Good morning. Russian state oil giant Rosneft said it would halt all activities in Venezuela and sell all its assets related to activities in the country. “Rosneft entered into an agreement with a company 100% owned by the Government of the Russian Federation on the sale of shares and termination of its participation in all projects in Venezuela, including shares in the production enterprises of Petromonagas, Petroperija, Boqueron, Petromiranda and Petrovictoria, in oil-service enterprises and trading operations,” the company said in a statement.

The announcement comes less than three weeks after the Trump administration added a subsidiary of Rosneft, Geneva-based TNK Trading International SA, or TTI, to its financial blacklist for allegedly helping Venezuela sell its oil in violation of U.S. sanctions. That embargo followed Washington’s decision in February to sanction Swiss-registered Rosneft Trading SA, warning that anyone caught doing business with Rosneft’s subsidiary risks being sanctioned by the U.S.

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All of Rosneft’s assets and trading operations in and related to Venezuela would be sold, closed or liquidated, the company said. The Russian government confirmed that it had acquired assets from Rosneft, the official state news agency RIA Novosti reported.

The Obama administration first imposed sanctions on Rosneft and a slate of Russian businesses and officials in 2014 to put pressure on President Vladimir Putin and Ukrainian separatists to cease their military activity in eastern Ukraine, where a slow-burning conflict was triggered following Moscow’s 2014 annexation of the Crimean Peninsula.

The Venezuelan government of President Nicolás Maduro, already reeling from a severe economic depression and low oil output amid U.S. sanctions, took another hit last week as U.S. prosecutors indicted the leftist leader and unveiled a $15 million reward for his capture for alleged narcotics trafficking. Retired Venezuelan Gen. Cliver Alcalá, who was also indicted, turned himself in to U.S. counternarcotics authorities Friday.

BP said it has agreed to draft a shareholder resolution to be voted on next year that would enshrine its pledge to reach carbon neutrality by 2050. The move comes as energy companies face pressure from investors to dial down their exposure to fossil fuels as governments ready regulations to punish big polluters. “BP has to change, and faster than ever, because the world is changing fast, and so are society’s expectations of us,” BP Chief Executive Bernard Looney said.

• Brokers are seeking permission from regulators to suspend some tasks that were developed during the era of paper stock certificates. Wall Street’s main trade group, the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, says these mundane back-office chores, such as sending signed forms to regulators in Washington, can’t be done when states including New York are on lockdown and even workers deemed essential have been urged to stay away from the office.
   
• President Trump ordered General Motors to sharply ramp up the production of ventilators to treat coronavirus patients, turning to a wartime presidential power that he had been reluctant to use. Mr. Trump invoked the Defense Production Act, or DPA, which dates back to the Korean War and gives the president powers to require businesses to produce goods tied to national defense. Meanwhile, the Food and Drug Administration approved the emergency use of devices that can be modified into ventilators.
   
• With new rules expanding paid sick and family leave going into effect April 1, small businesses across the country are scrambling to figure out which parts of the Families First Coronavirus Response Act apply to them and how to comply.
   
• Michael Sanchez, the brother of Jeff Bezos’ girlfriend, is alleging in a lawsuit that the publisher of the National Enquirer defamed him when it claimed that he was the source of the tabloid’s 2019 exposé about the Amazon founder’s extramarital affair.
   
• A U.S. technology company made thousands of digital-gun files publicly available, including blueprints that will enable users to make plastic guns with three-dimensional printers, a scourge of gun-control advocates. Cody Wilson, a director of the company, Defcad, has waged a multiyear legal battle against the federal government over the right to share 3-D-gun-related materials. This was the third time he has released such files, but the first time he has abided by U.S. foreign export controls online, using what he said are digital verification tools to ensure legal file downloads.
   
• China has cleared Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to take majority control of their local securities businesses, taking a key step in opening up its financial markets to Wall Street.
   
• The coronavirus pandemic has forced courthouses to abandon traditions and embrace long-resisted technology allowing legal work to grind on even if courtrooms remain empty. Judges are holding trials over Zoom, the online video-conference service, and attorneys are questioning witnesses or making oral arguments by phone. Defendants are pleading guilty without ever entering a courtroom.

• U.S. regulators gave banks a reprieve from new accounting standards that require lenders to book losses on soured loans more quickly, the latest step designed to encourage banks to keep lending during the spread of the new coronavirus. Banks now have up to two additional years before they must set aside more capital for reserves against loan losses, as required by the new “current expected credit loss,” or CECL, accounting standard.
   
• Public companies will have extra time to file annual reports and other major disclosures, as firms brace for a financial hit from the new coronavirus. The Securities and Exchange Commission has given companies an additional 45 days to file the periodic reports that investors depend on to learn about financial performance and developing risks. The relief applies to filings that companies would normally make between March 1 and July 1.

