Good morning. Investment adviser Van Eck Associates agreed to pay $1.75 million to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle claims that the firm failed to reveal the role of a social influencer in the launch of an exchange-traded fund.

• What was the fund in question? The firm in March 2021 launched the VanEck Social Sentiment ETF to track an index based on the performance of 75 large-cap U.S. stocks showing “the highest degree of positive investor sentiment and bullish perception” based primarily on content from online sources and other data.
   
• Plans for the ETF: The provider of the index told Van Eck it was planning to hire a “controversial” social-media influencer to promote the index in connection with the launch of the ETF, the SEC’s order said. The index provider proposed a licensing fee structure that included a sliding scale to provide an incentive for the influencer’s marketing efforts, according to the SEC, giving more of the management fee to the index provider as the fund grew in size.
   
• Why the SEC was concerned: The plans to involve the influencer to promote the index and the relevant details of the licensing agreement weren’t disclosed to the ETF’s board in connection to the approval process for the fund’s launch and its management fee, according to the regulator.
   
• Role of prominent online personality: The identity of the influencer wasn’t named in the SEC document, though The Wall Street Journal in March 2021 reported on its launch and that the index provider tapped Dave Portnoy, founder of Barstool Sports Inc., to help with promotion.

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Former Stericycle executive faces foreign bribery charges.

A former Stericycle senior executive has been charged by U.S. prosecutors over his alleged role in a foreign bribery scheme at the medical waste management company that involved $10.5 million in illicit payments to officials in Mexico, Brazil and Argentina.

The charge. Mauricio Gomez Baez, the onetime senior vice president of Stericycle’s Latin American division, faces a single charge of conspiracy to violate the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. Gomez Baez appeared Thursday in Miami federal court and was released on a $1 million bond.

The secret oil-trading ring that funds Russia’s war.

In the early days of the Ukraine war, data trickled out showing that a mysterious firm called Nord Axis had become one of the biggest global traders of Russian oil.

What's its role? The company seemed to have sprung from nowhere. It had been incorporated in Hong Kong nine days before Russia’s invasion. With Western buyers of Russian oil beating a retreat, Nord Axis and several other obscure firms were keeping the nation’s most important industry afloat by finding new places to sell the oil, generating billions of dollars in revenue for President Vladimir Putin’s war effort.

• TikTok faces a European Union investigation into whether the social-media company broke the bloc’s new online-content rules by failing to adequately protect minors and to manage the risks of harmful content on its platform.
• JPMorgan Chase said that government authorities are questioning the bank over disputes on the Zelle payment network.
   
• The Boy Scouts of America asked the U.S. Supreme Court to reject a plea by some sex-abuse victims to put on hold a $2.4 billion settlement that allowed the youth organization to exit bankruptcy last year, reports WSJ Pro Bankruptcy (subscription required).
   
• A Manhattan judge ordered former President Donald Trump and his business to pay $355 million and barred him from serving in a top role of any New York company for three years, ruling he fraudulently inflated his wealth for financial gain.

A $1 trillion conundrum: The U.S. government’s mounting debt bill.

Treasury yields have sprung to multiyear highs, forcing the U.S. government to pay a lot more in interest and putting pressure on the budget. 

The weight of debt. The U.S. government is expected to pay an additional $1.1 trillion in interest over the coming decade, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s latest estimates. Interest costs are on pace to surpass defense this year as one of the largest government expenses in the budget. The increase revives longstanding Wall Street worries that the yearslong acceleration in government borrowing by both political parties will eventually weigh on economic growth and asset prices.

Chinese banks slash a key lending rate as economy falters.

China’s economic malaise has pushed policymakers and state-owned banks to attempt an escalating series of remedies. Their latest attempt: A surprisingly aggressive cut to a key lending rate.

The People’s Bank of China said Tuesday that China’s major banks reduced the five-year loan prime rate, a benchmark for home loans, to a new low of 3.95%, from 4.2% previously. It was the largest cut since the rate was introduced five years ago, and a much bigger reduction than economists had expected.

• China Reports Smallest Foreign Investment Rise in Over Two Decades
• Chinese Travelers Hit the Road but Pinch Their Pennies

• NATO, a military alliance, is like a dollar bill: Its value rests on the faith people put in it. Now that faith is under attack from Donald Trump and politicians allied to him.
   
• Israel gave Hamas a Ramadan deadline to return the hostages held in Gaza or face a ground offensive in Rafah, the first timeline it has provided for looming operations in the city.
   
• The government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday voted to oppose plans by some allies to recognize a Palestinian state without Israeli participation in talks, but signaled willingness to engage in direct negotiations with Palestinians.
   
• Russian forces raised their flag over the eastern city of Avdiivka after Ukraine’s top military commander ordered his outgunned troops to withdraw, giving Moscow its first major gain in months.
   
• The Great Lakes, which are normally covered by a frozen sheath this time of year, are nearly completely ice-free this winter.

FBI director says China cyberattacks on U.S. infrastructure now at unprecedented scale.

As intelligence chiefs and policymakers gathered for Munich's annual security conference focused on the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation urged them not to lose sight of another threat: China.

The impact. Christopher Wray on Sunday said Beijing’s efforts to covertly plant offensive malware inside U.S. critical infrastructure networks is now at “a scale greater than we’d seen before,” an issue he has deemed a defining national security threat.

• Capital One said it will buy Discover Financial Services for more than $35 billion.
   
• A U.S. shale boom that helped suppress oil-price surges over the past two years is waning.
   
• Alexei Navalny taught a generation of young activists in Russia to push for change, starting at the local level. That movement has steadily been extinguished.
   
• The U.S. government is giving chip maker GlobalFoundries $1.5 billion in grants to build and expand facilities in New York and Vermont, the first major award in a program that aims to reinvigorate domestic chip production.
   
• Founders and investors who moved to Miami and elsewhere are returning to San Francisco amid a boom in artificial intelligence and a need for tech talent.
   
• A Russian court upheld the detention of Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich.

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