Good morning. The Justice Department is revamping a team it launched nearly two years ago to investigate cryptocurrency-related crimes, saying the move will more than double the number of prosecutors available to work on the team’s growing caseload, Risk & Compliance Journal’s Dylan Tokar reports. 

• The change: In a speech Thursday, senior Justice Department official Nicole Argentieri said the National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team, or NCET, would become a permanent fixture of a section within the department’s criminal division that handles a range of computer-related investigations.
   
• The team will also get a new leader: with Claudia Quiroz serving as acting director following the departure of its current director, Eun Young Choi, Argentieri said. Choi will be moving on to a new position within the Justice Department, according to a department spokesman.
   
• Background: NCET was set up in 2021 amid growing concerns about the ballooning size of the digital-assets industry and the ability of criminals, terrorists and other bad actors to use cryptocurrency to move and launder illicit funds. Since then, the team’s work and profile has grown due to an industry downturn and the collapse of crypto exchange FTX. Prosecutors have charged FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried with stealing billions of dollars from the exchange’s customers while misleading investors and lenders.

Fed launches payments system that will deliver paychecks to bank accounts in a flash

The Federal Reserve hopes a new, faster-payments system will let U.S. bank customers send and receive money almost instantly, but it could be years before the speedier network gains widespread traction.

The Fed said Thursday it launched its long-awaited FedNow system, which is intended to allow bill payments, paychecks and other common consumer or business transfers to be available quickly and around the clock.

That is a change from the existing, slower system that is closed on weekends and can at times take several days before consumers can access their funds. Last year those older rails handled 30 billion payments, valued at close to $73 trillion. The Fed’s system will compete with a real-time payments network built and launched by big banks in 2017, which processes a much smaller volume of payments.

• Charles Schwab is best known as the largest publicly traded U.S. brokerage firm, but it also runs a large bank that isn’t quite too big to fail. Investors are behaving as if a bit of good news about that bank means this year’s regional-banking crisis might be winding down. Billions of dollars in deposits are still leaving its balance sheet, Schwab said Tuesday, to the tune of a 7% decline from the first quarter and a 31% drop from a year earlier.
   
• An internal plan for the Supreme Court’s first-ever code of conduct has been stalled for years, people familiar with the matter said, and justices are deeply divided despite increased scrutiny surrounding their ethical behavior.
   
• New York City agreed to pay $13.7 million to demonstrators arrested or assaulted by the police in 2020 during the George Floyd protests, according to court records.
   
• A syndicate of investors is in the final stages of sealing a deal for cryptocurrency-focused media company CoinDesk.
   
• NFL owners unanimously approved Dan Snyder’s sale of the Washington Commanders to a group led by private equity billionaire Josh Harris, then immediately levied Snyder with a record $60 million fine after presenting the findings of the latest NFL-led investigation into the team and its owner.

Ukrainian military warns ships against heading to Russian Black Sea ports

Warnings by both Russia and Ukraine to strike cargo ships in the Black Sea are escalating a dispute over grain shipments and threatening to broaden the war to the strategic waterway.

Ukraine’s declaration, which takes effect midnight Thursday, said all ships sailing to Russian-controlled ports would be doing so “with all associated risks.” In addition, sailing in the northeastern Black Sea and the Kerch Strait separating occupied Crimea from Russia was “prohibited by Ukraine as dangerous,” starting at 5 a.m. Thursday, the Ukrainian Defense Ministry said.

• A wave of severe storms that brought hail and high winds to places such as Texas and a string of states in the central U.S. in recent months is wreaking havoc on insurers’ profits.
   
• Beijing’s warm embrace of Henry Kissinger this week sent a pointed signal to the Biden administration: Stop trying to contain us.
   
• For decades after the death of dictator Francisco Franco, Spain was viewed as largely immune to the appeal of the far right. That is no longer so. After years in opposition, the far-right Vox party has emerged as a likely kingmaker in Spain’s coming parliamentary elections.
   
• Iraq expelled the Swedish ambassador on Thursday, hours after crowds of angry Iraqis stormed the Swedish Embassy in central Baghdad, scaling its walls and setting it on fire in protest against the expected public desecration of a Quran in Stockholm.

U.S. Ambassador to China hacked in China-linked spying operation

Hackers linked to Beijing accessed the email account of the U.S. ambassador to China, Nicholas Burns, in an attack that is believed to have compromised at least hundreds of thousands of individual U.S. government emails, according to people familiar with the matter.

Daniel Kritenbrink, the assistant secretary of state for East Asia, was also hacked in the cyber-espionage attack, the people said. The two diplomats are believed to be the two most senior officials at the State Department targeted in the alleged spying campaign disclosed last week, one of the people said.

• Private-equity firms are looking for younger workers with different backgrounds as they seek an advantage in a tough labor market.
   
• Noncompete agreements are hindering even low-wage workers from taking advantage of today’s tight labor market by switching jobs for better pay.
   
• The Big Four accounting firms are thinning their consultant ranks after aggressive hiring in the wake of the pandemic.
   
• The Justice Department is turning to big data to spot corporate crime. “You’re seeing an increased focus on emerging technology broadly,” its departing criminal division chief says.

• President Emmanuel Macron is shaking up France’s government to help revive his second term in office after months of protests and riots that rocked the country.
   
• AMC Entertainment is ending a plan that adjusted ticket prices based on where viewers sat after a lackluster response from moviegoers and to keep its prices competitive with rival theater chains.
   
• The world’s top contract chip maker, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., said sales are likely to decline 10% this year and a planned Arizona factory would miss its target of starting mass production next year.
   
• Debt-laden trucking company Yellow, one of the nation’s largest freight carriers, is trying to stave off a labor action that is sending shipping customers rushing to rival operators, adding to financial woes threatening the company’s survival.

Follow us on Twitter 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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