Government officials across the U.S. are using location data from millions of cellphones in a bid to better understand the movements of Americans during the coronavirus pandemic and how they may be affecting the spread of the disease. The data can also reveal general levels of compliance with stay-at-home or shelter-in-place orders, according to experts inside and outside government.

The growing reliance on mobile phone location data continues to raise concerns about privacy protections, especially when programs are run by or commissioned by governments. Wolfie Christl, a privacy activist and researcher, said the location-data industry was “covidwashing” what are generally privacy-invading products.

• MIT Researchers Launch Location-Tracking Effort for the New Coronavirus

• Microsoft has decided to no longer hold minority interests in companies that sell facial-recognition technology, a policy change that follows a controversial investment in Israeli startup AnyVision. Microsoft said it would sell its minority stake in AnyVision in implementing a new investment policy for companies that sell facial-recognition technology, since minority stakes don’t “generally allow for the level of oversight or control that Microsoft exercises over the use of its own technology.” AnyVision had been accused of surveilling Palestinians in the West Bank.

American companies, from the owner of a single liquor store in Boston to corporate giants like Macy’s, must decide what to do about April’s bills: Which obligations do they pay and which can they put off? How many employees can they afford to keep on the payroll? Can they get a break on rent? The decisions they make this week could shape how deeply the economy is damaged by the coronavirus pandemic.

Measures taken to curb the spread of the new coronavirus could lower economic activity in the U.S. and other developed countries by a quarter, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development said Friday.

• As coronavirus spreads across the U.S., the trash industry is girding for a potential rise in infectious waste while grappling with concerns about workers’ exposure to the pathogen.
   
• An unprecedented withdrawal of capital from emerging markets is threatening to create a wave of debt defaults as governments struggle with the double whammy of falling oil prices and the rapidly spreading coronavirus outbreak.

The novel coronavirus claimed the life of the longtime finance chief of Jefferies Group LLC. Peg Broadbent, who had served as CFO of Jefferies Group for more than a decade, is the first senior Wall Street executive known to have succumbed to the disease, which has killed more than 30,000 people worldwide. He was 56 years old. Jefferies Financial Group announced the death Sunday.

Mr. Broadbent “helped us build Jefferies from less than half its current size, and navigate through hard times and good times,” Jefferies CEO Rich Handler and President Brian Friedman said in a statement. “He has also been a much-loved and respected leader to the incredible global team that provides the support, foundation and glue across our firm.”

The coronavirus pandemic has put a spotlight on executive succession planning and the disclosure of executives’ health in recent weeks. Teri Gendron, CFO of Jefferies’ financial-services arm, has been appointed interim CFO and chief accounting officer of Jefferies Group, the New York-based firm said.

• Executives are struggling to keep their companies afloat and their workers employed as the coronavirus spreads, and activists’ demands in many cases seem less pertinent than they did just a few weeks ago. That’s led many of the investors to walk away from campaigns or settle them early.

Warehouse operators across the U.S. are sanitizing workplaces, providing protective gear to workers and separating staff as they try to keep supply chains running while much of the country’s economy shuts down amid the coronavirus pandemic. Some businesses have suspended distribution and fulfillment operations in pre-emptive actions aimed at containing the pandemic.

The efforts are part of increasingly aggressive actions logistics companies are taking to ensure goods continue to move through distribution networks, both to anxious consumers who have been stockpiling food and household supplies and, more critically, to hospitals and health-care providers under strain as coronavirus cases mount across the U.S.

• The coronavirus pandemic is forcing the fastest reallocation of labor since World War II, with companies and governments mobilizing an army of idled workers into new activities that are urgently needed. Around the world, former hotel, restaurant and airline staff are moving to grocers, online retailers and hospitals as parts of the economy are shuttered to prevent the spread of the disease—and essential goods and services are strained. 
   
• The U.S. State Department is further easing requirements on seasonal foreign worker visas, following agriculture industry warnings that a bottleneck created by coronavirus-related curbs could prompt a farm-labor shortage at the peak of spring harvest.

The drive-through may be fast-food restaurants’ best shot at surviving the coronavirus lockdown. Even those companies that have the drive-through option say they will still likely endure hundreds of millions of dollars in sales losses in the coming months after officials across the country have banned dine-in eating to try to curb the spread of the new coronavirus. Yet drive-through is one of the few ways to reach customers in nearly every U.S. state, along with carryout and delivery.

Big chains such as McDonald’s, Burger King and KFC that already make up to 70% of sales at the drive-through are better positioned to weather the crisis.

Your special-edition evening newsletter rounding up coronavirus news and analysis is moving to a weekly schedule and will return Sunday. We will continue to include coronavirus coverage in the daily newsletter.