Good morning. Securities and Exchange Commission Chair Paul Atkins went with an unconventional choice in picking former military judge Margaret Ryan to lead his agency’s enforcement division, but securities lawyers said her background could lend itself well to the job, Risk Journal’s Max Fillion reports. 

Unlike many of her predecessors, Ryan was never a prosecutor and doesn’t have a long record of securities litigation. She could, however, use her position as an industry outsider to her advantage, said former SEC enforcement director and WilmerHale partner William McLucas.

• A key role: The enforcement director is one of the SEC’s highest profile roles, overseeing the agency’s civil litigation against publicly listed companies and their employees for a variety of regulatory violations and harm to investors. The cases they oversee often involve complex financial schemes.
   
• Ryan’s background: Ryan is a senior judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces who has worked in the litigation practices at Wiley Rein and Bartlit Beck. She served as a clerk for a Fourth Circuit appellate judge and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas before that. Her time with Justice Thomas, during the Supreme Court’s 2001 – 2002 term, featured at least one securities law case in which the court’s nine Justices unanimously ruled in favor of the agency’s theory of fraud in litigation against a broker.
   
• Crucial timing for the SEC: A new report on the agency’s enforcement activity shows fewer cases this year and a greater focus on investor harm, Barron’s reports. 

Net-zero banking alliance suspends activities amid wave of departures.

A United Nations-backed alliance that called on banks to align their businesses with net-zero emissions has suspended activities, following the departure of numerous financial institutions from its ranks amid political pressure from the Trump administration.

The Net-Zero Banking Alliance said Wednesday that it was pausing operations and initiating a vote to decide on whether to continue working as a membership-based alliance or operate as a framework initiative.

Microsoft investigating employees after Gaza protest locks down building.

Microsoft is weighing disciplinary measures for employees who occupied President Brad Smith’s office on Tuesday in protest of the company’s relationship with the Israeli government during its war in Gaza.

The employees, members of a group that calls itself No Azure for Apartheid, broadcast live video of themselves entering Building 34 on Microsoft’s Redmond, Wash., campus and hanging banners inside Smith’s office. A spokesperson for the group confirmed that several Microsoft employees participated in the takeover of Smith’s office and were arrested.

• President Trump on Wednesday fired Robert Primus, a board member of the railroad regulator that is weighing the proposed megamerger between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern.
   
• The White House said it fired the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday, and several top CDC officials resigned, throwing the agency’s leadership into turmoil.
   
• Prosecutors in Taiwan indicted three people in a case about sensitive chip technology, alleging they stole information from Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing to help one of TSMC’s top equipment suppliers, Tokyo Electron, win more orders.
   
• The U.S. Treasury Department has sanctioned two businesses and two associated individuals for their alleged roles in a scheme to earn money for the North Korean government by providing phony information technology workers, Risk Journal’s David Smagalla reports. 

Cracker Barrel says it’s going back to its old logo after backlash.

Cracker Barrel said it is reverting to its “Old Timer” logo after a rebrand ignited a culture war.

“We said we would listen, and we have. Our new logo is going away and our ‘Old Timer’ will remain,” the company said Tuesday.

The restaurant company’s announcement on Tuesday evening came just a day after it apologized for how it had communicated changes but said that it was keeping its streamlined new look.

• After Cracker Barrel Uproar, Activist Investor Seizes the Moment

Trump to lead White House meeting on ending Gaza war.

President Trump will chaired a meeting at the White House aimed at breaking the impasse on negotiations between Israel and Hamas and mapping out a postwar plan for Gaza, three officials said.

Wednesday’s meeting, which included the president’s top national-security aides and senior Israeli officials, was an attempt to renew efforts to bring about an end to the war ahead of the United Nations summit next month as Israel looks to head off an effort by other Western nations to recognize a Palestinian state.

• Egypt Is Training Palestinian Forces to Take Over Postwar Gaza

• When President Trump took office, India’s business and political establishment expected warm ties with the U.S. would follow, given the close relationship between the American leader and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Instead, Trump has turned on India, inflicting a stiff tariff on the country’s imports—duties that will hit billions of dollars of trade and hurt sectors ranging from textiles to farming.
   
• The Danish government has summoned the top U.S. envoy to Copenhagen over an alleged covert influence campaign in Greenland aimed at driving a wedge between Denmark and the autonomous territory that President Trump has sought to control.
   
• Russia launched a deadly barrage against Kyiv on Thursday, punctuating a lull during President Trump’s peace efforts and damaging buildings across the capital, including the British Council and EU delegation building, and prompting angry responses from European leaders.
   
• Iran’s deputy foreign minister called on European powers and the UN Security Council to give diplomacy the necessary “time and space,” amid European threats to invoke a so-called “snapback mechanism” that would reimpose U.N. sanctions on Tehran, Risk Journal reports. 
   
• Iran hasn’t yet agreed to give the United Nations atomic agency access to the country’s main enrichment sites, the agency’s chief said Wednesday, though a team of international inspectors recently returned following June’s Israeli and U.S. strikes.

• New Covid-19 vaccine booster shots are coming to a pharmacy near you after U.S. health officials cleared them Wednesday. But who gets access to the shots, at a time when infections are rising in many states, may be more limited than previous years because of the Trump administration’s narrower approval.
   
• A grand jury declined to indict a man accused of throwing a sandwich at a federal agent in Washington, D.C., in a blow to the Trump administration’s attempts to prosecute crime in the city to the maximum extent, according to people familiar with the matter.
   
• The Trump administration is taking over the management of Union Station in Washington, D.C., saying that “strong direction is needed to restore this federal asset to its former glory.”

Follow us on X at @WSJRisk. Send tips to our reporters Max Fillion at max.fillion@dowjones.com, Mengqi Sun at mengqi.sun@wsj.com and Richard Vanderford at richard.vanderford@wsj.com.

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