Good morning. Executives at the Resorts World casino on the Las Vegas Strip have been accused of allowing illegal sports-betting bookies and others with ties to organized crime to gamble at the property.

Investigators with the Nevada Gaming Control Board, which oversees the state’s casino industry, said in a complaint filed Thursday that Resorts World executives ignored signs that some of its high-rolling customers were gambling with proceeds from illegal activities in violation of anti-money-laundering regulations.

• Damaging the industry: The casino’s alleged practice of allowing gamblers who had criminal ties to spend money there created “the perception and/or reality that Resorts World is an avenue to launder funds derived from illegal activity,” damaging the reputation of the state’s gambling industry, investigators said.
   
• Sports-betting links: The accusations coincide with a federal investigation into illegal sports-betting operations that recently ensnared baseball star Shohei Ohtani’s longtime interpreter Ippei Mizuhara.
   
• Active communications: “We are committed to doing business with the utmost integrity and in compliance with applicable laws and industry guidelines,” Resorts World Las Vegas said in a statement Thursday. The company said it has been “actively communicating” with the Gaming Control Board to resolve the matter.

Big Four audit shortfalls stabilize, latest inspections show.

PricewaterhouseCoopers and Deloitte experienced greater deficiencies in their audits of public companies’ 2022 financial statements compared with the previous year, while the overall rate of Big Four accounting firms’ shortcomings stabilized, according to the latest annual inspection reports.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board last year inspected 230 audits conducted by the Big Four firms in the U.S.—Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PricewaterhouseCoopers—up from 215 a year earlier. The firms collectively had an average deficiency rate of about 26%, the same as a year earlier. PCAOB Chair Erica Williams said the findings from the inspections released Thursday, which covered audits of 2022 financials, were still unacceptable.

Starling Trust Sciences taps former Credit Suisse risk and compliance head as adviser.

Lara Warner, the former group chief risk and compliance officer for Credit Suisse, has joined applied behavioral technology company Starling Trust Sciences as a regulatory adviser.

Warner had a 20-year career at Credit Suisse and served in various roles, most recently as chief operating officer and chief financial officer of the company’s investment banking division.

Warner left the Swiss bank in April 2021 in the wake of the collapse of clients Greensill Capital and Archegos Capital Management, which eventually led to the bank being rescued by UBS in 2023 in a Swiss government-backed deal.

• Bayer shares soared after a Philadelphia appeals court ruled in favor of the company over claims it had failed to place a cancer warning label on the Roundup weedkiller made by its subsidiary Monsanto.
   
• A bipartisan group of 19 lawmakers sent a letter to Meta Platforms asking why ads for illicit drugs on Instagram and other apps have continued to proliferate while the company is facing a federal probe over the practice.
   
• New rules governing real-estate commissions are rolling out across the country, upending how deals get done and putting downward pressure on costs.

New data help calm economic-slowdown fears.

Fresh data showed that retail spending grew last month, assuaging some fears about an economic slowdown.

Retail sales—a measure of spending at stores, online and in restaurants—rose a seasonally adjusted 1% in July from the month before, higher than economists expected. Weekly jobless claims came in slightly below consensus forecasts, and Walmart reported strong sales for its latest quarter, with executives saying they don’t see signs of fraying demand.

Gaza cease-fire’s biggest obstacles are Israel’s and Hamas’s leaders.

U.S. hopes of closing a cease-fire deal for Gaza that could help calm tensions in a region on the brink of a wider war are running into a basic snag—everyone seems to agree it is time to stop the fighting, except for the two people who will have to sign off on it.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar have resisted an agreement for months, negotiators and officials in their own camps say, even as pressures to strike a deal have been growing.

• The Israeli Ultranationalist Quietly Reshaping the West Bank

• As Ukraine invades Russia, Kyiv’s troops are in trouble on the eastern front: Ukrainian soldiers are overmatched in some areas and deployments in the trenches can stretch for months
   
• Security officials ramped up preparations ahead of Taylor Swift’s five-night run at Wembley Stadium starting Thursday, with a ban on fans outside the venue and a heightened threat level following the foiled terror plot in Vienna last week.
   
• The U.K. economy expanded more rapidly than expected in the first half, putting it on course for a soft landing from high levels of inflation and supporting the new government in its attempt to end a long period of meager growth. The Japanese economy also showed signs of life.
   
• Canada’s government declined to intervene in a dispute between the country’s two biggest rail operators and unionized workers that threatens to disrupt the movement of goods across the country and cross-border trade.

🎧 Listen to CFO Journal’s Jennifer Williams discuss the escalating fight for shelf space at U.S. grocery stores.

After an animal-welfare law took effect in California, feared pork shortages haven’t materialized. But the state is paying higher prices.

Makeup brands and fertility clinics haven’t been associated with sports. Now they’re taking over game nights as women’s leagues attract new sponsors.

• One of the boldest acts of sabotage in modern history started with a drunken night out.
   
• A Russian court sentenced a dual U.S.-Russian national to 12 years in a penal colony, after finding her guilty of treason for donating funds to aid the Ukrainian army at the start of the war.
   
• Five people, including Matthew Perry’s assistant and two doctors, were charged in connection with the death of the “Friends” actor last year, authorities said Thursday.
   
• Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO and executive chairman at Google, walked back remarks in which he said his former company was losing the artificial intelligence race because of its remote-work policies.

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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