The Morning Risk Report

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Good morning. As weather grows hotter, wetter and stormier—and insurance becomes harder to come by—some businesses are warming up to an esoteric tool that lets companies effectively place bets on weather events with few strings attached.

Parametric insurance, as it is called, remains a niche product, though it functions in a relatively straightforward way: It pays out when certain conditions, or parameters, are met.

• Novel solution: Standard-issue insurance might cover flood damage or hail, but a parametric policy is tied directly to a weather event, paying, for example, if wind speed at a specific location gets above a certain level, or floodwaters reach a predetermined height. The data usually come from third parties, such as government weather agencies.
  
   
• Exact thresholds: In parametric policies, though, a near-miss doesn’t count. A business that bought insurance for 28 inches of flood water won’t get anything if 27 seep in.
  
   
• Hard insurance markets: Businesses are being driven to the parametric policies, which cover single, discrete risks, as they find it more difficult to obtain traditional policies.

Maui alleges Hawaiian Electric caused Lahaina wildfire.

Maui County filed a lawsuit Thursday against utility company Hawaiian Electric, alleging that its power lines caused recent wildfires on the island—including one that destroyed the town of Lahaina and killed at least 115 people.

The suit was filed in state Second Circuit Court in Hawaii against Hawaiian Electric and its subsidiaries on Maui, alleging the company failed to maintain the electrical system and power grid during a windstorm that lashed the island, resulting in three different fires that erupted on Aug. 8.

At the heart of Hawaiian Electric is an asset that stands to complicate the company’s already difficult road to recovery: the state’s third-largest bank. Analysts say they believe the financial institution is walled off from legal liabilities but warn that a potential bankruptcy could make that outlook more uncertain.

Morgan Stanley fined by U.K. energy market regulator over WhatsApp uses.

Morgan Stanley agreed to pay 5.41 million British pounds, equivalent to about $6.82 million, to the U.K.’s energy markets regulator to settle an investigation over its traders’ use of banned messaging apps that breached requirements to retain written communications.

The fine, announced Wednesday, was the first ever issued in the U.K. for record-keeping requirements related to the trading of wholesale energy products, according to the regulator, the Office of Gas and Electricity Markets, known as Ofgem.

• The Justice Department sued SpaceX, alleging that the Elon Musk-led company discriminated for years against refugees and others who fled their homelands.
  
   
• FIFA has opened disciplinary proceedings against Spanish soccer chief Luis Rubiales after he kissed Spanish player Jenni Hermoso on the lips during her team’s Women’s World Cup victory ceremony.

Taiwan president requests another jump in military spending to deter China.

One year after pushing through the biggest increase in Taiwan’s military budget in recent memory, the island democracy’s outgoing president ordered another substantial jump in defense spending this week as she tries to step up deterrence against China before leaving office.

As if to punctuate its significance, the unveiling of Tsai Ing-wen’s latest defense budget on Thursday coincided with an announcement by China of a fresh round of live-fire drills nearby. It also came hours after the U.S. State Department approved the sale of a new arms package to Taiwan.

Arizona labor spat signals challenges for U.S. chip manufacturing.

A labor tussle at a semiconductor-plant construction site in Arizona points to one of the thornier challenges facing the U.S. as it moves to revive domestic chip manufacturing: ensuring there are enough skilled workers to meet new demands.

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. is investing $40 billion for two chip fabrication plants in Phoenix. In Arizona, however, construction has been delayed by a shortage of skilled workers, TSMC says.

• Beer giant Heineken said it sold its business in Russia, which includes seven breweries and 1,800 staff, to a Russian packaging and cosmetics company for the symbolic sum of about one dollar.
  
   
• The U.S. is turning to the Democratic Republic of Congo, a much-criticized source, in the race to secure supplies of battery metals to meet the growing demand for electric vehicles.
  
   
• Turkey’s central bank raised its key interest rate by 7.5 percentage points on Thursday, a higher than expected increase, as it attempts to correct years of easy-money policies imposed by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan that left Turkey with major financial imbalances.

• Deceptive pricing practices are on the rise as struggling retailers try to appeal to price-conscious consumers.
  
   
• Uptake of agtech tools has been tepid, and even many farmers who do use them struggle with the software and a flood of data from their farms.
  
   
• Companies including PayPal, MetLife and Booking Holdings have started disclosing the midyear impacts of the 1% tax on share repurchases.

• Bud Light is digging deeper into grassroots American culture to reconnect with beer drinkers following its sales-losing battle in the culture wars.
  
   
• Shein and Forever 21 may soon be fast-fashion friends.
  
   
• Theme parks, airlines and other businesses are stepping up efforts to weed out abuse by opportunists pretending to be disabled to save money or cut long lines.
  
   
• T-Mobile US plans to lay off about 5,000 employees, or 7% of its workforce.
  
   
• A court in Moscow extended by three months the pretrial detention of Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal reporter deemed by the U.S. to be wrongfully held in Russia.