Good morning. U.S. forces seized a sixth oil tanker on Thursday morning, the U.S. Southern Command confirmed.

In a predawn raid, Marines and sailors launched from the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in the Caribbean and apprehended the vessel Veronica, according to the military’s Southern Command.

• Crackdown continues: The Trump administration’s crackdown on what is called the dark fleet that transports sanctioned oil has continued as the U.S. seeks to work with Venezuela’s interim government to control the country’s oil sales. Late last week, the U.S. seized a fifth tanker in waters near Venezuela.
   
• Raising the temperature: The move could raise tensions with Russia, which has been moving to protect dark-fleet tankers in recent weeks.
   
• More targets? There are dozens of ships carrying Venezuelan oil in the Caribbean and other waters around the world that the U.S. could try to take control of if Trump wants to widen the crackdown, analysts say.

The Morning Risk Report won’t be published Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day. We’ll be back on Tuesday.

Head of U.K. white-collar crime agency retiring.

Nick Ephgrave will retire in March after two-and-a-half years at the helm of the Serious Fraud Office, Risk Journal reports.

Ephgrave’s departure marks the end of a relatively short but high-intensity tenure at the SFO. The agency faced a series of controversies and courtroom defeats under Lisa Osofsky, its previous director. Osofsky, an American lawyer, obtained several high-profile corporate settlements but also faced many legal setbacks that culminated in an investigation into the agency’s handling of a case involving Monaco-based oil consulting firm Unaoil.

New York attorney general sues former Emergent BioSolutions CEO for insider trading.

New York Attorney General Letitia James filed suit against the former head of Emergent BioSolutions, accusing him of insider trading for selling his shares in the company before disclosing contamination issues in its production of the Covid-19 vaccine.

Robert Kramer, who retired as chief executive officer in 2023, made $10.1 million from the sale of his shares months after learning about—and before publicly disclosing—production problems the company was facing, according to a lawsuit filed Thursday in state court. Kramer is accused of violating the Martin Act, which forbids company insiders from trading stock while possessing material non-public information, James said.

• Aramark must sell Entier following its acquisition of the Scottish caterer last year, the U.K.’s merger authority said, citing competition concerns.
   
• California is taking on Elon Musk over AI-generated deepfakes. Influencer Ashley St. Clair also sued Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company on Thursday, alleging that its Grok chatbot is “unreasonably dangerous as designed” and constitutes a public nuisance.
   
• Business data provider Dun & Bradstreet agreed to pay $5.7 million to settle a case with U.S. prosecutors over violations of a previous Federal Trade Commission order.

Trump was told attack on Iran wouldn’t guarantee collapse of regime.

President Trump was advised that a large-scale strike against Iran was unlikely to make the government fall and could spark a wider conflict, U.S. officials said, and for now will monitor how Tehran handles protesters before deciding on the scope of a potential attack.

The U.S. would need more military firepower in the Middle East both to launch a large-scale strike, protect American forces in the region and allies like Israel should Iran retaliate, the advisers told Trump, the officials said.

• With Military Action on Hold, the U.S. Puts New Sanctions on Iran
• Iran’s Heavy Crackdown Quells Protests
• ‘A Massacre Happened’: The 24 Hours That Bloodied Iran

Maersk to resume sailing through Red Sea.

Maersk will resume sailing through the Red Sea and Suez Canal following improved stability in the area, but said it will continue to monitor the Middle East security situation closely.

The Danish shipping company said Thursday that after successfully navigating the route twice in recent weeks it will now restart a shipping service solely operated by it that connects the Middle East and India with the U.S. east coast.

• British American Tobacco’s South African subsidiary said it would close its only factory in the country by the end of the year, citing a booming black market.
   
• Trump’s campaign to exert more control over the Federal Reserve recently hit a new gear.
   
• President Trump threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act, a 19th-century law that could allow him to deploy the military inside the U.S., in response to protests in Minnesota that have widened after an Immigration and Customs Enforcement officer fatally shot a woman.

The move follows the U.S. Senate confirmation in late December of Tysen Duva to lead the agency’s Criminal Division. Laryea’s section oversees the department’s foreign bribery and major fraud prosecutions.

“Lorinda is a proven leader and deeply talented prosecutor,” Duva said in an emailed statement. “She is exactly the right person to lead the Criminal Division Fraud Section.”

• Amazon.com is turning to an Arizona mine that last year became the first new source of U.S. copper in more than a decade, to meet its data centers’ ravenous appetite for the industrial metal.
   
• Wall Street is rolling into the new year firing on all cylinders, after the nation’s biggest banks had one of the strongest years on record in 2025. BlackRock’s assets topped $14 trillion for the first time.
   
• Canada’s Prime Minister took an important step toward reinvigorating his nation’s ties with China and diversifying its trade away from the U.S., as Beijing increasingly seeks to woo U.S. allies frustrated with American protectionism.
   
• The Food and Drug Administration quietly removed webpages saying cellphones aren’t dangerous as the Department of Health and Human Services under Robert F. Kennedy Jr. launches a study on cellphone radiation.