subsidiary allegedly exported U.S.-origin goods to Iran.

The subsidiary's managers allegedly hid the misconduct from their U.S. counterparts, who had crafted a compliance policy covering Iran. But a whistleblower reported the sales to company headquarters, according to the settlement agreement. A spokeswoman for the company didn’t respond to a request for comment.

• Intel scrapped its more-than-$5 billion offer to buy Israeli chip maker Tower Semiconductor after Chinese regulators failed to approve the deal, showing how U.S.-China technology tensions are disrupting strategic plans for some major American companies.
   
• Jeffrey Epstein was advising Google co-founder Sergey Brin in 2007 on setting up a tax-saving trust for his children, according to new court documents that shed light on the late disgraced financier’s activities.
   
• The Marion County attorney has agreed to withdraw a search warrant and asked that all seized computers and cellphones be returned to a small central Kansas newspaper, after a raid on the outlet’s office and the home of its owners last week prompted national outrage from advocates for a free press and experts in First Amendment law.
   
• A federal appeals panel ruled that the Food and Drug Administration improperly expanded access to the widely used abortion pill mifepristone over the last seven years but left in place the drug’s original approval, teeing up the issue for review by the Supreme Court.

The U.S. is turning away from its biggest scientific partner at a precarious time.

One of the most productive scientific collaborations of the 21st century is pulling apart, as deteriorating relations between the U.S. and China lead researchers to sever ties.

Some U.S. lawmakers are pushing to let a landmark agreement to cooperate on science and technology, signed in 1979 and renewed routinely since, expire this month.

Many scientists warn that Washington would be severing ties as China is making its greatest contributions to scientific advancements, and cutting it off risks slowing American progress in critical areas such as biotechnology, clean energy and telecommunications.

• Estée Lauder’s Big Bet on China Is Looking Not So Pretty
• China’s Economic Woes are Pushing its Currency Toward a Record Low

• In the Federal Reserve’s campaign to bring down inflation without tanking the economy, there’s a key factor over which it has zero control: the weather.
   
• Most Federal Reserve officials backed an increase in interest rates last month but some saw rising risks that they might raise rates too high, underscoring growing caution about further increases.
   
• The Biden administration plans to announce new tariffs on can-making metal imported from China, Germany and Canada, a move that food companies say could lead to higher prices for some canned foods.
   
• The U.K.’s headline rate of inflation fell in July, though key components of prices remained stubbornly hot, adding pressure on the Bank of England to keep raising interest rates to cool the highest inflation rate among leading industrialized countries.
   
• The Russian central bank’s jumbo interest-rate increase to halt a tumbling ruble this week points to a new reality for the Kremlin: Russia’s economy has reached its speed limit.

Target, much like Bud Light, is stung by culture wars.

Target, much like the brewer of Bud Light, discovered the cost of getting caught in the middle of hot-button social issues in a politically divided U.S.

Sales at both businesses suffered over marketing efforts that backfired and caused shoppers on both sides of the topics to call for boycotts. Anheuser-Busch InBev came under fire for a social-media promotion with a transgender influencer. Target was criticized for store displays of merchandise for Pride Month that included gender-neutral swimsuits. Then each company’s response angered supporters of the LGBTQ community.

• The yield on the 10-year U.S. Treasury note hit a 15-year high, threatening steeper costs for many borrowers and raising concern on Wall Street about the potential fallout in the stock, bond and housing markets.
   
• Vietnam’s VinFast Auto became the latest electric-car startup to captivate Wall Street with a stock rally Tuesday that pushed its market value ahead of industry stalwarts General Motors and Ford Motor. 
   
• A series of wildfires in Northern California broke out this week near the site of last year’s deadly McKinney Fire, forcing some residents to evacuate.
   
• Companies have started leveraging advances in networking, algorithms and edge computing to run artificial-intelligence workloads outside of data centers and closer to where applications are being put to use.
   
• About six months into his new gig, Fulton County Superior Court Judge Scott McAfee was assigned to oversee perhaps the biggest case in Georgia history: the criminal indictment of former President Donald Trump and 18 others who prosecutors say organized efforts to overturn Joe Biden’s narrow 2020 victory in the state.

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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