Good morning. Two senators are calling for a federal investigation into Polymarket’s social-media promotion of fake bets following The Wall Street Journal’s reporting on the prediction market’s deceptive marketing practices.

• Congressional pressure: In a letter sent Thursday to Commodity Futures Trading Commission Chairman Michael Selig, senators John Curtis (R., Utah) and Adam Schiff (D., Calif.) said the allegations in the Journal’s reporting “are deeply troubling and demand immediate scrutiny.”
   
• Inquiries about regulatory regime: “The public-facing behavior alleged here does not resemble a sober financial market designed for hedging or price discovery,” the senators wrote. “We remain concerned that the Commission is neither enforcing the law appropriately, nor is equipped to serve as a federal gambling regulator.”
   
• Violations of law? The letter asked Selig to disclose whether the CFTC is investigating Polymarket and whether the practices described in the Journal’s investigation violate CFTC rules or federal law.
   
• Investigation ongoing: The CFTC is in the midst of a continuing investigation into Polymarket, according to a person familiar with the matter. A spokeswoman for the CFTC declined to confirm the existence of an investigation, and the subject of the inquiry couldn’t be determined. The investigation hasn’t been previously reported. The commission dropped a sweeping probe into Polymarket last year.

OpenAI limits access to new models, citing government security concerns.

OpenAI said it is limiting access to its newest artificial-intelligence models after discussions with the Trump administration, but warned that the recent trend of the White House restricting industry activity on national-security grounds on a case-by-case basis shouldn’t become the norm.

What are the restrictions? The maker of ChatGPT said Friday that its latest models, which operate under the umbrella name of GPT-5.6, will initially be made available to a small group of customers approved by the Trump administration. There will be three models available tailored to reasoning, everyday tasks and more intense workloads that have different costs and speeds based on complexity.

• Trump Administration Rolls Back Part of Anthropic Model Ban

Crédit Agricole U.K. unit to pay $41 million to WealthTek clients for AML failures.

A U.K.-based unit of French bank Crédit Agricole agreed to pay 31.7 million pounds, equivalent to more than $41 million, to investors in the failed wealth-management firm WealthTek as part of a resolution with the Financial Conduct Authority, reports Risk Journal's Max Fillion (free link).

The FCA said Caceis U.K., an asset servicing unit of Crédit Agricole, failed to properly safeguard client assets when it acted as a custodian for WealthTek. The U.K. wealth-management firm collapsed in 2023, with the FCA finding a potential shortfall of 81.4 million pounds in client funds.

• Risk Journal reports: The German Federal Prosecutor’s Office announced it is investigating a violation of the Foreign Trade and Payments Act over allegations Russia in 2022 tried to liquidate Gazprom’s German subsidiary in a deliberate attempt to disrupt the country’s gas supply (free link).
   
• The Justice Department closed a criminal probe into Abbott Laboratories over a baby formula plant, opting for civil penalties.
   
• The U.S. imposed sanctions on a Rwandan gold refinery and four associated mining companies on Thursday, targeting a network that authorities say has been smuggling gold from territory controlled by the M23 movement, a Rwandan-backed armed group in eastern Democratic Republic of the Congo designated by both the U.S. and the United Nations (free link).
   
• European Union officials opened an antitrust probe into Sanofi to assess whether the French drugmaker’s marketing campaign for a flu vaccine breached competition rules.
   
• A federal judge declared a mistrial Friday after a jury deadlocked on whether a California man intentionally sparked the 2025 fire that devastated the Pacific Palisades.
   
• Germany’s financial regulator said it launched an audit of the financial statements of e-commerce company Zalando, alleging a transaction related to its acquisition of About You might have been omitted.
   
• A congressional committee issued subpoenas for Apollo Global Management co-founder Leon Black to return for a deposition and turn over materials, after lawmakers said the billionaire declined to answer some questions during an interview about his association with Jeffrey Epstein.
   
• A lawsuit alleges USA Rare Earth stole grain boundary diffusion technology from MP Materials, intensifying competition for U.S. rare-earth supply.

U.S. and Iran agree to stop fight over the Strait of Hormuz.

The U.S. and Iran have agreed to end days of back-and-forth fighting around the Strait of Hormuz and resume peace talks, said officials from the U.S. and other countries involved in the negotiations.

Back to the table. The dangerous period of violence that began Thursday disrupted President Trump’s attempt to end hostilities with Iran and negotiate a settlement that addresses Tehran’s nuclear program. Traffic in the Strait of Hormuz fell during the tit-for-tat strikes, slowing the recovery of a waterway through which 20% of the world’s crude oil once flowed. A U.S. official said vessels would now move freely.

• We Investigated Damage From Iran to a U.S. Naval Base. Here’s What We Found.
• What to Know About How Iran Uses China’s Currency to Weaken U.S. Power

China has matched Anthropic in cybersecurity, resetting AI race.

Chinese artificial-intelligence systems have matched the performance of Anthropic’s powerful model Mythos in some cybersecurity scenarios, a development poised to reset the global tech race and pressure the White House in its overhaul of U.S. AI policy.

Security researchers said that a new AI model, released this month by China’s Zhipu AI, also known as Z.ai, can match the latest U.S. models when it comes to finding security bugs, although it still lags behind Anthropic’s and OpenAI’s products in other tasks.

• President Trump on Friday threatened to greatly increase tariffs on European nations if they follow through on plans to impose new taxes on U.S. tech companies.
   
• For more than four years, Vladimir Putin has tried to shield Russians from the hardships of war. But in Crimea, residents and tourists drawn to its sandy beaches are now enduring the conflict’s costs firsthand.
   
• Two devastating earthquakes have plunged Venezuela’s acting president, Delcy Rodríguez, into her first crisis, posing a crucial test of the Trump administration’s bet that she can transform the country into a more-functional, compliant ally.
   
• The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of Bayer, insulating the company from claims it failed to warn about Roundup’s cancer risks. Analysts said the Supreme Court ruling gives Bayer leverage for a $7.5 billion settlement and could lead to an agriculture unit split.
   
• Ocean shipping rates are surging as U.S. retailers rush in clothes, electronics and holiday items to get ahead of rising costs caused by tariffs and the Iran war.
   
• A record-breaking heat wave has disrupted life across Western Europe, exposing the continent’s vulnerability to scorching temperatures that are expected to be the norm with climate change.
   
• An El Niño could have “damaging effects for years to come” on the global economy through disruptions to agriculture, infrastructure and productivity, Citigroup found.
   
• Uncle Sam is slated to fork over more money than ever to help ease American farmers’ economic woes.
   
• Fierce competition will dominate artificial intelligence risks driving investment spending to excessive levels, threatening the profitability of leading firms and a sharp reversal that could tip some economies into recession, the Bank for International Settlements said Sunday.~
   
• China hit dozens more Japanese companies and several research institutes with trade restrictions, marking another escalation in Beijing’s campaign of economic coercion against Tokyo.

You can listen to new episodes every Friday on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Amazon.