Good morning. Regulators hit U.S. Bank with $36 million in fines, saying it left tens of thousands of Americans locked out of unemployment benefits during the pandemic for weeks at a time.

• Background: Minneapolis-based U.S. Bank had contracts with a number of states to deliver unemployment benefits in 2020 but froze customer accounts without a "reliable and quick" way back in, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a statement.
   
• What they're charging: The bank asked customers for identity verification as part of anti-fraud controls but “lacked an adequate way for them to do so" and failed to provide provisional account credits after some reported unauthorized transactions, the CFPB said.
   
• Bank's response: In a statement, U.S. Bank said a "small portion" of its prepaid debit cards for unemployment benefit recipients were subject to the extended holds. The bank said it prevented fraud of over $375 million and returned to states hundreds of millions "in additional funds sent to questionable accounts."
   
• Penalty: The CFPB ordered U.S. Bank, the fifth-largest bank by assets, to pay $5.7 million to consumers and a $15 million penalty. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency fined the bank $15 million as part of an investigation that was separate from but coordinated with the CFPB’s.

Why Credit Suisse's regulator couldn't stop the rot.

Switzerland’s financial regulator wants powers to fine banks and rules to make senior bankers more accountable, after its years of demanding changes at Credit Suisse were ineffective.

What's in the report? In a report on lessons learned from the downfall of Switzerland’s No. 2 bank by assets, Finma said it did as much as it could to get Credit Suisse to improve its governance and risk culture. It blamed the bank's board and managers for the crises that led to Credit Suisse's rescue takeover by UBS in March.

Starbucks CEO takes on chain’s social media controversy over Israel-Hamas war.

The Starbucks chief executive said protesters vandalizing its stores over the Israel-Hamas war have the wrong impression of the company and its beliefs.

In an annual company letter to workers, Laxman Narasimhan addressed controversies surrounding the coffee chain since the war broke out in October. The letter seeks to remove the company from the controversy caused in part by comments seen as pro-Palestinian by the workers’ union.

• A federal judge dealt a likely fatal blow to hundreds of lawsuits against manufacturers of Tylenol and generic acetaminophen, ruling the plaintiffs don’t have admissible evidence to support claims that using the pain reliever during pregnancy raises a child’s risks of autism or attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.
   
• Donald Trump can’t appear on the 2024 presidential primary ballot in Colorado because of his actions surrounding the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, the state’s highest court ruled Tuesday.
   
• A trust funded by utility PG&E to compensate victims of wildfires caused by its power lines is preparing to make final payments to those who lost homes, businesses and family members years ago. None will be made whole.
   
• Tesla supplier Panasonic said Wednesday that it has decided against building a multibillion-dollar electric vehicle battery factory in Oklahoma.
   
• Americans who owe back taxes will be given an incentive to pay up after the Internal Revenue Service said Tuesday it would waive nearly $1 billion in late-payment penalties.

U.S. leads bid to secure Red Sea, but shipping firms remain on edge.

Hours after the U.S. announced a multinational task force to protect commercial traffic through the Red Sea, shipping giant A.P. Moller-Maersk said it would send its vessels around the Cape of Good Hope in southern Africa instead.

The message was clear: Shipping firms, oil companies and insurers remain jittery about a possible snarl to one of the world’s most crucial trade routes.

• That’s Two for Two: The World’s Other Big Canal Is in Trouble

• The war in Ukraine made traffic on the Suez Canal busier. If conflict in Gaza bottles it up, energy cargoes will be forced to take an expensive, inflationary diversion.
   
• Higher interest rates from the Federal Reserve caused the housing market to seize up this year, and that is now having spillover effects for hardware stores, furniture sellers and construction firms.
   
• U.S. immigration authorities have closed several bridges and ports of entry along the U.S. border with Mexico, an unusual measure to contain a surge in illegal migration, and the closures are affecting international commerce.
   
• The Japanese corporate chief who was once bold enough to sue his top customer is taking on his biggest challenge yet, trying to acquire United States Steel despite political opposition.
   
• In November 2017, North Korea hit a milestone: launching a homegrown intercontinental ballistic missile that could reach the U.S. mainland. More than six years later, honing the technology has become a perennial quest, with launch after launch.
   
• Israel’s military said it is adding forces to destroy tunnels and undertaking targeted raids aimed at Hamas’s leadership in southern Gaza, after visiting U.S. officials pressed for a tactical shift away from larger-scale operations.
   
• Ukraine needs to rebuild its battered army. The infantry, which bears the brunt of deaths and injuries, is chronically short of men after nearly two years of resisting Russia’s full-blown invasion.

Comcast says data of 36 million accounts was compromised in breach.

Comcast said nearly 36 million U.S. Xfinity accounts were compromised after hackers gained access to its systems through a vulnerability in third-party cloud-computing software.

The breach occurred between Oct. 16 and Oct. 19, Comcast said, and was due to a vulnerability in software made by Citrix, which lets employees remotely access corporate networks and is widely used by large corporations.

• More than a decade after throwing in the towel on its hopes of being a major player in the lucrative U.S. investment-banking market, UBS is making another push, but this time the Swiss financial giant’s ambitions are a bit more measured.
   
• Electric-vehicle startups were flying high just a few years ago. Now many are focused on survival.
   
• Washington turns to Middle East power brokers to bring prisoners home.
   
• Democratic and Republican leaders in the Senate said talks on border policy remain on the right track but now see them dragging into next year. Their reason: Any deal is just too complicated to hash out quickly.
   
• The U.S. population grew 0.5% this year, according to Census Bureau estimates released Tuesday, as the pandemic’s effects on births, deaths and immigration continued to fade.
   
• Companies are setting their sights on a hot new growth market in China: the elderly.

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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