Good morning. Dubai’s top financial regulator is bulking up its capabilities to monitor the growing cryptocurrency industry.

Alan Linning, the managing director of enforcement for the Dubai Financial Services Authority, said the crypto industry is still small in Dubai but already includes big international players.

• DFSA’s concerns: Linning, who spoke at the Dow Jones Risk Journal Summit in Dubai on Wednesday, said the DFSA is concerned about the potential dangers of crypto being used to hide assets intended to thwart law enforcement and regulators. “We are internally growing our resources because of all of those issues,” said Linning.
   
• Context: Dubai and the broader United Arab Emirates have been working to make the region a hub for crypto investment. But the move opens up new risks, given lagging regulatory enforcement of the industry worldwide and the increasing use of crypto for money laundering. The DFSA last month introduced new rules to govern cryptocurrencies, including outlining eligibility requirements for tokens and the banning of privacy tokens.
   
• AML efforts in the spotlight: Beyond crypto, Linning said the DFSA is focused on identifying the sources of money laundering. Dubai and the wider U.A.E. have seen a flood of money in recent years as geopolitical tensions have led people to move their assets around.

Nike hit with DEI probe.

Nike faces a U.S. investigation into whether its diversity efforts may have unfairly discriminated against white workers, Risk Journal’s Richard Vanderford reports.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal civil rights law in the workplace, said Wednesday it is investigating whether the footwear and apparel company’s diversity, equity and inclusion targets and other DEI objectives were illegal. The agency filed an action in federal court to enforce a subpoena and compel Nike to turn over information.

Nike said it had shared thousands of pages of information with the EEOC, calling the agency’s move a “surprising and unusual escalation.”

Former Bank of America employee pleads guilty to laundering fraud proceeds.

A former Bank of America employee pleaded guilty to assisting with laundering more than $8 million in health care fraud proceeds, reports Risk Journal’s Max Fillion, marking the first such conviction for the Justice Department’s health care fraud unit.

The case: Prosecutors said Renat Abramov, a former relationship manager at a Bank of America branch in Brooklyn, N.Y., opened bank accounts for individuals who posed as owners of fake medical equipment companies. The accounts were used to deposit fraudulently obtained insurance checks, which were then transferred into offshore accounts and cryptocurrency, prosecutors said.

• The top Democrat on a House committee overseeing U.S.-China competition has launched an investigation into a $500 million investment by an Abu Dhabi royal in a Trump family cryptocurrency company and is urging a U.S. attorney to probe the deal as well.
   
• A Hong Kong-based company caught in the middle of U.S.-China tensions has started legal proceedings to challenge how Panama voided its contract to operate ports at either end of the Panama Canal.
   
• A federal district judge Tuesday refused Elon Musk’s request to dismiss a government lawsuit over Musk’s late filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as he accumulated Twitter stock in 2022.
   
• A former Federal Reserve official was found not guilty Tuesday of conspiring to share confidential central-bank information with Chinese intelligence officers, capping a case that featured spycraft, online seduction and a blackmail scam.
   
• The U.S. has agreed to work with Japan, Mexico and the European Union on the development of critical minerals used in industries such as defense, the Trump administration said on Wednesday.

U.S., Iran agree to discuss nuclear issues Friday in Oman.

The U.S. and Iran have reached an agreement to hold nuclear talks in Oman on Friday, ending a drama over what would be discussed, but restarting a delicate diplomatic dance that may yet end with President Trump ordering airstrikes on Iran.

Both the White House and Iran’s foreign ministry confirmed the Friday sit down, the first time since last May that Washington and Tehran will hold formal negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. The U.S. wants Tehran to stop enriching uranium, curb its ballistic missile program and end its support for regional proxies. Iran has said it is willing to discuss only its nuclear work.

• Trump Says He Spoke With China’s Xi About Iran

Microsoft’s pivotal AI product is running into big problems.

Microsoft’s Copilot chatbot has become central to its artificial-intelligence strategy as the company’s close partnership with OpenAI diminishes. But the effort to build it up as a ChatGPT alternative has been tough going.

Confusing brand positioning and interoperability problems have frustrated users, current and former employees who have worked on Microsoft’s AI products said. Only a small proportion of subscribers to Microsoft’s enterprise suite use Copilot, and the percentage who favor it over Google’s Gemini or other tools has decreased in recent months, according to data reviewed by the Journal.

The stakes are high for Microsoft because Copilot is core to a push by Chief Executive Satya Nadella to transform Microsoft into an AI-first company. Copilot is one of Nadella’s top priorities, current and former executives said.

• President Trump said India is going to stop buying Russian oil. Such a move—which would have profound effects on global crude trading—is easier said than done.
   
• The new U.S. strategy for rare-earth minerals looks a lot like China’s old one.
   
• President Trump and Colombian President Gustavo Petro met, signaling a detente after months of trading insults and policy disagreements.
   
• Democrats are calling on tech companies to cover the rising energy costs associated with the build-out of data centers rather than pass them on to their constituents.
   
• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told lawmakers on Wednesday that the president has the right to interfere with the decision-making of the Federal Reserve.
   
• The economic costs of last month’s massive winter storm Fern, which blanketed half the country in snow and knocked out power to more than a million people, could be historic.
   
• The U.K. economy would be smaller, its debts larger and taxes higher within 15 years if immigration were to end, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research said Wednesday.

• Google parent Alphabet reported an 18% jump in fourth-quarter revenue, driven by growth in its digital-advertising and cloud-computing units as it ramped up spending on artificial intelligence.
   
• Top Senate negotiators said that an effort to renew expired healthcare subsidies had effectively collapsed, likely ending the hopes of 20 million Americans that the tax-credit expansion could be revived and lower their monthly insurance premiums.
   
• The Trump administration is planning to make it easier to discipline—and potentially fire—career officials in senior positions across the government, a move that would affect roughly 50,000 federal workers.
   
• The Trump administration is pulling 700 of the approximately 3,000 federal officers and agents out of Minnesota, border czar Tom Homan said Wednesday, indicating that it plans to continue large-scale immigration operations in Minneapolis.
   
• The Washington Post is cutting one-third of its staff, slashing hundreds of jobs across the newsroom and other departments in an effort to trim costs and reshape coverage.

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