Good morning. A cat-and-mouse game is emerging between the so-called shadow fleet of tankers and U.S. troops blockading Iran’s coast on the orders of President Trump. But early signs are that after years of dodging restrictions, the Iranian shadow fleet may have met its match in the U.S. naval blockade—its ships now appear unable to leave the Persian Gulf.

• Dark fleets: Assembled by Iran, Russia and Venezuela, such ships employ various methods to avoid detection—including going “dark” by switching off their transponder systems that broadcast a ship’s identity and location or spoofing their signals by broadcasting false information about their positions. Iranian ships also transfer oil from one ship to another at sea to conceal the origin of their cargo.
   
• Stopped up: On Wednesday, Centcom, which oversees U.S. forces in the region, said that no ships got through its blockade of Iranian ports in its first 48 hours. Nine vessels obeyed direction from U.S. forces to reverse course and re-enter an Iranian port on the Gulf of Oman, Centcom said.
   
• Probing the blockade: Military and shipping analysts said the movements showed how operators of shadow ships were trying to test the limits of the blockade and probing to see whether the U.S. would take action to enforce the closure. “I think that they’re trying to push the envelope to see. Is the U.S. going to really go the whole measure here,” said Bryan Clark, a former senior official with the U.S. Navy and now a senior fellow with the Hudson Institute.

Live Nation illegally monopolized concerts and ticketing, jury finds.

A federal jury on Wednesday found that Live Nation illegally monopolized the ticketing market for major concerts in the U.S., in a win for a group of states that accused it of overcharging music fans and pressuring venues to use its dominant ticketing service, Ticketmaster.

The verdict came after five weeks of trial and nearly four days of deliberation by jurors in a New York City federal court. The Justice Department made the decision last month to settle its case against Live Nation, leaving more than 30 states to try their claims without the federal government.

Justice Department evidentiary failures lead to foreign bribery acquittal.

A federal judge acquitted a Texas businessman of his foreign bribery conviction because Justice Department prosecutors declined to make the translators they used available for cross-examination, Risk Journal reports (free link).

The experts that prosecutors used to translate text messages in Spanish between participants in the alleged bribery scheme played a central role at trial because the Justice Department relied on them to support their case, Houston-based U.S. District Judge Kenneth Hoyt said in an opinion Wednesday.

Lawyers for the defendant, Ramon Alexandro Rovirosa Martinez, repeatedly accused prosecutors of solely relying on translated text messages to obtain their indictment.

• The Federal Trade Commission and a coalition of eight states have reached a proposed settlement with major advertising companies to resolve a probe into whether the firms violated antitrust laws by coordinating boycotts against platforms, including Elon Musk’s X.
   
• The U.S. has sanctioned a network connected to Iranian shipping magnate Mohammad Hossein Shamkhani as part of its newly announced “Economic Fury” approach to sanctions.
   
• The European Union plans to order Meta Platforms to reverse a policy that officials say effectively bans rival artificial-intelligence chatbots from using its WhatsApp messaging platform as the regulator advances an antitrust investigation into the company.
   
• The Financial Accounting Standards Board wants to require companies to disclose significant stablecoin holdings as part of a broader move to have companies break out their different types of cash equivalents.
   
• The U.S. Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control suspended sanctions on Venezuela’s central bank and three other state financial institutions on Tuesday, another step in the gradual normalization of relations between Washington and Caracas following the restoration of diplomatic ties.
   
• America’s publicly funded emergency-communications network has sometimes failed during the exact disasters it was built to endure, prompting a bipartisan push for tighter oversight.

North Korea suspected of being behind April Fools’ Day crypto heist.

The likely culprit for the April 1 theft is the crypto world’s biggest nemesis: North Korea. Kim Jong Un’s cyber army has plundered billions of dollars from the crypto industry in recent years. No other hacking outfit comes close to the amounts stolen by North Korean scams and thieves.

This example fits a pattern of past thefts by North Korea. The country accounted for 60% of the world’s cryptocurrency thefts in 2025, stealing a record $2 billion, according to blockchain analytics firm Chainalysis. That included February 2025’s unprecedented $1.5 billion raid on Bybit, one of the world’s biggest cryptocurrency exchanges.

Has the era of the mega-layoff arrived?

Snap is laying off 16% of its staff. Block lopped off 40% of its workforce. Oracle, meanwhile, is shedding thousands of employees, after Amazon.com cut about 30,000 in a matter of months.

Welcome to the era of the mega-layoff. In Silicon Valley and beyond, companies that are cutting staff are doing it with a big ax. Instead of laying off people in more incremental—and less disruptive—waves, employers are seizing on the potential financial upsides of severing swaths of their workforces at once.

• Iranian leaders have portrayed the current cease-fire as a victory against an overwhelming U.S. and Israeli onslaught. But they now face a towering postwar reconstruction challenge that is putting pressure on them to negotiate for sanctions relief.
   
• The U.S. is uniting Libyan rivals to squeeze out Russia.
   
• China’s largely muted public reaction to President Trump’s Iran campaign reflects a measured effort to avoid risk while safeguarding its interests.
   
• As President Trump’s rift with Europe widens, he is casting even his political friends into the chasm.
   
• New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is introducing a plan to lower insurance costs for apartment landlords, his first prominent effort to help the city’s real estate owners after months of feuding with the industry.
   
• A major fire engulfed part of Viva Energy’s oil refinery in Geelong, heightening concerns around the supply of oil products in Australia at a time when availability has been stretched by the conflict in the Middle East.

A private equity billionaire mounts his biggest takeover yet: the Pentagon.

On Wall Street, Steve Feinberg had a well-oiled sales pitch for investors thinking of betting billions on his corporate turnarounds.

Now the Pentagon’s No. 2 official, the former private-equity boss faces the biggest sell of his career: persuading Congress to bless the Trump administration’s $1.5 trillion military budget.

The massive funding surge would pour into a military plagued by years of costly overruns and painful delays. Feinberg has told Trump administration officials he could avoid those pitfalls using a carrot-and-stick approach with companies on the receiving end of those dollars.

• The Trump administration wants automakers and other American manufacturers to play a larger role in weapons production, reminiscent of a practice used during World War II.

The Dow Jones Risk Journal Summit London on May 7 will convene senior business professionals for discussions on a range of corporate risks including supply chains, artificial intelligence, geopolitics and financial crime. Speakers include: Kathy Wengel, EVP, Chief Technical Operations and Risk Officer, Johnson & Johnson; Nish Imthiyaz, Global Privacy and Responsible AI Counsel, Vodafone; and Will Mayes, Chief Executive, Cyber Monitoring Centre.

Request a complimentary invitation here using the code COMPLIMENTARY. Attendance is limited, and all requests are subject to approval.