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Good morning. President Biden is set to limit sales of some categories of sensitive U.S. data to China and other adversarial countries in a bid to stymie the covert flow of rich streams of Americans’ personal information overseas.

• Snooping apps: The action is designed to counter a growing national security risk posed by the often-revealing data generated by mobile apps, smartwatches, car sensors and other ubiquitous digital devices. That data can be repurposed and weaponized as a means of intelligence collection by foreign spy agencies. In some cases, adversaries including China and Russia are leveraging these data sets.
  
   
• Digital export controls: Under Biden’s new executive order, specific classes of Americans’ sensitive data, including genomic, biometric, personal health, geolocation, financial and certain types of personal identifiers, will generally be barred from being sold or transferred in vast tranches to “countries of concern” or vendors known to supply data to them. The countries of concern are China, Russia, North Korea, Iran, Cuba and Venezuela.
  
   
• Chasing China: With the executive order, some analysts say, Washington is trying to play catch-up to Beijing, which in recent years has put in place a complex web of laws and regulations restricting data from flowing out of China’s borders.

We invite readers to take part in our 2024 Risk & Compliance Survey. It will only take a few moments of your time, and your insights will inform industry trends and enhance our community knowledge. We hope to present aggregated results in a future edition of Risk & Compliance Journal.

SEC investigating whether OpenAI investors were misled.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is scrutinizing internal communications by OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman as part of an investigation into whether the company’s investors were misled.

The regulator, whose probe hasn’t previously been reported, has been seeking internal records from current and former OpenAI officials and directors, and sent a subpoena to OpenAI in December, according to people familiar with the matter. That followed the OpenAI board’s decision in November to fire Altman as CEO and oust him from the board. At the time, directors said Altman hadn’t been “consistently candid in his communications,” but didn’t elaborate.

Altman returned as CEO less than two weeks later as part of a deal that also entailed a reconstituted board, which he hasn’t joined..

New York attorney general sues meatpacker JBS over climate claims.

New York’s top lawyer filed a lawsuit accusing JBS, the world’s largest meatpacker, of lying about its impact on the environment to win over climate-conscious customers.

New York Attorney General Letitia James on Wednesday sued the Brazilian meat giant’s U.S. division, saying that JBS misled consumers with its climate goals, including its plan to reach net-zero carbon emissions by 2040, to boost sales.

Gemini to return $1.1 billion to customers in New York regulator settlement.

New York’s financial regulator said Gemini Trust has agreed to return at least $1.1 billion to the users of the cryptocurrency exchange’s Earn investment program and to pay about $37 million in fines for compliance failures.

The New York State Department of Financial Services said Wednesday that Gemini failed to oversee and vet its partner in the Earn program, now-bankrupt crypto lender Genesis Global Capital, whose bankruptcy prevented 200,000 Earn customers from accessing their virtual currency, valued currently at about $1.8 billion.

• Alphabet-owned Google was hit with a EUR2.1 billion ($2.28 billion) lawsuit by a group of European media organizations, who are alleging Google’s position in the advertising market harmed their business.
  
   
• Chinese regulators said they will step up oversight of direct market access—a popular strategy in quantitative trading that is usually highly leveraged—to stabilize the market.

Wildfires sweep across Texas panhandle.

Texas is battling one of its biggest wildfires in decades as a series of devastating blazes ripped through the Panhandle, destroying homes and livestock and sparking a wave of evacuations.

Several large fires, ignited in unusually hot and dry winter conditions, have collectively burned more than 570,000 acres in the north part of Texas as of Wednesday, according to the Texas A&M Forest Service.

Detention of Chinese businesswoman owed money by the state sparks public outcry.

The detention of a Chinese businesswoman trying to recoup unpaid fees from government-backed projects in an impoverished stretch of southern China has stirred widespread outrage over a perceived abuse of state power.

The case, centered on a stalled resort development worth tens of millions of dollars, speaks to widespread frustration in China with how authorities are managing the world’s second-largest economy, with previously profligate local governments now struggling to pay their debts. China’s post-Covid economic hangover and slumping property market have driven down land-sales revenues that prop up local government coffers, prompting some officials to shore up finances through unorthodox means.

• Confidence in the eurozone economy unexpectedly worsened in February as sentiment clouded across sectors, according to a survey of consumers and managers.
  
   
• The start of Ramadan looms as an informal but urgent deadline to strike an Israel-Hamas cease-fire, as the militant group called Wednesday for mass protests that Israel fears are part of a plan to spread the conflict outside of Gaza during the Islamic holy month.
  
   
• Top congressional leaders unveiled a deal Wednesday to keep the federal government fully operating beyond Friday, when funding is scheduled to lapse for some agencies.

• A new crop of nefarious chatbots with names like “BadGPT” and “FraudGPT” are springing up on the darkest corners of the web, as cybercriminals look to tap the same artificial intelligence behind OpenAI’s ChatGPT.
  
   
• A decade ago, just one of the world’s 10 most populous countries, India, had a leader who was 70 or older. Today, eight of them do, putting at least half the global population in the hands of people in their 70s and 80s. President Biden, 81, “continues to be fit for duty,” his doctor said.
  
   
• Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, the longest-serving Senate party leader in history, said Wednesday he would step down from his leadership role in November.
  
   
• The Supreme Court agreed to consider whether Donald Trump must stand trial on charges he plotted to overturn the 2020 election.
  
   
• Wendy’s won’t be beefing up the price of a lunchtime burger after getting salty feedback.
  
   
• Thousands of Walmart stores were temporarily unable to process many transactions Wednesday after a software glitch emerged in the system that runs its cash registers and other equipment.